Anti-Climacus

LINK: I'm entirely at a loss at how to even begin responding to this Gregg Easterbrook post. Good point about the relative willingness to let violence in movies pass, but...

"A few years ago I mentioned in a New Republic article that Vivid, though its product are extremely X-rated, has an absolute ban on violence or menace. A company official dropped me a note explaining why: To depict sex and violence together would be irresponsible, he said. Note that this is how mainstream pornographers feel, while the big corporate studios churn out screaming and torture, and treat women as objects to be slashed.

Perhaps Ashcroft and others in his camp have no problem with Sony or Time-Warner exalting slaughter, but a big problem with movies that show sex, because the porn world is one of the few in which women command the big salaries and make the decisions, while the men are afterthoughts. As Susan Faludi detailed in her book Stiffed, porn starlets not only make serious money while their male counterparts are ill-paid; porn's female stars have considerable input into the flavor of the movies, which is why mainstream pornography generally depicts women as confident and assertive, while men are presented as compliant dim-wits whose sole virtues are cute butts and a useful appendage. It's a weird twist, but mainstream porn has become, as Faludi wrote, quasi-feminist--in these movies the women are in control and the women have all the fun. The John Ashcrofts of the world may find that more objectionable than depictions of women being slashed to death."