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An academic review of Dani Daniels’ “The Yoga Instructor”

 

At the age of 22, Dani Daniels seems to be taking over Porn Valley. She has been featured in main releases from several studios and her fidelity to girl/girl porn does not seem to be restrictive: it has actually granted her female and male fans, both genders submerged on their own Dani exclusivity fantasy.  Penthouse Pet of January, Daniels is quite active on Twitter and on her blog, At Home with Dani Daniels, which receives daily photographs and hosts a space for her to communicate with her fans, in her “Ask me anything” section. She is quick, witty, and sharp, and not afraid to go off on the fans if the question is too personal or the writer offensive; yet, she seems to be perceived mostly as American Porn’s new sweetheart – a position made vacant by Sasha Grey’s early retirement in 2011. By the content of her tumblr and what she has hinted about her upcoming website, Daniels has been slowly but steadily preparing a place for herself in the porn industry founded not on her performance, exclusively: self-proclaimed “Your girl next door who just so happens to be a pornstar!”, she might resemble the idea we as public might have of an adult performer, but her path is carefully being paved in what seem to be strategic movements to allow her slow taking over of the hood, bringing with her a lot of energy and eyes that seem to know more than she lets out.

 

Recently, Daniels took on the challenge to write and direct her first feature, “The Yoga Instructor” (Filly Films, 2011).  The storyline does not bring any surprises: Dani plays a yoga instructor who seduces her students – Lily Carter, Brett Rossi, Elle Alexandria, and Heather Starlet. If keywords were to be assigned, I would guess flexibility, fitness, and gym would be the ones for this movie.  However, a most accurate tagline would gravitate around female body adoration: Dani Daniels is able to create an ode to the female forms by directing a movie that, although not surprising in its format and technical aspects, innovates by making us ask not “Who is the film being made for?” but rather “Who is the film being made by?”  Daniels seems to take her work quite seriously and, despite a little goofiness that surrounds her persona, she leaves no doubt that she aims high. Described as one of the most hard-working professionals in the industry nowadays, she is preparing for the release of her second feature as both writer and director, “Fantasy Girls”, also by Filly Films.

The most interesting aspect of Dani Daniels’ “The Yoga Instructor” lies on the places in which some of the scenes happen. Her scenes with Lily Carter and Heather Starlet initiate in open-air, and proceed to move inside a house only when things are about to get really graphic: something which would not call my attention wasn’t for the fact that something seemed odd while I was watching the film. I was already watching it for the second time when it finally hit me that hardly ever had I seen sunlight reflected on the skin of adult performers: the idea of porn taking place outdoors belonged only to more specific fantasies, being a genre on its own.   And, like Dani Daniels herself embodies a new category of adult performers, to a certain extent her movie is emblematic of the new position porn is taking in society.

Since being contrived to the locked bedroom of Victorian bourgeoisie, sex and pornography have walked hand in hand if they dare to appear to public eyes. The relationship between sex and pornography is not as obvious and intrinsic as one might think: the coinage of the work pornography, in 1865, related not exclusively to sex, but to a set of knowledge which was supposed to be kept from minds more susceptible to corruption – namely the minds of women and children.  Men – and especially upper middle class Caucasian scholars – have always had full access to the world of pornography under the excuse of cataloguing and registering it, aiming at collectively deciding which images and ideas were apt to be presented to the average public eye.  The recovery of Pan and the Goat from the underground of Pompeii might have started the whole cataloguing of pornography, but it did little in restricting it to sexual realm.  Therefore, when Victorian morale hit, a lot of things were restricted to the interior of the house and, even more, to the interior of the bedroom. Sex no longer could circulate in the mouths of social salons: its existence was supposed to be ignored and forgotten, and pleasure deriving from it would generate the perversions and abnormalities that a society which feared itself dreaded to see in its participants.  The sexual active had no role and no space in open air anymore: it should only exist hidden from the eye by the darkness of the night. Any being who failed to comply with these – and so many others –standards was doomed to inhabit the underground, alternative spaces of dungeons and whorehouses. 

To a certain extent, these places which hosted the “perverted”, the “oversexualized”, are still present in our daily lives disguised as internet chat rooms, adult video streaming websites, and in the porn industry itself.  The dungeon, however, can now be recovered as an alternative space, not as restrictive walls. From the dark, hidden, illegal places, pornographic movies have erupted and are now being filmed in open spaces. Even if still restricted to foreplay and minor sexual movements, it seems to point towards a change. No longer must sex exist exclusively under artificial light: it is more than ready to heat up under the sun.

- published in December 12, 2012

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