How Deep Throat and Plea­sure ask ques­tions about safe­ty on porn sets

What’s shock­ing about Swedish direc­tor and co-writer Nin­ja Thyberg’s Plea­sure isn’t the soft­core, sub­mis­sive porn scenes fea­tur­ing an array of real-life adult per­form­ers. It’s the uneasy feel­ing that not every set will be a safe, pos­i­tive work envi­ron­ment, bring­ing to mind the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the sem­i­nal porn film Deep Throat, released 50 years ago.

Watch­ing Pleasure’s pro­tag­o­nist Bel­la Cher­ry (Sofia Kap­pel) deal­ing with the after­math of an on-set sex­u­al assault, it’s hard to not think about Lin­da Lovelace’s claims about her expe­ri­ence star­ring in Ger­ard Damiano’s Deep Throat. The breezy 1972 film ush­ered in the so-called ​‘porno chic’ era and con­tributed to spark­ing a gen­er­al inter­est in porn, mak­ing it acces­si­ble to a broad­er audi­ence thanks to its ful­ly devel­oped plot, tongue-in-cheek humour, and a char­ac­ter arc for its pro­tag­o­nist. It also car­ries a con­tro­ver­sial lega­cy due to the rape alle­ga­tions made by its star.

In her 1980 mem­oir Ordeal, Lovelace (born Lin­da Susan Bore­man) told a dif­fer­ent, more dis­turb­ing ver­sion of the mak­ing of Deep Throat. She blamed her hus­band Chuck Traynor for forc­ing her into porn and pros­ti­tu­tion and coerc­ing her into per­form­ing enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly on cam­era. After going pub­lic, the actress was brand­ed a patho­log­i­cal liar for shar­ing her truth. Her claims, firm­ly denied by Traynor, were dis­put­ed with­in and out­side the indus­try, despite her agree­ing to take a poly­graph test and nev­er chang­ing her story.

“When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watch­ing me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still show­ing; there was a gun to my head the entire time,” Lovelace, by then an anti-porn cam­paign­er, would say before Con­gress in 1986.

The mixed respons­es that the actress’s case received go to show how hard it is to believe women com­ing for­ward with their his­to­ry of abuse, par­tic­u­lar­ly when their sto­ries don’t fit con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tives. Lovelace’s trou­bling rev­e­la­tions about the film that brought porn to liv­ing rooms and din­ner tables uncov­ered a hard-to-digest sce­nario for that very same, larg­er audi­ence who had turned the film into a dis­course. They might have wit­nessed, and even enjoyed, domes­tic abuse and porn’s misog­y­ny under the guise of glam­our and female empowerment.

There’s lit­tle of either in Thyberg’s rise-to-fame para­ble Plea­sure, told through the eager eyes of 19-year-old aspir­ing porn star Bel­la Cher­ry (actress Sofia Kap­pel has no pri­or con­nec­tion to the indus­try). Mov­ing from Swe­den to catch her big break in the US, she learns that bound­aries have lit­tle place in this line of work and that busi­ness and plea­sure very rarely align, no mat­ter how much she enjoys sex. As view­ers wit­ness Bel­la push­ing past her lim­its, the film lulls them into a false sense of secu­ri­ty as she steps onto a BDSM set helmed by a woman (played by real-life adult film direc­tor and per­former Aiden Starr).

Looked after by a female assis­tant, Bel­la goes through safe words as a ball gag sits in between her lips. Yet she feels com­fort­able and con­fi­dent. It comes as a nice, unex­pect­ed bonus when Starr instructs the male tal­ent star­ring along­side Bel­la to make her orgasm before wrap­ping up, female plea­sure being the ulti­mate goal here.

Short­ly after­ward, how­ev­er, our fears about the treat­ment of women in porn mate­ri­alise in the jar­ring con­trast Thy­berg cre­ates between Starr’s set and a degrad­ing three­some scene Bel­la films with two male actors and a male director.

Her objec­tions that this vio­lent sequence might be a step too far are met with frus­tra­tion by her co-stars and the direc­tor. Tears stream­ing down her face, Bel­la is guilt-tripped into fin­ish­ing film­ing. ​“You’re fuck­ing with every­body else’s mon­ey,” the direc­tor tells her. Lat­er on, a pud­dle of vom­it on the dri­ve home and a few hor­rif­ic flash­backs are the only tan­gi­ble signs of Bella’s off­screen assault.

The jux­ta­po­si­tion of the two sets, if a lit­tle didac­tic, comes after Thyberg’s years-long research on the Amer­i­can adult enter­tain­ment busi­ness. While Plea­sure makes a point of pre­sent­ing the industry’s safe­ty pro­to­cols from ear­ly on – before her very first scene, Bel­la is asked to fill in forms and record a con­sent video – the film also doesn’t shy away from hint­ing that pro­tec­tion on the job might not always be a given.

