King Kong Theory

by Virginie Despentes;Stephanie Benson

  This remark is helpful in understanding the intensity of many people's fanatical, not to mention panicked, rejection of porn. Wild-eyed militants clamor for censorship and banning as if their lives depended on it. Their attitude is objectively surprising: is doggy- style in close-up really threatening national security? Antiporn websites are both more numerous and shriller in tone than those protesting against the war in Iraq, for example. An astonishing response to something that is really no more than a cinema genre.

  Pornography hits the blind corner of reason. It directly addresses our primitive fantasies, bypassing words and thought. The hard-on or wetness comes first, wondering why follows on behind. Self- censorship reactions are shaken. Porn images don't give us any choice: here's what turns you on, here's what makes you respond. Porn shows us the buttons to press to turn ourselves on. And that is porn's greatest strength, its almost mystical dimension. And also what literally horrifies the antiporn crusaders. They reject being told directly about their own desire, reject being made to know things about themselves that they have chosen to suppress and ignore.

  Porn poses a real problem: it lets the steam off desire, offering it release too quickly for sublimation to take place. As such, it's useful: the tension in our culture between excessive sexual stimulation (in cities, images relating to sex literally invade our brains) and over-rejection of sexual reality (we don't live in a huge, constant orgy, and the activities that are permitted and possible are in fact relatively limited). Porn comes in here to help us let off psychological steam, and balance the pressure. But what is arousing is often socially embarrassing. Rare are those who want to publicly own up to what gets them going in private. We don't always want to discuss it even with our sexual partners. What makes me wet is a private matter because the image it gives of me is incompatible with my everyday social identity.

  Our sexual fantasies say a lot about us, in the same indirect way as dreams. They don't reveal anything about what we want to happen in real life.

  It's obvious that many heterosexual men are turned on by the idea of being fucked by other men, or humiliated or buggered by a woman, in the same way that it's obvious that lots of women cream at the thought of being assaulted, gang banged, or fucked by other girls. We can also be upset by porn because it reveals that we're in fact a bit frigid, whereas we think of ourselves as insatiable nymphos. Whatever arouses us, or fails to, comes from dark, uncontrollable places in ourselves, and rarely fits who we would consciously like to be. Which is both the appeal of genre cinema, if you enjoy letting go into the unknown, and the threat of it too, if you're afraid of losing control.

  Porn is too often expected to mirror the Real. As if it weren't cinema. For example, actresses are criticized for faking orgasms. That's what they are here for, and paid for, and have learned how to do. We don't expect Brit ney Spears to feel like dancing every time she performs. That's what she is on stage for and we have paid to watch her, so each of us is doing our job, without anyone grumbling, "I reckon she was faking it" on the way out. Porn is somehow supposed to be real-something we never expect of film, by its very nature a technique of illusion.

  We expect porn to show us exactly what we dread about it: the truth of our desire. I personally have no idea why I find it so exciting to watch other people fucking and talking dirty. The fact is that it works. It's automatic. Porn crudely reveals this other aspect of human nature: sexual desire is mechanical, and hardly complex to set in motion. And yet, my libido is complex-what it says about me isn't necessarily what I want to hear, and doesn't always fit with who I would like to be. But I can choose to know this, rather than to turn away and say the opposite of what I know to be true about myself in order to maintain a respectable social image.

  Pornography's detractors complain about the poor quality of X-rated films and claim that all porn is the same thing. They like to imply that the genre is not creative. This is false. The genre is divided into distinct subgenres: 35 mm films from the i97os are different from the amateur films made possible by video, which differ again from shorts shot on mobile phones or webcam, not to mention the various live internet performances. High class porn, alt-porn, post-porn, gang bang, gonzo, S&M, fetish, bondage, scat, films with a distinct focus-older women, big-breasted women, women with pretty feet, sensational asses, tranny flicks, gay flicks, lesbian flicks: each type of porn has its own terms of reference, its own history, and its own aesthetics. In the same way, X-rated German films have different obsessions from Japanese, Italian, or American porn-each part of the world has its pornographic specificities.

  It is actually censorship that has shaped, created, and defined the history of Xrated films. Whatever is forbidden to be shown will soonturnup in the porn cinemas, which makes for an interesting exercise in transgression. With the more or less absurd consequences one might expect: in France, the cable TV networks define what can and cannot be shown. Violent or submissive scenes are banned, for example. Making porn that doesn't feature duress is a little like ice-skating without blades under your boots. Good luck ... The use of objects is also prohibited: no dildos or harnesses. No real dyke porn, or scenes of men being fucked. All this ostensibly to protect female dignity.

  It's hard to see why female dignity should be particularly threatened by the use of a harness. Surely we can assume that women are smart enough to understand that watching a bit of S&M doesn't mean they want to be whipped when they get to work, or gagged while doing the laundry. In any case, you only have to turn on the TV to see women in humiliating positions. The prohibitions are what they are, justified politically (S&M must remain an elite sport-the masses wouldn't be able to understand its complexity, and would hurt themselves). So "women's dignity" is trundled out every time the state wants to limit sexual expression ...

