During a recent media-swap with a buddy, I spotted a show I’d heard a lot about but never really settled down to watch. Maybe because its subject matter isn’t something that easily gets folks settled. That show is the British Channel 4 documentary series, ‘The Dark Side of Porn’, made up of several 48-minute-long episodes that examine a bunch of topics related to the porn industry. From season 1′s “Debbie Does Dallas Uncovered”, which deals with the background of the infamous 70s porn movie, to the final and most hectic episode, “The Real Animal Farm”, which looks at the history of a Bodil Joensen, the so-called ‘Queen of Bestiality’. And all I thought I’d get out of this media-swap were copies of the 2008-2009 Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon!
The show’s quite old already and, because there’s no narrative throughline, I’m not watching the episodes in any particular order. So far I’ve only managed to get through two of them because, despite the lack of actual on-screen sex, well, this show is one dark, fucking ride on the human trauma highway. (Un)fortunately, I’m sort of preoccupied with the depths of human experience and how we deal with trauma, so this show is (pardon this and the numerous other accidental puns that follow) right up my alley.
Bodil Joensen
Look, I’m not gonna feign false purity here and say I’ve never watched porn, or that I’ve never considered that there’s much more going on behind the scenes here than on any other movie set, but I also know a show like this probably gets overlooked by some people because of assumptions they’ve made about how it will handle the subject matter. I’m also pretty sure lots of people only tune in expecting a dirty, sexy half-hour of smut and scandal. What ‘Dark Side’ does, however, is capture the mindset of the people involved in porn by presenting them as human beings with their own private histories and a level of emotional depth you don’t see in a Jennifer Aniston rom-com. In fact, “The Real Animal Farm” is one I’d expected would be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever had to sit through (and even without the actual footage, it pretty much is), but it also makes use of a lot of objective footage of its Joesen. It doesn’t only track her rise to stardom as a sort of sexual curiosity in 1970s Denmark, but also focuses on her downward spiral once the world abandoned her to prostitution and destitution on the streets of Copenhagen.
All without a shred of salaciousness or sexualizing her actions.
The “Bestiality Queen”, whose nickname probably already conjures up certain connotations in your gut, is revealed in the most insightful ways, depicted as a person who deserves to be understood rather than an oddity or a pure subject that needs to be ridiculed or spat upon. She had an extremely traumatic childhood involving rape and an overbearing, abusive and religiously fanatical mother who, no doubt, had her own unresolved issues. Her mother heaped punishment on her for fraternizing with boys at an age long before it was probably sexual in nature, and even beat her when she was raped and molested by some man at a train station. In her mom’s screwed-up head, this was somehow her fault. Her threats of sleeping with the animals she already cared for, and wanted to farm as part of a future breeding business, eventually came true. How much of what is no doubt awful behavior wasn’t prompted by how unnaturally she’d been taught her feelings for men and boys were before she was even sexually active? How much of this doesn’t continue to happen today for similar reasons?
Frankie, a "Porn Virgin"
In another episode, “Diary of a Porn Virgin”, two women and one man are followed as they attempt to break into the UK porn industry. Without saying much, the filmmakers are able to reveal quite a lot about their subjects and the mindset of the sort of person the porn industry seizes hold of. One easygoing 20-something woman is from an extremely strict Muslim family she decides to openly rebel against. The other, 38-year-old woman turns out to be obsessed with her appearance, using porn as a means of preserving the beauty she’s never believed she had. The sad thing is, she only seems to realize this after three guys (at least one of whom is a right arsehole to her) fuck her at the same time. Maybe something she could’ve avoided if her mom and dad told her she was beautiful more often when she was a kid, no?
Most of the guys taking part in porn are, as we discover through an audition process, simply dudes determined to prove they’ve got the stuff to fuck a hot girl. At least three of them fail to get it up and have to leave in awkward shame they probably shouldn’t have had in the first place. Whatever the reason some people are into porn, most of the people in this episode ultimately seem to leave red-faced and solidifying whatever negative image they had of themselves in the first place.
I know, I know, I sound like your mom, so let’s get this straight: I think attractive people fucking, in whatever gender-permutation you prefer, can be sexy, artistic and even empowering. The porn industry, however, remains an unchecked source of sexual self-destruction, rather than exploration. This is because sex itself is still, despite the fact that we’re living in 20-frikkin-12, a big conversational taboo. Either you’ve gotta be fucking tough about it, or secretive and lip-licking as possible, so it retains some sense of mythical wonder that – in all honesty – it doesn’t really have the minute you start realizing that slapping sweaty bodyparts against one another sounds like exactly what you know it does. And that 90% of the human beings that populate Big Momma Earth are flabby in one or other places on their naked body.
While this show seems on the surface to be discussing porn, what it’s really looking at is the human psyche in relation to sexuality, and how our lack of awareness and openness about the hard truths about sex can be damaging to everyone around us. On the surface it’s a show about a woman who sucks off a horse and some people who wanna get laid on-camera for a little extra cash, but really, it’s also about the places we’ll take ourselves to solidify the horrible things we often believe about ourselves.
You can check out a few of the episodes over on Youtube or probably buy it on DVD. That’s if you’re ready to take that dark fucking ride.