Patently Offensive: Porn Under Siege

A recent winner of both a CINE Golden Eagle award and a Silver Apple in the National Educational Film and Video Festival, producer-writer-co-director Harriet Koskoff's Patently Offensive is a thought-provoking and disturbing look at "pornography." Eight years in the making, the film eschews the simple point-counterpoint approach, in which religious enthusiasts go head-to-head with civil liberties lawyers. In fact, although the issue at hand is often considered an emotional one, the interviewees in Patently Offensive speak in earnest, even-tempered voices throughout--whether it's the head of a Christian organization discussing his right to boycott or a feminist arguing that the protection of pornography under First Amendment rights ensures the continuation of the mindset that sees women as objects rather than equal human beings. With an estimated 20,000 adult bookstores across the country, adult video rentals topping 400 million a year, and an S & M-themed picture book (Madonna's Sex) hitting the No. 1 position on the New York Times bestseller lists, it's safe to say that "pornography" (which, in itself, eludes definition) is an ingrained facet of the social landscape. Koskoff's film doesn't judge, it inquires; and during that inquiry some interesting things turn up: one psychologist who counsels sex offenders says that he's amazed at how many of his clients are not interested in pornography; activists against porn will target Playboy at a local 7-11, but ignore the "true crime" magazines which sensationalize the subject of sexual violence towards women; although estimates vary, some say that organized crime rakes an approximate 4 billion per year from their interests in the porn industry. Interviews with a wide range of individuals, including representatives from the ACLU, National Christian Association, NOW, and Women Against Pornography, in addition to clinical psychologists, anthropologists, magazine publishers and editors, and directors and stars in the porn industry, offer a multitude of voices and viewpoints to a thorny and complicated issue. Is pornography protected under the First Amendment? Is there a link between pornography and sexual crime? Is there a difference between pornography and erotica? Patently Offensive does not offer definitive answers to these questions (it's doubtful that anyone can); what it does do, however, is take pornography out of the seedy little downtown shop and place it in the social mainstream--where, indeed, it has been increasingly for the past two decades. Patently Offensive harbors no illusions, nor pounds any drum. It convinces us that pornography is both widespread and here to stay, and it challenges us to think about that. Highly recommended. (Available from: Filmmaker's Library, 124 East 40th St., New York, NY 10016; (212) 808-4980.)