BRETT AND MELANIE: BOI MEETS GIRL will go on pre-order this weekend at the special price of price of $17.95. This price will be good until the DVD goes out for replication later this Summer, after which the DVD will be available at the regular price of $27.95
In this passage above, Melanie describes her (sometimes awkward) journey from being a young girl who loved pink party dress to an adult, comfortable with her love of women and her love of over-the-top glamour.
The clip was taken from a point in the editing process the footage from both cameras is shown. The story is now “locked”, and decisions on when to show the close-up, and when to show the two-shot are being finalized. As with our other films, the final cut will not have any split-screen effects.
BRETT AND MELANIE: BOI MEETS GIRL is the seventh film in our Real People, Real Life, Real Sex erotic documentary series. I am particularly excited about this film because (for me at least) this film opens up questions about strength and vulnerability in the context of how we portray and interpret gender. Throughout Brett and Melanie’s interview, there is a constant dance of who is strong for whom, of who is vulnerable and who nurtures; and this dance continues when Brett and Melanie make love.
Peggy and I are deeply grateful to Brett and Melanie for sharing themselves with us in such an intimate way, and it is our privilege to share Brett and Melanie’s story with you.
The Thigh’s the Limit or Ribbed for Your Pleasure?
It’s Half-naked Thursday again over at CameraPlayForCouples.com
In our Real People, Real Life, Real Sex series we’ve explored what happens when you completely ignore the show/don’t show paradox and just treat the sex act and sex organs like it is just another beautiful human experience. In our erotic documentaries we don’t tease, we reveal. Instead of being coy and flirtatious, those movies are candid and frank, and I think that’s what makes them special.
But what is covered or not covered, seen or not seen or half seen is also a very real part of our sexual lives. Flirting is often as much fun as doing, and showing/not showing can be a lot of fun to play with in erotic images. Sheer fabrics are one of my favorites because they flirt with all of those ideas all at once. I think that’s also what I like about stockings and garters – the mix up of what’s covered and what’s exposed…
Once upon a time, writer Amy Wolfe wrote a very nice article about my work called “The Romance of Fucking”. Fucking is not the only thing that can be romantic:
The Romance of Cocksucking
For a brief moment I saw myself sucking the Statue of Liberty, I know she has no cock but dear God I broke out laughing, he laughed too but tried to silence me by pushing his cock further down my throat, but my mirth wouldn’t be contained.
“Comparing what goes on on a porn set to what goes on on a movie set is like comparing what goes on on a porn set to what goes on in people’s bedrooms. In either case, whatever similarities there might be, they are outweighed 100:1 by the differences.”
I have a new post up over at TheIntentToArouse.com:
I’m a big believer in form and process, especially as a fall-back when inspiration fails.
The abstract for The Intent to Arouse was written in a very much inspired state, 24 hours in which everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve blogged about, everything I’ve experience making my movies seemed to magically distill itself into a few 100 characters. My fingers seemed to have a life of their own.
I can count on one hand the number of times that’s happened to me in the 20+ years I’ve been making my way as an artist. The rest of it has been, as Woody Allen says, just showing up. (Although in his case he claims 10% is something more than just showing up. The difference between his experience and mine is probably a measure of the difference of our respective talents.)
In any case, I’m going to use my abstract as road map to fleshing out my ideas. I’ll tackle each section, mostly in order, assembling ideas (my own and others) along with visual resources…
I was born in New York City, but it’s not where I grew up.
When I was two years old my family moved to Southern California. When I remember my childhood I remember sunshine and sand and gorgeous young mothers in bikinis made of fabric that was blue and yellow and brown.
In 1978, when I was 12 years old, I made my first trip back to NYC to visit with my uncle (over the next 15 years there would be four more of increasing length before I settle out here permanently.)
The New York of today is nothing like the New York of 1978, and the New York of 1978 was nothing like the San Diego at the end of the 70s. In 1978 New York was dirty and dangerous.
What do I remember most? The smell; pretzels, piss, sweat and sex. Yes, in 1978 New York actually smelled like sex. At the time I didn’t have a name for the smell, but I recognized it, was excited by it, was intoxicated by it. My uncle lived at Seventh Ave. and 12th St. and we ended many of our long days touring the city with hamburgers at David’s Pot Belly on Christopher St., in the gayest heart of Greenwich Village. On Christopher St. the smell of sex hung in the air almost like the perfume of lilacs on a Spring day, save that the oder sex wasn’t light and floral, it was heavy and portentous.
