“The Price of Pleasure”??? More Like “The Wages of Agitprop BS”

Asshattery, Love Me, I'm A Liberal...NOT!!!, Revenge of the Sexbots, Sexy Sex Intellectuals, The Feminist Sex Wars, The Sex Pox, The War on Sex/Sluts/Gays/Whatever September 25th, 2008

I would be derelict in my duty without adding yet another chapter in the everlasting Feminist Sex/Porn Wars between the Sex Positives/Sex Workers/Pro-Porn Meanies and their ancient rivals the Radical Feminists/GenderBorg Collective.

The latest bomb being thrown into the debate is a “documentary” titled The Price of Pleasure that was produced by Dr. Chyng Sun and Robert Wosnitzer; which claims to give an “honest and nonjudgmental” look at the porn industry and its effects on the treatment of women.

Trouble is, though, that moniker of “honest and nonjudgmental” becomes as factual in describing the real documentary as Fox News Channel calling itself “fair and balanced”. In reality, TPOP is nothing more than reconstituted antipornfeminist agitprop, rehashing all the old and tired libels, slanders, and just-so stories about how pornography innately degrades and humiliates ALL women, even those who will never see a naked breast of an exposed clit or the sight of a erect penis entering a butthole.

Indeed, considering all the parlor tricks and manipulation of facts to suit their ideology, as well as the total manufacturing of and distortion of (if not outright silencing of) porn performers, producers, and consumers alike, this film is far closer to the traditional antiporn agitprop of the fundamentalist Right than to any supposed “progressive” critique…..and this despite the attempts to invoke some leading progressive figures (such as Noam Chomsky with his now notorious YouTube interview inveighing against “The Hustler” (sic)) to add a shiny “leftist” patina to mask the fundamentally reactionary agenda.

Now other folk like Ren Ev and Chris Hall and Iamcuriousblue (here and here) and Ernest Greene (who appeared in the “documentary” only as a foil for antiporn bashing) have already done their part to dissect the premise and the execution behind this travesty…and there are countless others who have also done so from their own perspectives. Some have managed to see the entire film, while most have only seen the trailer or the pre-release publicity. For my part, I will base my opinion on the trailer which was released prior to release of the actual documentary; though the whole film won’t be public until later this year, I believe that considering the public opinions of the creators and main advocates of TPOP, and the nature and the severity of the distortions put out by the trailer, there is more than enough information available for a strong critique of this film.

Basically, this is an updated version of the classic antiporn agitprop film Not A Love Story, which purported to reveal the “true story” of Linda Boreman (aka Linda Lee Tracy; more notorious as porn starlet Linda Lovelace of Deep Throat fame), whom at that time was the ultimate symbol of the degeneracy and degradation of pornography during the 1980s.  (Lovelace was actually physically abused severely by her then husband/producer Chuck Traynor; but such abuse was more the byproduct of their hellish marriage; no one within the industry other than Traynor was even involved in any abuse of Lovelace.  In the latter years, just prior to her death in 1990 in a tragic auto accident, Lovelace was repudiating all the charges of porn abuse, and even charging her then antiporn allies of misrepresenting her positions and experiences….and of not compensating her for her sacrifices in promoting their ideology.) And just like Not a Love Story, The Price of Pleasure resorts to the same denial and misrepresentation of the actual experiences of porn performers and their genre…except this time, there is no useful symbol of abuse to wave around like a bloody flag.

Also similar in cinematic style to NALS — and dangerously close to the more common traditional antiporn propaganda of the Christian Right — is the means in which TPOP uses the placing of highly manipulative scenes of purported abuse and
extreme expressions of sexuality, counterposed with highly redacted and entirely incontextual quotes from various “representatives” of porn (mostly male producers and a couple of fans visiting the 2005 and 2007 AEE conventions, along with a couple of female performers) to sell their base ideology. The result leans more towards a piece of propaganda than a “nonjudgmental and unbiased” documentary. Considering that this “documentary” took about 3 years to be produced and supposedly relied on reams of on-site interviews and research about the depth and breadth of the adult industry, the absolute display of a total lack of understanding about how the industry actually is composed is simply breathtaking.

