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Perusing Porn and Sipping a Latte 8/27/2004 They're mainstreaming sleaze at coffeehouse bookstores. Major book publishers and mega bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble, and the online giant, Amazon.com, are cashing in on pornography. Sex and sleaze sell, so it's no surprise that the porn industry's zeal to mainstream itself has reached from the peep shows and dirty bookstores of skid row into reputable publishing houses and bookstores in upscale malls.
Major hotel chains, credit card companies, cable and satellite providers and other corporate giants have been pandering hard-core for years. The overriding obsession with the bottom-line has driven legitimate corporations to the bottom of the cultural sewer.
Still sensitive to the stigma that comes from pimping porn, the marketing masters at the publishing houses and bookstores are sanitizing the sleaze and masking the smell in a feeble attempt to con the public and assuage what's left of consumer conscience. The spinmeisters of marketing want us to believe it's not porn. Respectable folks don't buy smut and respectable businesses don't sell it. Right.
Edward Wyatt, in his August 24 article in The New York Times, "Sex, Sex, Sex: Up Front in Bookstores Near You," writes, "A wave of confessionals and self-help guides written by current or former stars of pornographic films is flooding bookstores this year, accompanied by erotic novels, racy sexual-instruction guides, histories of sexual particulars and photographic treatments of the world of pornography."
Those who've just awakened from a 40-year coma are informed, "Sex is what is selling these days," according to Judith Curr, publisher of Atria Books and Washington Square Press, imprints of Simon & Schuster. "When publishers see that, everybody wants to get into the market." Surprise, surprise.
Bob Wietrak, vice president for merchandising at Barnes & Noble, says, "What we're seeing now in novels is that they're sexy, but they're very sophisticated. That sophistication has brought greater acceptance, and demand has generated better placement in stores."
Wyatt quotes Judith Regan, president and publisher of ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, who claims, "I don't publish pornography. … I publish smart books about sex. A lot of people try to imitate what I do but they don't do it well."
Regan is promoting How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, "a memoir by Jenna Jameson, probably the most successful woman ever in the adult-film business." It's written with Neil Strauss, a former reporter and music critic for The New York Times. Wyatt says the book "is bulging with color photos of a mostly nude Ms. Jameson."
A truly "Cautionary Tale" about the porn industry should include the facts about the five porn performers who tested HIV positive last May, causing panic and a brief shutdown of the industry. It's an industry that cares so little about the people it exploits that it continues to vehemently resist use of condoms by performers. The fact that condoms don't ensure safe-sex isn't why the industry rejects them. Videos of "safe sex" don't sell and that's not safe for the bottom line.
Jameson's book is about a porn star describing explicit sex acts, and it bulges with her nude photos, but it's not about porn. It must be a challenge for Regan to sell books to people she considers nitwits. Why not subtitle it, "Nudity for Dummies" and reserve the panache for the nonfat, half-decaf latte crowd?
Naïve consumers, who think that porn and books by porn "stars" will enhance their love-life, shouldn't be duped by Jameson's book title. It isn't about making love as most regular folks think of it.
The only mention of "love" on Jameson's Web site is in the ads for her book. The site offers "some of my best scenes" featuring "girl-on-girl" and "group sex," including "new and upcoming girls … and you get to see me performing with many of them in real hardcore shoots."
Then there's her battery-operated sex-toys for sale at $59.95 and synthetic representations of Jenna's mouth and private parts, priced at $85, $199.95 and $230, "made from the awesome UR3 lifelike material." This is what it means to "make love like a porn star."
Porn "stars" don't "make love," they exploit sex in any and every perverse manner that sells. In the porn world, "love and marriage" don't "go together like a horse and carriage," and dad isn't "told by mother, 'you can't have one without the other.'" Porn "love-making" is about lust-driven self-gratification enhanced by devices that will eventually make it impossible for the person to have a love-giving sexual relationship with a human being because humans aren't battery-operated.
By the way, access to the "adult" section of Jameson's Web site is typical of every porn site pretending to care about kids while creating an attractive nuisance that acts as a magnet for them. I tested her "age verification" screen by providing the information requested-name, month, day and year of birth. I listed a year to indicate that I was a minor and was informed that I couldn't enter because I was under 18. Using the same name, month and day of birth, I changed the year to identify as an adult. Home free.
Here is a woman publishing a book by a woman who degrades women by doing what pornographers do-reducing women to sex objects valued and sold as pieces and parts. Does Regan care that "making love like a porn star" means doing it in front of kids?
According to Wyatt, Wal-Mart is refusing to carry Jameson's book but is offering another sex tome by a different author that comes sealed in a pink wrapper. An effort, no doubt, to distance it from that dirty old porn wrapped in plain old brown wrappers for dirty old men.
The next time you visit your favorite bookstore, they may have a new section for books like Jameson's, "Lecherous Peeping Toms." Not likely. Wouldn't be smart marketing to send a message that rouses the conscience to what it means to watch other people have sex and risk losing all those "respectable" and "smart" customers. |
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