Makin’ Wook­ie – A brief his­to­ry of Star Wars porn parodies

As one of the most per­va­sive pop cul­tur­al icons of the past one hun­dred years, Star Wars has o ered up ripe mate­r­i­al for all kinds of mock­ery. One of those, inevitably, was the time-hon­oured porn par­o­dy. The rst wave of par­o­dy pornog­ra­phy arrived in the 1970s when Amer­i­can obscen­i­ty laws had soft­ened to the point where major cities were able to screen fea­ture length erot­i­ca such as Deep Throat, Deb­bie Does Dal­las and The Dev­il in Miss Jones. The land­scape of pornog­ra­phy, which was once hid­den away behind closed doors, was sud­den­ly out in the open. While the major­i­ty of audi­ences were still wary to be asso­ci­at­ed with an indus­try tied to the coun­ter­cul­ture and, often, the Ma a, those sit­ting on the fence appeared to nd pornog­ra­phy wrapped up in a light com­e­dy nar­ra­tive more social­ly acceptable.

Since then, there have been at least two major waves of pop­u­lar­i­ty for the porn par­o­dy, each one imbued with increased sophis­ti­ca­tion. In an indus­try cur­rent­ly com­pet­ing with end­less stores of gratis online pornog­ra­phy, a well-made porn par­o­dy of a pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion series or movie has proven to be lucra­tive. Speak­ing with Adult Video Net­work, Jeff Mullen of X‑Play explained the genre’s appeal: ​“We got an entire­ly new seg­ment of peo­ple that were will­ing to buy porn that didn’t ever walk into a porn shop or order online before,” he says. ​“They want­ed to see The Brady Bunch porn, they want­ed to see Three’s Com­pa­ny porn.” While most porn is eas­i­ly con­sumed on free tube web­sites, there is a nov­el appeal in own­ing a par­o­dy of your favourite movie or TV show, even poten­tial­ly dri­ving up sales of the orig­i­nal property.

Com­pa­nies like X‑Play focus on par­o­dy­ing pop cul­ture that has cross-gen­er­a­tional appeal. Prod­ucts like Star Wars and The Brady Bunch were able to con­nect with as wide an audi­ence as pos­si­ble. While there have been sim­i­lar porn par­o­dies of recent polit­i­cal events, such as Hustler’s infa­mous 2008 film, Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?, they don’t com­mand the same bud­get or sus­tain­able audi­ence as a pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion pro­gramme. The high pro­duc­tion val­ues of some of these films have meant that most DVDs are bun­dled with alter­na­tive ver­sions with the adult sec­tions edit­ed out so that home view­ers can enjoy the par­o­dy with­out the sex.

The appeal of porn par­o­dies for a wide audi­ence satis es two impuls­es: it indulges in a fan­ta­sy of hav­ing your favourite char­ac­ters get it on and it also engages with pornog­ra­phy as a group expe­ri­ence. It offers view­ers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be ​‘naughty’ and watch porn with their friends while hav­ing the com­e­dy off­set much of the dis­com­fort. Com­e­dy, hor­ror and pornog­ra­phy have long occu­pied a sim­i­lar space in the cin­e­mat­ic land­scape where they reach for vis­cer­al reactions.

Where fear and laugh­ter are social­ly sanc­tioned, arousal is not. Match­ing pornog­ra­phy with com­e­dy means laugh­ter over­rides the most uncom­fort­able ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with sex­u­al desire. Off­set­ting the real impli­ca­tions of want­i­ng to watch pornog­ra­phy, it allows view­ers to dip their toes in tit­il­la­tion with­out the shame of admit­ting they want to get off. Porn par­o­dies have come to occu­py that same cul­tur­al space as the peo­ple who used to read Play­boy ​“for the articles.”

More so than any oth­er sub-genre of pornog­ra­phy, the par­o­dy occu­pies the most accept­ed space in the main­stream. Aside from oth­er obvi­ous gim­micks, it might be the only kind of pornog­ra­phy that is reg­u­lar­ly reviewed by the main­stream press. Web­sites such as the Split­sider cov­er porn par­o­dies in columns like ​‘This is Research’ where Sarah Schnei­der reviews pop­u­lar titles as The Big Lebows­ki: A XXX Par­o­dy and This Ain’t Ghost­busters XXX. Focused as much on com­e­dy as sex, she unveils the curi­ous appeal of the genre. In her first entry, on the 30 Rock par­o­dy, she asks ​“Why do these films exist? Who watch­es them?” Over the course of about a dozen columns, it becomes evi­dent that the veil of par­o­dy allows Schnei­der to also talk about the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of sex in a real and almost banal way. At di erent moments she dis­cuss­es cam­era angles, body parts and dirty talk (object­ing espe­cial­ly to this line from Sein­feld XXX, ​“I wan­na drink you. I wan­na have you in my tummy.”)

Over the past few decades, pornog­ra­phy has only increased its pres­ence in cul­tur­al and social cir­cles. It does, how­ev­er, remain a soli­tary and uncrit­i­cal enter­prise. Most dis­cus­sions of porn are reduced to a ques­tion of ethics, while the dis­cus­sions of artis­tic or even tit­il­lat­ing mer­its sad­dle up with Jus­tice Pot­ter Stewart’s 1964 procla­ma­tion in the land­mark Jaco­bel­lis v Ohio obscen­i­ty rul­ing: ​“I know it when I see it.” It almost seems unques­tion­able in 2016 that a film like Louis Malle’s noto­ri­ous 1958 work, Les Amants, would be sub­ject to an obscen­i­ty case, but what kind of crit­i­cal advance­ments have we made since then in the dis­cus­sion of eroti­cism and sex on screen?

