Mutt
02-24-2003, 07:30 AM
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 24, 2003;
The popularization of pornography is everywhere. In the suburbs, the shopping mall, the movie theater, the radio, the television, our living rooms: Pop Porn.
It's in the news: Brian Heidik, winner of "Survivor: Thailand," starred in soft-core porn movies. George Mason University grad Sarah Kozer, a finalist on "Joe Millionaire," acted in bondage videos. Have you heard "Porn Again," a rap CD by the Smut Peddlers? How about the interviews with porn stars on Howard Stern's morning drive-time radio show? Have you seen the Porn Star T-shirts teenagers wear?
"Pornography has lost its political purposes and is now 'naturalized' as just another form of representation," says Lynn Hunt, author of "The Invention of Pornography" and a professor of history at UCLA.
"Years ago, you could think it was somebody else's problem," says Bruce A. Taylor, president and chief counsel of a Fairfax-based anti-porn group, the National Law Center for Children and Families. "It was a big city problem. A guy problem. A dirty old man problem. But the Internet has put hard-core movies in everybody's home."
Pornography -- a multi-billion-dollar industry -- is out of the bedroom closet and on the living room table, in oversize photo-heavy books such as Madonna's 1992 "Sex" and Ian Gittler's 1999 "Pornstar." It even has its own euphemism: "erotica," which can denote anything from 18th-century Japanese prints to XXX videos.
In the past few years, courses on pornography have been offered at several of the country's higher-learning institutions. "Pornography and Evolution" was available at UCLA, and Vanderbilt students studied "Pornography and Prostitution in History."
"Our consumer culture is always looking to the margins to find things it can pull into the mainstream to market and make money," says Michele Malach, 38, an assistant professor of English at Fort Lewis College in Colorado. "Pornography is a huge margin."
Malach hoped to teach something called "The Poetics of Porn" last year, but encountered resistance from alums and donors. The course will eventually be offered, she predicts. After all, she says that her students are growing up these days with pornographic images all around them. "A majority of them have had more direct exposure to porn than I have," Malach says.
Of course, debate over the meaning of the word "pornography" can be endless. Some jurists have argued that "community standards" define it. But when porn is standard in communities, prosecution becomes difficult. In 1964, discussing hard-core pornography, Justice Potter Stewart declined to define it except by saying "I know it when I see it."
Slide 1, please: This is a picture of Ron Howard. He is an owner of Imagine Entertainment, a company that is producing a documentary about Linda "Deep Throat" Lovelace. If "The Andy Griffith Show's" Opie can traffic in porn, can't everybody?
Slide 2. Here we have Sherie Rene Scott, who starred as Debbie in this season's off-Broadway production of "Debbie Does Dallas." It's a musical based on the 1977 porn classic of the same name. A musical! Scott also starred as Amneris in Disney's Broadway blockbuster "Aida." Of "Debbie," the New York Times called it: "Porn you can take your grandmother to."
No longer creeping out from under shadowy movie houses and behind-locked-doors bedrooms, Pop Porn has become part of our everyday lives.
Slide 3. Mark Wahlberg, starring as a porn star in "Boogie Nights." The movie opened in October 1997 and a few weeks later was playing in more than 900 theaters nationwide. Now it's available for rent at the corner video store or for sale at Wal-Mart.com.
Slide 4. This is Yale University. Last October Comedy Central unveiled its first original movie, "Porn 'N Chicken," which was based on a real-life group of Yale students who ritually gathered to watch X-rated movies and eat fried chicken.
At the University of Indiana last year, a California porn company hired students to perform in an X-rated flick.
Slide 5. Here we see an adorable teddy bear -- with the word PORN emblazoned across the front of its little shirt -- on sale for $18 from the Funzo Shop, an online merchandise site that also offers PORN coffee mugs, mouse pads, barbecue aprons and thongs.
Some people trace the issue of modern pornography back to the mid-17th century, when three dirty books, including "The Wayward Prostitute," were published. Others point to the British Obscene Publications Act in 1857, which made the publication of certain books and pamphlets against the law.
The history of pornography doesn't really matter. The Golden Age of Porn began about 30 years ago with the public screening of movies such as "Deep Throat" and "Behind the Green Door," and accelerated with the introduction of the videocassette recorder, then the explosion of cable television and the Internet.
