American Porn

Here's the PR blurb: "Frontline investigates the $10 billion pornography business. Easier to order at home than a pizza, bigger than rock music, pornography is arguably the most profitable business in cyberspace. AT&T is in the business. Yahoo! and AOL profit from it. Westin and Marriott make far more money from porn than they do selling alcohol and snacks in their mini-bars." And, unlike some back of the box flak, American Porn covers what it claims to (while uncovering nubile porn starlets, seen here with those ubiquitous thin black bars covering what the British so quaintly refer to as the "naughty bits"--though whole derrieres parade by uncensored). Interviewees Larry Flynt (of Hustler fame), Internet sex site superstar Danni Ashe (of Danni's Hard Drive fame, who calls herself a "geek with big breasts"), and attorney Bruce Taylor (who recalls porn's shift to semi-respectability during the Meese Commission '80s as a time when "blood, goats and kids" were taken off the shelves), among others, address the central question facing pornography regulation in the 21st century, namely: in a wired world, who can define what offends a community's standards (the old legal yardstick)? While the first half of Michael Kirk's walk on the wild side looks at what Flynt sums up as "plain old vanilla sex," with a visit to major porn video studios and a mapping of corporate family trees depicting how General Motors and the like are part of the business, the second half looks at some of the more disturbing content found on the 200,000-plus porn sites on the Internet, where the "fetish" catch-all category is the fastest growing segment of the market. Whether its Chloe Gets Pounded on the Mariott's in-room movies menu or the "fisting" scenes of Tampa Tushie Fest, the boundaries of the permissible continue to expand, while old timers like Flynt fear that the (legislative) day of reckoning is close at hand under the current administration. While sexual imagery and graphic language make this unsuitable for school use, public and academic libraries will surely want to consider. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)