This real­i­sa­tion becomes appar­ent when Bel­la informs her agent Mike (Jason Tol­er), that she was raped, only to be told not to throw ​“that word” around. More sim­i­lar in nature to The Assis­tant than Promis­ing Young Woman, Thyberg’s movie doesn’t U‑turn into a rape-revenge fan­ta­sy, thus leav­ing the audi­ence to deal with bit­ter real­i­ty and ques­tions of how to ensure safe­ty and com­fort for adult performers.

In recent years, main­stream film and TV sets have been hir­ing inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors to help pre­pare actors for fic­tion­al sex. In 2018, when Plea­sure was filmed, com­pa­nies had only just start­ed to wel­come inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors on set, and Thy­berg has admit­ted to not know­ing any at the time. The film­mak­er and her assis­tant direc­tor Fan­ni Metelius had to dou­ble up as inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors for Kap­pel in her first role, which was a demand­ing one at that.

Chore­o­graph­ing inti­mate scenes has often grant­ed them a nat­u­ral­is­tic, authen­tic, sex­i­er qual­i­ty – BBC and Hulu’s Nor­mal Peo­ple being one of sev­er­al exam­ples – con­test­ing the harm­ful mis­con­cep­tion that dis­cussing con­sent and bound­aries takes the sex­i­ness out of the act.

As this rel­a­tive­ly new role has become a neces­si­ty on main­stream sets, it may be just a mat­ter of time before adult pro­duc­tions require inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tors’ exper­tise to help actors nav­i­gate the inter­sec­tion of ethics and pornog­ra­phy. Some film­mak­ers have already brought these pro­fes­sion­als to their sets, as eth­i­cal porn direc­tor Eri­ka Lust tells LWLies.

“Many per­form­ers who come to our sets for the first time show to be pos­i­tive­ly sur­prised, as they are just not used to work­ing with large crews and to be treat­ed with so much care and respect for their emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal health,” she said. ​“I’m not say­ing that main­stream porn sets are always unhealthy. Many per­form­ers feel okay shoot­ing with­out an inti­ma­cy coor­di­na­tor any­way, as it’s the norm of the porn industry.

“What I’m try­ing to say is that putting this role for­ward is a fur­ther step towards a sig­nif­i­cant, pos­i­tive change with­in the porn indus­try, which is the rea­son why I start­ed my busi­ness almost 20 years ago.”

Decades after Lovelace’s accu­sa­tions, sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tions still send shock­waves through the porn indus­try. Post-#MeToo, female (and male, most­ly in man-on-man scenes) adult per­form­ers shar­ing their har­row­ing expe­ri­ences have been large­ly ignored. Out­side the busi­ness, many have been forced to face the stig­ma against sex work­ers in its most big­ot­ed, aggres­sive form: vic­tim-blam­ing masked as moral righteousness.

Once an anti-porn activist, Thy­berg does not reduce Bella’s sto­ry to a series of tired tropes about adult per­form­ers. Plea­sure nev­er morphs into a cau­tion­ary tale but treats its sub­ject mat­ter with care and hon­esty, not pass­ing judg­ment on the protagonist’s lust for life. By cap­tur­ing the industry’s most mun­dane ele­ments, it also qui­et­ly reit­er­ates how male-dom­i­nat­ed this world is at every level.

In the real-life indus­try, the fem­i­nist porn busi­ness is chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo, advo­cat­ing for more women on set and a more col­lab­o­ra­tive approach, as well as diverse storylines.

“When I talk about the female gaze, I’m talk­ing about our mis­sion to smash the stig­ma that is attached to the female body and to show that female plea­sure mat­ters by cre­at­ing a safe space for women to engage sex­u­al­ly while feel­ing seen and val­ued in their needs, with­out feel­ing any pres­sure,” Lust said. ​“We want to be pio­neers in an indus­try in which ethics have nev­er been seen as a pri­or­i­ty by pro­vid­ing a sex-pos­i­tive space where all indi­vid­u­als feel free and safe to tell their sto­ries and reclaim their right to pleasure.”

Sub­scrip­tion ser­vices like Only­Fans are doing a sim­i­lar job in fos­ter­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on pornog­ra­phy out­side the con­straints of hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures, giv­ing cre­ators from under­rep­re­sent­ed groups a plat­form they may not have in more estab­lished spaces.

Hav­ing more women call­ing the shots – some­thing Thy­berg also seems to sug­gest – could final­ly shake the patri­ar­chal pow­er dynam­ics in place and give female and femme per­form­ers agency, no mat­ter how sub­mis­sive they may play on camera.