Me being led on a leash by Sabrina Fox at Wired Pussy
I finally sat myself down to watch The Price of Pleasure a documentary that is being hailed as either an “apolitical lifting of the porn veil” or the “Reefer Madness” of our time. The documentary has traveled around college campuses and women’s centers for everyone to be shocked and appalled at how porn is perverting our consciousness. I had been avoiding it myself. I saw the trailer, I watched the clips, and I knew it was going to give me a migraine.
Erotic art is the oldest form of art. There have been two reports commissioned by conservative presidents on the effects of porn. The Commission on Obscenity and Pornography was done under Nixon and LBJ as Deep Throat filled theaters with fancy and middle class viewers and it found no ill impact of watching sex on film. The Meese Report under Regan came to the same conclusion. It still seems to unnerve people though.
There are, undoubtedly, issues in and about porn. When tits and lips are blown out of proportion, so are stereotypes and identity. One thing I always keep in mind is the hand-in-hand relationship sex has always had to comedy. Looking back at Greek plays, sex jokes were crucial to plot development (or does that go the other way around?). Giant phalluses were waved around as a flag that it was now okay to begin to deal with the things that make us uncomfortable. We air dirty laundry in sex. We let loose the animal we keep tamed as otherwise respectable people in our day to day lives handling…well…all of the drama. There are also issues of sexism, queerness, and everything else. It is a playground of fantasy and many fantasies are taboo.
Maybe that is why there is a healthy side to porn consumption. Most people who enjoy porn don’t find their entire lives revolving around it. Some will. Although I am highly skeptical of sex and porn addiction, I’m sure there are some who do have a compulsion around it. Just because your partner doesn’t like the fact that you beat off to porn doesn’t mean that porn is a problem, per se. The only problem is god awful cheap porn. Boy, that stuff can ruin an otherwise good night.
The documentary was full of interviews with the usual anti-porn folk who were given amazing editing, lighting, and time. Pro-porn people or performers only seemed to be talking about pricing or things clearly taken out of context. I always love it when the editing team puts someone’s words up against a visual background contradicting everything that they are saying. For a team of people making the claim that moving images are infinitely more powerful than words to our human brains, the action of actually using this technique was not lost on me at all.
My favorite part of the documentary was the Kink.Com bashing segment. I recognized clips, directors, and fellow models on the screen as it churned to “bad” music to let the audience in on the fact that this was the worst of the worst- the dreaded torture porn. There was no comment on the fact that Kink.Com has a fantastic record among models, it fails to mention their work in restoring a historic building, and the models who have worked for them often are cut out of the discussion. The documentary that had every sign and symptom of bias really showed its colors here.
If you’re looking for something good to watch, I do recommend Penn and Teller’s Bullshit episode on porn (Season 6, Episode 1 “The War On Porn”). It’s a lot funnier, for one, and you’ll some of the same people there. Penn says aloud the same things that ran through my mind except they were far wittier. I’m not going to cry about that, I’m the only writer here at MMM. I can also say that The Price of Pleasure gave me a migraine. Bullshit gives me a stomach ache from laughing so much. Maybe have a double feature and save the best for last.
I'm rather skeptical as well about the porn and sex addiction. >.<
What of the woes of David Duchovny! That beautiful, beautiful man was struck by porn addiction. They should have interviewed him, you know if they actually wanted to "document" something. I do like bullshit at times but Penn can be misleading, biased and myopic sometimes and dead on other times. He's a brand of fringe "liberal" that confuses my sensibilities. The interviews alone are so edited and self-serving. Though I do love a fat man who can do magic.
-Nima
Hmm,Well, is there maybe room for some space in between. Porn consumption may not be good for all, not all porn is good for consumption, etc?How about this? Kink.com may have a good record with its models, but what of the industry as a whole? It seems to me that a rotten barrel has spoiled one good apple. (at best) The truth is that in the majority of the porn produced in this country, the great majority of models are addicted to drugs. I do mean addicted, not recreational users. By that I mean, unhealthy use as an inappropriate coping mechanism. The number of stories of women coming out of the San Fernando Valley's porn industry is one of abuse and coercion.I think this makes the non kosher meat industry look almost angelic by comparison in its abuse of its product. Add to this that not all STDs are tested for in the industry, the great majority of Porn stars (in the Large American SFV produced Porn) carry HPV as well as other STD's and that there is very little practice of safe sex in that prime market. 66% of porn performers have Herpes, Between 2003 and 2005, 976 performers were reported with 1,153 positive STD result, Models insisting on the use of condoms don't work in the industry long.Even if the "consumption" of Porn is not inherently harmful to the viewer, the very fact that we are contributing to an industry that is so mindlessly abusive at best is Very sad. If you think that porn is a healthy thing to partake in regularly, then fight the above abuses. No, the more I read about the industry in general, the more I think that this a destructive lifestyle for anyone partaking.I think it is dishonest to compare the existance of images of porn from years gone by to the industry today. Someone may have had even a myriad of paintings on their walls, but compare that to the saturation of millions of images, and the countless hours of time that people spend seeking it out, and you know that it is hardly comparable. Antiquities can not be compared to the saturation that we see now.I believe that you are sincere in your thoughts and in your motivation, but I believe that you are also very wrong about this. I hope that you can get out before the tragedies of this industry get you too. And, as you read this, I know that you will read it with the desire to protect your own participation, but I hope that one day, you will see it from the eyes of self preservation. YOu are of great value, and the price tag that porn puts on you, is far cheaper than what you are really worth.
I did a research report for the FSC about porn and its connection to domestic violence. The person making this documentary is making the same mistake that a lot of researchers on domestic violence (DV). They interview the survivors of DV about what happened to motivate the violence, like watching porn, then try to generalize this information to the general public, but that is not possible. In order to understand the relationship between DV and porn you also have to interview people who watch porn but don't commit DV. What the documentary is doing is interviewing only the people whose view of the world has been distorted by porn, but not those whose attitudes have not been distorted…so of course they find what they want to find. This is something that should be taken with a grain of salt.Rick Umbaughqui bene amat bene castigat
My biggest issue with this "documentary" was that it denied its own bias. There is nothing wrong with having a bias. We all do. To deny it is bad journalism.Furthermore, to edit people so far out of proportion they aren't even saying the same thing is ridiculous. It was an awful film and I watched it as either a warning, a wakeup call, or advice to simply skip it. Don't give these people any more press for their lies.
Are their "lies" any worse than your denial? The outcome of what this industry does to the majority of the people in it should be some kind of proof to any thinking person that it is not beneficial, but rather detrimental to the people who participate in it. AS for safe sex, you sucking down some guys dick that routinely fucks all these other women is not in the remotest sense of the word safe. If you are not already the permanent residence of more than one STD I would be surprised. You will be soon.I hope you wake up before your future is trashed.