Miguel E. sent us a link to a story about Natural High, a Japanese company that reportedly makes “extreme” pornography. The producer, Sakkun, felt bad that many children in Africa live in poverty and so he sent a porn star to Kenya to have sex with African men (on film, of course). The company gave a Kenyan aid organization one million yen (around $10, 800 U.S.) and 1,000 more (currently about $10.77 U.S.) is donated for every DVD sold (story here). Images and discussion after the jump:
These first two photos are part of a promotional photo shoot in which the porn star poses with recipients of aid:
Natural High has, in fact, produced a series of “charity porn” videos. In these videos, female porn stars have sex with men and a portion of the profit goes directly to their communities (as I understand it). The first image below is a promotional photo and the others are DVD jackets:
Some scattered thoughts:
1. If this was a U.S. production company, I would say that this represented a fetishization of the modernity/tradition binary (like the fashion shoots we’ve highlighted–see here and here–but explicitly and literally sexualized) and that the videos might function as a sort of sex tourism.
2. Gail Dines writes about interracial porn produced in the West. She argues that the genre of porn in which white women have sex with black men functions to denigrate both white women and black men. If the content of the videos is any indication, the viewers of the pornography, who she argues are primarily white men, get off on watching white women being degraded by having sex with a black man. Thus the genre is both racist and sexist.
3. The project also reminds me, more directly, of this Icelandic cartoon that caricatures Barack Obama as a primitive cannibal cooking up a sexualized Hillary Clinton.
But I don’t know if any of this applies in the Japanese context. Any thoughts?
The project also raises ethical questions.
First, the news story doesn’t discuss payment. I assume the men are paid. This raises serious questions. How much choice can these individuals really exercise if, in fact, they are as impoverished as the producer claims? This reminds me of those campaigns to sterilize women on welfare or drug-using women by offering them a sum of money and paying for their operation. Is this consent or coercion?
Second, to what extent do you think these individuals would understand what they were getting into when a Japanese porn company came along offering money in exchange for engaging in sex on film? I should be careful not to assume that such populations are ignorant about the “modern” world, but it’s possible that they are rather unfamiliar with the pornography industry. That said, another question is to what extent this is all staged.
Finally, I wonder how the women in these communities feel about this project. Certainly some women wives and girlfriends of the men in the video are perfectly fine with it, and happy to get some money. But I would assume that at least some are not thrilled that their husbands or boyfriends are having sex with this other woman who is in town to make a video. To what degree do the producers worry about how the women who are connected in some way to these men feel about their participation? Related to that, to whom are the payments to the community made? Do women have a role in deciding how it is spent, or is the money distributed to the men who were in the video, in which case it might or might not be spent in ways that improve women’s lives (as many aid agencies have discovered over the years)?
I hesitate to make conclusive comments about what this video series illustrates because I am unfamiliar with Japanese culture. If you have some familiarity with Japan, I’d be really interested in your thoughts.
UPDATE: In our comments thread, Andrew writes that he rented one of this films and that the sex occurs between Japanese porn stars, not the local men. I will admit, I did not verify this story personally, so I’m blogging blind. Has anyone else actually seen these videos?
20 Comments
Given the homogenization of Japan, & the use of the word “extreme” pornography, I’m going to guess that this is a MESS.
As a Japanese female having engaged in long-term anthropological fieldwork in African rural areas I suggest the OP might consider a much wider audience and context in which the products might be consumed than as suggested in 1. or 2.
