AVN's Response to "Neither Adult Nor Entertainment"
In its September, 1998 issue, the mainstream
movie magazine Premiere ran a twelve-page
article on our little awards show (Neither Adult
Nor Entertainment). It has been suggested that
the piece was written by award-winning author
David Foster Wallace, with some help from
Premiere editor Glenn Kenny.
Contrary to our best information, Hustler
Erotic Video Guide editor Mike Albo vehemently
denies having acted as a source to Wallace and
Kenny. "I didn't have anything to do with that
piece," says Albo. "You guys must feel pretty
stupid."
While hysterical, the piece contained factual
errors and was so colored by obvious editorializing
that several of us here at AVN felt compelled to
respond. Paul Fishbein's letter has been promised
space in an upcoming issue of Premiere, and
we're including Mark Kernes' and Kensington
Smith's letters here in full. Enjoy.
August 14, 1998
James B. Meigs
Premiere
1633 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Dear Mr. Meigs:
First, thank you for devoting approximately 12
pages of your high-profile, mainstream magazine
to our Adult Video News Awards. Unfortunately,
your funny and beautifully-worded article is also a
shoddy piece of journalism, rife with errors and
innuendo.
Bad reviews are part of the game; it could be
argued that we here at AVN give bad reviews for
a living. I do feel compelled to point out that AVN
is a trade magazine for the adult industry:
producers, talent, manufacturers, wholesalers,
cable television buyers, foreign buyers, etc.
Similarly, the AVN Awards are for the adult
industry. We do not market tickets to consumers,
so commentary about the show aimed at
consumers is pointless.
The writers imply that the AVN Awards are
rigged. Could this be libel? Your reporters seemed
bent on damaging AVN's reputation; a reputation
we have earned over fifteen years of service to
the adult industry and the video retail community.
News publications such as U.S. News and World
Report, The L.A. Times, Time, Newsweek,
Variety, and The New York Times have cited AVN
sales charts and consulted with AVN editorial
staff members. However, your reporters did not
consult any of us. Not even about AVN itself. Had
they asked us about the voting process, they
could have learned that the ballots (all signed on
every page) are available for inspection for a year
after the awards ceremony. Had they called us
for information, or indulged in some simple
fact-checking, they could have inspected every
ballot and recounted votes themselves. They
could also have found out that Ellen Thompson
uses her real name when writing regular reviews
and articles, and the name "Ida Slapter" for her
fetish-oriented copy, and because of this we
included both names in the program booklet; but
every writer has only one vote, as the ballots can
testify.
Instead, the main sources for an article on
our Awards show are two "experts" whose names
no one in the industry seems to recognize.
The errors in the piece are too numerous to
list here. But a few could easily have been
avoided:
Page 91: Evil Angel's Jeff "Hatman" Marton, of
the goatee and trademark fedora, is incorrectly
identified as director Greg Dark, who did not
attend CES this year.
Page 92: The Sands Casino, referred to as
being "just outside [the CES]" does not exist. The
Sands Hotel was razed in 1996 - and this includes
the bar where Tom Byron supposedly held court
nightly, as averred on page 100.
Page 93: This report has Jasmin St. Claire -
with dyed (?) black hair- signing at the Xplor
booth. Jasmin signed exclusively at Impressive.
Page 100: Suggesting that our awards
trophies are stolen, or purchased "hot," is
mystifying. Is there some big "hot trophy" market
we're unaware of?
Page 102: Gene Ross is a 12-year employee
of AVN, a senior editor and vice president; he is
not, however, a co-owner.
Page 103: Security at the AVN Awards is
mentioned in light of "problems with unauthorized
Caesars employees sneaking in to catch the gala"
the year before. Last year's show was held at the
Riviera Hotel; not an impossible trek from Caesars,
just unlikely.
Page 104: Robert Black did not win the AVN
Breakthrough Award. Steve Orenstein of Wicked
Pictures did.
I could go on, but the point has been made.
Bad reviews are one thing. Bad journalism is
another. And a brazen attempt to hurt someone
else's reputation is something else entirely.
Sincerely yours,
Paul Fishbein
President
AVN Publications
All at Premiere,
As a target of what amounts to an
unsubstantiated attack on an already
marginalized industry, I take issue with the gross,
sensational Neither Adult Nor Entertainment,
September, 1998. Is this the analog of
responsible journalism at Premiere?
I find it reprehensible, your thesis statement
about the Snuff Film being the guide for modern
porn (page 106, capitalization the authors'; it's
interesting to note that the "snuff film" is
considered to be a myth by both law enforcement
and industry professionals). It is exactly this kind
of moralizing attitude which degrades the
performers in porn, not the fact that pornography
is becoming more acceptable all the time. Porn
doesn't thrive because it's taboo; it thrives
because humans have sex drives, and in our
culture - thanks to the myopic, church-elder
agenda of pieces such as yours - honoring one's
sex drive is an act of subversion. It is this kind of
"reportage" that puts the adult industry, sex
work, rights for women, sexual equality and
understanding, free speech, freedom from
repression and guilt, and simple safety for sex
performers back in the gutter - where these
things "belong," no doubt. You must be so proud.
Speaking of suffrage, thanks for broadcasting
your condemnation of our industry under the
banner of "Feminists of all stripe" (page 92). You
are the righteous defenders of helpless females
everywhere! Wish you'd called any of the women
on staff (like Ellen Thompson, so you could
actually get a quote, rather than attributing to
her something overheard - what is wrong with
you people?) before damning pornography from
the self-congratulatory high ground of "feminism."