Our access to sexually explicit material is greater than it's ever been -- taboo words and images are available to just about anyone anywhere at any time. Nudity on television is commonplace. We are awash with images and lyrics that once would have been considered pornographic.
Rapper Eminem features porn star Ginger Lynn and scantily clad women in a new music video. When the curtain rose on Stanley Tucci and Edie Falco in a Broadway revival of "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," the couple was making love in a bed. Even Kathy Bates and Will Ferrell are getting naked in movies. One by one, acceptable standards and practices have been changed in movies, on the stage, on television and on radio. Type "porn" into the Google search engine and you get 53 million hits; type "God" and you get 42 million hits.
Slide 6. This is Elaine May, who directed "The Heartbreak Kid," starred in "California Suite" and shared an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of "Heaven Can Wait," and has written a new play about porn. May's off-Broadway production of "Adult Entertainment," says the theater critic of USA Today, "offers more bang for your buck than any stage comedy I've checked out recently."
The porn industry has become fair game for the American literati.
Slide 7. Here you see the 20 or so shelves of erotica at a downtown Borders Books & Music store. Notice the titles include everything from bondage stories to the illustrated Kama Sutra, pages and pages of material that would have once been considered pornographic.
Is there such a thing as a pornographic book anymore? Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove/Atlantic, is not so sure. "The last book that shocked people was 'American Psycho,' " Entrekin says, referring to the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. "That book elicited a response of the sort you hadn't seen in 20 or 30 years. I happen to think it came from a misreading of the book. It enraged people. Bret got death threats. There were book boycotts."
Originally scheduled to publish "American Psycho," Simon & Schuster backed out of the deal. Vintage published it. The book, it should be noted, was decried mostly for its misogyny and violence. And its shock is muted now that the Internet and the World Wide Web infiltrate every corner of American culture.
It should also be noted that, despite the outcry, "American Psycho" went on to be made into a movie starring Christian Bale in 2000.
Though Grove didn't publish Ellis, the company was notorious through the years for pushing the envelope of what is -- and what is not -- considered pornographic in America. Under the leadership of Barney Rosset, the company published long-banned books by Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence.
No one raised an eyebrow last year when Entrekin published a translation of "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." by Catherine Millet.
"It was written by a French intellectual," Entrekin says, and though the book contains countless graphic descriptions of various sexual forays and orgies, "it's not particularly erotic."
The book is of literary value, he adds, because "this was the first time you saw that a woman had written about sex divorced from emotion -- with a cold analytical approach."
Slide 8. The Forbidden Fruit boutique on Rockville Pike sits in the crook of the Wintergreen Plaza shopping center near a Food Lion, a Blockbuster video store, a bridal shop and Family Dentistry. Inside Forbidden Fruit you will find several shelves of porn movies next to the sex toys and beyond-provocative lingerie.
We are seeing not only the coarsening, but also the corseting, of America.
Porn has been an issue in women's politics, with controversies over use of the phrase "pornography is rape" by some feminists. Elaine Showalter, a professor of English at Princeton University and author of "A Literature of Their Own," says that feminists have been divided over the issue of pornography. Some believed that pornography was pernicious and degrading to women and therefore should be restricted; others emphasized the precedence of freedom of speech.
There is no doubt, she says, that pornographic speech and imagery is increasingly prevalent in contemporary America. "At the same time," Showalter points out, "you read that people are having less sex."
Slide 9. A Spencer Gifts store. Stroll into the fun-for-the-whole-family Spencer Gifts shop in your local shopping mall -- there are three in the Washington area. On a shelf near the lava lamps and Homer Simpson hula dolls, pick up a "Do It Yourself Adult Movie Kit" that includes massage oil, a battery-powered massager, a Hollywood-style clapper and a script full of sexual innuendo.
Porn in the shopping malls, on the TV, on the Internet, at the video emporium. Could this signal the beginning of the end? If pornography is everywhere, it's nowhere.
The National Law Center's Taylor thinks that "the Peter Pan porn period" is in decline. "I think everyone is in the game now," he says. "Most families have people who have seen hard-core porn. A majority of Americans have experienced it. Now they know what's wrong with it."
The anti-porn crusader is arming for new battles. "I still think most of the hard-core pornography is obscene and prosecutable and would be convicted by juries," he says. "I think this is a temporary thing. I think a few prosecutions would turn this thing around."
In any case, says college professor Michele Malach, we must pay attention to pornography because of its omnipresence. "It's there already," Malach says. "If we don't study these things, in many ways, it's worse."
