PARK CITY, Utah—Looks like there's no shortage of anti-porn commentary in the mainstream media regarding this year's Sundance Film Festival's primary anti-porn offering, Hot Girls Wanted, a "documentary" by former Miami Herald reporter Jill Bauer and her photographer partner Ronna Gradus, and co-produced by Rashida Jones and Debby Herbenick, an associate professor at Indiana University School of Public Health. Jones, of course, is best known for her role on NBC's Parks and Recreation, where she played nurse Ann Perkins. Jones is also the daughter of popular '70s/'80s musician Quincy Jones.
And it's Jones who has been the focus of much of the press surrounding the film's premiere at the festival, and she laid out her feelings about the movie and adult content in general in an interview she did with The Wrap, whose interviewer was clearly in tune with the film's anti-porn sentiments.
"These are real people with real problems and real lives," Jones said, "but for me, the take-away is, it's just about, whatever the cost is of saying, 'Oh, you know what? I'm having sex anyway; why not just do it on camera for money?', they're not considering the real cost, the psychological cost, the emotional cost, the physical cost to your body. The trauma that it does on your body to have sex for a living is a real thing, you know, and I think by the time you realize it, it's not too late because they can go back to their lives but they've lost their childhoods, you know? They're 18 or 19 and they're caught in porn."
Apparently, in Jones's world, it's not possible for a young woman to both enjoy the sensations attendant to having sex and also be willing to share that experience, to the extent that it's possible to do so on film or in a video clip, with others. In fact, she says as much later in the interview.
"That's a huge thing, too, we talk about all the time, is the difference between sexuality and sexualization," Jones said when the interviewer suggested that modern culture doesn't teach women to value their bodies. "Because it's performative, women aren't—they're not feeling joy from it. This would be a whole different conversation if women were like, 'We're having sex; we love it so much; we want more of it; we feel so good about our bodies and ourselves,' but that's not the conversation."
And why isn't it "the conversation"? Could it be because news outlets aren't interested in what the women of porn have to say for themselves—unless it's something negative about their experiences, like the Traci Lordses and Holly Ryders and Alexandria Quinns of the world? Would it surprise Jones (and Bauer and Gradus) that something approximating that "whole different conversation" is almost exactly what many adult female performers do say in pretty much any venue where they're given the chance to say it?
"It's performative; it's fulfilling a male fantasy; it's not about how you feel about it; it's like going with it because you're making money which, again, is like the connection between that being a female empowerment thing," Jones continued. "It's so tricky to have that conversation because you're making money and therefore you're empowered but what is the real cost to your soul, to your psyche, you know? Women should feel pleasure and have sex and feel good about it, and not feel shame—There's a lot of shame in both these situations, I feel like, you know?"
Again, Jones's words speak greater volumes about the mainstream mindset when it comes to porn, not to mention her own lack of experience with the genre, than they do about anything approaching reality. The meme is, they're making money—and before the Great Recession, that was pretty damned good money, and still isn't too bad—and that's empowering, sort of, but how can they not feel sick and dirty deep down inside while doing it? In Jones's world, it's apparently not possible for women to "feel pleasure and have sex and feel good about it, and not feel shame" while having that sex on camera.
Jones's co-producer, Debby Herbenick, also had some choice words about the dangers of porn, though more from an academic perspective.
"Human sexuality is broad, diverse, rich, nuanced and allows for so many possibilities about how a person can experience their sexuality," Herbenick told Mic.com. "The kinds of sexualization and objectification we see in most mainstream porn tends to be pretty narrow... As my students often point out, porn sex often focuses on people's genitals—as if that's all that matters—and often features titles that describe women as 'dirty whores' or 'sluts'."
Really? Let's take the most recent nominees for the AVN Award for Best Drama: Aftermath, Apocalypse X, Champagne Showers, Forbidden Affairs: My Wife's Sister, The Gardener, Holly... Would, Hollywood Babylon, The Hunted: City of Angels, Lollipop, Mother-Daughter Affair, Silhouette, These Things We Do, Voracious: Season 2, Wetwork and White Witch. However did we miss nominating the titles with "dirty whore" and "slut" in them? Could it be because movies that feature actual development of female (and male) characters tend not to describe those characters with those words (unless the plot calls for it, of course)? Same for Best Romance Movie. (Yes, there's even romantic porn, Debby.) Likewise in the Best Comedy category, where the closest any title comes to anything approximating those words—which is to say, not at all—is Bikini Babes Are Shark Bait, an homage to Hollywood's seemingly endless stream of "horror at the beach" movies. Even in Best Non-Feature, where plots are non-existent, the only title that's arguably in Herbenick's pejorative ballpark is Dirty Little Sex Dolls for Vivid—from award-winning feature director B. Skow.
But we'll concede a couple of points to Herbenick: 1) We'd definitely like to see more facial reactions in scenes than is common from some companies, and 2) we agree that kids shouldn't be getting their sex education from porn—though sadly, in most school districts in this country, the only "education" about sex is, "Don't do it until you're married." Even so-called "comprehensive" sex ed courses barely get beyond rolling a condom onto a banana.
So we're hardly surprised to find that Herbenick's students at her mid-western university have a skewed idea of what sex should be like: "Young women often talk about sex being exceedingly rough, or about the pressure to perform anal sex or to let a guy come on their face, or to act as though they like certain kinds of sex that they don't," Herbenick told Mic.com. "And young men often talk about the pressure to perform in superhuman ways, or how they compare their penis size to what they see in porn, and it makes them feel worse about themselves, and sometimes worse about their female partners' bodies if they're comparing the two (which some admit to doing)."
