Description

This DVD rip is not available on public trackers.This is a another porn documentary, others are and Gazette: Pornography can be a difficult subject to discuss. Too often, films like the histrionic Price of Pleasure can take a tone somewhere between stern condemnation and the mom from Carrie squealing Bible verses. But at the other end of the spectrum, TV series like Porno Valley and Family Business unabashedly glamorize an industry some see as dangerous, or at the very least, unhealthy.But Jens Hoffman’s excellent documentary 9 to 5: Days In Porn takes a different approach, seeking neither to judge nor accept. By simply presenting players in the industry, from performer-turned-health worker Dr. Sharon Mitchell to agent Mark Spiegler to actress Belladonna, the film allows its subjects to tell their own stories. This, by extension, creates a realistic, sensitive portrayal of the industry.Adult entertainment, the film suggests, is not populated by fork-tongued satyrs, determined to clog society’s moral workings with lubricant and soiled bed-sheets, or turn the nation’s daughters into dazed, sex-addled harlots nursing broken pelvises. But it’s also not all crusaders promising sexual liberation and empowerment. Instead, it’s an industry of regular people, some smarter or creepier than others, who just happen to be slightly more flexible than most.Of course, there are extremes, which are well-represented here. At 18, performer Sasha Grey is committed to freeing Western society of its sexual shame. And slimy punk-rocker/porn producer Jim Powers seems interested only in rolling over the lowest common denominator to see what’s living underneath. The film also presents many women who embrace pornography as a valid form of self-expression. But some are browbeaten by the industry’s misogyny and its mercenary capitalism, and still others wander around dully like the cast of The Hills gone topless and simple.As a documentary, 9 to 5 benefits from its refusal to explicitly state its own viewpoint, at least in comparison to its contemporaries. But this (relative) objectivity doesn’t affect its visual style, which eschews verité realism for a stylish, modern look. It’s also livened up by a killer soundtrack prominently featuring porn-punk legends The Dwarves. And while the numerous characters in the nearly two hour film do occasionally threaten to turn the documentary into a lengthy series of introductions, it paints enough of a portrait of the industry for the audience to draw their own conclusions.