Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Porn in the USA

1993; Duke University Press; Issue: 37 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/466257

1527-1951

Candida Royalle,

Cinema and Media Studies

There were three reasons why I started Femme Productions. After a few years of working as an actress in adult films, I began to write for men's magazines and review adult movies. That was when I started looking closely at the films and was horrified to see how sexist they were. So I began to think about making porn movies that were aimed at women, and which could share together. I felt that adult entertainment could be very valid and life-enriching, but it wasn't being done with that in mind. Unlike the antiporn movement, I don't think porn causes violence. But the films were very exploitive of women and of sexuality in general. I didn't think that they were offering anything constructive about our sexuality. I also realized that women were beginning to watch porn, and I knew that there was nothing out there for them to watch. So I began Femme with three aims in mind. I wanted to show that it was possible to produce explicit porn that had integrity, I wanted to show that porn could be nonsexist, and I wanted to show that porn could be life-enriching. I grew up Catholic, fed on the usual menu of guilt and shame. I was a very passionate young woman with urges and feelings that I was not supposed to have. I was almost raped when I was thirteen, and although I managed to get away, my culture made me feel that I must have been asking for it: I was reaching puberty, I was becoming sexual, I was making men do these things to me. It's a very tough culture for women. So I wanted to make films that made people feel good about their sexuality and about who they are as sexual beings. I wanted to make films that say we all have a right to pleasure, and that women, especially, have a right to our own pleasure. In the beginning, the men in the business told me that there is no couples market, and that women don't watch porn. Honey, they said, you won't make a dollar. They'd say: really nice, honey. That's a really nice idea. (She's nuts. She'll be gone in a year.) But I knew that a new market had opened up that no one was addressing. I knew that, financially, it could be a very good business venture and a way to utilize the name I had created which was following me around now whether I liked it or not. When I started Femme, I was already branded as an evil woman for working in porn, so I felt that I had nothing to lose. I thought Candida Royaile