Have you ever heard of (and my apologies to
those I haven't room to list) Annie Sprinkle,
Susannah Breslin, Susie Bright, Tristan Taormino,
Carol Queen, Betty Dodson, Candida Royalle,
Gloria Leonard, Kathy Acker, Jane Hamilton, Pat
Califia - your ignorance (or was it flat out ignoring
to gird your point?) of this wave of pro-porn -
and if I may, much more rational and humanist -
feminism is unforgivable. Shame on you.
Finally, on your choice to let two juvenile
sniffers ("mook"? In my four years writing about
the industry, I've never heard that one - except
from the pages of Hustler, hint hint) give reign to
their adolescent prurience in the guise of
reporting: I know plenty of writers with access to
as many three-dollar words who can leave their
repression at home when taking on the delicate,
multi-dimensional task of reporting on the already
stigmatized sex industry.
Rebecca Gray
a.k.a. Kensington Smith
Associate Editor
Adult Video News
Dear Mr. Meigs,
Although my employer, Paul Fishbein, has also
written to you concerning the article "Neither
Adult Nor Entertainment" in your September issue,
I am writing with somewhat different concerns;
namely, the anti-porn agenda which the article's
pseudonymous authors have brought to your
readership.
To be sure, "deGroot" and "Rundlet" simply
echo sentiments which can be found in hundreds
of other publications, from the American Family
Association newsletter to the New York Times. I
had hoped, however, that Premiere's writers
would be a little bit more incisive and inquisitive. I
am disappointed to see that that was not the
case.
My colleague Rebecca Gray has addressed the
problem with "Feminists of all stripe oppose the
contemporary adult industry... " so I won't
reiterate what she wrote. But the authors'
suggestion, through the quote from David Mura,
that looking at pornography is equivalent to drug
use, is beyond the pale. Mura claims masturbating
to porn is "a way of numbing psychic pain," but
the vast majority of porn viewers experience no
"psychic pain" - simply horniness, which
masturbation quickly relieves.
Mura further writes that "Those in the thrall of
pornography try to eliminate from their
consciousness the world outside pornography,
and this includes everything from their family and
friends to their business deals or last Sunday's
sermon to the political situation in the Middle
East. In engaging in such elimination the viewer...
reduces himself. He becomes stupid."
I wonder how the studio executives at
Paramount or Touchstone would react if the titles
Titanic or Saving Private Ryan or Armageddon
were substituted for the word "pornography" in
the above quote? The purpose of art is to enthrall
the viewer; if it doesn't, the piece is, to that
extent, less successful. That writers for a movie
magazine like Premiere failed to realize this
speaks more to the writers' agenda than
Premiere's dedication to objective reporting.
Further, the writers' attempt to defame porn
and its workers becomes clear with descriptions
such as the one of Jasmin St. Claire as "a very
expensive thoroughbred being led onto the track
under a silk blanket." Or that "the woodmen all
avoid cameras like Mafiosi." One supposes they
could have said, "like Alec Baldwin," who recently
won an anti-paparazzi suit, but that simile
wouldn't have fit the agenda.
Or consider, "The gynecologically explicit
sexuality of Jenna, Jasmin, et al seems more than
anything like a Mad magazine spoof of the
'smoldering' sexuality of [Sharon] Stone and
Madonna and [Pamela] Anderson Lee and so many
other mainstream iconettes." What's laughable
about this is that none of the "mainstream
iconettes" (with the exception of Pam Lee's
inadvertent sortie into porn with husband Tommy)
are explicitly sexual, yet to "deGroot's" and
"Rundlet's" twisted sensibilities, people who can
be seen having sex on camera are somehow
parodies of those who can't!
The writers' problem is made clear in the
paragraph, on page 93, beginning, "For a regular
civilian male, hanging out in a hotel suite with
porn starlets is a tense and emotionally convolved
affair." It is a sorry commentary that those who
cannot adjust to porn stars' open and relaxed
sexuality seem duty-bound to defame it, as if
there were something rational about being
sexually repressed.
Even plainer is the statement in footnote 36
that "The psychology of porn seems always to
have depended on a certain degree of shame,
self-loathing and perception of 'sin.'" It is
apparently inconceivable that actors could appear
in porn movies simply because they are somewhat
exhibitionistic, they like sex, and have managed
to throw off the stifling hang-ups which
all-too-many "normal" citizens learn by osmosis in
American society! And their unfounded
assumption that porn somehow thrives on
unacceptability, when anyone who has cursorily
studied the subject knows that "acceptability" is
exactly what the industry is currently fighting for,
only leads them deeper into the mire of idiotic
statements like "the star that late-'90s porn is
steering by is the Snuff Film." How ludicrous!
Perhaps the writers' problem is made more
clear in the homo-panic statement (on page 104)
that "the urge to look over/down at [Alex
Sanders' and Dave Hardman's] penises is so
overwhelming and the motives behind this urge so
complex as to cause anuresis (which in turn ups
the trauma)."
Much as they talk about "not wanting to go
into it," understanding "complexity" is certainly
not your writers' strong point. I only hope that
they someday can come to the porn industry with
open minds, and leave their "sin" concepts at the
door.
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