The Problem with Porno

I tend not to subscribe to the Obligatory State Fandom Rule, which clearly dictates that if someone famous is born in the same state as you, you have to adore them. I suspect this works more in less populous states, or at least in less overtly beloved states, but if you're from New Jersey, for instance, the law of the land is that you must love Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, and Kevin Smith.

Sorry guys, but Bon Jovi has always been way too cheesy for my tastes, and Bruce never could sing and still can't. Kevin Smith, on the other hand, can write and direct a damn funny movie, and he was doing the "crude but good-hearted" flick long before Judd Apatow became a household name (and, with the exception perhaps of the unfortunate Jersey Girl, has consistently done it better).

So I'm incredibly stoked about K.S.'s upcoming feature, which grabbed my attention (and, apparently, the Weinstein Brothers' as well) by the title alone:

Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Straightforward. Blunt. To the point. Gotta love it.

Unfortunately, that same title has been causing a number of problems with promoting the flick, including newspapers and TV stations who have flat refused to carry ads because of that pesky five-letter P-word. (No, not that one, you sicko.) And while I'm all about freedom of expression -- and especially in this case, as the usually-rigid MPAA approved a green-band (or all-ages) trailer for the film that includes its complete title -- I suppose I can understand why some people may not like that word.

Except when they say stupid shit like this:

Diane Levin, an education professor specializing in child development at Boston's Wheelock College, said the posters at city bus stops send a message to children that working in the porn industry is an acceptable occupation.

"It's drawing attention to a movie which is mainstreaming and normalizing pornography, saying if you need money, this is what you do," said Levin, co-author of "So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids."

The stick-figure images are especially appealing to youngsters, since "stick figures are something for children," she said.

Read the whole article here.

Consider me officially enraged.

I'm endlessly amazed at how little research talking-head academics do when cited for mainstream stories. Because, as a recovering academic myself, I know that the academy typically demands extremely rigorous research before anything is even considered a possibility for future publication.

So it's astounding to me that Professor Levin could level such a harsh charge against a movie that I'm almost certain she has not seen. (After all, it's not being released until October 31.) In fact, reading any of the copious available interviews with Smith regarding the movie -- which can be easily found using that most primitive of academic search engines, a little site called Google -- would quickly reveal that the film is not intended to glorify pornography whatsoever, and that it is instead both a skewering of the over-the-top world of internet porn as well as a thinly-veiled jab at his own experience independently making his first feature, Clerks.

And as for the bit about the stick figures, that too was part of the joke: just look at the freaking caption! "Seth Rogen & Elizabeth Banks made a movie so titillating that we can only show you this drawing." It's clearly not meant to try and attract children; rather, it's again a clever jibe at the MPAA, which felt that the original version, which still exists as the official Canadian poster, was too risque for all audiences despite it just barely toeing the line of inappropriate.

(If your virgin eyes can handle it, you can look at it here.)

It seems pretty clear to me that Smith has made a movie that's very clearly skewed towards adults and that is meant only for mature audiences. After all, anyone going to see a movie with "porno" in its title has to know what to expect from it. (This point, in fact, was a key part of Smith's ultimately successfully appeal to have the original NC-17 rating reduced to an [ironically] more advertising-friendly R.) And as I've already said, I'm all about freedom of expression, so if the MPAA is cool with it, I don't see why that single word should be such an issue.

Of course, there are parents who don't see it that way:

One complaint came from a man watching a game in September with his young son, who did not understand a suicide-squeeze bunt the Dodgers tried, Rawitch said.

"He was explaining to his son what a squeeze bunt was. Commercial break, the ad comes on, and the kid asks, `Dad, what does porno mean?"' Rawitch said. "Dodgers baseball has always been about family, and we've always been sensitive to the type of advertising that runs on our games."

So let me get this straight: it's perfectly legitimate to play highly-suggestive commercials hocking Viagra and Cialis during sports events, and that's less "family-friendly" than this commercial for a raunchy comedy? I smell bullshit. If this guy's kid watched one of those commercials and asked, "Daddy, how do I know if I have a four-hour long erection?" would he wig out just as badly? Or would he, like any normal parent, come up with a perfectly plausible explanation that doesn't reveal too much information and then quickly change the subject before the kid realizes this is something that's inappropriate for his age and thusly totally worth fixating on for the foreseeable future?

I'm not interested in turning this into a "parents should freaking parent" argument (though I stand by that thesis), and frankly I think this is mostly the case of the media turning a non-issue into a front-page story in the entertainment section. But what it continues to prove to me is that we are a country of raging hypocrites -- the kind who love our skin flicks and buy our perfumes and colognes based on how sexy the models look, but inexplicably wig out when we hear a single word, and one that isn't even a dirty word or a patently offensively word to boot!

"Porno" doesn't make us uncomfortable because it's a "bad word," but because we have a cultural rift over sex that is spiraling more and more out of control with each new day. We're trained from an early age that it is morally degrading and ethically wrong to think about sex or willingly seek it for pleasurable purposes. We're made to think it's ugly and awful and worth shunning. And we're told to ignore it, while on billboards and in even the most well-lit corners of the Internet, it grows and thrives and expands while we look at it through the slits between the fingers on the hands that cover our eyes.

It took a lot of balls for Kevin Smith to call his movie by this title precisely because it asks us to confront the issue head-on. And yet here we are, placing it on the pedestal of newsworthiness while pointing an accusatory finger at it and shouting, "Not on my bus stop!" It seems to me like Mr. Smith is making his point loud and clear, and he's getting lots of free press out of it, too. And if you care at all about freedom of expression, you'll support the cause by buying a ticket opening weekend. I know I will.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is in theatres October 31.

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EDIT (10-22-2008, 4:00pm): Not to be a braggart, but I love being right. Click here to see Kevin Smith himself use the same argument I employed in the fourth-to-last paragraph.