Porn Stars Peak

The debate between pro- and anti-porn feminists has long been a nasty brawl between women who’d otherwise agree on a wide range of feminist issues. Lawyer and activist Catharine MacKinnon favors gender equality over freedom of expression and supported laws banning porn. Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin linked pornography to violence against women. Then there are pro-porn media and culture critic Laura Kipnis, and, of course, the feminist-that-other-feminists-love-to-hate, public intellectual extraordinaire Camille Paglia. Both Kipnis and Paglia view pornography as a form of art that deserves serious cultural analysis. These critics have dictated the terms of the pornography fight: The genre is seen as either fetishization of sexual abuse or a tool of sexual liberation.

Sometimes forgotten in this heated debate are the pornography performers themselves. “Thinking XXX,” a nuanced HBO documentary, seeks to add their voices to the fray. The film follows photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders as he assembles a portrait collection of 30 porn stars. In one portrait the actors are clothed; in a second, they are naked (a nod to Goya’s paintings The Clothed and Unclothed Maja).

Public intellectuals, from Gore Vidal to John Waters, offer commentary, as do a number of other artists, filmmakers, and authors. The commentators provide colorful explanations of pornography’s role in our culture. Vidal, for example, attributes America’s boob craze to a national infantilization of adults, and controversial performance artist Karen Finley says pornography stems from a longing for the maternal breast.

The porn stars featured in “Thinking XXX” have their own theories. The actresses alternately debase and venerate their profession. While Nina Hartley traces her entry into the business to her reading of Our Bodies, Ourselves and other popular feminist books from the 1970s, Tera Patrick makes the weighty confession that a woman must relinquish her soul in order to work in the pornography industry. Actor Sean Michaels echoes the arguments of many female porn stars—their profession is a form of liberation and empowerment.

Many stars view the industry as accepting and supportive of women. One could easily dismiss the actresses’ claims as extreme denial, but it is far more interesting to probe which aspects of the pornographic process these women find empowering. The viewer is left wondering: Is it exhibitionism? Taboo? Freedom of expression? Fantasy enactment?

It’s also crucial to remember that pornography is about money. “Thinking XXX” touches on how difficult it is to evaluate porn stars’ feelings about their professional choices when they are so inextricably linked to economics. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, a journalist whose work focuses on topics such as prostitution and impoverished youth, reminds us that sexual power is tied to economic survival in the lives of poor, uneducated women. Hartley reinforces this point by saying that, for most of these women, it’s not a choice between porn and Harvard, but between porn and the trailer park. The most intriguing observation in the documentary comes from Faye Wattleton, the first African-American president of Planned Parenthood, when she argues that society feels threatened by pornography because of its inability to control it.

In the end, “Thinking XXX” provides more questions than answers. What exactly is pornography’s place in a society that struggles for both liberty and justice? Most can agree that sexual exploitation is unacceptable, but in this case, there is no consensus on what constitutes exploitation. How do we maintain freedom of expression without resorting to censorship? I’m still not sure, but “Thinking XXX” demonstrates how valuable it is to have the discussion.