30 years later New York is changed. The smell of piss is occasional, rather than pervasive. The smell of sex is gone. I don’t find myself in the neighborhoods where the pretzel wagons ply their trade that often. The city is safe.
And it’s a little boring.
I almost feel ashamed to say this, but I feel nostalgia for the bad old days. Peggy feels it too, and she wasn’t in New York in the 70s as a tourist. As a child she lived with the smell and the danger every day of her life. We watch films like TAX DRIVER or SUMMER OF SAM or GAY SEX IN THE 70s and we feel wistful – ”It used to take grit to live in this town, now all it takes is a bank roll.”
But don’t be fooled by our nostalgia. Time has a way of white washing the muggings and the dog shit and the four locks on your apartment door and two more on the building itself. Time has a way of white washing the daily diet of petty indignities and the personal violations that used to be part and parcel of being a New Yorker.
New York in the Seventies was a shithole, and I miss it.
The only version of this scene from TAXI DRIVER I could find is dubbed in Spanish, but you get the idea.
One conversation I think is long overdue is a sex-positive examination of the attitudes towards STIs in the “adult industry.” A few years back, when Vivid backtracked on their condom-only policy, I remember Chi Chi La Rue stopped working for the company. He said he couldn’t reconcile his concerns and public record advocating condoms and safer sex with Vivid’s new policy. But other than La Rue, I don’t remember anyone taking much notice.
It’s frustrating to me that it always seems to take an acute problem, whether it’s a subprime mortgage meltdown or HIV outbreak to get conversations started that are long overdue. I suppose this is part and parcel of the fact that our brains don’t have an intuitive feel for large numbers, and are not well equipped to understand risk. It’s very hard to feel the difference between one in a thousand, one in 10,000 or one in 100,000. I’ve often wondered, half facetiously, if this isn’t a survival adaptation; if our minds were truly able to apprehend just how badly the cards were stacked against us, our species would have gone extinct as a result of despair long long ago. But instead, our race is blessed with a profound capacity for denial, and hope springs eternal.
“Personally, I’ve always thought the term “safe sex” was something of an oxymoron. Whatever measures are taken, physical intimacy is never completely free of risks of various kinds. It is from that understanding that the current harm-reduction approach, which has saved countless lives over the past decade by acting as an alarm system rather than a policing operation, evolved as it has.”
“I predicted it would happen again… You’re like Superman. Especially with the amount of work that I had? It was nonstop, I’m thinking, I’m invincible. . . . That’s just the way our mentality was. It was, you get the test, you’re clean, not realizing that in between the tests, and after the tests, you know, other people, you don’t know what they’re doing… That’s why I want to come out and do a little more [talking about the issue] if I can. And if it’s just to help . . . just to get them to listen. Not to boast up porn, not at all, just to make people be aware that I got caught up, man. I thought I was invincible, and I got shot down so fast. . . . There’s some really good people, and they want to change.”
Because the nature of the beast will always find plenty of performers willing to take a risk with an unprotected scene,the straight porn industry will only adopt condom regulations when it’s ordered to. It will never choose to regulate safer sex on it’s own. They don’t have to, they will always be able to find someone who needs the work.
I’ve had the opportunity to work for small indie companies and larger-run businesses. Companies treat the issue of safer sex differently and to the best of their abilities. For example, models at Kink.com are required to be AIM tested at least 30 days prior to their shoot. The test is: Aim Panel (includes HIV-1 DNA by PCR & Chlamydia and Gonorrhea by PCR) and costs the company $120 each. They schedule testing with every model who participates in shoots for the company. Because a lot can happen in 30 days, Belladonna and other safety-conscious folks in the industry require 2 days.
Keep in mind that Southern California porn is a different world than NorCal porn. But because of AIM, testing is stringent and hardcore; enforcement is the issue. And that in 2004, remember that AIM Healthcare contained the outbreak, fast.
Commercial porn, true to its nature, has become a clusterfuck the last few days. People both inside and outside the industry are scrambling to make their opinions known a reported case of HIV in an adult performer. It seems very important to everyone in the room that they be heard on this issue now.
Meanwhile, there’s been a perfect storm of misinformation, misunderstanding, and defensiveness. Hubris, hysteria and bullshit: All three are certified virulent.