(I think you could watch samples at the official site)
@mordicai
How is ‘the homogenization of Japan’ a given and what do you mean by MESS?
it’s interesting in terms of the standard epithet on japanese domestic tourism, which holds that it involves “pray, pay and play” (i think that’s the right order; it originates from a paper published in the early 80s?). part of that idea was that domestic tourists use the device of pilgrimage to validate a pleasure trip - pleasure encompassing everything from sightseeing on up. given that domestic tourism in japan is often about experiencing “traditional” japan as something bordering on the foreign for its past-ness, i think the idea can be extended to this experience of foreign tourism, too. here the charity is the validation, and “pleasure” becomes a euphemistic term, but i think there’s still something which resonates with that idea of validating your presence, and of taking on a role [pilgrim, native] in order to get the proper experience, especially judging by how the women on these dvd jackets are largely shown dressed in some approximation of local clothing. well - appearing to be taking on a role, that is, since our tourist is an actress.
i’m not so sure that dines’s degradation argument holds water for the japanese case, though. there’s certainly racism here, in the sense of seeing other races as capital-o-Others, but it doesn’t come with the same baggage as it does in the west - no history of white panic over the sexually potent and dangerous black man, for instance. it’s still both racist and sexist, but in a different way.
I do think you are right to hesitate before assuming people didn’t understand, couldn’t all be in favour of it and don’t think the money justifies it. It’s the imposition of a set of values - about sex, money, ethics - that wrecks most commenting on the sex industry. The key is to separate our own feelings about sex. I write about these issues at Border Thinking http://www.nodo50.org/Laura_Agustin
Best, Laura
How much choice can these individuals really exercise if, in fact, they are as impoverished as the producer claims? This reminds me of those campaigns to sterilize women on welfare or drug-using women by offering them a sum of money and paying for their operation. Is this consent or coercion?
Does being in circumstances that “force one’s hand” really constitute coercion in itself? If so, than everyone is in a constant state of coercion by nature itself, and I don’t think this is a particularly useful means of analysis, as it would make so many things “coercion” that the word would lose all meaning. Since this porn company is not responsible for their impoverishment, I don’t think this is coercion in any meaningful sense.
“How much choice can these individuals really exercise if, in fact, they are as impoverished as the producer claims? This reminds me of those campaigns to sterilize women on welfare or drug-using women by offering them a sum of money and paying for their operation. Is this consent or coercion?”
“Does being in circumstances that ‘force one’s hand’ really constitute coercion in itself? If so, than everyone is in a constant state of coercion by nature itself, and I don’t think this is a particularly useful means of analysis, as it would make so many things “coercion” that the word would lose all meaning. Since this porn company is not responsible for their impoverishment, I don’t think this is coercion in any meaningful sense.”
Precisely. Free will v determinism is moot here.
This post reminds me of a comedian that noticed that if it costs just a dollar a day to keep someone alive and it’s a dollar a minute for phone sex. All that really needs to be done is to get the starving to operate phone sex lines.
Also, what effect will sleeping with a porn star have on the male participants view of women in their own community? Will they want to recreate the events with them and will they feel obliged to sexualise themselves in the image of the porn star.
“If sleeping with a porn star is coercion… sign me up!” /most guys in the world.
I wonder if the porn star was allowed to require her “recipients of aid” to wear condoms when they had sex with her? What about STD testing? Without more information I can’t say for sure, but the mere thought of requiring the porn star to engage in unprotected sex with high-risk men for the titillation of men watching the video later in the safety of their own home is another way to see this as exploitation of, and cruelty to, women. How objectified is it when a porn star’s health/body is seen as disposable for the sake of amusing/arousing her um, “fans”?
@nm–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_issues_in_Japan
The racial homogenization of Japan (only about 1.6% of people there aren’t ethnically Japanese) is a reality. & a MESS? I’m probably not the go-to guy to lay out examples of the portrayal of race in Japan, but given my understanding, things like blackface etc are commonplace & not even considered as something to condemn.
@ mordicai,
thanks for the reply. Please beware that in Japan also, race, ethnicity and nationality are overlapping but different concepts, and the simple assumption of a homogeneous Japan is repressive enough to affect the statistics.
But yeah, the pornmaker does use blatantly evolutionist-racist copies (earliest men, DNA, etc…) to sell their products.
I agree, though, with the OP about avoiding hasty conclusions. There are so many points I feel are worth considering that do not appear in the post or the comments. I wish I had more time to write.
