Discerning tastes

There's a great line by Chuck Klosterman when talking about pornography, where he wonders why it is attractive to see a girl get shot all over the face with sea-monkeys. He equates it to slapping her in the face with a fry pan.

Clearly, he is of the minority, since almost every pornographic film scene ends with the same money shot. Heck, even Kobe Bryant testified in his rape case that he enjoys it. "It's my thing," he told Colorado police officers when discussing details of his unfortunate affair. Right. And I patented the question mark.

I suppose pornography isn't a topic I discuss often, but I'm really intrigued by Steven Soderbergh's new movie "The Girlfriend Experience", which stars (in)famous porn starlet Sasha Grey.

For starters, it's a real life jump for a porn actor to legitimate acting. And, yes, I realize it's a stretch (no pun intended! eww....) to say a porn star is acting when her role is "call girl", but whatever. If Keanu Reeves is an actor, then we should at the very least acquiesce for Miss Grey as well. This is uncommon, and Soderbergh is a big time director. I'm sold.

Second, a quote from a recent Guardian article about the movie really got me thinking:

"With Sasha, you can within seconds see her do anything you can imagine with her clothes off," Soderbergh acknowledges. "What you can't see is what it's like to be her boyfriend, to hang out with her and be emotionally intimate with her. So my whole theory is that's the fantasy for those who've been double-clicking – that they want to spend 77 minutes being her boyfriend."

I find myself these days not particularly interested in pornography. Sure, send in the gay jokes, but through the years, I've found that whenever I see a porn scene or a television show about porn stars, I am more curious about the sociological commentary and semiotic relevance of the whole construct.

These women are an enigma, no? In this month's Rolling Stone, there is a feature on Sasha Grey. She is an intelligent girl, and argues that her actions are an empowering form of feminism. She points out that if equality, rights and freedom is manifested in the right to make choices, then shouldn't all choices be respected regardless of society's hollow moral pillars? Isn't telling her not to be a porn star actually an act of misogyny?

But really? Does Sodenbergh believe that internet porn surfers fantasize about emotionally connecting with Sasha Grey? That they want to argue about what movie to rent, where to eat dinner and whether it's time to move on to the next level?

Do consumers of porn consider actors to be real people?

I'm not sure. Frankly, I don't even fully believe as a whole, society extends that much empathy to normal celebrities. They are spectacles for our amusement and consumption, not vessels for our emotional plight.

So is porn really empowering then? If most of the people watching you being disrespected and degraded are willing to gloss over that fact to see you get hit in the face with a fry pan, does that really give a woman a sense of autonomy and self-respect?

I don't have answers. But I think the porn industry is one of those facets and products of our sexual behavior that has a lot to say about our society. We just never really think about it any deeper than the superficial.

Which is only fitting, I suppose, if not somewhat ironic in how absolutely non-ironic it is.

Of note: this movie isn't even about porn. But it deals with many of the same issues, in a more thought provoking way; which are all those issues we almost never want to deal with.

Here's the trailer.