Such crossover success has been happening for a few years now in Europe, such as French model and actress Dany Verissimo, who got her start as porn star Ally Mac Tyana. And, of course, porn stars crossing over into indie film has been going on for a long time now, for example, Marilyn Chambers lead role in Cronenberg's Rabid, Rebecca Lord's supporting role in I Am a Sex Addict, not to mention Nina Hartley's featured bit part in Boogie Nights. These movies unfortunately did not bring about more mainstream roles for the actresses in question, and time will tell whether or not the same will be true for Sasha Grey.
In any even, its great seeing a talent like Sasha Grey get this kind of recognition. In a recent column, Violet Blue sends out suitably mad props to Sasha and her cohort of upcoming, stereotype-busting porn stars:
For me, Grey occupies that hyperpublic, female-sexual-power groundbreaking space shared with young female porn performers such as Lorelei Lee (articulate eloquence embodied), Dana DeArmond (vanguard realist), Kimberly Kane (cutting-edge visionary), Ashley Blue (powerful muse), April Flores (playful agent of change) and Madison Young (soft-spoken shock troop of female sexual power). These women are my heroes, and they are not to be trifled with. Like her amazing colleagues, Sasha Grey is articulate, smarter than the journalists and pundits (and pud whackers) that record her every move, and she more than sees the forest for the trees when it comes to sex work and porn. Third gen feminism? Try screw-your one-size-fits-all feminism, or fuck feminism altogether and watch me shred your quaint old notions of female sexuality into pure feminine power and the redefinition of sex and gender roles — and porn.
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Sasha Grey as an intellectual and artist.
ReplyDeleteMany blogs and internet sites written by pro porn people talk a lot about Sasha Greys qualities as an actor and artist. And many also mentions her supposed intellectual capacities.
I will question those abilities.
I have read many interviews with her and also followed some of the discussions she is involved in on different fora.
What I´ve seen and heard there doesn´t convince me of any special artistic or intellectual abilities at all. On the contrary most of her talk and writings on the net is amazingly simple and plain. And also she seems to be very limited concerning the subjects she adresses.
Some examples: on YouTube she put out some "educational" videos that adresses below waist subjects as "on eating sperm", "on fellatio" and "on the joy of enemas". Very intellectual :-)
When she was 18 she was interviewed in the Tyra Banks show. Afterwords she was not pleased by the way they portraited her. Later the Tyra show came up on YouTube. Then she sent in a video talking about that occasion. But she didn´t adress any important issues as porns role in society, porns influence on people and so on. Instead she talked about what clothes she had to wear in the show and how they stole her earrings.
Another time I followed a discussion on a fora. Some people there discussed porn and it´s impact on children and teenagers. Then someone mentioned a scene in one porn movie where Sasha Grey eats an enema out of another womans butt (a very artistic act :-))
The writer thought it was rather disgusting and also unclean to swallow shit mixed with milk (urrgghhh). Then suddenly Sasha came forward and wrote "this is not so, there was no feces in that enema, it was clean". So here we have a discussion about porns impact on society and on the people who participate in it and Sashas only contribution was that she discussed the amount of feces in a milky enema! Very intellectual!
In other interviews she discusses such artistic and intellectual things as how she wanted to be punched in the stomach during a gang bang, how she vomited on her boyfriend and how fun it was to throw urine over the audience on a convention in Barcelona.
Nowhere one can hear the artist, the intellectual, the "existentialist" that she sometimes want to be seen as (or is it just a facade that her former pimp/manager Mark dreamt up to make her seem more interesting?).
And at other times she has in fora (like adult DVD Talk Forum) discussed how comfortable it is to have a big hook in her anus or how certain actors sperm tastes.
And her idea of a good performance seem to be the thing in Spain where she first drank a "big gulp" cup full of her own urine and then filled the cup again and sprayed the content over the audience. When she told about that she was so happy that such things where allowed to do publicly in Spain (in USA they are not). She also referred to this stunt as a "performance".
