Maybe names such as Laura, Mr Lothar, Eve
X, Rakel Leikki, Mariah or Henry Saari do not ring a bell to you… or maybe
they do. Undoubtedly, porn and sex industry are not a marginal side of society
anymore. As an example, there are 3 big sex festivals, called Sexhibition, all
around Finland:
In Oulu, Turku
and Helsinki,
being the latest the most important one, with a number of visitors that oscillates
between 25,000 and 35,000. We are talking about the same number of visitors
that could go to the biggest Book Fair of the country, so … do you still
believe that sex business is not mainstream here?
An industry not
much openly discussed, but massively used
Go to any of the most popular chat rooms in Finland, such
as Suomi 24 website. Sex rooms are overwhelmed by visitors; meanwhile the others
are almost empty. Not exactly that people overcrowd the gardening chat rooms…
Young people want it fast and want it wild, so why to waste time and money
going to a club, when you can hit on somebody from your computer? Or take a
walk around Kallio neighborhood, and you will see the huge amount of sex shops
every few meters offering all kind of films and products. It could be that sex
industry is not still a subject of massive study at serious academicals circles
but… maybe the trend should start to change soon.
Vesa Riihinen,
who is the responsible for the biggest porn magazines publishing company in Finland, Press
Masters, with approximately. 40 % of market share, explains to us “There are
approximately 20 000 different readers/month on our for magazines Kalle,
Jallu, Lollo and Ratto, and in our on line service there are about
2000 visitors per day”.
{mosimage}Different ways
of making porn.
As most of the people involved in Finnish
porn film industry assures, this is a small country with a small market, so
everybody knows everybody at the end. There is not much space for launching
dozens of films a year as in USA market, so apart from the mainstream and more
classic porn movies, where the biggest and most demanded names by the audience belong
to Rakel Liekki and Henry Saari (better known as “Henry the
King”), there is a big trend towards the home-made and amateur porn.
Basically, the new genre consists on
recording sexual encounters with an amateur video camera, and with no other
effects or crew collaborating during the shooting. As Mr Lothar,
stripper and porn actor, who has filmed dozens of encounters during his
wanderings all over Finland,
explains to us, “It is a fast way for many girls to get some extra money. Some
of them appear only once, and some others become part of the business. With
some of them I just spend few minutes and some others have fun and stay with me
for the whole week”.
Most of the actors contacted in Finland are
quite proud and happy of what they do, out of the image one could have of
“sexual and manipulated objects”. But hey, being in the business can have also
many others unexpected risks. As Mika Erkillä, organizer of Helsinki
Sexhibition, remembers: “Once a Czech stripper fell from the stage during a
performance. It was a 2 meters fall and we were quite worried he could have got
inured. Fortunately, no serious damage happened”
And well, if you feel like testing your wild
side, and are not shy of performing some hot games in front of the crowd, in
next Sexhibition they prepare a lot of interactive games with the visitors in
their “Corridor of Activities”, such as “New Twister” and “New Poker”…
Radical Production, settled in Tampere, is another
company that has gained reputation very fast for their amateur videos, even
exporting outside Finland.
As lead actor, they feature Jeppe, a guy who looks more like the fellow
sitting close to you at University classrooms than a “sex machine”.
For many of you, these names were already
well known, and for many others who will go directly after reading this article
to Google and Internet pages, we can just say: Enjoy yourselves with the
national product!