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.

The American porn industry is very good about HIV testing, as a result American porn stars have a much lower rate of HIV infection than the general population. Those who do get infected tend to contract it doing bareback gay porn in South America and from people who have been doing South American bareback gay porn.
It is, unfortunately, lax on other STIs. Belladonna, a rather famous porn star/director/producer with enough clout to demand three-day-old HIV tests from her partners instead of the industry-standard 30-day-old, well known for retiring from heterosexual porn to exclusively do hardcore lesbian BDSM test has recently retired from lesbian BDSM to focus on behind-the-camera work due to a herpes scare. It seems that the vast majority of porn stars have genital herpes.

The real obstacle to doing good good historical porn movies is the odd fact that the Screen Actor's Guild does not allow its members to participate in non-simulated sex on camera for money and the fact that all of the major motion-picture unions horrifically abuse Californa's lack of right-to-work laws to impose union shops. No union actor can work on a non-union production and no union-production can hire non-union actors and most of the best (and the worst, for that matter) actors are SAG members. This means that hiring competent extras and casting tertiary characters may be difficult, since the standard venues for casting would be closed.

It also doesn't help that since the Golden Age of Porn, anything resembling acting talent has pretty much fallen out of the industry.

Normal movies with random hardcore sex scenes.. wasn't that in Brave New World?

The man you're reffering to is Mark Wallace, who contracted HIV, then forged his STD tests, infecting several starlets, the most famous being Kendra Jade. There have been a bunch of AIDS scares in the American porn business; for obvious reasons, the industry attempts to deal with them "in house". I believe the most recent study of the issue was "Porn Shutdown", an episode of a series called "The Dark Side Of Porn", which plays occaisionally on basic cable. Other episodes include "Does Snuff Exist?" and "Give Me Your Soul". To my knowledge, it's not available on dvd, but you might be able to catch it on youtube. It was made by a team of Canadian documentarians. For the other side of the "is porn good" debate, go to www.nopornnorthhampton.com. HBO also has a series on the porn industry, past and present. For sexuality in general, the History Channel has a very interesting show, the aptly named "History Of Sex". Past episodes have dealt with the Middle Ages, India (past and present), China (likewise), World War 2, and early twentieth century America, to name but a few. Although not accurate in historical terms, there have been a number of "history theme" flicks in recent years. The most notable include Pirates, by Digital Playground and Adam & Eve (starring Carmen Luvana, with a soon to be released sequel), and the "Gladiator" trilogy, by Private (starring Rita Faltoyano).

Some of those titles sound really biased. "Give Me Your Soul"? Is the porn director Shang Tsung?

Man, everyone really rides porn hard.

Porn has a bad reputation because it is harmless and profitable at best and exploitive at worst. Adult entertainment's illicit reputation is a self-perpetuating problem for the industry. Being a pornstar or stripper comes with a lot of negative connotations in our society, which means you generally attract three kinds of people to the industry: those who are mature and confident enough to actually handle the baggage, those who are emotionally/financially vulnerable enough not to care and those who are naive and only think they can handle the pressure. So even a porn producer with the best of intentions is bound to be involved in some repentant pornstar's sob story at some point or another. It's a classic catch-22; you can't fix porn's reputation until everyone involved is emotionally balanced and happy yet porn's reputation also contributes to the unhappiness of those who enter the industry. Or else, of course, you can just cut the bullshit and change everyone's outlook on sexuality in general, but good luck with that one.

THis really doesn't have anything to do with gaming in any sort of way.