Population health of porn stars..., ...and historical porn movies! Options

[Wounded Ronin]

On the radio this morning I heard a woman who worked for some institute that makes public health interventions relating to porn stars. I think that they screen them for various STIs and try to get a handle on the epidemiology of various diseases within the international population of porn stars.

Apparently a lot of porn stars are in denial about their level of risk and disease status which is certainly a typical reaction. Apparently there used to be some HIV infected porn star who kept going around being in porn and when his specific case was investigated it seemed like he kept getting HIV tests at different clinics under anonymous names which is highly suggestive of denial behavior.

I have to say that I feel pretty sympathetic to porn stars. They act as a great safety valve on the sexuality-repressing tendencies of society. Young people don't have to grit their teeth and sit through an inspid lecture about sexuality from their parents...they can just go on the internet and watch the pros at work, thus skipping to the point. I mean, who wants to hear about bukkake from their grandma? So much less SAN loss to just watch it. Definitely, it's good that at least someone is trying to look after porn stars in a systematic manner.

It made me kind of sad to think that lots of porn stars don't really take care of their health, though, and certainly there's a certain amount of social stigma associated with being a porn star. As unfair as it may be, for example, it could be tough for a former porn star to be able to get a job as a teacher, even though I don't see logically why a former porn star would necessarily be a bad teacher.

So it got me thinking. What could make porn stars less stigmatized by society? How could they be taken more seriously as the hardworking professionals that they are? How can we defeat the Puritain bias that someone making pennies working at McDonalds is somehow producing something more socially useful than porn?

The answer, of course, is an impeccibly-researched pornographic historical movie. The legitimacy would come from a high quality of historical research.

A lot of movies from the US which would be historical are flaming train wrecks of pain. Every time someone makes a movie of a Henry James novel, for example, it's a bunch of boring actors in expensive historical costumes who then proceed to act in a very un-historical manner with really overplayed sexuality so as to appeal to brainless ahistorical moviegoers.

Let me put it this way. A film detailing a meticulous historical presentation of the Titanic would be to Riddle of Steel as "Titanic" is to Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. I think that here on DSF where people tend to be interested in the historical basis of what they're playing in games (such as real firearms use versus SR firearms use, or how to really beat someone down with your greatweapon while claiming that Bastard Swords don't exist) people will appreciate what I'm trying to say.

So why not make a film that is very meticulously historical BUT also has porn? So, for example, I could make a film dealing with the first world war. The first scene would be a rural English economically disadvantaged person, played by a porn star, having conservative and bland sex with his local wife, also played by a porn star. Next, world war 1 breaks out and the REEDP enlists in full good faith believing in his government and crap like that. The bulk of the film deals with the horror of World War I, and the final part of the film deals with post traumatic stress disorder and how even survivors of the war might have come backmentally wounded. So at the end of the film the REEDP is having sex with his wife again, but he's either impotent, or else suddenly really violent. Or, like, after having sex where everything seems really positive the REEDP is startled awake by someone and then as a reflex punches that person's teeth out, showing the degree of social maladjustment due to exposure to extreme psychological stress and trauma. Something like that.

Or perhaps make a French-style slice of life film dealing with Victorian society. Have everyone behaving all prim and proper but all of a sudden there's covert gay sex with Oscar Wilde.

I suppose it would also be possible to just craft a porn film with high production values as well, which might be more accessible. Like, someone could make a very nice-looking Cthulu horror film, complete with postwar university professors losing their sanity, and the spooky cultists in their rituals could be explicitly doing a number of sex acts.