No revelations: Porn actresses dominated by stereotypes
Elina Chebbocha
Revelations of the best porn models came out in limited rent - a documentary about actresses of films for adults, which are considered to be the best in business. This is the first directorial work of a glossy photographer Deborah Anderson, which she released as a prequel to her art album. We tell why this film, like many others, does not cope with the task of showing porn actresses from the other side.
“Civilians do not understand us. We use the term civil to refer to anyone who is not involved in the adult industry. Civilians have filters, we don’t,” says Belladonna, a 32-year-old porn actress. She has 10 “Oscar porn” AVN Award and absolutely cult status in the world of unscrupulous adults - something like Jenna Jameson, only without the released autobiographies of bestsellers. Belladonna is loved for a special, very aggressive type of porn and, of course, for beautiful eyes. She, 15 more porn actresses and one porn agent tell about themselves in a black and white documentary film - the most vulgar and monstrous creation in the world, after which porn you want to stop watching once and for all. It is better not to keep up than to pinch, but the director Deborah Anderson - civil - does not yet know about it.
It turns out that porn is the only place where their individuality is manifested.
The idea was simple and straightforward: to collect the best of the representatives of the porn business and to make frank on camera. In this, with varying degrees of failure, no one succeeded at all during the entire existence of documentaries about porn. French "Il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel" with porn actor Herv P. Gustave turned into a narrative lanfren-lanfr on the technique of filming. The film about the cult "Deep Throat", where you could not do anything at all because of the richness of the original texture and the pop-cultural status of the cinema, became the primitive "Wikipedia". In the first half of Deborah Anderson’s film, the stylist works on porn actresses and, under the hum of the fan, they answer questions about life — the first words that come to mind in a conversation about the porn industry, religion, family attitudes to work, childhood and drugs. At some point, they stop showing the names of actresses - and you get lost in an endless stream of similar stories about ordinary women, faces merge into one, and you can only distinguish them by the "blonde / brunette" tag. It turns out that porn is the only place where their individuality is manifested. The situation is aggravated by the structure of the documentary: it is divided into parts not intonationally, but technically - epigraphs from quotations of great women.
The most interesting character of the film is pornorgent Fran Amidor - in fact, the planter-exploiter, but sincere and very intelligent. She says that she had doubts about what she was doing, but she was advised not to bother with moral dilemmas: "There will always be someone else. You can choose between who the hell [actresses] are and who actually cares about them. " In the course of the conversation, Amidor gives some pretty universal tips, telling that the porn industry works according to the same laws as a regular movie. For example, there must be a mystery in a woman, she says. No need to show everything at once: first you do it alone, starting to feel comfortable in front of the camera. Then you meet a guy, and after six months you do it with two. The women shown in the film did everything right, according to the agent, and therefore they stayed in business. Why defend your right to condemn a wise agent, if you can just listen to him?
When the camera begins to slide on the nipples of absolutely naked porn actresses lying on the bed, the pattern is torn from the inconsistency of what they are talking about at the moment, and the pictures. For example, one of them is crying, and the other tells that she was forced to drink 12 glasses, which is understandable without warning and without thinking, “what will she feel and how will she live with it until the end of her days”. Someone has problems with family and drugs. Someone is afraid of losing beauty, and in childhood suffered from bulimia. At some point, the porn agent frankly says that half the industry is drugged: "When they see a guy with a huge dick, they know that he is not going anywhere without Vicodin." Pornagents have a normal life, but for the rest everything goes on an inclination - "a part of their soul disappears, and they have to spend half of the money they earn on therapy."
In order to show porn stars humanly, you need to stop manipulating them.
The problem is that Deborah Anderson, in general, doesn’t shoot a film, but an ad for an album of his photos — he has no idea what people should do and tell people to look real. Trying to put the porn actresses in beautiful light, Anderson corners them with exactly opposite clichés, inevitably making victims of industry or circumstances. But everything is simple: in order to show porn stars humanely, you need to stop manipulating them, and also create a comfort zone in which the heroines will not say what is expected of them. In the end, in order to free the image of a woman (and porn actresses) from stereotypes, it is not necessary to be a woman too - it is enough just to be a smart person.
The photo: coverphoto via Shutterstock