Netflix’s Pornhub doc is out to radicalize porn fans

In those bygone days when you had to sit on a family computer in the living room to access the internet, teens watched documentaries like Netflix’s Money Shot: The Story of Pornhub hoping to glimpse a world they would otherwise only be able to access by stealing someone’s father’s Playboy. (RIP HBOs real sex, one of the main providers of this kind of content in the ’90s and ’00s.) But one of Pornhub’s big, groundbreaking innovations was to make real pornography available to anyone with a smartphone – no credit card required.

There is a more graphic version of this story that could be be told. At the beginning of Money shot, a woman who has spent most of her adult life in the porn industry, describes how she first watched an “eight-person gangbang for the elderly” when she started Pornhub. “That kind of set the tone for how extreme things on the internet could be,” she says.

Perhaps as a tacit admission that Netflix can never compete with real Pornhub content, Money shot leave his analysis of the “gonzo” side of porn there. Like this movie played in theaters, it would be rated R for language and some above-the-waist nudity. (Seriously, though, if you want to see people having non-simulated sex—many of them pretty athletic—the site to check out is right there in the name of the doc.) That allows director Suzanne Hillinger to focus on the thing that really makes the film’s narrative: feminist power struggles.

It’s not sexy, but it’s true. Ever since hardcore adult films emerged from the shadows and entered the zeitgeist in the “porno chic” era of the early 1970s, feminists have been embroiled in a bitter debate over whether pornography is a degrading act of violence by misogynists. is, or a liberating path. to sexual freedom. The debate ebbs and flows with the tides of public sentiment and generational change, but the opposing teams remain roughly the same a decade after decade. And each side vents its grievances Money shot.

One group whose voices are rarely heard in this debate are those of sex workers who make their living producing X-rated content. Money shot gives a group of (mostly) female sex workers – a male performer is interviewed, but he’s not much of a main character – the chance to defend their industry on camera. According to these women, websites like OnlyFans and Pornhub allow them to offer their services directly to consumers, eliminating the need for exploitative “producers” and “managers.”

But the passing of SESTA/FOSTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act/Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) in 2018 forced these artists back underground, as payment processing companies like Mastercard pulled out (no pun intended) from Pornhub under pressure from anti-porn groups. SESTA/FOSTA was a triumph for the other side of this debate, made up of “anti-trafficking” organizations who have freaked out countless women online with stories of cable ties, unmarked vans and innocent girls seduced into a life of sin.

Money shot takes the bold stance that claims of rampant CSAM (child sexual abuse material) on Pornhub are mostly nonsense, including stories of underage girls who were traumatized by uploading private videos to Pornhub without their consent. It also alleges that groups such as NCOSE (The National Center on Sexual Exploitation – there are many acronyms in this documentary) are using these kids to advance a larger conservative Christian agenda. The anti- and pro-porn feminists named in the document agree on one thing: that Pornhub should have required its posters to verify their age and identity to upload videos to the site long before it actually enacted that policy in 2020 determined.

Photo: Netflix

The fact that Pornhub has remained a lawless tube site for so many years is down to its parent company, MindGeek, operating on the same kind of techno-libertarian arrogance that led to the SVB collapse dominates the headlines this week. The shadowy men who run MindGeek have made their fortunes off the back (and front) of sex workers. They’re also thrilled that the artists are being blamed, both financially and in terms of reputation, for the company’s laissez-faire attitude to content moderation.

Money shot doesn’t even consider the idea that watching porn is bad for you, which seems reasonable given that most people do it at least sometimes – even those who don’t want to accept it in public – and that society does not appear to be collapsing faster than it otherwise would. The movie’s argument that tech bros and venture capitalists Are accelerating social downfall by concentrating money and power in the hands of a few inexplicable people, meanwhile, is more convincing.

That is Hillinger’s true agenda with Money shot. It’s essentially an exercise in getting the horny voice out, convincing the people who love porn to give their political support to the people who make it. It is excitement with a side of radicalization. And if teens whose parents have parental controls installed on their computers watch this documentary late at night with the volume turned down, they’ll learn more about laborers seizing means of production than they do about sex—which is much more dangerous to the powers that be. are then any bare breasts or asses.

Money Shot: The Story of Pornhub now streaming on Netflix.