Both male and female porn performers are disempowered to demand condom usage because most companies actively discourage condoms (even though the option to use condoms is often written into their model release or contract). The reality is that unless the performer is a major star and has leverage or produces his or her own films, performing without condoms is a sure way to get booked frequently and work a lot. Condom mandatory performers work less and get paid less.
Porn performers have sex with people other than their scene partners, be they lovers, tricks or random guys in bars. One of the unfortunate facts of this business is that having sex with the right people gets women work. Directors, producers, agents, you name it – they’re screwing talent. And most of them are not getting tested. Not to mention that a lot of stars escort on the side, possibly without condoms. This is a huge X factor in the STI equation.
Since I started testing people that I have sex with 3 days prior to our engagement, it has been over 5 years since I’ve contracted Chlamydia or Gonorrhea. I knowingly caught over a handful of performers with STDs by using this rule. As a female in this industry, I can say it feels DAMN good to not have to spend every week at the doctor’s office clearing up an STD and being out of work. I feel like I’m more excited about having sex and performing, knowing that I’m going to be STD free…
Performers in this business need to be safer when having sexual relations OUTSIDE of the industry. They need to be more responsible with safe sex because they DO know more than the average person when it comes to STDs and safe sex. If this were happening, the spread of STDs inside the business would be a fraction of what it is now.
In a nutshell, performers as a rule don’t care for condoms for several reasons. For most of the men (with few exceptions), condoms make for a very-much-more difficult scene; just one more huge distraction to add to the host of other ones on the set: uncomfortable set, no chemistry with the female player, asshole director, late/early hours, too hot/cold, bad food, personal issues, etc.
For the women, there are just four words: rubber rash/friction burn. Not only do I have to work harder for him to feel anything, the scene takes much longer to get through, with the changing out of condoms, needing to give the guy a break and suck him again, and the total passion-killer that is on-set condom use. It’s hard enough to create a real connection, so the scene doesn’t feel to the viewer like we faxed it in, on a set as it is. If all of our energy is focused on our working parts, there is none left over to actually connect and show a spark, which is what the people at home want to see.
[E]ach test costs 120 bucks per performer each time. I work every day, you want me to get 10 tests a month? that 1200 bucks a month. Or are you suggesting producers pay for their talent’s new test every 3 days? Both are impractical unless you shoot 1-2 titles a month (like Belladonna).
AIM needs oversight, first and foremost and that oversight should come from a board of directors that consists of mostly health care professionals, real ones, not associated with anyone in porn.
Second Sharon Mitchell must step down, her credibility is lower than that of George W Bush, The whole Doctor thing bit her in the ass, it’s time to fix it.
Third we must start testing not only for HIV but also Hep A and B Hepatitis kills way more people every year than AIDS does. We also must do a full panel, it doesnt matter if 75% of porners have herpes the 25% who don’t have a right to know if the person they are working with does.
Fourth we should be doing both a viral load test for HIV and an antibody test, one without the other is not sufficient. You may say fine South but where will the money come from? I tell you what we can do it a lot cheaper now than it will cost should the county/state get involved…find the money you can pay now or you can pay a lot more later.
Finally we need to implement a system of full disclosure, if someone has been exposed or tests positive everyone must know. The people who were quarantined from the Darren James situation didn’t suffer ant long term bad results. porn people are fine working with you if you test clean for the required length afterward.
Likewise if you do gay porn or have done gay porn (and yes tranny is gay) that should be disclosed as well, it puts you in a higher risk group and your potential partners have the right to know that. If that bothers you don’t sign up to be talent. When you perform in this business you have no private sex life, other peoples lives depend on making informed decisions and if you are hiding things they cant make informed decisions. If you don’t like that tough shit, stay out of the biz.
My predictions:
1. This will blow over.
2. There will neither be mandatory condom use nor state regulation of the porn industry in any form.
3. Companies will feel compelled to require more frequent tests. This is expensive, and they can argue that performers not on a contract will have to foot the bill as they’ve always done.
4. The major companies will agree on an increased testing schedule and then, one by one, the schedule will return to what it once was
5. AIM will close loopholes in reporting test results, such as verbal or provisional confirmation, if loopholes exist. If there is a phone call greenlight process, that is probably going to go away, too.
—–
I hope Gram’s predictions are wrong, but I fear he isn’t. Five years ago there was an outbreak that resulted in the on-set infection of three performers. AIM and its supporters announced this was proof that their system worked, and nothing changed. In fact, things have arguably gotten worse with respect to performer health, Vivid’s backtracking on its condom-only in 2006 policy being only one example.
