The Pornographic Liberation of Sasha Grey

So I finally saw Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience this weekend. Set in late 2008, as the gilded age gives way to financial collapse, it is story of an escort (played by porn star Sasha Grey) trying to take her business to the next level, and finding, instead, that she is not as in control of her life as she thinks. The film is shot in high-def video; this, in addition to Grey's affectless performance has the effect of making everything seem distanced. One presumes this is Soderbergh's point: The Girlfriend Experience is a film about the deeply transactional nature of our lives, about how commodified even intimacy has become in the 21st Century.

This critique is complicated by Soderbergh's use of Sasha Grey—and Grey's own choice to make the film. Some critics have lambasted her acting for its lack of versatility. But the little fillip of "authenticity" adds another level of canniness to the movie—even as, ironically, it also reads like a cynical marketing ploy—a clever way of capitalizing on the audience's curiosity about the "reigning princess" of adult films, as Grey has been called. Because Grey isn't just any porn star. She is a hard-core porn actress known for her willingness to do extreme scenes. She sees her extremity as helping to liberate female sexuality, and she told Rolling Stone early this year that she is a "pervert." She takes an intellectual approach to her work. She often talks about the fact that as she began to explore her sexuality with her boyfriend, trying out S&M, she made a rule: Anything he did to her she got to do to him. Transactional equality, if you will. Her MySpace page says she likes Yeats, Baudrillard, and Nietzsche. Early on in her porn career, she wrote a mission statement: "Most of the XXX I see is boring, and does not arouse me physically or visually. I am determined and ready to be a commodity that fulfills everyone's fantasies." Making a Soderbergh film that intellectualizes questions of transaction is just the natural next step in Grey's extremely thought-through career.

Paradoxically, of course, the Soderbergh film ultimately depicts its confident escort star getting her come-uppance. By the end, it turns out she's not so in control after all. (This might seem to contradict Grey's message, but presumably that doesn't bother her much, given the quote she brandishes at the top of her MySpace page: "Be just, and if you can't be just, be arbirtrary.") Grey interests me, because she is trying to challenge old paradigms, but at the same time, her persona is clearly a clever marketing tactic. I wonder what my fellow XXFactor writers (and readers) thought of the film and of Grey. Can Sasha Grey really liberate herself—and other women—through porn? (You can reach me at morourkexx@gmail.com.)

Photograph of Sasha Grey by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival. 

 

Tags: female sexuality, porn, sasha grey, steven soderbergh

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Meghan O'Rourke is a founding editor of Double X and the author of Halflife, a book of poems.

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By: Davidsmith7 | Fri, 09/11/2009 - 17:19

I think that like so very many things the answer is more complex than you can get out of a simple binary choice.
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Sasha Grey's self-imposed pervert status isn't going to change things on its own. It will be interpreted and filtered however individuals see fit. Some will see it as one step towards equality, allowing both women and men to engage in sexual deviance and promiscuity regardless of if they're 18 year old guys or 40+ women (which seems to be an undercurrent of the 'cougar' idea- older women get the same leeway as the young guys they supposedly prey upon). Others will see it as objectifying women and setting things back, doing nothing more than telling men that women are all like this and it just takes the right arguments to get them to go along with it.

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By: sstauf | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 09:32

I have to say that I have no understanding of the idea that porn will help to liberate women. In fact I see it as being quite the opposite. I don't know why we want to pretend that porn is for anything but stereotyping women and classifying them as the age-old "sex object."
Aren't we better than that? I don't see how stooping to that level of degradation and humiliation accomplishes anything but reinforcing the idea of women as objects for men. They aren't looking at this porn star and thinking "wow, women are really smart;" they're thinking "wow, I'd tap that".
I can't imagine any reason for this to help with equalizing women. It's contradictory to what Grey says she wants to do. Is it possible that she's really just doing it because she's hot and makes a bunch of money doing it?
Maybe the point is that women are more sexually promiscuous. Is that really what we want? I suppose that's what many think they want, that they want to be able to have sex with random guys and just treat it like it's a game. The problem with this reasoning is that women aren't built like that. We're better than that because we have strong emotions and self-respect. It's not that we're not as exalted as those brilliant men who follow their penis instead of their brain or heart... why would we want to be like them?
I also want to point out that any woman I have ever known who does lead that kind of life is constantly afraid that no one will ever truly love or know her (because we crave love), and most often feels cheep and depressed. It's a cycle that I can't understand promoting.
I don't think that porn will help to liberate any one. If anything, you're taking us back to being just sex objects. It doesn't matter how smart a porn star you are; no one cares. That's not who your audience is.

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By: amberrrr | Thu, 06/11/2009 - 00:40

Hypothetically, I believe a porn star is capable of liberating women. Does Sasha Grey? If so, I don't understand how! She seems similar in attitude to other female porn stars and playboy bunnies. Are we making the claim that porn in general liberates women? Perhaps because it breaks the age-old stereotype that women are simply modest, sexless creatures?

I think Suicide Girls might have some sort of positive effect for the female gender (at least amongst porn in general) because the girls are encouraged to express opinions and interests, the pictures seem more artistic instead of quite so gratuitous, and the girls seem unique. It seems less degrading and dehumanizing.

To be honest I am not that familiar with porn in general, so maybe that's why I'm missing the point. I read that Rolling Stone article though and wasn't impressed with Ms. Gray in particular just because she has Nietzsche on her bookshelf. In interviews, she doesn't seem to have a lot of insight, not that it matters, I just don't understand the hype surrounding her.

I mean I guess the point is that (shockingly!) Sasha Gray is relatively intellectual, instead of just a mindless sex kitten, but I don't get how that is advancing or liberating femininity exactly.

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By: guyreadingXX | Wed, 06/10/2009 - 16:56

Does this remind anyone else of Radical Chic? Leonard Bernstein inviting the Black Panthers to his cocktail party? Taken on their own, I’m a big fan of both Sasha Grey and Steven Soderbergh, although I wouldn’t always admit to the latter. But their collaboration makes me a little uncomfortable. Grey might be cool and clever and entrepreneurial, but if you’ve watched any of her work you know that the world she inhabits must often be insane and ugly and dangerous. For Soderbergh to bring a piece of that counterculture into the mainstream might seem daring at first, but ultimately he’s just staging a train wreck. It reminds me of Norman Mailer, always trying to upset the squares. Nice frisson, but it doesn’t always end well.