Pussy power

>> The sexual censorship saga of Bad Girl

by GENEVEIVE PAIEMENT

By now, the subject of women making porn has some of us stifling yawns and changing the subject. Bo-ring. Porn is porn, right? Well, no. Montreal director Marielle Nitoslawska's documentary Bad Girl manages to reopen this can of worms, bringing up new questions and covering fresh ground.

Bad Girl, in its curt 58 minutes, globetrots from Quebec to California, from Denmark to Cannes and back again. Nitoslawska interviews sexologists, anthropologists, feminist philosophers and porn stars about the evolution of female involvement in porn. The interviews are spliced with excerpts of sex scenes illustrating certain points. From the early anti-porn feminists, to pro-porn, sex-activist feminists like Annie Sprinkle, with nods to French envelope-pushers like Catherine Breillat and the makers of Baise-Moi, they all pretty much say the same thing--two words: pussy power. It's about neutralizing the negative taboos associated with female sexuality.

Alas, much like the worlds of politics and big business, only a small percentage of women have stepped into the highest positions of power in the industry. It seems that the proverbial glass ceiling still hovers over the porn world, where females largely remain performers and the directors, producers and CEOs are still mostly male.

Ironically (and some would argue, typically) this film, which talks so much about women's repressed sexuality, was itself censored. Co-producers Télé-Québec were apparently privy to every step in the editing process, but refused to air it at the very last minute, citing too much sexy content for the small screen. But how can a film that talks about women making porn not show the porn women make?

An anecdote told by French feminist Benoîte Groult illustrates the age-old discomfort surrounding honest representations of female sexuality (i.e. without goals of male titillation): Simone de Beauvoir, covering the Algerian war for Le Monde, told of atrocities committed by French soldiers. Some put a bottle in a girl's vagina. The editors told de Beauvoir that the word "vagina" simply could not be printed. What did they expect her to replace it with, she asked? "Stomach," they said.

Of course, the explicit sexual content of Bad Girl is not family viewing. But it certainly reveals, intelligently and engagingly, how far we've come and how far we've got to go.

Bad Girl opens Friday, Sept. 21 at Ex-Centris