This comment is in response to the above mentioned Gail Dines thesis. Mrs. Dines claims that in interracial porn, specifically black man /white woman that the white woman is abused. I agree with her that the porn produced by white males for white males I see the rape scenario played out. But in the porn that black men produce for a black audience, the women are treated well, not like queens because after all this is porn. I have notice, and I stand strongly behind this statement that women of color are treated ten times worse then white women in porn. As far black women go, there is a trend of white porn where the men where racists garb, KKK robes, and verbally and physically abuse the women. The rhetoric on these sites call these women whores, welfare queens, and loud obnoxious women that they know how to shut up, using their penis as their weapon. Furthermore, asian and latin women will supposedly do anything for a green card. I saw a film in which a latina was called all kind of names because she said that she had never dated a white man, they then brutally had sex with her to punish her for her racism. I think its absolutely imperative to talk about the experiences of women of color when you talk about interracial porn. Its not just white women being exploited here.
First, the news story doesn’t discuss payment. I assume the men are paid. This raises serious questions. How much choice can these individuals really exercise if, in fact, they are as impoverished as the producer claims?
Yes, yes, by all means. First and foremost, “What about the menz?”
This has nothing to do with the modernity/tradition binary. And this was not really produced to feed an appetite for racial or even female degradation. (It thus has little in common with Euro-American pornography), It should instead be viewed with the tools of economic anthropology: this is about the gift relationship.
Human inequality is maintained over time because wealthy women deny sexual and reproductive access to the poor. Racism is nothing more than a kind of restricted marriage market.
Wealthy men can give sexual fluids to poor women, but poor men cannot return the favor to wealthy women. This creates resentment among poor men, and eventually violence against women, and usually poor women are easier targets. Japanese women realize this. Euro-American women repress this fact.
That anyone would watch this movie for sexual stimulation is not important. Almost anything can be be sexually stimulating, charity need not be involved for those men who masturbate. Masturbation is a frenetic activity, without much meaning.
This kind of pornography is therefore more significant for female viewers than male viewers. Female Japanese DO watch pornography, you know, more than Euro-American women do. That some Japanese women are having sex with the poor would be a relief for many of the privileged female viewers. It reduces the overall injustice in society, lessens the likelihood of retaliation. “At least it is not I who am doing it. Let someone else service the poor.” The feeling of superiority towards the women who have the difficult task of servicing the poor, the mixed feeling of superiority and relief, made this project happen.
I went to the store and rented one of these movies. The actress don’t have sex with the locals. They have sex with japanese actors.
Andrew,
No kidding! Check my update.
(don’t click the link if you are at work…)
a scene from that movie http://contexts.org/socimages/files/2008/12/hadakanotairiku_02_00.jpg
can be found here : http://www.efukt.com/1784_Sex_With_An_African_Native.html
no idea if it is fake or not
Very Excellant .
I want to photograph my self in a homo sexual-pornographia .
Write me a email to send you pictures .
I suggest we have to be very careful in commenting about this apparently new phenomenon in the absence of a lot more information about it. In general, however, I am wary of any form of criticism of the sex industry because such criticisms are far too often based upon left-wing feminist and christian anti-sex and anti- male ideology which assumes that all sex is harmful, sinful and disgusting, ignores or downplays pleasure, especially sexual pleasure and treats so-called victims as mindless, powerless and ignorant idiots. This simplistic but increasingly pervasive ideology is itself very destructive, counter-productive, arrogant, reverse discriminatory, patronizing, insulting and rigid. In its extreme it is a form of sexual fascism little better or different from that of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I therefore suggest that this new project of the Japanese sex industry is probably another way in which the sex industry in general can be harnessed, with the help of full legalization, regulation and taxation by government, to deliver, directly and indirectly, desperately needed income, knowledge, products and services to developing societies. Therefore congratulations to the producers of this material for their innovation and hopefully it will be of net benefit to those whom it is supposed to help.
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