  The conditions in which the actresses work, the degrading contracts they sign, their inability to either control images of themselves once they've left the profession, or earn money from their use-the censors aren't interested in any of these aspects of female dignity. The authorities aren't bothered that there isn't a single specialist center where actresses can go to access the various pieces of extremely specific information pertinent to their work. One kind of dignity obsesses them, but they don't give a damn about the other. Yet porn is made with human flesh, with the flesh of actresses. And in the end, the only moral issue it poses is the political aggressiveness with which these women are treated-offstage.

  We're talking here about women who decide to enter the profession when they are eighteen to twenty years old. That very specific age when the phrase "longterm consequences" has no more significance than ancient Greek. Middle-aged men have no shame about being turned on by girls only just out of childhood; they see nothing wrong with spanking the monkey while looking at barely pubescent asses. That's their problem, they are the adults, and they should take responsibility for it-for example by being particularly attentive and kind to the very young girls who agree to satisfy their appetites. In fact, not at all, they are furious that these girls should have dared perform exactly what they want to see. Masculine grace and coherence in a nutshell, "Give me what I want, I beg you, so that I can spit in your face for doing it."

  These days the budding porn actress is made aware of this as soon as she enters the profession: she is told repeatedly, so she isn't under any illusion, that there will be no way back. Oh, we do like our women vulnerable, endangered, and branded. They pay a high price for having left the straight and narrow and for having done it publicly.

  I experienced this first-hand when I co-directed Baise-Moi with Coralie Trinh Thi. That her amazing body left men in shock, that they remembered it with emotion, was not a problem. What was disturbing was how ferociously they then refused to believe that she could be capable of anything else. Her role as co-director could only be put down to caprice on my part. Whatever the argument put forward, she had to be dismissed as illegitimate within thirty seconds. She could not be a wicked, lustful creature, and then demon
strate creativity and intelligence. Men did not want to see the object of their fantasies step out of the frame into which they had put her. Women felt threatened by her mere presence, concerned about the effect her status was having on the men. But they all agreed on one important thing-she must be prevented from speaking, interrupted. Her words must be silenced, to the extent that, in interviews, her answers were often attributed to me. And I'm not talking about a few isolated cases-this was almost a blanket response. She had to be kept out of the public space-to protect male libido, which requires that the object of desire remains in its place, which is to say virtual, and most of all mute.

  In the same way that it is a political necessity to frame the visual representation of sex within welldefined ghettos-clearly separated from the rest of the film industry, so that porn remains the lumpen proletariat of the film world-it is crucial that porn actresses remain framed in disapproval, shame, and stigma. It is not that they are incapable of doing anything else, nor that they don't want to, but that things have to be organized to make sure that they cannot.

  Girls involved with paid sex, who gain concrete benefit out of their position as females while remaining independent, must be publicly punished. They have transgressed, have played neither the role of the good mother nor that of the good wife, still less that of the respectable woman-shooting a porn film must be one of the most radical ways of liberating oneself from these roles-and so they must be socially marginalized.

  It is a class struggle. A message from our leaders to women who have wanted to ensure their social mobility through sheer determination. A political message, from one class to another. The only opportunity for social advancement for women is through marriage. The equivalent of porn for men is boxing. They have to display aggression, and risk destroying their bodies, for the entertainment of the rich. But boxers, even black boxers, are men. They have the right to that tiny slice of social mobility. Not women.

  When French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing banned porn from mainstream cinemas in the i97os, he was not responding to a public outcry-people hadn't taken to the streets yelling, "We've had enough"-nor to an increase in sexual offenses. He did it because the films were too successful: the population was flocking to see them, and discovering the notion of pleasure. The president was protecting the French people from their desire to see good sex films at the cinema. From then on, porn was subject to murderous economic censorship. It was no longer possible to make ambitious films, to film sex as we try to film war, romantic love, or gangsters. The ghetto started to take shape, without the slightest political justification. What was protected was the moral notion that only the ruling classes should have access to playful sexuality. The masses, on the other hand, must be kept calm-too much lust would doubtless affect their work ethic.

  It is not pornography that bothers the elite, but its democratization. When, in 2ooo, the Nouvel Observateur responded to the banning of Baise-Moi with the cover story, "Pornography: the right to say no," this did not refer to prohibiting scholarly access to the writings of the Marquis de Sade, nor closing the magazine's classified ads columns to well-heeled and randy readers. And no one would be surprised to see these virulent antiporn militants inthe companyof ayounghooker, or at a swingers' club. No. It was easy access to what must remain the domain of the privileged which the Nouvel Observateur was insisting upon the right to say no to. Pornography is performed sexuality, sex made ceremonial. And in a continuing conceptual sleight of hand that remains unclear, what is fine for some-here labeled libertinage-there becomes a grave danger for the masses, from which they must be protected.

  One is easily lost in the meanderings of the antiporn argument: just a second, who is in fact the victim? The actresses, who surrender their dignity the moment we see them giving a blow job? Or the male viewers, weak and unable to overcome their wish to watch sex, or to understand that what they are watching is merely a performance?