And it is hardly a surprise, knowing the history of how antipornradicalfeminists have a way of twisting data to fit their ideology, that they manage to take liberties with the information they obtained.  Ernest Greene, for example, was interviewed for more than two to three hours by Chyng Sun in 2005 as part of her “research”: for this film, and Gail Dines had some follow up last year (more like, she ambushed Ernest and Nina Hartley and the girls from Abby Winters.com in an attempt to pigeonhole them to fit her biases).  Yet, the most that they could give him was a 15 second blurb about how proud he was of his work….followed by an image of him placing a collar on a woman’s neck, allegedly to seal the impression of him as a simple sadist and woman-hater. (Had they managed to actually interview the woman in question, porn starlet Chloe Nichelle, who at the time happened to be Ernest’s SO (before he met and married Nina Hartley), they would have had a much different impression of that particular scene.)

In another part of the trailer, Joanna Angel — seen as the preimenent representative of “alt.porn”, is quoted rather loosely as not caring about how porn supposedly degrades women….while images of her being slapped and tied up are shown in the background. (Obviously, she’s a deluided and sick slut who needs to be “saved” by antiporn ideologists, just as gay men who apparently do nothing other than dress in leather chaps and Peter of Finland cock rings and cruise gay bars for “joyless” bareback sex need the “healing power” of ex-gay Christian ministries to save them from their own baser instincts.) In juxtaposition to this, antipornradfem converts such as Sarah Katherine Lewis (who, while her experiences as a sex worker and stripper should be respected, is highly questionable as an self-asserted expert on the porn industry) and Rebecca Mott (and even fundamentalist Christian converts like Shelley Lubben), as well as the usual run of antiporn demonologists such as Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, Nikki Craft, and the like, are given free reign to wax eloquent about the fundamental threat of pornography to women’s bodily and physiological integrity, as well as it’s supposedly toxic effects on human relationships.

But at least Ernest Greene and Joanna Angel get their publicity’s worth…that is far more than the many sex workers and porn performers who are effectively silenced and rendered invisible to serve the ideology of TPOP. For all their emphasis on “gonzo” porn as the foundation of porn’s economic success, they ignore the basic fact that the predominant form of adult sexual media remains the Internet, where most sex acts  consist of  basic vanilla sex between couples, girl/girl sex, or solo sex featuring  women performing masturbation. Not to mention the fact that some of the most edgy forms of gonzo are being produced by women (and in many cases, all-girl flicks; see Kylie Ireland’s Slutzwerks Productions…and in particular her latest project Upload, or the Shane’s World series, or Tristan Taormino’s Chemistry and House of Ass series).  And I need not mention a woman named Nina, should I???

Also, why do a documentary that claims to be unbiased about porn and conveniently ignore actual female porn performers??  You know….Tera Patrick, Shyla Stylez, Gina Lynn, Ava Devine, Lisa Sparxxx, Melissa Lauren, Eva Lawerence, Sara Jay, Lanny Barbie….that list could go on ad infinitum.  Then there is that group of women who are NOT neccessarily full-time professional porn starlets who make out in the San Fernando Valley full time, but who may make porn at their own pace with their home-made websites:  Vicky Vette, Naughty Allie, Emma Starr, Wifey, et.  al. OL…and how about some interviews with some old school performers from the early days:  Cara Lott, Ginger Lynn, Amber Lynn, Keisha, Christy Canyon….that should be good for starters.  And then you have the few women who have parlayed their success into upper positions of production (Lisa Ann, who happens to run a highly successful adult talent agency, Lisa Ann’s Talent Management, while still managing  to remain relevant as a performer), Christie Hefner of Playboy, Alana Flynt of HUSTLER (who pretty much runs the day-to-day work there in her father’s absence)….surely any “unbiased and nonjudgmental” documentary would have made time to include these women as much as they tried to stack the deck with victimologists and erotophobes.

Nope….any claim to be fair and balanced with this ‘”documentary” would be utterly diminished with the first word and the first image.

That this film will be represented as “the feminist and progressive voice” on the subject of pornography is a lie that almost rivals the “Saddam Hussein = WMDs” fallacy….in the absence of a serious vetting of its distortions and lies and outright falsehoods and slanders of innocent people by genuine feminists and leftists and progressives who take equality, diversity, pluralism, and free self-expression more seriously than just a roll of toliet paper, unfortunately, it is likely that such a travesty will take hold.  The Left is not nearly as immune to cranks and irresponsible, mean-spirited ideologues as they think, and the antipornfeminist movement is certainly an opening for not-so-progressive beliefs to take hold and consume even the most well meaning of activists. All the more reason to rise up and oppose this documentary while it is still in its infancy.

There may be a price for pleasure…but freedom shouldn’t be one to give away.  Some pleasures should not be sold out under any circumstances.


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