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9 to 5 : Days in Porn

Made by a German director, this movie received a lot of critical coverage in the German press. In case you haven’t heard those reviews: It’s about a part of the US porn industry based in the San Fernando Valley in California. The movie follows the daily lives of its members - actors, agents, producers, newcomers, old hats, directors, doctors. They elaborate on how and why they came to do porn, how they like or dislike it, how the job shapes their lives and whether it differs from other jobs. The viewers see them act (although, thankfully, most “action” is positioned at a visual distance, objects screening our point of view from the purchasable close-up or filmed with long shots.) and hear them describe the industry and the people in it, the development of porn in relation to the general culture and to earlier porn.

Pro or Con

In discussing the film afterwards with my roommate, I wondered. Say you dislike the people presented in the documentary. You find them arrogant, full of themselves, crazy, or liars. Coincidentally, this is what mostly happened to us with this film. (If the liars believe in their own lies, does that still make them liars?)

Now, my roommate thought the movie was trying to show these people in a positive way, but their lunacy shone through. I thought that the movie, or director-as-author, or the combined traces of the collective involved in making this film, pushed me towards this conclusion. (Because I actively dislike auteur theory.) I have to admit that after watching the deleted scenes, extras and Q&A on the DVD, it seemed that my roommate was right, and that at least the director seemed to have viewed his subjects with innocence and sympathy bordering on naivety.

In fiction film, there are subversive ways of reading a movie against its grain. But I find this idea harder to maintain in a documentary (unless it is blatantly ideological.) In Days in Porn, there was no omniscient narration, and the formal way of dividing the movie – presenting the characters, with a sort of title (“the agent”, “the newcomer”, “the Spiegler girl”) – did not appear to be more manipulating than a bookshelf would manipulate the books you put on it. I know, you can omit stuff – in Days in Porn there was no human sex trafficking, little mention of bad childhoods or abuse. But our controversy was about the stuff that was shown. Even in this film, where there is no sex trafficking going on, the toll on human psyches seems immense. Then there was the idea, pushed again and again, that the porno industry is, basically, “like any other”, you are up or down, working for the man, and you can try to pick a role - rookie, pioneer, entrepreneur, starlet – if not, you’ll be what’s left. Also, there was repeated mention that these things are not some seedy ongoing outside of society. The producers and filmmakers emphasized that their products were supplies to the demand of the market, dictated by our apparent lust for double anal penetration. So the Gretchenfrage remains: Is it an industry “like any other”? Are we all part of this? How much of these questions did “the movie” want me to ask?

On a random note..

Maybe I am just being stubborn (or judgmental?) but I find it truly weird when they are talking shop, for example “I respect male talent.” I mean, isn’t “talent” a weird form of expressing … I can see (imagine, rather) what they mean but it seems almost sexist towards men. In an interesting way.

Or when the girl says “Thank you guys” after some obviously exhausting double penetration scene (while the male talent just hobbles off, massaging their genitalia).

Or take this, from Sasha Grey’s online goodbye “I genuinely feel I accomplished everything I could as a performer. I was able to work with the industry’s most professional performers and companies, and I’ll always cherish the friends and relationships I was able to build”.

This is so phony. Why does everybody, everywhere, have to talk like that? Is there no room for non-self-promoting words anymore, for not telling the-story-of-how-cool-I-am-/-we-are ...  Okay, so porn is close to Hollywood. Geographically and, you know.

Porn stars

I’m sorry if this is a 1990s point, but what kind of culture produces porn “stars”? Sasha Grey is the most confusing example for this – a young, resolutely self-confident woman making the apparently free and conscious decision to go into porn, she became famous, turned herself into a brand, refused to be victimized, had apparently no body or shame or boundary issues whatever and is talking some sort of feminism… Her determined way of pushing her case made a knot in my brain. She said she wanted to go against boring, repetitive porn and that she wanted to “explore her sexuality”. On the one hand, of course, this is BS - if you want to explore your sexuality, why take money for doing so on camera. On the other hand, I don’t reject artists for taking money for their art, and I would still take their projects seriously …

I googled Ms Grey, and found out that she has left the porn business in 2007, and is now doing a variety of cultural and artistic projects (starring in a Soderbergh film, music and music ...).