Felicity – the vicissitudes of whose own troubled relationship with her father was mirrored by the cruelty of the men with whom she ended up working – eventually escaped back to the UK. Arriving excited, and clear about what she would not do – anal sex, double-vaginal penetration – she ended up being coerced into playing a submissive role and agreeing to anal sex.
Channel 4’s documentary Hardcore, shown two years ago, told the story of Felicity, a single mother from Essex who travelled to Los Angeles hoping to make a career in pornography. Only occasionally, amid porn-disguised-as-documentary that distinguishes much of Channel 5’s late-night output, is there broadcasting that gives any kind of insight. With pornography, it seems as if the sheer scale of the phenomenon has, in time-honoured capitalist fashion, conferred its own respectability as a result, serious analysis is hard to come by. We suspect that pornography might be degrading to everybody.” “In all our years of watching porn,” they write, in a rare moment of analysis that doesn’t get developed any further, “we have never properly resolved what we think about how, why and whether it is degrading to women.
Coren and Skelton, former Erotic Review film critics, focus on their flip comic narrative, scarcely troubling themselves with any deeper issues. From pieces “in praise of porn” in the normally sober Prospect magazine to such programmes as Pornography: The Musical on Channel 4 last month, to Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton’s book, published last year, about making a porn film, to the news that Val Kilmer is to play the part of pornography actor John Holmes in a new mainstream movie, there is a widespread sense that anyone who suggests pornography might have any kind of adverse effect is laughably out of touch.
Pornography is not only a bigger business than ever before, it is also more acceptable, more fashionable, and more of a statement of cool. Each year, in Los Angeles alone, more than 10,000 hardcore pornographic films are made, against an annual Hollywood average of just 400 movies.
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In the US, with the pornography industry bringing in up to $15bn (£8.9bn) annually, people spend more on porn every year than they do on movie tickets and all the performing arts combined. Since the British Board of Film Classification relaxed its guidelines in 2000, hardcore video pornography now makes up between 13% and 17% of censors’ viewing, compared with just 1% three years ago, a rate of growth that is being cited as a causal factor in the recent bankruptcy of Penthouse, at one time the very apotheosis of porno chic but in recent years little more risqué than Loaded. In its hardcore form, pornography is now accessed in the UK by an estimated 33% of all internet users. Pornography is everywhere – it masquerades as “gentlemen’s entertainment” in the form of clubs such as Spearmint Rhino, it infiltrates advertising and it will soon be available in our back pockets, thanks to a deal by adult entertainment giant Private Media Group to beam porn to UK mobile phones. “You know what,” decides Chandler, “we have to turn off the porn.”Īs a society, however, we are further from turning off porn than we have ever been. “I was just at the bank,” he complains, “and the teller didn’t ask me to go do it with her in the vault.” Joey, bewildered, reports a similar reaction from the pizza-delivery girl. By the end of the episode, Chandler is seeing the world through porn-tinted spectacles.
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They leave the TV on, afraid switching off will mean no more pornography.
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There’s an episode of Friends – The One With The Free Porn – in which Chandler and Joey discover they have tuned into a porn channel.