posted on The Phoenix Online: For a while, we have been meaning to review a porn film directed by Tristan Taormino, of Sager and Village Voice fame. This topic ended up being particularly pertinent this week, as Nathaniel Peters wrote an opinion column last week dealing with the issues of objectification in pornography and the possibility of feminist porn. We don’t intend to argue about whether or not objectification is evil, or about whether or not sex should always be about love. Rather, we wanted to address the issue of whether or not feminist porn actually exists, and we thought it would be interesting to address this issue from a practical rather than a theoretical standpoint. So we watched Tristan Taormino’s “House of Ass.”

The premise of “House of Ass” is that Tristan Taormino invites eight porn stars – five women and three men – to a cabin for a weekend of mostly unscripted sex. The film is comprised of five long scenes of the eight porn stars in various configurations, including one seven-person orgy, interspersed with Real World-sequel interviews with the stars during which they discuss their experiences and each other. The stars chose their own partner(s) and were given a huge array of sex toys from which they were allowed to pick for their scenes.

Tristan Taormino purports to make “gonzo” pornography with a feminist bent. Tristan asserted during her lecture at Swat that gonzo is the “cinema verity” of pornography; the goal of gonzo porn is to depict sex in a “realistic” manner, thereby making the viewer aware of the artifices of conventional pornography. In “House of Ass,” the actors acknowledge the presence of the camera, the viewer can hear the director talking in the background and items that are usually edited out of conventional pornography (i.e. lube and fluffers) are prominently showcased. The film does not edit out stretch marks or tattoos, and all the actresses have real breasts. The film also makes a point of showing that these actors are not playing “characters,” but are rather vocalizing their own sexual desires. In the interview segments, the stars are also asked to discuss their feelings about sex in general as well as their feelings about the porn industry. In one particularly interesting segment, two of the stars quit the shoot because they were in a relationship with one another and did not feel comfortable watching each other having sex with other people on camera.

However, after watching this film, we concluded that “House of Ass” did not really succeed at what it was trying to do (for one thing, there wasn’t a whole lot of ass, but there was a lot of vagina. Maybe it should have been called “House of Vagina”). Even though the stars were supposed to be playing themselves, in the end it seemed as if all of them were playing the role of Porn Star. The stars were almost too enthusiastic; at one point, a new couple arrived, and the replacements immediately disrobed and jumped into an orgy. The female stars also seem to conform to the conventional pornography trope that we like to call “everything you do makes me come very vocally for 20 minutes.” What we mean in this case is that in the making of this movie, these actresses were probably having sex continuously for the better part of three days with multiple partners of both sexes and in multiple orifices. Basically, they were poked and prodded like there was no tomorrow, but they seemed to be in throes of a screaming orgasm 90 percent of the time. To be fair, these are porn stars, and this is their job, but that is exactly our point. Despite Taormino’s goals of realism and feminism, the people in the movie are still porn stars who are being paid to act in the manner the viewer expects a porn star to act.

It seems that “House of Ass” still incorporates many tropes associated with conventional pornography, particularly in its portrayal of female sexuality. Even though “House of Ass” is supposed to be “alternative” porn, it was still produced to make a profit in a market dominated by male consumers. Pornography has become a huge industry at least in part because of its ability to cater to the sexual desires of men. So while it can be argued that pornography to a large extent determines males’ sexual desires and their conceptions of female sexuality, we are inclined to believe that the porn industry portrays sex and female sexuality in a certain way because that is the vision of sex and female sexuality men want to believe in. This is not to say that evil market forces have turned Tristan Taormino’s radical feminist vision into a tour de force of female oppression. The film does succeed in some ways, particularly in its portrayal of women who are vocal about their sexual desires rather than docile receptacles of male sexuality. Nevertheless, the film does not go far enough in its attempt to break free of porn industry conventions.