Having already fessed to being a bit neurotic about checking my stats, I don’t feel any bit of embarrassment when I tell you that last Thursday I noticed something odd in our search referrals.

Specifically, the number of visitors arriving on the search [comstock] suddenly shot up, and the number of visitors we were getting from Google’s various international versions (.it, .pl, .eg) also jumped. Together this was a pretty clear indication that someone somewhere made mention of Comstock Films in a non-linking medium.

But what could it be?

Well it turns out it was the program dISPENSER that runs on channel 2 of state-run Italian radio (sort of the Italian version of the BBC.)

I don’t speak Italian, but I do speak a little Spanish, and between that, and the Google translation and the Babblefish translation and listenning to the podcast of the show, I was able to get a sense of what they said, which it turns out was altogether very nice, which comes as a bit of a surprise.

I’ve come to accept that when mainstream journalists write about what we do, it’s going to be done with a certain degree of snark and condesension. After all, who wants to be seen taking “porn”, especially “amateur porn” seriously.

But as far as I can tell, there was no snark in the dISPERSER piece. Well actually there was plenty of snark, all aimed at Anthony Comstock, which makes folks at dISPENSER the first mainstream journalists to even notice that the name “Comstock Films” is a bit of a sly joke. (Apparently a bit too sly for the likes of Richard Corliss or Stacy Grenrock Woods.)

There also seemed to be some genuine appreciation for what we do. Yes, the name “Comstock Films” is a bit of a joke, but we’re quite sincere about the work we do, both in our desire to entertain and arouse our audience, and perhaps even to provoke a little thought about the strange way our society treats the collision of sex and the moving image.

Treating the subject of sex with respect, and especially treating people who make movies about sex with respect takes a bit of courage; it so much easier and much less risky to make what we do the butt of a bit of mean-spirited humor. I understand why Stacy feels obligued include a jab about yellowed futons in her Esquire piece, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.

So thank you to Matteo B Bianchi and everyone else at dISPENSER for sharing what we do, both the silly side and the serious side, with your listeners. And thanks for showing us the same respect we try to show our subjects.

FATE L’AMORE, NON FATE IL PORNO (”Make love, not porn”) webpage

FATE L’AMORE, NON FATE IL PORNO (”Make love, not porn”) podcast

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 8:38 am and is filed under dISPENSER. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.