The Well Versed has a too-short interview with Alexander DeVoe, who talks about the history of black people in fetish video porn, on both sides of the camera:
AD: When I first started [directing], people didn’t understand it. When they watched it, they never would’ve guessed it was a black guy producing it; it was all this weird shit, tying people up, gagging them, crazy costumes and dungeons. I wanted to present something that was visually appealing.
TWV: So you’ve moved more towards fetish content?
AD: I look at it as another level to present people of color in.
TWV: Porn is still taboo in the black community, but we know a lot of black people are watching. When you got into the bondage stuff, was it difficult to introduce that?
AD: It was in the beginning. People thought, “This dude, DeVoe is crazy.” There’s a vocal minority that watches this. This is my style, once people got used to the brand, they were feeling it because I was giving them a different look. Everybody else was doing the booty shaking—and I do that because you’ve got to hit every niche. If you look at things in terms of business, everybody might not be feeling it, but there’s an audience. I never want to be compartmentalized or produced things that are stereotypical.
TWV: Was there a process of educating people on the fetish content?
AD: The owner of West Coast [Productions] gave me free reign to do what I wanted, so I was doing shit that was way out: Putting girls in wings and resurrecting dead folks. I was giving people a lot to look at. People were so used to popping in a VHS and watching people shake their booty and have sex. I tried to keep everything really complex, but I understand that you only had a certain amount of time before people hit fast forward.
I think people in any business, including porn, develop their own received wisdom about what their customers want. It does take a rare individual to go against the grain and take a risk, by having POCs in a fetish or BDSM scene, and to address POCs as an audience when the assumption is that the audience is white.
(via Violet Blue)
