Argue

When I was 25, I shared an apartment in Los Angeles with an old high school friend. We both were making fairly good money and were able to enjoy just about everything the City of Angels had to offer. Until I got laid off. Or quit. I don’t really remember. Either way, I was unemployed.

My roommate worked in the San Fernando Valley at a post-production facility, where they edited and duplicated film and video. Okay, not just film and video, but rather, ‘Adult’ film and video… “Oooooh.” When I told him I had lost my job, he just smiled and said, “We can probably use your help at my office. We’ve got so much work we can barely stay afloat.”

They’ve “got so much work they can barely stay...afloat.”

Afloat...

I suddenly picture a huge white yacht, floating aimlessly through Caribbean waters...As the camera zooms in, we begin to notice that the eight or ten passengers on board seem to be...naked. And not only are they naked, but for the most part, they are tanned, very fit, and very well manicured. A closer look reveals that--yes, yes, YES! They are having SEX! All of them! The camera tightens in on the bronzed and muscular back of a male passenger, his muscles ebbing and flowing with each calculated movement. Suddenly we see a woman’s hand enter the frame, with her flaming red nails clawing passionately at the man’s skin. The camera rotates to one side, revealing this young gorgeous couple, very much in love (of course) and very much having SEX! She fondles her breasts with her free hand, her head leaning back over the stern of the boat. As the wind blows through his shoulder length brown hair, he thrusts his manhood deeper and deeper inside her, when suddenly...

WHAM! I come to.

“Porn? Porn-o-gra-phy?” I sheepishly sound the word out as if it were the first time I had heard of such a thing...as if. “I can’t work in porn. It’s not that I don’t think it’s okay. I mean, you work in porn and that’s great, man, that’s great. But I can’t, I mean, well...you know...it’s porn.”

My roommate just laughed at me and turned to walk into the kitchen. “I’ll check with my boss tomorrow. I’m sure there’s something for you to do.” He stopped and turned around, smirking. “You know…something.”

The following Monday I drove with my roommate to the Valley. Turns out I was going to work in porn. My roommate’s boss needed an editing bay built for a new editor who would be starting there the following month. So I was going to build it. The icing on the cake? I would be paid under the table. Getting paid under the table in the porn industry? That’s not the kind of work you write home to Mom about.

But money is money and tax free money is TAX FREE MONEY, so I absolutely went for it. It’s not like I was “acting” in these films, or directing or fluffing. I was far, far behind the scenes, way out in a typical looking warehouse somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, utilizing my carpentry skills to build and install an editing bay.

The first day on the job was the most bizarre. The facility had three editing bays, one screening room and one monstrous room stacked with humming VCRs. And monitors everywhere. On those monitors? Yep, SEX. Sex of every kind, make and model: black, white, yellow, gay, straight, bi-, tri-, hard, soft... whatever. You name it; they edited it or copied it. Despite the distractions, I managed to eke out eight hours of sketching and measuring, doing my best to ignore the ongoing symphony of sex that was around me AND keep a straight face. Tough day.

By the time I arrived the next day I was over the shock. I actually woke up that morning, rolled over to turn off the alarm clock and mumbled to myself something about not wanting to go to work. To WORK? I sat straight up in bed. Is this work? Better yet, is this my job? Then it hit me. This IS work. This IS my job. And, crazily enough, this IS an industry.

And a huge one, too.

So that seems like a good place to start when putting together an article that defends the adult entertainment industry. The industry is enormous. After all, sex sells. Believe it or not, admit it or not, like it or not, it’s the truth. And in saying so, I’m in no way introducing a new concept. It always has and it always will. The pornography business has skyrocketed in the past twenty years to become a multinational, multi-billion dollar industry. There seems to be a niche for adult entertainment in every corner of the world. As global economic trends become more and more capitalistic, the age old theory of supply and demand will continue to reign supreme. And if the people want the porn, the people will get the porn.

Discussing the economic aspects of any industry, however, does not offer much support in the attempt to defend said industry’s existence. This fact has haunted cigarette and alcohol companies for decades. Just because a company makes money does not necessarily prove its worthiness. But one major thing that profitability does for an industry is to help to ensure that lobbyists and political supporters have adequate resources at hand with which to battle legislature that potentially threatens the industry’s well-being.

Scientific research has undoubtedly proven that cigarettes and alcohol can be deadly. Nobody in their right mind will debate that. Admittedly, regulations in the United States have been tightened in recent years, denying these companies certain advertising avenues (television, radio, and designated billboards), and a few large companies have been slapped with fines and settlements stemming from lawsuits filed by groups and individuals who claim wrongful death or illness from continued use of tobacco or alcohol. Yet both industries continue to flourish. How can this be? Well, obviously, the economic and political factors exist. We talked a bit about that already. But how about this for an answer: Some people like it.

Some people like it? Wow. That’s absurd.

