scene title: precious gold
performers: ana foxxx, alexis fawx
site: sweetheart video (mile high)
production credits: ricky greenwood (dir.)
release date: july 8, 2019 | trailer
it was photos from this shoot, which ana foxxx posted on her social media shortly after filming it, which got me excited about alexis loves girls. alexis fawx's bold choice of contrasting body paint, the reflective metallic backdrop, and ana wearing her natural hair for as far as i am aware the first time ever in a scene made for a stunning preview image, but more than anything the creative ambition from both women to play so audaciously with racial and gender conventions in a field which shies so fearfully away from anything remotely unconventional or controversial is almost breathtaking.
ana is covered in metallic gold body paint, looking a bit like a more shapely academy award with a close-cropped afro; alexis is covered in dark body paint save for her face (i imagine she didn't need to be told not to do blackface, but i'm also certain ana would have warned her away from it if necessary). during alexis' pre-scene interview she takes great care to underscore that she is attracted to the essence of a person rather than their external physical characteristics (male or female), which raised my eyebrows slightly: is she excusing her choice of ana to racists convinced that no black woman is beautiful? but watching the scene, i think i get what she's going for: by painting ana a lighter tone than her natural pigmentation and herself a darker tone than her natural pigmentation, she's attempting (clumsily, perhaps, for someone with a thorough grounding in antiracism already) to demonstrate how unimportant racial differences are: ana's peerlessly beautiful facial structure and lithe, muscular body are clearly stunning regardless of the shade they're painted in.
but ana's decision not to wear one of her many signature weaves (as she puts it in the interview, she gets to be bald) ups the ante on racial presentation and takes in gender presentation as well. her lean figure is already rather androgynous (as her former career as a fashion model would demand), and by refusing the long hair which porn has always used to code femininity, she allows herself to be read as masculine, especially since centuries of racist, eurocentric beauty standards have conditioned viewers (particularly white viewers, but social conditioning affects everyone) to read even cis black women as more masculine than white women and indeed only provisionally feminine at all, regardless of how closely they adhere to white norms. (listen to black trans women, they know what they're talking about.) especially when juxtaposed against alexis' exaggerated fertility-goddess anatomy, ana's young-golden-god look transgresses porn's gender determinism so strongly that it's one of the textually (if not intentionally) queerest scenes in girl/girl porn this year. the result is a provocative, genuinely brave statement about human connection and desire that neither woman has to articulate verbally: the imagery stands on its own.
and the audience has been accordingly unreceptive. the feedback on sweetheart's website (after, admittedly, only one day) has been subdued and decidedly mixed, and social media has, as far as i can tell, been virtually silent on the scene. porn is so conservative that even this very mild venture (as compared to the kind of thing that regularly occurs in fashion or arts spaces) in tweaking racial and gender norms is a bridge too far for most porn fans, even the more liberal of whom refuse to acknowledge race as anything but a sexual fetish and are so deeply homophobic that the slightest hint of androgyny sends them screaming for the hills. it's not the first time that porn performers and creators have been well in advance of the porn audience, and in fact most of the things that are wrong with pornography today boil down to the paying audience having not budged an inch in their social views since the 1980s, when they were not notably progressive.
but i've gotten this far into the review without talking about anything that the still photos couldn't have communicated. how's the sex?
it's good. both alexis and ana are all-star performers, down to get filthy (which is good, because the body paint is going to get everywhere) with wolfish appetites for giving each other pleasure. they rarely stay in one position for long enough to credibly deliver orgasms, but that's hardly the point: they want to devour each other, not make love. (sex can be so many different things, which the girl/girl audience in particular refuses to hear.) they do a lot of swapping spit colored with the paint they've licked off each other (i have to assume it's edible and non-toxic because i don't think anyone involved is that stupid), and by the end of it they're both smeared in each other's colors with patches of their natural pigmentation showing: in particular, ana being dark from the nose down (thanks to enthusiastic cunnilingus) and golden above is a striking inversion of minstrel imagery.