Also, I understand that it’s the letters H I V that get everyone’s attention, but I wish there was a little more attention paid the other health implications of a business built on such high volumes of unprotected sex. In Belladona’s post she talks about spending “every week at the doctor’s office clearing up an STD” before adopting her own 3-days prior testing policy. I hope “every week” is an exaggeration, but if HIV were out of the picture altogether, Belladona’s experience with STDs and the policies she’s adopted seems like more than enough reason to re-examine our attitudes about how pornography is manufactured.
I do not support state-mandated condom use, because 1) I do not believe the state has the means or will to enforce it; and 2) because I believe it will only push an already highly marginalized population further underground…
There will always be people willing to put their sexual desires above their ability to see the people providing for their sexual desire as human beings – as brothers, sisters, sons, daughters; and there will always be people willing to trade their scruples or their safety to provide for this market.
This may strike some as a harsh judgment, and perhaps it is. But I also think it’s realistic. If change is to come, it will come as individual producers, performers, and viewers decide that what’s in place isn’t sufficient, and they don’t want to support it – with their bodies, with their cameras, with their dollars.
To that end I have a small suggestion.
I’d like to see an independent, peer-reviewed epidemiological analysis of AIM STD figures with a side-by-side comparisons to the relevant cohorts in the general population. AIMs ongoing assertion is that STD rates in their performer pool are lower than in the sexually active population at large, but I don’t think the numbers I’ve seen presented by AIM bear this out.
But the fact is no-one at AIM has the expertise to make a definitive analysis, and I certainly don’t; and it’s not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that perhaps I have an agenda, and perhaps AIM does too. We may have our (bias-informed) opinions about whether it’s riskier to be a 21 year old college student or a 21 year old adult performer, but an independent analysis of the HIV and other STD infection rates from AIM’s 10+ years of testing, with a comparison to sexually active, non-high risk group young adults would put the facts on the table, giving performers the information they need to make informed choices about their health and welfare, and viewers the information they need to understand the human costs involved in manufacturing pornography.
I would hope that there would be broad agreement that such an analysis would be in the best interest of all parties concerned.
Absent such an analysis, it seems to me it would be best to err on the side of caution, which is course, a judgment call. I’d like to return to Susan Quillam’s blog on February 24,
Sorry to revisit a topic I was going on about only a few weeks ago… but if there is one thing that I really “got” when I was rewriting Joy of Sex, it is that while sex may be the same as it was in 1972, the joy certainly isn’t. Given the drip feed of horror stories in the press and the continuous warnings about the dangers of sex from all sides, we’ve somehow lost our optimism, our innocence - somehow, we’ve flushed the joy baby out with the bathwater.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not advocating condom-free orgies or emotion-free lust-fests. I’m as aware - and as vociferous - as anyone about just what we all need to do is order to make sex safe, sane, concensual and super-enjoyable. But I do feel that we’ve forgotten that sex is a Good Thing.
My own thinking about sex, both in my personal life, and as a filmmaker is tremendously influenced by my experiences as a surfer, rock climber, skier, and various other pleasures that reward responsible risk taking. Some of the most interesting literature in the mountaineering world is devoted to forensic examination of tragedies, which necessarily invite the reader/climber to reflect on their own values and form judgments.
“Judgment” is fairly nearly a dirty word in the sex-positive community, but it need not be. Good judgment is at least as fruitful a route to joy as anything else.
This last week or so has certainly drained the joy out of my life. In the last ten years I’ve tried to do everything in my power to advocate for a safer, saner approach to depicting sex, adopting the age-old maxim “lead by example.” Aside from promoting our own films as a model of how a financially successful enterprise can be built without resorting to “meat grinder” business tactics, I’ve never shied away from speaking my mind about the regard for performer safety, from making judgments in a judgment-phobic community, knowing full well that doing so may cost me friends, allies, and my livelihood. Once or twice I’ve heard the accusation that my standards are too high; unreasonable and unworkable for others
Of course that too is a judgement call, and hearing it brings me no joy.
Judgments, mine and those of others, are informed by factual knowledge, experience, and values. When assessing risk I tend to be less concerned with frequency, and more concerned with severity. This is why, for example, I buckle up when I drive, even though it has been seven years since in was in an accident, and more than 20 years since the one before.
This is also why I would never play Russian Roulette, regardless of how high the pay off. Unlike financial risks, physical risks do not amortize. You can never be half-pregnant, half HIV+, or half-dead.
