Educational Media Reviews Online

Robin Morgan’s 1974 article "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape," published in the seminal 1980 anthology Take Back the Night, Women on Pornography asserts, “Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice.” To be a feminist in the 1970s and early 80s necessitated an anti-pornography stance. In academic circles, it really wasn’t until the publication of Linda Williams' Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible" in 1989 that the tide turned in favor of the study of pornography as a valid genre with its own sub-genres. Thus legitimized by academia, in terms of its growth in cultural studies as well as an amplified desire for investigation of moving image history, pornography holdings in archives and libraries, such as the ones at the Kinsey Institute, the UCLA Film and Video Archive, Southern Methodist University, and Cornell University have been increasingly accessed by scholars resulting in prolific academic publications and in courses on the topic.

Louisa Achille’s documentary, The Naked Feminist, contextualizes contemporary pornography within its current pro-sex feminism realm. The emphasis is on several female former porn stars who went from being in front of the camera to working behind the camera, within or in support of the porn industry. Although the economics of this billion-dollar industry are not addressed in this film, figures show that 10,000 to 1,000 porno DVDs are being released each year and are thus driving DVD technology that inevitably affects mainstream film.

Dealing with the last 20 or so years of commercial pornography, the shift to pro-sex feminism within the industry is shown to be in 1983 when a group of women working in porn got together socially and formed what they called Club 90. The women included Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Hart, Candida Royalle and Gloria Leonard. Veronica Hart went on to produce and direct at VCA Pictures and Candida Royalle founded Femme Productions in 1984, both are hard-core porn production houses. While Annie Sprinkle’s direction was in sexually-based performance art, Sharon Mitchell started a healthcare HIV monitoring facility for adult film performers. These women successfully transitioned and it is their stories along with some current popular female porn actors/entrepreneurs that are shown.

The documentary provides a fairly good discussion of issues of exploitation versus empowerment. Some of the women in porn agree that after a good number of years of woman-positive porn there now appears to be a slide down into misogyny as new individuals entering the field have no regard for the history of the industry. Gonzo filmmaking, or freakshow filmmaking are creating negative ripples although apparently this type of content is popular in only a very small market segment. Anti-porn feminists Kate Burke, Pauline Bart and Diane Russell are shown in their interview clips as simply regurgitating 1970s rhetoric by claiming to be against the degradation and thus mutilation of women that begins with their objectification, as well as against the acceptance of male arguments that pornography is not detrimental. Pauline Bart’s position on the male sense of entitlement is illustrated by her comparison of the objectification of women in porn to Nazi propaganda films. It’s unfortunate that Burke, but particularly Bart and Russell come across as simple caricatures since there probably was more footage available in which they made more cohesive arguments and articulate statements. The anti-porn vs. pro-sex feminism section of this documentary would have been more powerful if both camps were portrayed as equal players in the ideological debate.

Bonnie Sherr-Klein’s 1981 National Film Board of Canada’s production of Not A Love Story: A Film About Pornography was used for many years in women’s studies courses as a visual example of the theories of anti-porn feminism. Although now sadly antiquated in its ideology and using questionable - even for its time - means of eliciting responses, it is the better film in terms of narrative structure and overall impact. Today, Not A Love Story would play well as the first part of a double feature with The Naked Feminist, which would most likely be able to position itself as a potential historical sequel within the history of feminism and pornography.

The copyright date in the credits is 2003 while the DVD sleeve information lists it as 2000. The Cinema Guild’s conversion of this documentary onto DVD-R does not provide any menu and therefore the chapter stops artificially produced by using the remote control arbitrarily, go to sections in mid-sentence rather than to the specifically designed and titled chapters framing the structure of the film. Even consumer level DVD recorders now offer options to create rudimentary chapters, so it is difficult to understand this omission on the part of the distributor. This is a serious drawback in using this DVD-R as a teaching tool, and it amuses me to think that while the porn industry advanced the multiple choice of viewing angles and other interactive features on DVDs, a documentary about the porn industry comes out like an old analog VHS amateurishly transferred to DVD format. Still, in terms of content this DVD is recommended for areas of film studies, women’s studies, and cultural studies as it advances the dialogue of the place of pornography in contemporary culture.