  The notion that pornography hinges solely on the phallus is astonishing. It's the female bodies you see. Often idealized female bodies. And what is more unsettling than a porn actress? We're no longer in the domain of the "bunny girl," the available, unthreatening girl next door. The porn actress is the liberated woman, the femme fatale, the one who turns heads, who always pro yokes a strong reaction, be it desire or rejection. So why are we so quick to pity these women, who are the epitome of the sex bomb?

  Tabatha Cash, Coralie Trinh Thi, Karen Lancaume, Raffaela Anderson, Nina Roberts: what struck me during the time I spent with them was not that men treated them like dirt, or controlled the situation. On the contrary, I had never seen men so intimidated. If, as people are always claiming, there is no higher aspiration for a woman than to appeal to men, why must we insist on pitying porn actresses? Why does society insist on casting them as victims, when they are probably the most seductive women on the planet? What taboos have been broken to justify such a feverish endeavour?

  Having watched hundreds of porn films, it seems to me that the answer is simple: in these films, the actress has male-type sexuality. To put it bluntly: she behaves exactly like a gay man in a back room. She is shown in the film as always wanting sex, with anyone, in every hole. And she comes every time. As a man in a woman's body would.

  In heterosexual porn, it's always the female body that is in the limelight, displayed, and counted upon to produce the desired effect. The same level of performance is not expected of the onscreen male-he just has to get a hard-on, do a bit of thrusting and shoot his load. The work is done by the woman. The Xrated film viewer identifies more with her than with the male protagonist. As in any film you identify with the main character. Porn is also the method men use to imagine what they would do if they were women, how they would apply themselves to satisfying other men, what good sluts they'd be, what prick-devourers. It is often said that reality frustratingly doesn't live up to pornographic performance; the reality where men have to fuck women who aren't like them, or not often anyway. It is interesting to note that the "real" women who really exaggerate the feminine thing, those who repeat a dozen times in the space of one conversation how "womanly" they feel, and whose sexuality is most compatible with that of men, are often in fact the most masculine. The frustration of real life can be summarized as the necessary rejection by men (if they want to be heterosexual) of the notion of fucking men with the physical attributes of women.

  Pornography, often denounced as making people uneasy about sex, is in fact a tranquilizer. Which explains why it is attacked with such ferocity. It's crucial that sexuality should frighten people. In porn films you knowthat characters will "do it," you don't have to worry about the outcome, as you do in real life. Fucking a stranger is always a bit nerve-racking, unless you're completely drunk. That's even the fun part of the whole thing. With porn, you can count on the men being hard and the women climaxing. You can't live in this performance society, crammed as it is with images of seduction, flirtation, and sex, without realizing that porn is a zone of safety. You're not involved in the action, at ease, you can sit watching others doing it, knowing how to. Here, the women are happy with the service rendered, the men get good hardons and produce jism in abundance, everyone speaks the same language-for once everything works out fine.

  Why is porn a male prerogative? Why, when the actual porn industry has only been around for forty years or so, are they the ones who've made money out of it? The answer is the same as in every field: money and power are not valued for women. We are only supposed to acquire them via a man: be chosen as consort, and you can share in your partner's gains.

  Men alone conceive of porn, direct it, watch it, and profit from it. And female desire is subject to the same distortion: it must only occur via the male gaze. We have only recently begun to get familiar with the notion of female pleasure. Perfectly unthinkable and steeped in taboo until recently, the female orgasm only became part of everyday language in the i97os. But it was immediately turned against women, in two ways. Firstly, by making us feel like
failures if we don't climax. Frigidity has almost become a sign of impotence. The lack of female orgasm is however not comparable to masculine impotence: a frigid woman isn't sterile. Nor a woman cut off from her own sensuality. But instead of being a possibility, the female orgasm has been turned into a requirement. We must always feel inept in some way ... Secondly, by men immediately taking over this female orgasm: they have to be the ones that make the woman come. Female masturbation continues to be contemptible and secondary. The orgasm we are supposed to reach is the one given by the man. The man needs to have "knowhow." Just as in Sleeping Beauty, it is his job to bend over the beautiful woman and send her into ecstasy.

  Heterosexual women take this message on board, and as usual do their utmost not to offend the vulnerable male. Which explains how, even today, you still hear young girls saying that they're waiting for a man to make them come. Now everyone is in trouble-the boys wondering how to go about it, and the girls frustrated that the boys aren't more expert than they are with their own bodies and fantasies.

  Try talking to people about female masturbation, and check out their responses, "It's not very interesting on my own," "I only do it when I haven't had a man for ages," "I'd rather have someone look after me," "I don't do it, I don't like it." I don't know what they all do with their spare time but in any case, if they don't masturbate, I can see why they don't feel concerned with pornography: skin flicks are made for jerking off. I know that what girls do with their own clitorises in private isn't exactly my business, but this indifference to masturbation does bother me: if they don't touch themselves when they're alone, when do women connect with their own fantasies? How familiar are they with what really turns them on? And if you don't know that about yourself, what exactly do you know? What relationship can you have with yourself if you systematically hand your genitals over to someone else?