Porn Perspectives

I realize I may be late to the party here, but Sasha Grey is the future! The 20 year-old starlet has been in the porn industry for a couple years now, and I'm adding her to my list of women who get it.

The girl owns her own name, promotes industry self-advocation, associates herself with bedrocks like Belladonna and Nina Hartley, and clearly offers a lot of talent on top of it all.

Excerpt from an interview she did with the Citrus Report:

I've been pushing Sasha Grey as an idea not just a person. There are for sure larger things to come. I don't want to spoil the surprise, I'll just say sooner than you think. I own my name as a corporate entity, which seems like a no duh issue, but you'd be surprised how many girls don't own shit.

Yes, my girl! That's the right idea--your youth and beauty will fade, but your BRAND will last forever.

She is opinionated and feisty:

I'm really fucking tired of "gonzo" porn with little dumb thematic teases. I mean c'mon, does anybody really believe for one second that I'm a "bad little school girl" or that this is my "first time" having anal sex, the pizza guy, or just stupid shit like that.

Love it.  Despite a potentially ill-advised appearance on the Tyra Banks show, during which her skyrocketing career was reduced to an after-school job (see segment and Sasha's response)--as an aside, aren't we over Tyra yet?--she seems to be on track for major success. Best of luck to her. I'll be watching her career closely!

Isabella Rossellini is hardcore, and I love her. She is freaking people out with her Green Porno project (covered here). On top of that she gives deadpan interviews with journalists as though dressing up like a male bug and simulating sex with a paper cut-out is the most natural thing for a woman to do.

Isabella, you're just so strange...

My undying adoration of Tristan Taormino is fanned once again at the news of her latest release, "Rough Sex."

The film itself is good, I'm sure, but what excites me about Tristan's various projects is they give her the opportunity to espouse common sense porn theory. Not only that, she puts her money where her mouth is, putting her ideas about porn into action with highly successful (often educational) movies. (Did you ever think you'd see the day Vivid signed on to produce Tristan's Expert Guide series?)

Here is Tristan on "Rough Sex":

"The problem [with porn] isn't with the depiction of hardcore sex itself," she said in her latest movie's press release. "It's about sex that is seen as one-sided, degrading and hostile. Many women love rough sex and these films will give us a chance to present their desires from their perspective."

Exactly! It's not about the content of the movie--it's about how sex is depicted that makes it fun or disturbing, helpful or degrading, etc. It is great to have a director in the porn world who understands that "feminist" porn does not equal roses and soft focus frolicking across a beach. Feminist porn can be softcore, hardcore, artful, dirty, fast, slow--whatever it wants to be--the defining characteristic is that it respects the female experience.

I could honestly make this blog an all-Tristan love-a-thon because she basically embodies my entire theory about business, porn, and women. But because we can't count on Tristan alone to save sex, I must give space to other endeavors. She certainly is casting the mold (building on pioneers like Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell, and Candida Royalle), and my hope is that she can inspire a new generation of women and men to follow in this vein.

I have to share my excitement at the prospect of Jenna Jameson starring in a horror movie about zombie strippers:

This one could be right up there with Showgirls, one of the all-time best good-bad stripper movies:

I know, I know...big dreams.

No one really gets what it is. Isabella Rossellini has written, directed, and starred in a series of one-minute short films called “Green Porno” to premiere on the Sundance channel sometime in the near future. They feature her dressed as various insects, copulating.

Yes.

I think the Onion’s The Hater encapsulates the world’s collective reaction:

Short of Leonardo Di Caprio dressing up like a slab of ore and making an educational documentary about the extraction of metallic iron, or maybe Hal Holbrook doing a video short about the post office and depression while wearing a giant envelope costume and crying, or, I don't know, Amanda Bynes dressing up like George Washington (but with a wig made of cotton candy) and starring in a commercial for a funeral home, I can't think of a weirder juxtapostition of ideas than this one.

Desperately searching for something—anything—to indicate what the hell this is all about, I came across a short interview Isabella did at Sundance.

Isabella Rosellini is hilariously matter of fact about the project, as though it were only natural she would create a series of shorts depicting herself as a male insect having sex with much larger paper mache representations of female insects.

The interviewer, who clearly is not comfortable talking about sex, at one point asks Isabella: “Is it true that the lady praying mantis eats the head of the man praying mantis after they make love?” These last words breathily eak out.

Lady praying mantis. Isabella is unfazed.

“While they make love,” she corrects. “The female eats the male’s head and the male keeps copulating even without the head.” She emphasizes this point with an index finger aimed at the now quivering interviewer, who, I kid you not, jumps back in her seat.

Charging ahead, Isabella reports that she has, in fact, portrayed this very scene: “I play the male, and the paper mache (female) eats me. And then I am seen without my head, still making love to the female cut-out.”

The clip ends with Isabella as a male spider, fingering a spider web with trepidation but clear desire.

“She is very very big, and very very aggressive,” the spider laments. “If I shake the web, she might think she caught a fly, and eat me.”

This spider could be a New Yorker contemplating pick-up lines in a bar.

Isabella directs the interview towards tech theory, discussing the “third screen” (i.e., the itouch and other personal technology devices) and how it will inspire a new art form and reach new audiences.

This is true but entirely tangential to what’s going on here. (I have a feeling Isabella is trying to downplay the sexual overtone for the comfort of advertisers.) As an aside, I will acknowledge that it is not the obligation of the artist to tell us what it means—they need just create the art. Interpretation is the job of us sniveling masses, and I cannot yet offer an assessment without seeing these films in their entirety--BUT. I have a feeling that "Green Porno" could be a strangely subversive way to get something perhaps not visually pornographic, but conceptually pornographic, on television. Perhaps Isabella means to underscore the draw of female sexuality, using the animal kingdom as allegory. These films are also completely NOT about insects, despite the claims of the press release. 

