Show Me The Money (Shot)

A widely held belief states that all men like “money shots”.

No straight-male-orientated porn film is complete without the mandatory final wand-waving splurge by the male star, generally all over his female co-star, because received wisdom holds that this is what men like. But why is this?

Firstly, are money shots in fact merely a cinematic convention, like the Lewton Bus, the 555 area code and Morley cigarettes? Are they just accepted industry practice, just “how things are done”? Wham, bam, pass the Kleenex, mam – as meaninglessly formulaic as the grumpy boss’s 48-hour ultimatum to a maverick cop? Well, probably not.

Perhaps we have to accept that, in the crowded and competitive world of porn, money shots are there because there is at least some demand for them. Indeed, great thinkers have gone as far as to say that, since the orgasm has become the accepted definition of male sexual fulfilment, the money shot has become the essential wind-up to the (albeit often very wobbly) narrative of the porn film. No happy ending – no narrative closure.

But even if this is the case, we must at the same time recognise that, while many – even most –men have seen a straight porn film, not so many are actually regular undertakers of this sort of leisure activity.

And furthermore, even within the crowded world of straight-male porn, there are plenty of other, non-ejaculatory genres, from artfully posed nudes in alpine meadows to grizzled veterans in badly-lit spare rooms – each with its own audience.

Of course, some men may be consumers of more (or many more) than one of these types. Indeed, one would imagine that for some teenagers their consumption is limited by hours in the day, rather than personal preferences. But all the same, the logic stands. Even within the subset of men who like and look at straight porn, it will still be only a further subset of these that like videos that end in money shots.

Say, for example, that half of all straight men look at porn (I would imagine this is a fairly generous proportion, but let’s carry on). Imagine that half of these again look at the sort of stuff that involves money shots of one sort or another. The result is that only a quarter of men actually “like” money shots.

Thus, once you take away those men who don’t actually watch porn (even putting back in those who “would if they could”), and those for whom the idea of a nice evening in is not one spent watching plotless amateur dramatics that unchangingly ends with the leading lady’s face looking like a plasterer’s radio, the bald question “Why do men like money shots?” really starts to look as if it’s working from an assumption that is far from axiomatic.

So why are we all being tarred with the same dripping, tumescent brush? Maybe it’s because that side of the porn industry has a higher profile. Or maybe it’s analogous to the fashion industry telling men that what they all like is stick-thin, inaccessible zombies. Whatever the reason, it’s not something that autocompletes in the web browser on my computer.

Contact the author here: thewhy@morningquickie.com