i can't help it, i'm essentially an arts critic who has chosen to write about pornography. this scene is so creatively erotic in a way that is so fundamentally different from the pseudo-verité of most porn that it's hard to read it as porn, even when both women are jackhammering each others' genitals. it's just as much a performance art piece as it is a video designed for creeps to jerk off to (if not more so), and it's probably more successful as performance art than it is at being porn. but why make the distinction? the clumsy literalism of the discourse around porn, the insistence that it only be an aid to masturbation and nothing else, rather than existing on an erotic and aesthetic spectrum in which all other art also participates, is so boring. (hence why i'm writing all these reviews.) alexis fawx and ana foxxx understand that performance art can be erotic too, and certainly seem to find it so in the moment; their post-coital interview is so brimming with joy and affection that even if i had loathed their action together i would still have loved the way they felt about it.
it was gorgeously shot: dry ice drifting across the screen in order to highlight the already heightened unreality of the scene was a particularly nice touch, and the mysterious, darkly glittering location, so starkly different from the usual pseudodomestic porn sets, concentrates all the attention on the two strikingly adorned bodies in the center of the frame. the shooting team of greenwood and avalon know what they're doing, and alexis' vision was perfectly realized.
i honestly can't praise this scene highly enough: it's so brilliantly conceived and passionately enacted that everything else after it might be a letdown if i didn't enjoy variety so much. i was particularly thrilled to see, as someone who has followed ana's career closely for many years, how much she has grown into her personality as she has matured. the blandly-smiling, carefully articulate performer of some half-dozen years ago has loosened up, gained confidence, and allowed her sense of humor to inform her work instead of just delivering exquisitely pretty pictures.
once more, women over thirty make the best pornstars change my mind.
performances: 27
cinematography: 25
editing: 20
script: 12
sjw points: 7
total score:
performers: ana foxxx, alexis fawx
site: sweetheart video (mile high)
production credits: ricky greenwood (dir.)
release date: july 8, 2019 | trailer
 |
| l: alexis fawx, r: ana foxxx |
it was photos from this shoot, which ana foxxx posted on her social media shortly after filming it, which got me excited about alexis loves girls. alexis fawx's bold choice of contrasting body paint, the reflective metallic backdrop, and ana wearing her natural hair for as far as i am aware the first time ever in a scene made for a stunning preview image, but more than anything the creative ambition from both women to play so audaciously with racial and gender conventions in a field which shies so fearfully away from anything remotely unconventional or controversial is almost breathtaking.
ana is covered in metallic gold body paint, looking a bit like a more shapely academy award with a close-cropped afro; alexis is covered in dark body paint save for her face (i imagine she didn't need to be told not to do blackface, but i'm also certain ana would have warned her away from it if necessary). during alexis' pre-scene interview she takes great care to underscore that she is attracted to the essence of a person rather than their external physical characteristics (male or female), which raised my eyebrows slightly: is she excusing her choice of ana to racists convinced that no black woman is beautiful? but watching the scene, i think i get what she's going for: by painting ana a lighter tone than her natural pigmentation and herself a darker tone than her natural pigmentation, she's attempting (clumsily, perhaps, for someone with a thorough grounding in antiracism already) to demonstrate how unimportant racial differences are: ana's peerlessly beautiful facial structure and lithe, muscular body are clearly stunning regardless of the shade they're painted in.
