Interviewing scholars, industry insiders and consumers, this probing documentary delves into the effects of pornography on one's sexual identity and relationships, as well as its influence on business and American popular culture overall.
I watched it as I painted so I listened more than watched, only glancing up every once in a while for a few seconds. I don't think I could have watched the whole thing. The images, though they blocked out the breasts, penises, and vaginas, were still graphic and disturbing.
I have watched a few porn flicks in my life, but only a few. I watched one with a former partner - that didn't turn out so well - and 2 with groups of women as we critiqued them and made fun of them and laughed until we got bored and turned them off to talk about more interesting real life stuff. So I am not a fan of porn. This documentary certainly cemented that feeling.
The film was truly disturbing to me. First of all, it was the images - there have apparently been "advances" in the world of porn since I last dipped into it 15 or so years ago. Now, according to researchers who have subjected themselves to watching 200 of these films and cataloging the content, 87% of the scenes contain violence towards women in them. And they mean VIOLENCE - rape, anal rape, forced sex, gang banging, S&M stuff I couldn't even have imagined in my wildest dreams, not to mention calling the women demeaning names, etc. Apparently (and I realize I might sound completely uninformed and naive as I say this stuff having just learned about it, but that's true - I have been naive and uninformed) there's something called ATM (not the machine where you get money). It stands for anus to mouth - the man comes into the woman's anus then puts his penis into her mouth to have her clean him off. I can't begin to imagine doing that. I also can't understand how that might be considered a turn on. So many of the scenes they showed or alluded to were bestial, cruel, vicious. I don't understand what's happening.
I learned from the film that more money is spent on the porn industry than on football, baseball AND basketball combined. 900,000,000 films are watched each year. That's an average of 3 per person, man, woman, and child, in the USA each year. It is big business. And it's no longer some slimy business which people are embarrassed to be a part of. Instead, women who are in the movies become superstars and go around on DVD-signing tours. There are trade fairs for porn where women are up on platforms which put their vaginas right at eye-level for the men with their video cameras to film them. Live. In person. Or where women are bound and gagged for men to film them. The filmmakers showed the men who were ogling the women. They were normal-looking guys with an irrepressible hunger in their eyes.
They interviewed a young woman who took part in Girls Gone Wild. I don't really know what it is, but I think camera crews descend on FL and other Spring Break hotbeds of wildness and film girls going wild. The camera crew of GGW visited one young woman in her hotel room and asked her to act sexy, etc. Who knows what she did. Then the producers of this film asked her why she took part in it. She looked at them like they were brain dead, "Why wouldn't I take part? It's not like I want to be a politician or something one day." As if the only thing that made sense was to take part and be famous for a time on camera.
Another young woman who graduated from Rutgers started her own porn film company and made films starring herself. She talked like she liked the attention she gathered as she walks down the street, men hooting and hollering and whistling at her. They showed a scene from one of her movies. Her face was on a chair while she was clearly bound and being entered from behind while her head was being held in place by her hair being pulled. Her face was contorted in pain and agony. It did not look to me like she was acting. Perhaps she was. But I felt pain and agony watching her. I can't understand how that could be a turn on for someone. I wanted to go into that room and pull the SOB's off of her and protect her from such violation. Yet she talked about her part in it as if she were empowered and getting the best of the men, beating them at their own game. I don't get it.
More tomorrow.
While I have a number of thoughts, my first is: There's really someone using the name "Brandon Iron?"
ReplyDeleteBut the first serious thought that strikes me is about repression. Research shows that anti-gay crusaders show a higher percentage of response to gay erotica than the average person. I would dare say that many of the people campaigning for laws against women are also the ones who are watching the more violent or abusive porn.
It's a hate cycle that can only be broken with education and, unfortunately, the people who need the education are too busy telling everyone how morally correct they are and how wrong everyone else is. (And they're also the ones who refuse to admit they watch porn.)