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 24, 2003;
The popularization of pornography is everywhere. In the suburbs, the shopping mall, the movie theater, the radio, the television, our living rooms: Pop Porn.
It's in the news: Brian Heidik, winner of "Survivor: Thailand," starred in soft-core porn movies. George Mason University grad Sarah Kozer, a finalist on "Joe Millionaire," acted in bondage videos. Have you heard "Porn Again," a rap CD by the Smut Peddlers? How about the interviews with porn stars on Howard Stern's morning drive-time radio show? Have you seen the Porn Star T-shirts teenagers wear?
"Pornography has lost its political purposes and is now 'naturalized' as just another form of representation," says Lynn Hunt, author of "The Invention of Pornography" and a professor of history at UCLA.
"Years ago, you could think it was somebody else's problem," says Bruce A. Taylor, president and chief counsel of a Fairfax-based anti-porn group, the National Law Center for Children and Families. "It was a big city problem. A guy problem. A dirty old man problem. But the Internet has put hard-core movies in everybody's home."
Pornography -- a multi-billion-dollar industry -- is out of the bedroom closet and on the living room table, in oversize photo-heavy books such as Madonna's 1992 "Sex" and Ian Gittler's 1999 "Pornstar." It even has its own euphemism: "erotica," which can denote anything from 18th-century Japanese prints to XXX videos.
In the past few years, courses on pornography have been offered at several of the country's higher-learning institutions. "Pornography and Evolution" was available at UCLA, and Vanderbilt students studied "Pornography and Prostitution in History."
"Our consumer culture is always looking to the margins to find things it can pull into the mainstream to market and make money," says Michele Malach, 38, an assistant professor of English at Fort Lewis College in Colorado. "Pornography is a huge margin."
Malach hoped to teach something called "The Poetics of Porn" last year, but encountered resistance from alums and donors. The course will eventually be offered, she predicts. After all, she says that her students are growing up these days with pornographic images all around them. "A majority of them have had more direct exposure to porn than I have," Malach says.
Of course, debate over the meaning of the word "pornography" can be endless. Some jurists have argued that "community standards" define it. But when porn is standard in communities, prosecution becomes difficult. In 1964, discussing hard-core pornography, Justice Potter Stewart declined to define it except by saying "I know it when I see it."
Slide 1, please: This is a picture of Ron Howard. He is an owner of Imagine Entertainment, a company that is producing a documentary about Linda "Deep Throat" Lovelace. If "The Andy Griffith Show's" Opie can traffic in porn, can't everybody?
Slide 2. Here we have Sherie Rene Scott, who starred as Debbie in this season's off-Broadway production of "Debbie Does Dallas." It's a musical based on the 1977 porn classic of the same name. A musical! Scott also starred as Amneris in Disney's Broadway blockbuster "Aida." Of "Debbie," the New York Times called it: "Porn you can take your grandmother to."
No longer creeping out from under shadowy movie houses and behind-locked-doors bedrooms, Pop Porn has become part of our everyday lives.
Slide 3. Mark Wahlberg, starring as a porn star in "Boogie Nights." The movie opened in October 1997 and a few weeks later was playing in more than 900 theaters nationwide. Now it's available for rent at the corner video store or for sale at Wal-Mart.com.
Slide 4. This is Yale University. Last October Comedy Central unveiled its first original movie, "Porn 'N Chicken," which was based on a real-life group of Yale students who ritually gathered to watch X-rated movies and eat fried chicken.
At the University of Indiana last year, a California porn company hired students to perform in an X-rated flick.
Slide 5. Here we see an adorable teddy bear -- with the word PORN emblazoned across the front of its little shirt -- on sale for $18 from the Funzo Shop, an online merchandise site that also offers PORN coffee mugs, mouse pads, barbecue aprons and thongs.
Some people trace the issue of modern pornography back to the mid-17th century, when three dirty books, including "The Wayward Prostitute," were published. Others point to the British Obscene Publications Act in 1857, which made the publication of certain books and pamphlets against the law.
The history of pornography doesn't really matter. The Golden Age of Porn began about 30 years ago with the public screening of movies such as "Deep Throat" and "Behind the Green Door," and accelerated with the introduction of the videocassette recorder, then the explosion of cable television and the Internet.
Our access to sexually explicit material is greater than it's ever been -- taboo words and images are available to just about anyone anywhere at any time. Nudity on television is commonplace. We are awash with images and lyrics that once would have been considered pornographic.
