E!'s True Hollywood Story will air a bio on porn legend Jenna Jameson beginning Sunday night at 8. I am curious to see it, because I am always facinated to see interviews with porn stars in the news, because I am interested in the psychology of whatmust be the most cognatively dissonant careers one could possibly be in. Big stars like Jenna (apparently the highest-selling porn star ever) trade an enormous amount of dignity for an enormous amount of cash. I would be willing to lose a small amount of dignity for money, if of course it were not immoral. But assuming that porn actors do not have a strong moral conviction against what they do, they still must be conscious of the fact that their most intimate, their most vulerable selves are not hidden from the world, who expliots their image for their own gratification. But on the other hand, they trade that dignity for an enormous pile of cash, which they are not willing to give up.
I recently saw an investigative journalism piece (20/20 maybe?) on some women that wanted to become models but ended up in porn. It followed them through trying to get a modelling job, swearing that they would never do porn, realizing how hard it is to get into the business, deciding to maybe do a little bit of nudity, and then two of them finally caving into all of the most degrading type of hardcore stuff that they swore they would never do. The not-so-hdden agenda of the piece was that they were tring to expose the large corporations that profit from porn, either through ppv or hotel chains that offer it in the rooms. The irony that they completely missed is that it was the profit motive that drove all of these women to the very thing that they said they would never do. The media though, could not bring themselves to admit that working-class individuals could be just as greedy as corporations, and never commented on it. They interviewed the mother of one of the girls (who became quite famous in the porn world) and got her all worked up over the greedy big corporations that were profitting from her daughter. She cried and harshly condemned their greed. Well, just a few months later, the mom is now porn star Bella Donna's manager, and her best friend, who was jsut as concerned as her mom, decided to dabble in a little porn too. In the end their moral convictions were not a strong enough disincentve when compared to the money. What struck me was theat the show was not interested in criticising the greed of these subjects, they were only interested in corporate greed. In fact, this was the whole premise of the story, but was also the least interesting part about the whole thing. They continued to paint the subjects as victims of corporate profiteering; they could not escape this paradigm. Contrary to popular opinion though, you do not have to be rich to be greedy. The poor and "working families" can be just as guilty; for some reason though, most people think it's justified.
Posted by Matthew Pearson at August 7, 2003 09:12 AM | TrackBackDespite my sinful interests in porn, I have like you always had this fascination for how the heck do people actual end up in that industry? Both guys and girls. I mean, how does this thing keep going and going? Where on earth do new directors come from?
I've always wondered if its like these sick pimps in major metropolitan areas sudden decide to "upgrade" their business and move into the porn industry.
It's a shame there's no definitive work out there really telling the history of the industry, or even the SIZE of the industry.
It's like, ok, so Porn is a billion dollar a year industry. Fine. How many films are made a year? How many different "actors" and "actresses" are there? What's the relationship between conventional media porn (film/magazines) and internet porn? How many thousands of women are involved in the industry?
The whole thing reminds me of this article in national geographic I read once on "blood diamonds." It's like, we only ever see (the royal we, not us in particular) the finished porn product, and it seems like nobody knows anything about it's starting points, its production, and the stories behind the people involved.
Posted by: JosiahQ at August 7, 2003 09:19 AMI read that over 700 movies are made each month in porn (compare that to Hollywood, which churns out around 400 films a year).
This bio of Jameson sounds fascinating. I'm going to check it out. I was looking at the timeline, on the link you posted, and it's kind of interesting to read all the stuff in between the lines concerning her and her dad. She continually references her father and notes that it, in some way, was a cause in her decision to become a porn star. Very interesting.
Paul Thomas Anderson, on the director commentary of Boogie Nights, refers to an article that appeared in the New Yorker a while back about a girl who goes into porn, by accident. She goes to Hollywood from Idaho, gets off teh bus, works around, starts dancing, then gradually ends up doing porn. I think she kills herself, too. She was believed to partly serve the William H. Macey's character in the movie, although Anderson said that wasn't true, but that he was familiar with the New Yorker article.
Posted by: scott cunningham at August 7, 2003 10:39 AMI saw the 20/20 piece you mention, and nothing has done more to kill any interest in porn for me. Also, if you haven't, you might want to see Paul Schrader's film "Hard Core" with George C Scott, who plays a father (Dutch Reformed) whose daughter leaves the church's youth group on its trip to Disneyland and gets involved in making pornography.
Posted by: Bill Crawford at August 12, 2003 04:23 AMI saw that Schrader movie. It was pretty interesting, if only to see the scenes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The movie starts out with this really interesting scene at the businessman's home in which two people are arguing over Arminian vs. Calvinism. An even more interesting scene is later in the movie when Scott's character and a prostitute he's befriended are talking, and Scott begins to share the gospel with her, which to him, is mainly the five points of calvinism. The girl has a funny reply - "You believe that? You're even weirder than me!" or something like that.
Schraeder's an interesting character. He grew up in a Calvinist family, went to Calvin College, but dropped out and went to Hollywood where he wrote Taxi Driver over about an eighteen day binge of lots of drinking and lots of porn. I would love to better understand what exactly he is saying about pornography in Hard Core. The movie seems, on one level, simply about a cold, distant father who drives his daughter into pornography (sounds very similar, actually, to Jameson's story). But then on another level, it deals with obvious hypocrisy in this man's religious life, and the fact that so many of the scenes of religious life in Grand Rapids are during times of several feet of snow on the ground, and people having very esoteric, intense debates about Calvinism, is interesting - especially to this Calvinist. Does anyone know more about Schraeder, and care to comment on him? I don't know enough about him, but I'm fascinated by his movies, as well as his background.
Posted by: scott cunningham at August 12, 2003 05:59 AMYou summarized his life nicely. One interesting Schrader movie is "Light of Day" with Michael J Fox and Joan Jett. In one scene they are talking in their home (they're brother and sister) and on the bookshelf are just the right books for an educated Christian layman - Keil and Delitzsch's OT commentaries come to mind. I was very impressed by that knowledge and attention to detail.
Posted by: Bill at August 12, 2003 06:41 PMI remember you telling me that, Bill. That is such an interesting detail to include. I need to see that movie. It's one of those that, since you told me about it, I've been meaning to see it, but still haven't.
Posted by: scott cunningham at August 13, 2003 10:24 AM