Similarly, when considering the balance of risk and reward, I look towards who is being asked to bear the risks, and who is in a position to reap the rewards. In my mind there is a world of difference between the risks that I am willing to take for my own amusement and the risks I will ask others to take for my financial benefit.
But I readily acknowledge that my judgments are my own, and that people generally have the right to perform in films or make films under whatever conditions they wish, in accordance with their accessment of risk and reward, and using their own faculties as informed by their knowledge, experience, and values. Freedom must include the freedom to do things of which others may not approve, up to and including being reckless with one’s own life. The desire to regulate, to make a world in which we are safe from all harm must be balanced against the benefits of liberty, an abstraction sometimes difficult to set against the reality of broken bodies.
But acknowledging this freedom is not the same thing as condoning reckless behavior, or countenancing those who profit from ignoring or encouraging reckless behavior in others.
It is also naive to ignore that fact that there are disparities in power, that the freedom to be reckless is not of particular benefit to the person exercising it, and that sometimes the freedom to walk away is precious little freedom at all.
I wish no one any harm. In a world that can be so brutally indifferent to our frailty, I hope that each person has the chance to carve out some small measure of security, some measure of meaning, some measure of joy. The sun also rises, but it sets as well. Find happiness where you can.
Sharon Mitchell poses in a labcoat embroidered with “Dr. Sharon Mitchell”
Perhaps some readers think I am being unduly harsh with respect to Sharon Mitchell. Perhaps some readers wonder if my reservations about Ms. Mitchell are born out of some personal animosity. They are not.
I have never met Sharon Mitchell. I’ve never spoken to her. My first awareness of her came during the 1998 Marc Wallice outbreak, and at the time my focus was on Wallice’s duplicity. It had simply never occurred to me that, given what was at stake, a person would forge their health documents.
Once that possibility moved from the realm of the unimaginable to the factual, and I realized how vulnerable any system of testing was to human error or malfeasance, I knew that I would never put myself in the position of depending on a testing regime to make my films.
First-generation performers must wait 30 days, the amount of time it could take for HIV to appear in measurable quantities, before taking another PCR-DNA and RNA HIV test. If those tests come back negative, the first-generation performers will be declared “clear,” and they will no longer be quarantined.
The PCR-DNA test is believed to have 95% reliability after 28 days. With eight performers on in “first generation contact” with Darren James, all of whom have to be presumed to be HIV+ until proven otherwise, that’s eight chances for someone to slip through the 1:20 odds.
This is an iteration of a classic climbing problem. If you have two bolts with a 50/50 chance of holding against a fall, and you set up your protection so that if either one of them fails your system fails, you have increased your odds of catastrophic failure from 1:2 to 3:4. (1-(.5 x .5 =. 75)). (Conversely, if you set them up so that both have to fail for your system to fail, the system as a 75% protection rate.)
In the case of the eight first generation contacts, all of whom must be presumed to be HIV+ until proven otherwise, the chance of one infection passing through 95% screen is 1 - (.95 to the eighth power) or about 1:3
Even working with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that there were in fact three HIV+ performers in the “first generation”, the chance that at least one of these three infected performers might have passed through a 30 day testing cycle on a false negative is startlingly high: 1 - (.95 x .95 x .95) or about 1:7
The math quickly became irrelevant. Within a day it became clear that AIM couldn’t track the huge number of contacts involved and that a 60 day moratorium on production to ensure their were no second-generation infections would not be observed. On April 14, AVN, published the following:
While the first-generation has been identified and quarantined, and AIM is rapidly creating a quarantine list for the second-generation, there is no doubt that there is already a third- and even fourth-generation in the outbreak.
The third- and fourth-generation is not being quarantined; AIM simply can’t track down that many people fast enough.
Thus we recommend that all adult companies cease production, or at the minimum shoot condom-only productions, until all women who have worked with Darren James since his last negative test, known as the “first-generation” have cleared. That will be on June 8, 2004.
It was during this time, and in light of the bizarre and inconsistent response by AIM to the HIV crisis, and after repeatedly seeing Mitchell referred to in the press as “doctor” that I became curious about what sort of doctor she was. It didn’t take long to find out where her degree was from, or what the credentials of that organization were.
Well fine, whatever. It’s a cock-up and people are just doing the best they can, and maybe AIM is better than the alternative, and let’s not be too hasty with our judgment.
