Are the Oscars Finally Ready to Embrace Porn?

It is no secret that the Oscars are decided upon by a coastal cabal of predominantly old white men who dictate their emails. That’s why male vets, attractive young women, and sentimentalist fare like Green Book keep taking home the gold. The Academy that votes on the Oscars is also comprised of people in Hollywood who are total suckers for self-worship. In the last decade alone, three films celebrating Tinseltown have won Best Picture—including Argo, wherein an aging Hollywood producer joins forces with the CIA to rescue diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis.

One industry that Hollywood has always viewed with disdain, however, is porn.

Yes, despite being the epicenter of the #MeToo movement, Hollywood has long seen the adult film industry as the height of debauchery. They’ve been exiled to the San Fernando Valley, their wildly popular stars almost never cross over into the mainstream, they aren’t invited to parties, and whenever a Hollywood celebrity romances a porn star, they’re hidden from sight. Heck, the first-ever porn billboard in the heart of Hollywood was unveiled just last month.

Only Simon Rex Could Play a Washed-Up Porn Star and Maybe Win an Oscar

To add insult to injury, the porn world is often depicted on film as a hedonistic hellscape that young women must be rescued from, e.g. Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, the Nicolas Cage vehicle 8MM, or the romantic comedy The Girl Next Door. And you can forget about the Oscars. Even Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 masterpiece Boogie Nights, capturing porn’s Golden Age in the ’70s (and subsequent implosion), only mustered three Oscar nominations, winning none.

It will be interesting, then, to see how the Academy handles a trio of films up for awards consideration this year—or two, since they’ve already managed to snub Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, the Romanian entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars that failed to so much as make the 15-movie shortlist for the category. And it’s a damn shame because Jude’s film, about a history teacher who’s subjected to a Salem-esque trial by her students’ parents after a sex tape with her husband is posted online, is a scathing satire of sexism, xenophobia, nationalism, and the myriad ways the COVID-19 pandemic has driven people mad—not to mention boasts the most bonkers ending of any film this year, Wonder Woman costume and colossal dildo included.

More promising is Ninja Thyberg’s debut feature Pleasure, a behind-the-scenes look at the adult world that centers Linnea (Sofia Kappel), a 20-year-old who arrives in L.A. from Sweden with designs on porn stardom. Under the stage name Bella Cherry, she navigates the highs and lows of the sex industry, from supportive colleagues to boundary-crossing. Pleasure was made in collaboration with central figures in adult films and provides maybe the first honest depiction of life as a rising female porn star.

“We are still in a culture that has a hard time respecting female sex workers enough to make them protagonists. Usually sex workers are the victims and get killed,” Thyberg told me. “To take them seriously enough to make them the protagonist of the story you need to respect them, and that’s still too hard for a lot of people.”

Though it debuted to raves at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Thyberg’s film has since struggled to see the light of day. One week after its Sundance premiere, it was acquired by A24 in a bidding war—only to see the much-heralded indie studio drop it in October over plans to censor much of its sexual content via an R-rated theatrical edit. Neon then picked it up, planning to release the film sometime in 2022. Even so, Pleasure managed to scare up a pair of nods at the upcoming Indie Spirit Awards, including Best Director (Thyberg) and Best Supporting Actress (Revika Reustle).

Hopefully the Academy will pay close attention to Red Rocket, the latest from filmmaker Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project), who’s dedicated his career to both removing the stigma surrounding sex work and casting his lens on America’s hidden poor—those scraping by on the margins that Hollywood fails to acknowledge. The film was named one of the 10 best movies of the year by the National Board of Review and has earned star Simon Rex serious Best Actor consideration for his dynamic portrayal of Mikey Saber, a washed-up porn star turned hustler who returns to his Texas hometown, sorta tries to patch things up with his estranged wife/former scene partner, and begins dating a local teenager who works at the donut shop.

Rex, himself a Hollywood outcast of sorts who’s clawed his way back to prominence, was named Best Actor by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and earned nominations in the category from the Gotham Awards and the Indie Spirits.

It would be unfair, of course, to place the blame entirely on the shoulders of the Academy for consistently snubbing films exploring porn. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a shadowy organization that determines film ratings, and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) work in tandem to punish any films with explicit sexual content—and have shown particular distaste for scenes showing gay sex or female pleasure—by slapping them with an NC-17 rating, thereby banishing them from the major theater chains. (Violence they’re mostly OK with, though.)

So, will Hollywood ever get off its high horse and embrace cinematic depictions of porn? Or better yet, allow more crossover between the industries? After all, it’s not like Hollywood treats their young female talent any better than the adult world. When I asked former porn star Sasha Grey, who’s appeared in a number of mainstream movies, as well as the HBO series Entourage, whether she was treated worse in Hollywood or adult, she said, “Hollywood. Can’t lie. I had far worse experiences in terms of sexual harassment there than I ever did in the adult industry.”

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