Whatever their ultimate purpose, there is some importance in the fact that a 55 year-old woman renowned for her beauty is generating these films. I have no doubt she acutely feels the effect of aging and my dearest hope is that these films represent some kind of statement (message?) from one of the great beauties in the world to the next generation.

The indomitable entrepreneurial spirit of Heidi Fleiss strikes again, and the former madame has announced plans to open a "Stud Farm" in the Nevada desert (employment opportunities available, FYI). Fleiss is convinced there is an untapped market of women willing to pay for sex.

While I applaud the concept (and Fleiss is certainly no amateur when it comes to understanding markets), I have to admit to some initial skepticism. This may appear lopsided as I predicate my entire position on pornography on the belief that women will happily pay for pornography, if it's a decent enough product.

Nonetheless, I had to work through some visceral repulsion before I could endorse Fleiss' venture. To start, huge differences separate paying for porn from paying for sex. Women are the mistresses of heterosexual intercourse (and the world might recognize this if women would claim their rightul ownership instead of cowering under insecurity and a demeaning obsession with "goodness"). Porn inhabits a totally different world. Even though most people conflate porn and sex, watching porn is not the same as having sex (which is why I can condone sexism, racism and the like when they are relegated exclusively to a space of sexual fantasy). They are qualitatively different experiences.

Since I believe in female sexual power, it was tough to swallow (so to speak) the idea of women paying men to have sex with them. We can get it whenever want, right? So how can it be ok for women to subvert this natural order, and act as though we can't?

Here's how: Thorstein Veblen. Or rather, the phenomenon he coined conspicuous consumption, which describes lavish spending on goods and services for the mere purpose of displaying wealth.  Diamond-encrusted cell phones, absurdly expensive cars, and (proving it's all relative to a given society) a second child for Chinese families are all examples.   

Following this (il)logic, in a society where women have little trouble getting laid, and are earning more than ever before, the best way to flaunt both wealth and sexuality is to pay for it. It is an interesting turn of events, since it was not so long ago that the best a woman could do was be a symbol of conspicuous consumption (see "trophy wife").

Fleiss has once again found a market where none was thought to exist. She has imagined the ultimate vacation for wealthy LA socialites--a women can grab a couple girlfriends for a weekend outside Vegas at a luxurious spa providing massages, facials (of all kinds) and endless sex with hot men. Decadence embodied, no?

I'm not going to say this exactly helps feminism, but I'm certainly not going to begrudge women a little decadence. Now the question is whether Fleiss will be able to navigate Nevada law and get this little shangri-la up and running.

I really have to give Jenna Jameson credit. Her movies aren't so much my style--they're not terribly interesting, provocative, or progressive, but Jenna herself is conducting her career like my dream woman.

After an incredibly successful career as an actress, she has parlayed her fame (and fortune) into a number of enterprises, including an affiliate program under the umbrella of her Club Jenna site which offers unknown starlets consumer access and visibility so difficult to acquire online.

And now she's moving away from her acting career altogether, towards her business pursuits. As she reports in the latest issue of AVN, she has not turned her back on the industry; in fact, she is embracing its fertile entrepreneurial landscape. In the process, she is creating a brand new archetype the industry is only starting to recognize--female tycoon. I'm so proud of her!

The good Lady Rubelucia and I recently had a brilliant idea. Stripper party planners--the antidote to crappy bachelor parties everywhere. Imagine: leave the logistics of your bachelor party to a woman--the shepherds of hospitality--and not just any woman but a sexy non-future-wife who knows all the best clubs and who will strip on a whim. I think it's a brilliant scheme, but a (male) coworker recently expressed skepticism at my chest-pounding entrepreneurship, doubting that there are strippers savvy enough to run a successful business of this nature.

Which got me to thinking...I'd always thought of strippers as smarter than the average bear. Maybe I've just been exposed to a disproportionate share of sexy San Francisco feminists who smirk while happily making three times the salary of their patrons. Seems pretty smart to me, and yet they get a really negative wrap.

This is all a long-winded way of introducing a fun new blog I found, Pretty Dumb Things, which contains very smart writing by an ex-stripper named Chelsea G. Summers. She mostly writes about relationships and sex, but I like her irreverent approach to topics like her fake boobs as well as her total lack of sympathy for blue balls.

Check it out--and in the meantime I'll work on writing a real entry. I promise!

My friend Leah has been working on directing her first porn movie, and I've been watching the process with rapt attention. As regular readers know, I'm a huge fan of sane, progressive women making movies that honor the participants (and the viewer). Ever since meeting at school, Leah and I have traded ideas about women and sex work, culminating in, for me, a research project, and for Leah a movie.

I managed to convince her to document the process in this space, so stay tuned for Leah's periodic updates on the creation of a feminist pornography film. Please welcome her to the space, and thanks to Leah for contributing! I'm looking forward to seeing the project progress!

Everyone needs to know about Bridget Everett. I've been dying for a chance to promote her in this space, but her fabulous show, At Least It's Pink, already closed and Bridget's been lying low since. I first experienced Bridgett last year at Tristan Taormino's release party for House of Ass and I can't wait to see her next project.

In the meanwhile, here is your chance to catch Bridget in action! She's performing this Saturday at NYC's Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette St). There's a burlesque event happening, hosted by Murray Hill (who I also adore). I can't make it, but I hope you all can! Believe me, it's worth it!