Then only two months later Sharon Mitchell gave paid testimony as an expert witness for the defense in a rape trial; a trial in which several teenaged boys were accused of violating a teenaged girl with among other things a pool cue, a lit cigarette and a snapple bottle, while she was drunk, drugged, and in a dubious state of consciousness.
Tall, thin and wearing a black pantsuit, Mitchell outlined her expertise. She’d acted in, directed or produced more than 1,000 adult films during the past quarter century. She had watched the 21-minute Haidl gangbang film several times, she told Justice Brisea, and concluded that “all in all, it was a very amateur effort to make a porn film.”
Brisea began sinking lower in his chair as Mitchell told him that porn actresses often fake intoxication or unconsciousness to satisfy consumer tastes. “There’s a fantasy and fetish for everything,” she said, noting that some people want to see porn involving actors “pretending to be dead.”
But most important for the defense, Mitchell concluded her 13-minute appearance by claiming that Doe was “clearly conscious.” Her evidence? Doe had assumed a “reverse cowgirl position” during the filmed sex and, at another point, “was positioned to receive objects.” She congratulated the defendants, who kindly “lubed” the foreign objects before using them–indicative, she said, of porn-industry professionalism.
Let’s, for a moment put aside the question of guilt or innocence . (The judge did not admit Mitchell’s testimony, the first jury could not return a verdict and the boys were found guilty in a second trial.) Let’s also leave aside the O.C. Weekly’s tone, which drips with scorn for Sharon Mitchell.
The simple fact is that Sharon Mitchell was under no legal obligation to involve herself in this case. She was not under subpoena by the court; she was hired by the defense, and she could have said “no”.
But she didn’t.
Instead, just weeks after being embroiled in the biggest crisis she had ever faced in her professional life, she chose to go into a court room and given testimony on behalf of several young men who had videotaped themselves shoving a pool cue into a woman’s rectum while she was (at best) half-conscious.
This is not well intentioned bumbling. This is a calamitous error in judgment that in my mind calls into question her fitness to be in a position of making decisions that affect people’s lives.
Addendum, June 24, 09
It has been suggested (in the comments on this post and elsewhere) that my criticisms of Sharon Mitchell do not in any way contravene AIM’s efficacy over the last 10+ years, but I am dubious about these claims. My own number crunching, based on data provided to me by AIM board member Ernest Greene after the 2004 outbreak leads me to be high skeptical of AIM’s assertion that STD transmission, including HIV transmission, is lower in the AIM cohort than in sexual active heterosexuals at large.
But the fact is, my mathematics background (a Bachelor of Science that with an emphasis on math and physics that underlays my BFA) is an insufficient tool for making such an analysis, and Ms. Mitchell’s degree from AISHS is no better, and there is no one else at AIM with any epidemiological expertise.
I have suggested that an independent, peer reviewed analysis of the HIV and other STD infection rates from AIM’s 10+ years of testing, with a comparison to sexually active, non-high risk group young adults would put the facts on the table, giving performers the information they need to make informed choices about their health and welfare, and viewers the information they need to understand the human costs involved in manufacturing pornography.
Such an analysis would end speculation and guess-work as to how STD infection rates related to the manufacture of pornography compared to infection rates among various sexually active “civilian” populations, and I’m sure the end of such speculation would be welcomed by all concerned.
Last week I announced that this September I’ll be giving a lecture at NYU, The Intent to Arouse: A Concise History of Sex, Shame, and the Moving Image. My hope is that this September date will be the first of many through out the next year. Here’s the blurb:
The world is awash in sexualized imagery, but that imagery rarely speaks to or captures the pleasurable reality of sex. Award-winning filmmaker Tony Comstock takes us into the legal and business realities that shape and often warp the sexual imagery we see. Drawing on examples from Hollywood’s history of self-censorship, landmark obscenity cases, and the collision of technology and image-making, Comstock offers an expanded framework for understanding of how what we do and do not see in cinema affects our understanding of our own sexuality
Today I’d like to invite you to click over to TheIntentToArouse.com. I’ll be using it as a proving ground and organizational tool, and I hope it will develop into an expanded version of lecture, a place where things that will only receive curasary mention in a 90 minute format can be delved into more deeply; and where resources and citations will be readily available.
I’d also ask any of you who work in an academic or educational setting – in film studies program or sexual health department – who think there might be a place for this lecture on your campus to please get in touch with me. Just like making films, the researching and writing a lecture is just the beginning. The real work is bring your work to an audience. Any help on that score would be much appreciated!
