Review: How To Make Money Like A Porn Star
A disclaimer, right off the bat: I hate to use a word like "reprehensible," especially as it's one of the most-often used elements of the right-wing, talk show blowhard lexicon that seems to think censure and scorn is a better solution than, say, discussion. It's not a word I'm comfortable using - I'm a bed-wetting liberal who hugs a copy of the First Amendment every night before heading off to bed.That said, How To Make Money Like A Porn Star by Neil Strauss and Bernard Chang is possibly the most reprehensible piece of fiction that I've read in my lifetime. Ostensibly a satire about the adult film business, Strauss's hateful, stupid script is a simultaneously gross and limp attempt at exposing the reader to a world where - surprise - image rules and women with severe psychic damage do horrible things to their body to make a buck. Congratulations to all involved in this book - you've cracked the fucking DaVinci Code.
The introduction claims that How To Make Money Like A Porn Star is partially based on the conversations that Rolling Stone writer Strauss had with various personalities in the porn business while co-writing How To Make Love The Jenna Jameson Way1. By making every speaking part into a grotesque caricature, he's done every one of those people a great disservice. I understand satire and one of the things that makes the best examples work is the use of at least one character for the audience to relate to. This is one of South Park's greatest strengths: no matter how nasty or over-the-top things get, Stan and/or Kyle are there for the viewers use as a kind of anchor.2
This book could have - should have - been very good. A smarter version of Orgazmo3 is just begging to be made, but this nasty piece of work certainly isn't it. How To Make Money Like A Porn Star plays misogyny for laughs while featuring rape, kidnapping, semen collection, and the same tired jokes about pornography that the masses have been making since the 70s. Most of its threadbare plot works towards a reveal that's swiped from George Lucas In Love. It's tiresome, unfunny, and managed to make me feel worse for having finished it.
Bernard Chang's art is the single bright spot in this mess - it's a bit like Phil Noto, but with more stock faces and body types and he manages to do cartoony and "comic book" art with equal aplomb. I'd love to see him work on a book that's not as aggressively dumb in the future.
A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher. For more information, visit the Regan Books site.
1Do you see what they did there? How amazingly clever!
2Nip/Tuck is one of those exception that proves the rule: in villifying everyone, it provides the viewer with the knowledge that no matter how fucked up they are, they're doing better than the people on screen. See also: Sid and Nancy. Neil Strauss is no Alex Cox or Ryan Murphy.
3Trey and Matt: the third mention is going to cost you guys.