As film­mak­ers like Gas­par Noé and Cather­ine Breil­lat tease the bound­ary between obscen­i­ty and art, it seems pornog­ra­phers are doing the same. Porn par­o­dies which bridge the gap between grat­i­fi­ca­tion and enter­tain­ment might actu­al­ly offer an open­ing for crit­i­cal engage­ment with pornog­ra­phy. In pornog­ra­phy and beyond, issues of desire and sex­u­al­i­ty still seem glossed over, in par­tic­u­lar in terms of aes­thet­ics and the­mat­ic impli­ca­tion. As these film­mak­ers them­selves strive to cre­ate bet­ter prod­ucts, some of which are pre­sent­ed sans sex, this should be seen as a chal­lenge to crit­ics to fol­low suit and flex their sex­u­al imag­i­na­tion in writ­ing about eroti­cism on screen

Set in 2080, Star Babe was released the same year as A New Hope. In the lm, three sparkle cov­ered Star Babes are sent to Plan­et Phal­lus where they need to recov­er some secret plans and pre­vent an alien takeover of plan­et earth. Very tan­gen­tial­ly a par­o­dy of Star Wars, the movie does fea­ture a Darth Vad­er cos­tume, a stormtroop­er mask and a can­ti­na scene. Nei­ther fun­ny nor par­tic­u­lar­ly sexy. It’s cer­tain­ly an odd­i­ty in the annuls of cheap­ly made pornog­ra­phy of the 1970s. Extreme close-ups that com­plete­ly abstract the body parts and actions they por­tray seem like a bizarre rel­ic of the avant-garde rather than an erot­ic impulse. Dis­em­bod­ied gen­i­tals peek out of cheap Hal­loween cos­tumes (includ­ing a goril­la, a were­wolf, and Nixon) and are matched with the per­form­ers’ non­sen­si­cal imper­son­ations of clas­sic Uni­ver­sal mon­sters. With a mer­ci­ful­ly short run­ning time, this par­o­dy is a great doc­u­ment more than a great film.

Sex Wars is per­haps the most famous of the first wave of Star Wars par­o­dy films. Made just a few years after the release of Return of the Jedi, it arrived dur­ing the per­fect storm of most SW super­fans hit­ting ear­ly adult­hood with the new­found acces­si­bil­i­ty of the VHS tape. Run­ning up against what will become a major prob­lem in most of these par­o­dy films, the movie splits the role of Leia over sev­er­al women, mak­ing up for the gen­der dis­par­i­ty of the orig­i­nal series. Famil­iar as both pornog­ra­phy and par­o­dy, the movie has recog­nis­able Star Wars iconog­ra­phy such as Admi­ral Ack­bar and the crawl­ing text that goes on and on and on. Remark­ably, the film does have some expres­sion­is­tic edges, includ­ing a blowjob inter­cut with a per­co­lat­ing vol­cano. And, in a sub­ver­sive move, rather than shy away from the under­ly­ing incest inher­ent Luke and Leia’s sex­u­al attrac­tion, Sex Wars embraces it.

This seems to be more of a riff on Space­balls than Star Wars, which make it a porn par­o­dy of a par­o­dy. Run­ning at near­ly three hours, the film fea­tures not only a whole lot more sex than the oth­er films, but far more plot as well. Seem­ing­ly made by cinephiles, Space Nuts takes as many hits at Kubrick as it does Star Wars, includ­ing a fun­ny extend­ed sequence with Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Fit­ting in as many sex jokes as pos­si­ble (this is episode 69 and is cen­tred on a ball-shaped chin Pal­pa­tine knock-off and Princess Huba­ba), the com­bined run­ning time of all the sex scenes eclipse the two pre­vi­ous par­o­dies com­bined. The sex scenes often seem dropped in rather than inte­grat­ed, and, inex­plic­a­bly. all fea­ture an over­whelm­ing gui­tar shred­ding sound­track. Hard­ly great cin­e­ma, this one is fun, though way too bogged down with life­less and unin­spired grinding.

With ritzi­er pro­duc­tion val­ues than most mid-2000s par­o­dy films, Star Wars XXX man­ages to tran­scend pornog­ra­phy. With gen­uine laughs and a sophis­ti­cat­ed sex­i­ness, it is per­haps the only Star Wars porno where the per­form­ers don’t break char­ac­ter once they undress. Rather than just rely on cheap gags and heavy winks, the movie imag­ines a Star Wars uni­verse where the char­ac­ters have real erot­ic desires and it builds off that premise. The film­mak­ing itself is sur­pris­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and relies not only on sex­u­al puns but visu­al gags, includ­ing a fun­ny take on Vader’s overzeal­ous and inef­fec­tive force choke. With a charm­ing script and decent-to-good per­for­mances, Star Wars XXX is emblem­at­ic of the porn par­o­dy as a com­mu­nal expe­ri­ence. Sala­cious enough to be excit­ing and com­mend­ably fast paced, the film appeals direct­ly to fans and also oper­ates as a diver­sion­ary social expe­ri­ence. Big thumbs up.