The Price of Pleasure reviewed, plus, an actual "honest and nonjudgmental" documentary on porn

First reviews of The Price of Pleasure

Several reviews have come out from people who have seen The Price of Pleasure at the few engagements its actually played so far. A review here by Go-To-Girl (aka Guli Fager), a sex-poz blogger and freelance writer who is new to me, but I will definitely read more of in the future. She somehow managed to score an invite to the Austin premier of The Price of Pleasure from Robert Jensen himself, interestingly, though she doesn't sound at all sympathetic to his overall view of sexuality or porn. Another review here from the Montreal Gazette, and here, from the blog Culture @ Montréal. The consensus seems to be that the documentary is anything but "honest and nonjudgmental". And lest you think I'm cherry-picking, Google it yourself – I have yet to see a review that has much good to say about the spin this documentary puts on the issue.

(Chris from Sex in the Public Square also posts his impressions here, though like me, he's only seen the trailer and website and is quite familiar with the figures behind it.)

One interjection here, to head off a possible canard by the anti-porn folks – I'm not actually trying to discourage anybody from going and seeing The Price of Pleasure. In fact, I'm definitely going to make a point of seeing it, if it comes to my area, or if it gets a proper DVD release or is made available on the web, and I encourage others to do likewise. The film is supposed to get a proper release after circulating through the film festival circuit, at lease according to a post by Robert Wosnitzer on the TPoP forum. (And, yes, they do have a forum which they claim is open to "conversations and debates" concerning the film. If anybody wants to take advantage of this rare exception to the usual closed moderation policy of radical feminist blogs, the forum can be found here.)

9 to 5: Days in Porn

I also see from the reviews from the Montreal Film Festival that there is in fact another documentary on the industry nearing release, 9 to 5: Days in Porn. Unlike The Price of Pleasure, which seems to disproportionately focus on the opinions of the "chattering class", this doc really does focus on people working in the porn industry, both on the performing and production end. The focus is on the mainstream LA industry, though it also includes some coverage of the burgeoning Czech porn industry.

This doc also claims "not to judge, but to observe" and seems to succeed in this regard much more so than The Price of Pleasure. Nonetheless, its take on performers and other people in the porn industry seems to be pretty positive, something I have little doubt the antis will find fault with. (I suppose they might also find fault with the fact that neither Shelly Lubin nor her cohorts were included, though interestingly, The Price of Pleasure doesn't include any of those people, either.)

And while this definitely can be seen as a pro-porn documentary, I think its pro-porn in the best sense – it doesn't look like a fluff piece along the lines of HBO's Cathouse, but rather a realistic, unflinching look at the porn industry as work and the performers as workers with a variety of motivations for being in the porn industry. Nor does the documentary shy away from the nature of some of the product, for example, showing Jim Powers at work on an installment of the White Trash Whore series.

9 to 5 includes interviews with some of the more articulate and self-aware voices in the porn world, such as John Stagliano, Sharon Mitchell, Belladonna, and Sasha Grey. The latter two I think are particularly important, because these are two very self-aware, interesting women who have been the target of some very distorted coverage by the mainstream media, which is often used as political hay by the antis as a result.

According to some of the reviews, 9 to 5 is still in the editing process and the version shown at the Montreal Festival is a somewhat longish cut, so it maybe a few months at least before this goes into regular release. Though, personally, considering who's interviewed here, I like the fact that they shot a whole bunch of interview footage and I hope a lot of it ends up being included as DVD extras when that's finally released.

Even more films

Yet another documentary on the porn industry, this time a short one, has recently been made in the Czech Republic, Who is afraid of Ashley Lightspeed?, which describes itself as "A little superficial reportage from the big superficial world of Czech porn business." This doc covers several figures in the Czech porn industry, but focuses on Katerina Strougalova, aka Ashley Lightspeed, a social work student who was quite active in web porn a couple of years ago, and who's still one of the more popular models in the Central European glamor porn genre. She had some publicity in the Czech Republic about a year and a half ago when some of the local tabloids decided to out her as a porn star, using her real name. This actually led to her university threatening to expel her on "morals" grounds, and I'm not entirely sure what the outcome of that was.

This film is actually viewable or downloadable in its entirety from the above-mentioned website, however, its entirely in Czech with no subtitles. If you're part of the 99.8% of the world's population that's non-Czech-speaking, you're kind of out of luck in terms of understanding what anybody is saying. Still, you can glean a lot just from viewing it, and I'm struck by how much the Czech porn industry looks pretty much like the American one.

And getting away from documentaries, there's a comedy/indie flick about feminist porn called Slippery Slope that's just made it onto DVD. An interview with the filmmaker, Sarah Schenck, went up a few days ago on the Hip Slope Mama blog and is worth a look.