but ana's decision not to wear one of her many signature weaves (as she puts it in the interview, she gets to be bald) ups the ante on racial presentation and takes in gender presentation as well. her lean figure is already rather androgynous (as her former career as a fashion model would demand), and by refusing the long hair which porn has always used to code femininity, she allows herself to be read as masculine, especially since centuries of racist, eurocentric beauty standards have conditioned viewers (particularly white viewers, but social conditioning affects everyone) to read even cis black women as more masculine than white women and indeed only provisionally feminine at all, regardless of how closely they adhere to white norms. (listen to black trans women, they know what they're talking about.) especially when juxtaposed against alexis' exaggerated fertility-goddess anatomy, ana's young-golden-god look transgresses porn's gender determinism so strongly that it's one of the textually (if not intentionally) queerest scenes in girl/girl porn this year. the result is a provocative, genuinely brave statement about human connection and desire that neither woman has to articulate verbally: the imagery stands on its own.
and the audience has been accordingly unreceptive. the feedback on sweetheart's website (after, admittedly, only one day) has been subdued and decidedly mixed, and social media has, as far as i can tell, been virtually silent on the scene. porn is so conservative that even this very mild venture (as compared to the kind of thing that regularly occurs in fashion or arts spaces) in tweaking racial and gender norms is a bridge too far for most porn fans, even the more liberal of whom refuse to acknowledge race as anything but a sexual fetish and are so deeply homophobic that the slightest hint of androgyny sends them screaming for the hills. it's not the first time that porn performers and creators have been well in advance of the porn audience, and in fact most of the things that are wrong with pornography today boil down to the paying audience having not budged an inch in their social views since the 1980s, when they were not notably progressive.
but i've gotten this far into the review without talking about anything that the still photos couldn't have communicated. how's the sex?
it's good. both alexis and ana are all-star performers, down to get filthy (which is good, because the body paint is going to get everywhere) with wolfish appetites for giving each other pleasure. they rarely stay in one position for long enough to credibly deliver orgasms, but that's hardly the point: they want to devour each other, not make love. (sex can be so many different things, which the girl/girl audience in particular refuses to hear.) they do a lot of swapping spit colored with the paint they've licked off each other (i have to assume it's edible and non-toxic because i don't think anyone involved is that stupid), and by the end of it they're both smeared in each other's colors with patches of their natural pigmentation showing: in particular, ana being dark from the nose down (thanks to enthusiastic cunnilingus) and golden above is a striking inversion of minstrel imagery.
i can't help it, i'm essentially an arts critic who has chosen to write about pornography. this scene is so creatively erotic in a way that is so fundamentally different from the pseudo-verité of most porn that it's hard to read it as porn, even when both women are jackhammering each others' genitals. it's just as much a performance art piece as it is a video designed for creeps to jerk off to (if not more so), and it's probably more successful as performance art than it is at being porn. but why make the distinction? the clumsy literalism of the discourse around porn, the insistence that it only be an aid to masturbation and nothing else, rather than existing on an erotic and aesthetic spectrum in which all other art also participates, is so boring. (hence why i'm writing all these reviews.) alexis fawx and ana foxxx understand that performance art can be erotic too, and certainly seem to find it so in the moment; their post-coital interview is so brimming with joy and affection that even if i had loathed their action together i would still have loved the way they felt about it.
it was gorgeously shot: dry ice drifting across the screen in order to highlight the already heightened unreality of the scene was a particularly nice touch, and the mysterious, darkly glittering location, so starkly different from the usual pseudodomestic porn sets, concentrates all the attention on the two strikingly adorned bodies in the center of the frame. the shooting team of greenwood and avalon know what they're doing, and alexis' vision was perfectly realized.
i honestly can't praise this scene highly enough: it's so brilliantly conceived and passionately enacted that everything else after it might be a letdown if i didn't enjoy variety so much. i was particularly thrilled to see, as someone who has followed ana's career closely for many years, how much she has grown into her personality as she has matured. the blandly-smiling, carefully articulate performer of some half-dozen years ago has loosened up, gained confidence, and allowed her sense of humor to inform her work instead of just delivering exquisitely pretty pictures.
once more, women over thirty make the best pornstars change my mind.
performances: 27
cinematography: 25
editing: 20
script: 12
sjw points: 7
total score: