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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Critics sneer at XXX films. But careers like Juliet Anderson's offer as much to admire as those of John Wayne or Audrey Hepburn.
Apr 13, 2002 | A recent Newsweek "Newsmakers" column carried an item announcing that porn star Jenna Jameson would be introducing a talking action figure of herself. At the end, the unnamed writer quips, "Doesn't everybody really watch her films for the snappy dialogue?" To which the only answer is "No, they watch her movies to see her fuck."
In the tee-hee mind-set that defines the mainstream press's attitude toward porn, the safest route is to make jokes about the cheesy dialogue or music or "production values," or to flaunt your higher cultural values by looking down your nose at those of us who admit to enjoying the stuff.
Here's Benjamin Schwarz, the books and critics editor of the Atlantic, in the New York Times Book Review: "Reviewing these three books ... is like viewing pornography. The exercise is at first vaguely diverting, but one is soon bored by the slipshod methods of the medium that explores it and exasperated by the insubstantial nature of the whole experience." "Vaguely diverting ... one is soon bored ... insubstantial nature of the whole experience." Has anyone ever done more to affect boredom at the prospect of a hard-on?
Kenneth Tynan once identified the subtext of all arguments that strike the pose of distaste and boredom toward the very idea of porn as "Needless to say, I never masturbate." He went on to say that the reason there's so little good intelligent writing about pornography is that writers are "worrying all the time about what their readers will think of them."
So pornography is turned into a joke, or treated as something for the coarser, lower orders. Or else we get the pretense that porn is a shadow industry unknown to the mainstream. Newsweek feels it necessary to I.D. Jenna Jameson as "Top adult-film star ... known to mainstream audiences for her bubbly appearances on 'Howard Stern' and the E! channel ..." That description is, on the face of it, ludicrous. The top star in an industry that outgrosses many professional sports is known to the mainstream for her work in porn more than for her appearances on E!
Porn stars are often dismissed as if they are trying to be actors and failing (just as porn is dismissed as if it is trying to be real movies and failing). But since when have the personalities we enjoy watching on screen all been actors? There are performers we love for their specific talents (like the Nicholas Brothers) or those that project an outsize or alluring personality (like John Wayne or Audrey Hepburn or Brigitte Bardot -- all of whom, at one time or another, proved themselves actors).
Admitting the things you enjoy watching porn stars for is a sticky business because it's tantamount to owning up to your own personal and quirky sexual tastes. Nobody who admits to being transported by the sight of watching the Nicholas Brothers leapfrog down a flight of stairs, or even watching Sophia Loren perform the sexiest striptease ever in "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" is likely to wonder what other people will think of them. Admitting you like porn is still enough to get you looked at askance or, if you're in a relationship, to get other people wondering about how your poor partner feels. (The idea that there are couples who enjoy porn is still a fairly radical one for some folks.)
Since I've been chastising people for not being honest about porn, let me practice what I preach and give some examples of who -- and what -- I enjoy in porn. I enjoy the nasty look on Jenna Jameson's face when she's giving head; I love the overabundance of everything -- breasts, buns, lips -- on Sandra Scream and the sheer, lip-licking delight she takes in her own naughtiness; I like the way John Leslie, the greatest of all porn studs, takes charge in his scenes, bringing a tough-guy swagger to sex; I like the drugged-on-sex look that comes over Missy in her scenes; I'm delighted by Alicyn Sterling's puffy nipples and Kylie Ireland's lush behind; I love the combination of high-toned glamour and lust that characterized "Golden Age" star Annette Haven, the most beautiful of all porn performers; and I love everything about Juliet Anderson.
That's Aunt Peg to some of you. Juliet Anderson, aka Aunt Peg, has had arguably the most unusual career of any adult-film star. How many others have entered the business at 39? (Yes, you read that right.) And how many are still working in the sex industry at 63? And looking damn good, too. Juliet is the one female performer in porn who has made gleeful hash of the industry's age barrier. She is proof that not every porn star need be a nubile young thing, just as, in conversation, she is proof that porn stars needn't be brainless bunnies.
