Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Chad Sniffen" <>]

From: 

Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 3:22 PM
To: 

Subject: New documentary on porn available for free


Hi, All.
 
I wanted to alert you to a great organizing opportunity that has emerged as a 
result of the porn industry's new corporate strategy of marketing porn films 
by offering select titles to be shown on college campuses free of charge. The 
non-profit Media Education Foundation is making available for free a new 
cutting-edge documentary about pornography, and they are encouraging student 
activists, campus professionals and others to screen it on their campuses as 
soon as possible. (SEE DETAILS BELOW). The documentary MEF is distributing is 
entitled The Price of Pleasure.  It addresses porn in a sophisticated way, 
with compelling interviews, footage, and analysis.  It is an outstanding 
pedagogical resource and media literacy tool. It would be great if The Price 
of Pleasure could be shown on every campus where school officials or student 
groups essentially choose to work for the porn industry under the wildly 
misguided idea that they are championing "free speech."  
 
The Price of Pleasure should also be screened in classes in a range of 
academic disciplines, as well as in fraternity houses, with athletic teams, 
by progressive student organizations and elsewhere.  It is long past time 
that we have a thoughtful debate in this society about porn and its effects, 
instead of the mindless pseudo-debate that so often ensues whenever the 
p-word comes up. It is altogether fitting that this latest "teachable moment" 
in the ongoing porn struggles comes during Sexual Assault Awareness Month.  
In my view it is naive in the extreme to talk about significantly reducing 
the incidence of sexual violence without addressing the sexual socialization 
of boys and men in our society.  Porn plays a huge role in that socialization 
process.  
 
It is about time that men and women -- on college campuses and elsewhere -- 
have an open conversation about the misogyny in mainstream porn.  It would 
also be quite refreshing if more men came to understand that porn producers 
not only have disdain for women, but they also have contempt for their 
(largely) male customers.  Men who want to develop or sustain healthy sexual 
selves in this porn-drenched culture really do need to step out of the box 
and look critically at the effects of porn on their identities and humanity.  
Viewing and discussing The Price of Pleasure with other men and women would 
be an important step in that process.  
 
 
Please read the press release below for more info. about how you can get 
copies of The Price of Pleasure for free.  And if possible, please circulate 
this message widely.  Thank you.    
 
In peace,
 
Jackson Katz
 
 

ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE PORN INDUSTRY TO BE OFFERED FREE TO COLLEGE 
CAMPUSES IN RESPONSE TO MARYLAND CONTROVERSY  

For Immediate Release

For further information contact Dr. Chyng Sun 

(617) 733-8091 | email: 

                           

April 8, 2009 - The way filmmakers Chyng Sun and Miguel Picker see it, the 
cure for bad speech is more speech.  That's exactly why they've come up with 
a plan to get their hard-hitting documentary film about the porn industry 
screened on as many college campuses as possible.   

In response to the national controversy surrounding the screening of a 
hardcore porn film at the University of Maryland this week, Sun and Picker 
have cut a deal with their distributor to do exactly what Digital Playground, 
the makers of the porn film in question, are doing with their film: make it 
available at no charge to any campus that wants to show it. 

"This is a great opportunity for this film to reach a wider audience," Sun, a 
professor of media at New York University, said of her documentary, The Price 
of Pleasure.  "Especially given that male college students were our target 
audience going in.  We did numerous focus groups to find the right tone and 
approach to speak to them."

The Media Education Foundation (MEF), one of the nation's leading 
distributors of educational films on media and social and cultural issues, 
has announced that it will send a free copy of Sun and Picker's devastating 
expose of the porn industry to faculty and students who are willing to screen 
the documentary on their campus.

MEF is asking those interested in setting up a screening of The Price of 
Pleasure to visit http://www.mediaed.org/wp/price-of-pleasure-press to watch ;
a trailer and request a free copy of the film, on three-week loan.

"The reason we're making this film available to screen for free is simple," 
said MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally.  "What's needed on this issue is more 
discussion, not less, and this film is a perfect vehicle for achieving this.  
If faculty and students who supported the decision to show the porn film at 
the University of Maryland are serious about their defense of free speech and 
open debate, they'll fight to make sure this documentary is shown as well." 

The firestorm at the University of Maryland ignited when students decided 
this week to screen a $10 million-dollar, 2 ½-hour hardcore porn film called 
Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge, which is being offered to campuses around 
the country for free by Digital Playground as part of an innovative marketing 
strategy.  When state legislators tried to stop the screening, students on 
the College Park campus fought back, claiming their free speech rights were 
being threatened by overly moralistic politicians. 

According to University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen, who is 
featured in The Price of Pleasure, one of the central aims of the documentary 
is to move the debate about pornography beyond precisely these kinds of 
predictable, and distracting, arguments about morality and free speech.

"The film tries to move the discussion beyond a clash between a rigidly 
moralistic position and the irresponsibly individualistic free-speech 
response we hear so often whenever the issue of pornography comes up," Jensen 
said.  "Instead of asking important questions about what a relentlessly 
sexist and routinely racist pornography genre says about our culture, 
conservatives try to assert control and liberals try to assert independence. 
Complex questions about contemporary pornography are too often derailed by a 
debate that never gets past First Amendment arguments."

The Price of Pleasure intervenes in this debate by taking a sustained and 
often disturbing look at pornography itself, placing the voices of producers, 
performers, industry critics, and anti-porn activists alongside candid 
observations from men and women about the role pornography has played in 
their lives.

Campus organizers who request a free copy of the film at 
http://www.mediaed.org/wp/price-of-pleasure-press will also be able to ;
download a number of other resources, including materials to help promote 
their screenings and a study guide designed to help viewers navigate the 
troubling issues the documentary explores.