Naughty Realism: The Britishness of British Hardcore

Abstract

This article offers a history of and a context for videos and DVDs rated as R18 in the United Kingdom. These contain hardcore pornographic material (albeit subject to certain restrictions) and are allowed to be sold only in licensed sex shops. As well as explaining changes in legislation and in censorship practices that allowed the sale of hardcore pornography at R18 after 2000, it explores whether British-produced R18s have a distinctive approach, style and ideology, and tentatively suggests that they share a carnivalesque style of ‘naughty realism’ which is similar to that found in British sexploitation films of the 1970s. The article concludes by describing and analysing the films of two British porn ‘auteurs’, Lindsay Honey (‘Ben Dover’) and Anna Arrowsmith (‘Anna Span’), and reflecting on the potential obsolesence of the R18 in the age of online pornography.