Here is a short list of other things that some people like: Gambling, painting murals, skeet shooting, writing, eating fast food, bull-fighting, roping cattle, bungee jumping, washing skyscraper windows, naked water-skiing, and climbing Everest. Each one of these things can be potentially dangerous, but we do them anyway. And those of us who live in free societies are fortunate to be able to choose to do these things. Take them away, and all hell would break loose. I, for one, would go completely insane if the newly formed Literary Police stormed in here right now and snatched up my keyboard. Despite the fact that my writing might end up being dangerous, I do it anyway. I have to do it. You see, I am addicted to writing. I CAN NOT STOP.

So let’s put smoking, drinking and enjoying porn on my little list as well. Interestingly enough, however, it’s the addition of these words to my list that seems to be the most shocking to people. But not so much the smoking and the drinking part, which is strange because both of those can actually kill you. It’s the one that can’t: the pornography part. That particular word is a guaranteed eyebrow raiser. Anytime, any place. And I think that’s too bad, because it’s not an ugly word, per se...(In fact, if I had to choose an ugly word, I’d choose onomatopoeia. Now, that’s an ugly word. Ugly in every aspect: it’s a grouping of letters that weren’t meant to be together, it’s never is a fun word to say, and it means something that it, itself, is not. That’s ugly.) And when pornography is hanging out with geography, photography, calligraphy and stenography, it’s the one word that stands out. What a tragedy! Now, why on earth would that be?

Aha! It’s because of what pornography means, not how it looks...Now I get it.

All right, adult entertainment makes tons of money, and some people enjoy it. Others find the word itself to be downright disgusting. That’s where we are right now. But it is fair to argue that one can preach the virtues of the First Amendment and discuss freedom of choice until the cows come home and never really get down to defending pornography for pornography’s sake. Now the cows are home, and they want something to watch on TV.

So let them watch porn.

What actually is pornography? We all think we know what it is, or at least have associations that we freely make with the word which help to personally define it. But what does the old dictionary say? Funny you should ask. I have one right here:

por-nog-ra-phy /n/ 1. the treatment of sexual objects in pictures or writing in a way that is meant to cause sexual excitement 2. books, films, etc., containing this

Okay, that seems simple enough. According to this definition, pornography is meant to cause sexual excitement. And that’s it. “But that can’t be it. It’s got to involve cameras and actors and directors and drugs and money shots, doesn’t it?” Well, not exactly. It can and sometimes does, but not as a rule. I think that’s where the main hang-ups that people have with pornography occur: people generally make the immediate connection to the adult film industry when the word pornography is uttered. But there is much more to pornography than meets the screen.

We tend to forget that pornography is entertainment. It may not be entertainment to you, it may not be entertainment to me, but it is entertainment to some. We also tend to forget that reading for pleasure is a form of entertainment. Go figure. So when people tie the p-word exclusively to the X-rated video part of it, they have missed the boat entirely. Adult entertainment has been around for centuries: in literary, artistic and even verbal forms, while the adult film industry has not. Nor the recent addition of e-porn and its mechanics to the family - now that, arguably, is something worthy of being illegalized. Generally speaking, pornography simply serves as a vehicle for changing times, the current and most popular method of getting an art form to its fans. “Art form, did you say? Art form?” You bet I did.

Do I dare to open up the squeakiest and heaviest of doors and go down this dusty corridor which will bring pornography and art into the same room together? Absolutely. Art is a very unpredictable and unexplainable phenomenon, in general. I have to admit that art is not a word that I have ever looked up, or felt the urge to, for that matter. And I’m not going to start now. We just know what art is, don’t we? We look at it, or we listen to it, or we touch it, and it makes us react. Maybe we laugh, maybe we cry, maybe we just cock our heads to the side and say, “Hmm.” Maybe we take in what the piece of art has to offer, and, in doing so, we get excited or just have fun. And sometimes, maybe we just don’t get it at all, and while walking down the steps from the Art Museum, we turn around, look up at the building and mutter silently, ”Yeah, it says ‘Art Museum’... It must have been art.”

While it is clearly art, we must always bear in mind that pornography is a mature art form and can only be viewed as such when marketed towards and depicted by adults. The sexual exploitation of children and unwilling adults for the sake of creating pornography is a crime and should be prosecuted without leniency. Period.

So what is the real problem with adult entertainment? Can we not recognize or admit its economic or industrial impact? Can we not see that some people actually like it? Are we afraid to label it as art? Why? Why? Why?

Pornography, in all forms, from movies and books to poetry and photography, is art. Like many other genres of art, it can be interesting, comedic, sad, frightening, educational, and of course, thrilling. For some of us it is high art and for some of us it is barely art, but it is art nonetheless. And to stand up against it, and make efforts to denounce another individual’s right to have fun is absurd. Life is too short not to have a little fun every now and then. And enjoy a little porn if you want to.