Celebrity Sex Tapes

Even if you haven’t seen them, you’ve no doubt heard about them.  They always contain shaky, grainy footage at first.  The camera pans at odd intervals this way and that as one of the participants steadies him (or her) self into position or mounts the camera on a tripod or some other surface.  When they come into focus, you can’t quite believe it’s them at first.  Her hair may be in disarray or he isn’t “pimped out” looking the way that he usually does when seen in the public eye.  But after a few seconds you realize that it really is them.  The celebrity that you see acting so perfect and stately on the red carpet is actually having sex right in front of your eyes and the footage was as accessible as performing a simply online search.

Celebrity sex tapes are a huge deal in Hollywood and when they leak there is never a small amount of excitement about them.  It seems as though everyone wants to see their favorite star in their most compromising and private moments and are willing to go against that star’s wishes to download their private home movies, watch them, and even share them with their friends.  It’s just too good to pass up.

When the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson sex tape was made public the media went wild trying to cover just what happened and how it got leaked.  While the couple adamantly asserts that the tape was stolen from their home, this story has been questioned time and again by speculators that noticed that, instead of becoming a detriment to their careers, it actually caused resurgence in interest in the two.  In order to make the absolute most out of a bad situation the couple decided to allow the tape to be marketed and sold since it was already leaked and bound to be seen worldwide.

Other celebrities that have been caught on film in the past few years include Paris Hilton, Vince Neil, Colin Farrell and many, many more.  It almost seems like a rite of passage of sorts in the new millennium to be caught in some kind of lewd or scandalous behavior only to come out squeaky clean and more popular than ever.

Sex tapes can become public in a variety of ways.  Perhaps the most usual is for an ex-lover to come forward to capitalize financially on the trysts he or she held with the celebrity.  This was the case with Paris Hilton when ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon chose to release footage of the two having sex and sell the copies under the title, 1 Night in Paris.  Tapes can also be pilfered from stars’ homes and personal belongings as well, which is what is said to have happened to Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson.

Most intriguing, perhaps, is the public view on celebrity sex tapes.  While if you ask almost anyone on the street what they think of the celebrity sex tape being made public and the celebrity shown they will usually reply with some sort of sympathy for the celebrity or admonishment for their behavior.  However, if the vast majority of the public feels this way, why is the download and purchase numbers for this footage in the tens of millions?  If one chooses to look at the situation in a certain light, the existence of celebrity sex tapes and their popularity say just as much about the public as they do the celebrity depicted.  Whether they choose to admit it or not, the average person is enthralled with the notion of seeing celebrities – nearly any celebrities – out of the normal view of being perfectly manicured and polished standing on a red carpet.  Perhaps because it makes the celebrity seem a little more real – a little more like an average person.