So after seen and heard a lot of those things I seriously doubt Sasha Greys artistic and intellectual capacity.
Oh, fucking bite me.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to try and make an argument directly addressing Grey's intellectual abilities, go ahead. But that's not what you've done here – you've simply listed some extreme sex acts she's discussed being into, and used that as a launching pad to disparage Grey's intelligence. I'm not even going to argue with the clear ignorance and bigotry on your part that this reflects – that's pretty self-evident and pretty contemptible. And not something that exactly speaks well of your intellectual capabilities, I might add.
For my part, I'm not going to throw around words like "artist" and "intellectual", because that get's pretty pretentious pretty fast. I'll note that Grey is active as a musician, being half of the electronic music project aTelecine and has contributed vocals to a recent Lee "Scratch" Perry track. And while I'm not going to say this is inherently any better art than any other 20-year-old musician, its a sight more than your typical whiners from the anti-porn blogosphere have ever contributed to the world.
But the reason Grey (and, to give another example, Belladonna) is thought of pretty highly for her articulateness and self-awareness is not because of the her descriptions of extreme sexual acts, but because of the attitude and awareness she takes toward what she's doing and the way she presents herself. (As in this interview, for example.) Whatever kind of sex she's into, it seems pretty clear its about her own pleasures and preferences, and not just about being a hot body who's being acted upon, or a cold mercenary who's only in it for the money.
Your sniping at Grey's response to her portrayal (and that's "portrayed", not "portraited", oh judge of other people's intellectual abilities) on the Tyra Banks show in particular is many shades of Wrong. The fact that Banks was particularly manipulative toward her, dressing her as younger-looking than she actually dresses, among other things, and editing the interview in such a way as to make Grey sound damaged is HIGHLY relevant. (The fact that she had her earrings taken is simply an additional detail that underscores the lack of professionalism of Tyra Banks and her staff.) As are other examples of such treatment, such as the similarly manipulative and selectively-edited Diane Sawyer interview of Belladonna, or the similar treatment of Joanna Angel in "The Price of Pleasure". You blast Grey for giving her side of the story, rather than addressing subjects YOU'VE deemed important and demanding a response – "porn's role in society and porn's impact on society". Fucking unbelievable, really.
I'm not sure what shade of anti-porn you represent, but if you're like most trolls who roll through here, I'm guessing you identify as "feminist". Whatever you identify as, your contempt for the women who perform in porn is pretty apparent, and if you call that feminist, then you're certainly making a poor case for that ideology. Then again, I guess for some people "being an asshole and being a feminist are two things that are not very different".
Angelina seems to be completely obsessed with Sasha Grey.
ReplyDeleteSimilar rants have been posted in other blogs/forums where Sasha's been mentioned. See the comments in this blog post by Sasha's old acting teacher for example.
When trolling is that persistent it starts looking very creepy and stalkerish. With people like this around, it's easy to see why performers use a stage name and try to keep their real identity secret.
Oh wow. Angelina truly does sound unhinged, doesn't she?
ReplyDeleteI had already noticed that there was somebody posing as Sasha Grey on YouTube – Grey posts a videoblog under the name "misssashagrey", while this other person posts as "missashagrey", and I'm pretty sure its the same person. Looking around the web, I see that, under various names, "missashagrey", "Angelina", "Angela", etc are going to far as to post Sasha Grey's real name, email, phone number, and street address on every open forum where Grey is mentioned. When not indulging in variations on the rant above.
Nice.
While I'm not sure now if this person actually has "feminist" motivations, the comparison to Feminist Anonymous, Natalia Antonova's creepy cyberstalker, isn't far off.
Gee, Angelina...you scare me a hell of a lot more than Sasha Grey would ever do.
ReplyDeleteFirst off....even if she does all those horrible things you say she does, what the fuck does that have anything to do with her artistic talents in mainstream movies?? Or, do you really think that just because she happens to like the kind of sex that you personally loathe, she should be banished from humanity with a capital letter branded on her?? (And which letter would that be??? "S" for "Slut"?? "P" for "Porn"??? How about "SPP" for "Slut Porn Pervert"....would that suit you???)
