You say you want to go behind the curtain and find the wizard, which is an image I love and the spirit of which I think I understand. But I'm confused on the specifics. Who is the wizard? Is it the people making the porn? Is it what happens on set? I feel your work presents a depth which often times I don't find in porn itself. Is it possible that what makes pornography interesting is you?
Well, it's all you mentioned, and, I think, it always changes. If the curtain is the screen, then what's happening in the real world on the other side of the fourth wall is where I want to be. The wizard is Truth; the director, "god," or God; or what the players and porn stars do when "no one"--or the camera--is looking. It's the moment when halfway through the day, the gangbang girl comes back into the room after a break, and you can tell she's been crying, you can see that her chin is trembling, and she smiles anyway. It's the guy who, at a bukkake, stands in the corner and masturbates with his back to the scene while looking at a porn magazine he brought that he's got balanced on a barrel. It's what's in the mind of a woman who has been dressed up like a lamp. What's going on underneath that lampshade, in the corner, behind the scrim? I don't think it's "me," per se. I think I am me, you, all of us. I am a stand in for everyone who wants to look and to see, as we do, with the spirit of scopophilia, giving all of us the right to look at that which we are "not supposed to" look, but without guilt, or judgment, or fear. But I always love the wizard. He is not a god, after all. He is a man.
You seem like the ideal anthropological participant-observer. When anthropologists go to the field, they talk about "deep hanging out" which I imagine you doing on a porn set, both willing and enchanted by recording what you see without judgment. Are you, in fact, suspending judgment regarding the porn world? Does this ever give you pause?
I wouldn't say, in a way, that I go into that world with any intention but to observe. And there is a great amount of pleasure to be had when one transgresses and sees the unseen and does so without judging the self or others in the process. That's the ideal, I think. As I have to write about it later, as I well know, I can't write well about what doesn't fascinate me or compel me in some way. But, I am a human being, too, so, of course, I react to what I see, in ways that are in conflict or in contradiction. That world has given me pause many times. Making pornography is no easy art. It requires the recombining of bodies. That is an unusual profession in which to live.
Relating to your comments on this policiticized writing on porn, I'm curious to know more about your own sexual politics? Was there a time when your personal politics clashed with your interest in sexual imagery?
I think articulating my own sexual politics, whatever that may mean, is something I avoid doing publicly. I see things that offend and horrify and shock me routinely. Pornography is a subject that has "suffered" so much from those who attempt to slot it into terms of black and white. It is a distinctly grey world. The lines blur. Is it good or bad or right or wrong? It's hard to say. The bottom line is not to focus on my personal politics but ask the question in the face of something I do not understand: Why is this happening? And that requires empathy, not judgment. Putting myself into their minds is part of the process. Coming back from that is part of the challenge.
