‘The Price of Pleasure’ draws small crowd, lengthy discussion
Film raises questions of influence of porn in mainstream media to audience of fifty to seventy-five
Alanna Howard
News Editor
After a special screening of the “The Price of Pleasure: The Role of Pornography in Heterosexual Relationships” on Tuesday, Robert Jensen hosted a question and answer session. The film is directed by Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun and the event was sponsored by the Women’s Center.
A professor at the University of Texas-Austin School of Journalism, Jensen has authored several books focused on examining the pornography industry, including “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity” and “The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege.”
The film examined the emergence of pornography as a visible and profitable industry and its increased stance in mainstream media. Topics such as violence involving women in the porn industry, the influence of homosexual pornography and the rise of content that is increasingly sexist and racist left students with conflicting emotions at the end of the piece.
Kristi Jones, a graduate student in science and communications, said the film was interesting overall, but the conclusion did not give her emotions a direction.
“It evoked an interesting conflict because I found that it was possible to respond physically but at the same time it was disgusting,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how to reconcile the two feelings, both happen at the same time, but there is no direction to lead me to one over the other.”
According to Jensen there are two schools of critique for pornography, the “feminist and the religious, conservative critique.” In his discussion following the film, Jensen said he followed the “feminist critique” of pornography.
He said the feminist critique is concerned with the harm of mass consumption of pornography.
“This school of critique focuses on the conditions of porn, what happens to women who are in porn films and the attitudes of male behavior in response to porn.”
The film parallels various experts in the pornography business, producers, critics and performers with observations of men and women in discussions over the role of pornography in shaping society’s views of relationships and male/female interaction.
Lauren Hazel, a sophomore in human biology, said she reacted with surprise to the film.
“Honestly I was pretty surprised about the amount of violence associated with porn,” she said.
Jensen said violence associated with porn is mainstream in today’s culture, but that does not make it acceptable.
“With porn there are two trends. There is the temporary porn paradox that states there is no controversy and that since porn is so normalized there should not be objection to it and the other school of thought that understands the content is overly cruel to women and overly racist,” he said.
According to Jensen during his question and answer session, Hollywood is no match for the porn industry.
“Hollywood makes around 600 films a year, whereas the porn industry makes around 13,000 films a year,” he said.
This number was met with surprise by Sommer Snyder, a sophomore in sports management.
“I had no idea about the amount of porn out there or with how the porn stars sell their bodies to that extent,” she said.
To exemplify his point on pornography traits in mainstream culture, Jensen described an ad contest publicized by American Apparel.
The ad encourages “women to take pictures of their butts and send it in for the ‘best butt’ campaign,” he said. “This shows the degraded state of our culture and yet it’s happening with major apparel industries in this country.”
In response to a question about the variety of pornography, Jensen said everything can be made into pornography.
“Whatever you can imagine, I guarantee someone has made a porn about it and made money off of it,” he said.
Teah Watson, a sophomore in finance, said the discussion made him want to read Jensen’s books.
“This was a very good talk, and this has made me want to read his books,” he said.