I Went to a Church to Watch Porn and Fund Planned Parenthood

by Michael Anthony Farley on September 29, 2015 Baltimore

ScreeningSexBaltimore

A sold-out room watched “Graphic Depictions” by porn-maker/panelist Stoya.

On Friday, mere hours after conservative Speaker of the House John Boehner announced his resignation, I went to a church to watch porn to fund Planned Parenthood. When I mentioned this ironic coincidence to the fundraiser’s organizer, porn star Dale Cooper, he grinned ear-to-ear and shrugged “We couldn’t have asked for a better date!”

To clarify, Screening Sex took place in the second floor of a former church on West 37th street in Baltimore, in an artist’s live-work loft above a vintage clothing store. And the space’s eclectic renovations lent it a vibe that’s more House Gryffindor than Domus Dei—although I walked in late during a screening of the film “Action Painting no. 1 / no. 2” by Krefer and Turca whose ritualism would’ve been totally (in)appropriate for either context. It consisted of a single point-of-view shot from the perspective of someone furiously humping another person from behind. The genders of both figures were unclear and the silent scene was lit mostly by a candle, which was being used to drip wax across the anonymous back in an apparent nod to Jackson Pollack.

This was not the kind of porn one sees on Cinemax. And that’s a point that was driven home in the panel discussion that followed the screening by Jiz Lee, who was in town to promote the book Coming Out Like a Porn Star: “I never watched porn growing up… to me ‘porn’ was that scrambled thing on cable that was just so formulaic and heterosexual and white.”

Instead, the program of Screening Sex was intended to represent the broadest possible spectrum of what might be considered pornography: from projects by self-identified porn stars that might not be immediately recognizable as porn to content that’s been considered “pornographic” from non-pornographers. The selection was originally curated by Cooper for Helsinki’s Wonderlust Festival with the ambition of stretching the genre’s definition. “Most people have an idea of what porn is, but we don’t have a society that acknowledges sexuality… we approach porn without that context. But as a culture we’re very literate in film; it’s nice to have porn that’s as diverse as the medium.” In that spirit, Cooper opened the screening with Thomas Edison’s “The Kiss”, the first intimate moment ever recorded on film. The evening ended with Jan Soldat’s adorable documentary-style “One Weekend in Germany”, which featured an elderly German gay couple and their friend discussing and performing a variety of S&M acts in the very-vanilla context of quiet suburban retirement. Between these two not-particularly-sexy bookends, I was struck by how much some pretty sexy porn looks like so much video art:

Screening-Sex

Beautiful Agony, a grid of faces appearing and disappearing as they begin and end orgasms, would not look out of place at many an MFA thesis show.

One major difference between porn and video art? Pornographers tend to be much more direct when speaking about their work than members of the mainstream art world, particularly in regards to their relationship to the market. “The only thing I find empowering about what I do is the fact that it provides me a living wage. We exist under a capitalist system. It’s no more or less a feminist statement than being a waitress,” Stoya replied in response to a question about balancing integrity and the realities of economics.

“‘What is money if not consent?’ to quote Conner Habib,” Jiz Lee added, “It validates what we do… but porn has the potential to be so much more. The potential to reflect who we are as human beings. And money is always awesome”

Dale Cooper closed out the night with a sentiment I hadn’t even considered: porn, like Planned Parenthood, has an educational component. As a teenager, pornography was one of the few places Cooper could find representations of gay men. It helped him understand his identity in a society with severely lacking sex-ed curriculum, particularly outside of heteronormative, cisgendered copulation. This realization motivated him to create the kind of porn that might similarly help others understand sex, despite a political climate where the public sector threatens to become even more unreliable in the realm of reproductive health. Keep fighting the good fight, porn!

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