Another Post About Pornography

The first chapter of David Foster Wallace’s recent book, Consider the Lobster, is about the adult film industry circa 1997, and within it Wallace observes:

The thing to recognize is that the adult industry’s new respectability creates a paradox. The more acceptable in modern culture it becomes, the farther porn will have to go in order to preserve the sense of unacceptability that’s so essential to its appeal…. Whether or not it ever actually gets there, it’s clear that the real horizon late-90’s porn is heading towards is the Snuff Film. It’s also clear, with all moral and cultural issues totally aside, that this is an extremely dangerous direction for the adult-film industry to have to keep moving in.

For evidence that he may have been correct, read this post at Punkassblog and click on the “rape porn” link, which I do not want to replicate here. Or you could read this article about how an 18 year old porn actress contracted HIV in 2004, in which the author notes:

A word about government regulation: I’ve directed and produced two feature films within the county of Los Angeles, which is another way of saying I have a very hostile attitude toward government regulation of motion picture production. I have hired government employees to sit around doing nothing, because that’s what the rules said I had to do. I’ve paid permit fees that were more than my production costs for an average day’s shoot. I’ve declined to shoot scenes in L.A. because of indie-unfriendly regulations.

But even a ROTIO (Republican On This Issue Only) like me can acknowledge that some regulation makes sense.

When I shot a scene for Nothing So Strange in which a character gets shot in the head, the action required a “squib” explosion: The effects artist put a metal plate on the back of the actor’s head. On top of that plate went a small explosive charge. On top of that charge went a grisly packet of fake blood, brains and hair. At the appointed time in the action of the scene, the effects artist pushed a button to trigger the explosive, and, boom, big old mess.

In order to shoot this scene legally (which I did), I had to hire a pyrotechnician licensed by the state. I also had to hire a county fire marshal, who monitored the pyrotechnician and had the authority to stop any behavior deemed unsafe. If you add in the city cops I was legally required to retain for crowd control, the actors and crew on my set had three levels of protection provided by government agencies.

If, in my zeal to get a better scene, I had tried to persuade the pyro to make the explosive charge larger than was safe, he probably wouldn’t have done it–his license would have been at risk. If he decided to take the risk to please me (perhaps so I’d hire him again), the fire marshal was there to keep him honest. And if I tried to stage the scene in another way that put the actors or crew in danger, the police officers present would have stopped me.

Lara Roxx had zero protection by government agencies. There was no cop on that set. No fire marshal. No doctor. Nobody had a license. And nobody broke the law by paying a teenager to accept the uncovered penises of two men into her anus.

Roxx showed poor judgment, yes. She isn’t blameless. But there are plenty of neophyte stunt performers in L.A. who would also be delighted to show some poor judgment and get themselves hurt or killed on a Hollywood movie set–but the government regulates those sets. I’ve auditioned plenty of eager young actors who would no doubt be willing to do their own dangerous stunts if it meant getting a good role and getting paid–but the LAPD, the LAFD and the Screen Actors Guild would all have something to say about that.

The 18-year-olds flooding into the porn industry have just about nobody. The porn companies label them “independent contractors,” so the performers don’t even have the workplace safety protections that fry cooks at Burger King do.

Lara Roxx, who is too young to legally drink in a bar, has HIV not just because she participated in a dangerous sex act. She also has HIV because there was nobody to stop the producers from dangling money and other inducements in front of this young woman to get her to take that risk.

–Ann Bartow