The Convergence of Sex and Violence

 First published January 24, 2013

Gun violence in movies and media is a hot topic. Just ask Robert Redford, who devoted part of his opening address at the current Sundance Festival to this issue. In his address, Redford frames the question in terms of social responsibility.

Questions concerning sex, specifically sex and public health, are also hot. Just ask the lawyers for a collection of major porn companies in Los Angeles County. They are filing suit based on the legal argument that the mandated use of condoms in adult movies is a violation of the First Amendment. Which means that we are about to witness a fascinating exercise in linguist convergence as the debate on these issues take a wild flip flop from their traditional focus.

Let’s start with sex. During the past decade, the porn industry has taken many major hits. All the free online amateur material has drastically reduced the “professional” profit margin. It use to be easy to make a quick, if dirty buck. Now, the porn industry finds itself trying to upgrade production quality and even resorting to “scripts” and “plot lines” in hope of luring an audience that has way too many options for cheap thrills.

Then there have been some major health problems. Last year, there was a syphilis outbreak in the industry that resulted in a brief production shut down. There has also been recurring HIV concerns. The problem of STDs is taken seriously enough in the porn business that they have their own medical agency (the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation). Testing for STDs is done on a regular and systematic basis. The industry says that they’ve got the issue covered, so their performers don’t need to be “covered.”

But some studies indicate otherwise, such as a recent report from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. I suspect what these studies are discovering is that the industry approach is reactive, not proactive. They can discover and deal with a performer who has come down with an STD, but they cannot truly prevent it. Which is why the county of Los Angeles has approved a measure forcing porn “actors” to use condoms. It is viewed as a public health issue.

Except that the industry is appealing on the grounds that it is an infringement of their Right to Free Expression as guaranteed in the First Amendment. After all, when the Founding Fathers were dripping their quills and drafting the Constitution, they were referring to both their big and little brains. The real problem is that the legally enforced use of condoms takes away the “money shot,” which is a major commercial staple of the industry. It is about business, not opinions. But the porn industry is working very hard at turning a health issue into a Constitutional fight. Gun violence in the movies is already protected by the First Amendment, more or less. Ironically, the industry largely does not press on this First Amendment protection. Instead, they prefer insisting that violence in media does not influence public behavior and even if it did, it only reflects the violence in the society.

This has always been a slippery argument. Movies do not operate in a vacuum (though some films are empty headed enough to seem like they do). Likewise, since the industry has already admitted that they “reflect” the society, it does not take much to ponder the larger effect of some type of social and behavior exchange between the society and the reflected image. In other words, a pattern of stimulus, response, reward, and reinforcement. Which is why the debate on gun violence in media is moving away from the First Amendment and heading toward the mental health zone. In some recent interviews, Quentin Tarantino has been directly asked this question. So far, his less than brilliant responses have convinced almost everybody (including Fox News for crying out loud) that there may be a point to the mental health argument.

So the question of violence in movies is becoming a public health issue, while the use of condoms in porn is a free speech concern. The first question has been a ticking time bomb in the movie business for a long while; and the industry is finally going to have to seriously deal with it. As for the other, well I guess we now know which brain does the talking in certain businesses.

How dare the citizens of Los Angeles try to gag the gabby little darlings.