Rapper Eminem features porn star Ginger Lynn and scantily clad women in a new music video. When the curtain rose on Stanley Tucci and Edie Falco in a Broadway revival of "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," the couple was making love in a bed. Even Kathy Bates and Will Ferrell are getting naked in movies. One by one, acceptable standards and practices have been changed in movies, on the stage, on television and on radio. Type "porn" into the Google search engine and you get 53 million hits; type "God" and you get 42 million hits.
Slide 6. This is Elaine May, who directed "The Heartbreak Kid," starred in "California Suite" and shared an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of "Heaven Can Wait," and has written a new play about porn. May's off-Broadway production of "Adult Entertainment," says the theater critic of USA Today, "offers more bang for your buck than any stage comedy I've checked out recently."
The porn industry has become fair game for the American literati.
Slide 7. Here you see the 20 or so shelves of erotica at a downtown Borders Books & Music store. Notice the titles include everything from bondage stories to the illustrated Kama Sutra, pages and pages of material that would have once been considered pornographic.
Is there such a thing as a pornographic book anymore? Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove/Atlantic, is not so sure. "The last book that shocked people was 'American Psycho,' " Entrekin says, referring to the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. "That book elicited a response of the sort you hadn't seen in 20 or 30 years. I happen to think it came from a misreading of the book. It enraged people. Bret got death threats. There were book boycotts."
Originally scheduled to publish "American Psycho," Simon & Schuster backed out of the deal. Vintage published it. The book, it should be noted, was decried mostly for its misogyny and violence. And its shock is muted now that the Internet and the World Wide Web infiltrate every corner of American culture.
It should also be noted that, despite the outcry, "American Psycho" went on to be made into a movie starring Christian Bale in 2000.
Though Grove didn't publish Ellis, the company was notorious through the years for pushing the envelope of what is -- and what is not -- considered pornographic in America. Under the leadership of Barney Rosset, the company published long-banned books by Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence.
No one raised an eyebrow last year when Entrekin published a translation of "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." by Catherine Millet.
"It was written by a French intellectual," Entrekin says, and though the book contains countless graphic descriptions of various sexual forays and orgies, "it's not particularly erotic."
The book is of literary value, he adds, because "this was the first time you saw that a woman had written about sex divorced from emotion -- with a cold analytical approach."
Slide 8. The Forbidden Fruit boutique on Rockville Pike sits in the crook of the Wintergreen Plaza shopping center near a Food Lion, a Blockbuster video store, a bridal shop and Family Dentistry. Inside Forbidden Fruit you will find several shelves of porn movies next to the sex toys and beyond-provocative lingerie.
We are seeing not only the coarsening, but also the corseting, of America.
Porn has been an issue in women's politics, with controversies over use of the phrase "pornography is rape" by some feminists. Elaine Showalter, a professor of English at Princeton University and author of "A Literature of Their Own," says that feminists have been divided over the issue of pornography. Some believed that pornography was pernicious and degrading to women and therefore should be restricted; others emphasized the precedence of freedom of speech.
There is no doubt, she says, that pornographic speech and imagery is increasingly prevalent in contemporary America. "At the same time," Showalter points out, "you read that people are having less sex."
Slide 9. A Spencer Gifts store. Stroll into the fun-for-the-whole-family Spencer Gifts shop in your local shopping mall -- there are three in the Washington area. On a shelf near the lava lamps and Homer Simpson hula dolls, pick up a "Do It Yourself Adult Movie Kit" that includes massage oil, a battery-powered massager, a Hollywood-style clapper and a script full of sexual innuendo.
Porn in the shopping malls, on the TV, on the Internet, at the video emporium. Could this signal the beginning of the end? If pornography is everywhere, it's nowhere.
The National Law Center's Taylor thinks that "the Peter Pan porn period" is in decline. "I think everyone is in the game now," he says. "Most families have people who have seen hard-core porn. A majority of Americans have experienced it. Now they know what's wrong with it."
The anti-porn crusader is arming for new battles. "I still think most of the hard-core pornography is obscene and prosecutable and would be convicted by juries," he says. "I think this is a temporary thing. I think a few prosecutions would turn this thing around."
In any case, says college professor Michele Malach, we must pay attention to pornography because of its omnipresence. "It's there already," Malach says. "If we don't study these things, in many ways, it's worse."