And maybe the fact that she wasn't quite pleased with the way she was smeared on Tyra Banks' show might have something to do with...well, you know, the personal anti-porn agenda of Tyra Banks?? Naaaah...she's just another evil stoooopid porn slut whose mere existence makes it harder for more moral, more intelligent women like you, I guess.
Also...it's so funny that you are so focused of Sasha's supposed obsession with certain bodily fluids...or maybe it's your obsessions with enemas and urine and sperm being projected on Sasha?? What...are you jealous or envious of her?? Most of her roles are actually quite vanilla, BTW....the more extreme stuff is more rare, even if she does actually get off on it; and that's her perfect right, however I or you might differ.
You want to play your little stalking games, then fine..but this is still a pro-porn site where performers will be treated with respect and dignity as human beings. Go and do your stalking somewhere else. Or better yet, I'd be very careful that Sasha doesn't get a restraining order on your sorry ass for what you are writing and posting about her. Internet or not, we still have slander and libel laws on the books.
I'll leave it to Ren and Ernest on how to treat any more responses by you, if you so offer.
Anthony
Here's a recent interview with Sasha, talking about the crossover between porn and mainstream film.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the porn industry could ask for a much better spokesperson.
I just saw that clip...and I'm in love.
ReplyDeleteNot only with Sasha for defending so strongly girls who go into porn for the pleasure alone, or for saying that porn is as legitimate as "mainstream"....but with the producers at G4 for being so open minded to allow her to have her say.
Maybe the media isn't so bad after all.
Antony
It is impossible not to love Sasha Grey.
ReplyDeleteThe progeny of King James just mask their attraction with hate soup.
I can't help it but to feel sorry for her kids if she ever had, she does some extreme stuff for the lack of better word, we don't live in some kind of idealisms, I doubt ANYONE would feel good that their mother was like that.
ReplyDeleteShe is an empty vapid bitch who clearly has no feeling or real emotions. She will never a real star in any sense of the word because she has an evil energy and an evil aura and this is coming from a True Spiritualist who can see and feel these things. If you really look behind the superficial beauty that is there there is a coldness and evil that is recognizable at once if you have eyes to see it. She has male demonic energy in a female body so all you guys out there who love her so much well congratulations your in love with a male energy dark demonic cold calculating that just took on a female form. She has true evil in her and no real feeling and you can tell from the way she talks that she is disconnected. Not all porn stars are evil you know. I am not against porn and there are some with fantastic energy. Some are just very sexual goddess types who have a sexual expression naturally but Sasha is a male demonic energy in a calculated female form that has a lot of evil behind her. I dont say that often but if you look into those eyes you will see one souless bitch trust me. I also dont feel she is aware of it though and thats the sad thing. I dont feel she is consciously projecting evil but it doesnt matter what she is conscious of or not. Behind her is alot of evil and darkness and coldness and I know she might not be aware of it but its there if you have EYES to see it. May her facade crumble and may GOD HIMSELF set her own evil against her so she is destroyed by it quickly and permanently.
ReplyDeleteThe fascinating thing about Sasha Grey is that she is a train wreck that so far hasn't wrecked yet and inf act keeps chugging along. While everyone thought the joke was on her, the joke is on the audience who actually believes in the 'intellectual abilities' or acting abilities of a disturbed teenage porno hooker. The fact that an equally vapid, dishonest, opportunistic director like Soderbergh would choose her should be the end of the argument about how pitiful this all is. If she was an actual 'star' of erotic movies or an actual 'porn star' maybe she'd have a little more clout. Unfortunately her oeuvre consists of being put into situations where she is presented as complete filth, which in this day and age is supposed to be 'empowering'. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteIs this Sasha Grey's cyberstalker again? I have no idea if she was somebody who jilted you in high school or what, or just somebody who gets obsessed with celebrities, but, in any event, you really need to find a better way to spend your time.
ReplyDelete