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Chapter one examines the early history of adult video from a variety of technological, cultural, and industrial perspectives beginning with the Panoram, a device invented in the 1940s and completely unintended for pornography. Following is an analysis of the adult motel landscape of Southern California, an early site of adult video distribution. The chapter concludes with a history of the early pioneers of adult video, including George Atkinson, who created the first video rental store in the United States.

The final chapter examines traditional forms of regulation, focusing on the community protests, anti-pornography feminist movements, national efforts by conservative groups, and other attempts to contain the efforts by the adult video industry to find widespread public acceptance and economic success. I argue that a panic, traceable to the move of sexually explicit films from public to private spaces, resulted in a major shift in the cultural understanding of sexuality, pleasure, and pornography. Part of this panic is visible in the Meese Commission’s investigation in 1986, which aligns with the period in which the adult film industry completed the transition from celluloid to magnetic tape-based production and distribution. I conclude the book with an analysis of the mainstream video rental’s decision to stop carrying adult video in the wake of the Meese Commission and gesture toward the further regulatory actions of the 1990s.

Chapter two explores the creation in 1983 of Adult Video News (AVN), a newsletter initially aimed at the public but gradually transformed into an industry trade journal in the vein of Variety or Hollywood Reporter. In its attempts to provide a more sophisticated, nuanced, and professional set of discourses for adult video, AVN represents a major turning point in this history, focusing on the industry as an industry, rather than merely as content made by unseen, hidden forces. Additionally, AVN repeatedly emphasized and encouraged the creation of quality material as a strategy to gain the respectability that would lead to greater acceptability and profits, a stance it also replicated within its own pages and editorial practices. Ultimately, AVN crafted something new: a space in which to promote, sell, and celebrate adult video.

This introduction offers an overview of relevant literature, a brief trajectory of the history of pornography before the video era, and an analysis of why the topic has not received much attention. Additionally, it offers one of the central arguments in the book, that the industry’s quest for respectability by foregrounding quality (both aesthetically and narratively) had critical ramifications in terms of gender and sexuality—particularly for women—that have been previously overlooked.

Chapter three contrasts a pair of case studies involving the challenges faced by the women whose performances helped build the adult video industry, and particularly the significance of the means of production and control. First, Ginger Lynn and Vivid Video, the first company to recognize the potential of the shot-on-video format. Lynn was the centerpiece in a new, aggressive marketing strategy that sought widespread public acceptance but did not hold an ownership stake in the company, and thus represents the limitations of performance success. Second is Candida Royalle, a performer in the 1970s who founded Femme Productions in 1984 with the goal of creating adult films for women, which she did as writer, director, producer, and owner. While similar to Vivid in terms of the desire for economic success with particular demographics, Royalle’s overt politics, feminist strategies, marketing discourses, and narrative and visual content set Femme in radically different territory.

In this prologue, I describe my own background in relation to this topic, particularly important given my religious family upbringing describe the book’s guiding questions, and set the stage for the rest of the book.

The epilogue examines On the Prowl, the 1989 film directed by veteran performer Jamie Gillis. Ushering in the “gonzo” genre, which de-valued narrative and familiar aesthetics for a raw and spontaneous set of practices and conventions, the film represents where pornography would go in the era after the events of this book—as well as the constructed nature of all pornography, regardless of technology or technique.