One problem that both of the movie's producers have was stated succinctly by Jones, who observed that there's a "difference between sexuality and sexualization," which allowed Mic.com's writer Ellie Krupnick to call Jones's distinction "crucial," and to state, "When porn actors perform on camera with the sole aim of titillating the audience, they are literally being sexualized. And in many cases, particularly women, that sexualization goes hand in hand with objectification, with porn stars as the literal sex objects onto which viewers can project their fantasies."
Of course, it's important that no one in this article (or any other article we've seen on this topic) bothers to define "sexualized" or "sexualization," which according to Merriam-Webster.com, simply means "to make sexual, endow with a sexual character or cast." The fact is, human beings (or most of them, anyway) are sexual. They have sex. Most of them like sex. Many (most?) of them like to watch other people having sex, despite the condemnation of that voyeurism by pretty much all of the world's major religions. So how do you "sexualize" a human being who came about because of sex, often begins seeking out sex in his/her early teens, and continues being interested in it for most of the rest of his/her life? And while adult performers are certainly "sexualized" according to the above definition, do we call Bruce Willis's ongoing Die Hard character John McClane "violentized"? Does it say something unkind about Willis that he chooses to play such characters? Some few porn stars don't particularly like sex, but do it for the money; are they somehow lesser human beings for choosing this sort of acting work?
"If porn can lead to people taking control of their own sex lives, empowered to pursue pleasure in a healthy, consensual way free of shame or guilt, then that's inarguably a positive outcome," Krupnik writes. "But if the takeaway for viewers, particularly for men, is to hyper-sexualize and objectify their own partners, that's when porn becomes problematic."
"That's when porn becomes problematic"??? Isn't the problem the men who, through lack of a decent sex education or because they want to maintain a macho persona, act in ways that other men, even porn-watching men (which is most of them), would reject?
Another "hit piece" on porn comes in The Daily Mail (UK) Online's review of the film by Belinda Robinson, and her opening phrase sets the scene: "The disturbing world of amateur pornography has been laid bare by a new documentary called Hot Girls Wanted, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday."
The review deals mostly with the story of "Tressa" (no last name given), who, according to what she told the filmmakers, "earned $25,000 in her four months in the industry, but after paying for lingerie, manicures, makeup and biweekly STD tests, she only had about $2,000 in her bank account when she quit the business." Well, we know what biweekly STD tests cost, and we understand that lingerie, manicures and makeup might be a bit pricier in Miami than L.A., but we suspect that Tressa would have had to add a lot of partying or something else to her budget to get down to a mere two grand for four months' work. But we guess that's (in Robinson's words) "the brutal world of pornography."
Somewhat more even-handed is Leslie Felperin's review for The Hollywood Reporter, which opens with a warning that would be humorous if so many parents wouldn't be so likely to take it so seriously: "Parents be forewarned: after watching documentary Hot Girls Wanted, anyone with a daughter will feel an uncontrollable urge to prevent her from ever using the internet again, or perhaps even leaving the house."
Ah, but they will surf the Web and they will leave the house—so maybe the best protection is a comprehensive sex education? We'd never know that from reading this review.
Instead, Felperin recounts the troubles Tressa and another performer, Rachel, had in their brief careers: Tressa got a "hideously painful infected gland in her vagina, brought on by so much sex"—no word on just how that was accomplished— that "[brought] home the physical toll of the job"—and her mother and her boyfriend got on her case about having sex on camera, so she quit.
"Watch closely and you can almost see the exact moment when the penny drops as her boyfriend gently asks her to clarify the difference between this line of work and prostitution," Felperin writes. (Tressa may not know—the review doesn't say—but we [and the California court system] have a few ideas on that subject that we won't prolong this article with now.)
"These subjects’ stories illustrate how insidious the industry is perfectly well by themselves," Felperin concludes. "Nevertheless, Bauer and Gradus up the ante with intermittent rapid-fire, fair-use montages, nimbly cut by screenwriter-editor-producer Brittany Huckabee, that illustrate not just the broader world of online porn but also the highly sexualized culture teenagers are immersed in these days, bombarded every day with media coverage of Rihanna’s nipples, Kim Kardashian’s ass or Nicki Minaj’s twerking skills. The implication is that it’s no wonder kids today have become desensitized and think of sex as no big deal, a valid point but one that might be said with more authority and clarity."
Um, Leslie? Sex is no big deal—aside from being the single most important activity that humans engage in, since without it, there are no human beings. And if "kids today have become desensitized" to sex, it might be because of modern society's schizophrenic attitude toward it: Spending countless column inches and .mp3 footage on famous women's nipples and asses while preachers and politicians and "educators" rail about the supposed dangers of being too interested in sex.
One reviewer who seems to have the filmmakers' number is Jordan Hoffman, writing for The Guardian (UK), who after describing some of the movie's action, notes, "'Success' cases like the Duke University porn star and self-described feminist Belle Knox are derided. The one gal in the low-rent Miami home that seems to have her head on straight (she’s created an on-screen 'character' and reads Frank McCourt during her free time) doesn't get much of the directors' focus. She doesn't really fit the movie's alarmist agenda, which is rife with intertitles of terrifying statistics and absurd montages of the Kardashians and Justin Bieber, suggesting that our modern culture has created this market of sexual exploitation out of whole cloth."
Hoffman concludes with, "There are occasional, vérité-style glimpses of what this film would be like in the hands of less pamphleteering film-makers. These moments are quite touching, lacking the abrasive bombast that mars the rest of the picture. The increasing acceptance of pornography in our culture is an important topic, and no one would deny that the industry is built on exploitation. Were I to advertise on Craigslist, I’d write Better Filmmakers Wanted."
Sounds like he's hit the nail on the head.
