Candida's Camera

National Review, Sept 11 2000

WHEN actress Candida Royalle (Legends of Porn, Classic Swedish Erotica 2, Teenage Pony Girls) announces that she is "going to be hard on you," you sit up and pay attention. Not that we needed the warning. We had all paid good money ($49) to see her perform, and we were sure she would not let us down. Nor does she. True to her name, Candida is open, frank, and often very revealing. Miss Royalle knows how to give a good lecture. Yes, lecture. To the crowd gathered in an upstairs room in Manhattan's "School for the Physical City," Candida Royalle is much more than a sex star. She is an entrepreneur, sharing her hard-won practical insights with an eager and ambitious audience. The event has been arranged by The Learning Annex, an "alternative adult-education organization" that offers evening classes at a number of cities across the country. The demand for its "powerful, inspirational, nurturing, and insightful" seminars is in the American tradition, a reminder of the relentless drive for self-improvement that took this nation from log cabin to Martha Stewart. Recent courses have included Spanish, calligraphy, running your own laundromat, the power of persuasion, becoming a medical transcriptionist, and "Breaking into Adult Movies—in front of or behind the camera!"

Candida's pupils are ushered into a large, brightly lit classroom painted in the Pokemon palette that only an educational bureaucrat would choose. It's all very normal—Educating Rita rather than Deep Throat. There's no buzz, no guilty anticipation, just a naughty pile of coarse, er, course materials heaped on a side table: flyers for FOXE ("Fans of X-Rated Entertainment"), an order form for Breaking into XXX—the Porn Stud Handbook. And our teacher? Miss Royalle is a trim fortyish blonde in a short skirt, more Mary Kay than Miss Jean Brodie.

This is not enough to hold two members of the class, who slink off within minutes, disappointed perhaps to discover that the evening will not feature "adult situations." Maybe they will be back for the Tantra lessons ("Reach higher levels of sexual ecstasy than ever!"). The only other source of awkwardness is the presence of a film crew shooting the lecture for National Enquirer’s TV show. Strangely, not everyone wants to appear in front of these particular cameras.

These are shy folks, mostly. One woman, an exotic dancer, is interested in making "bubble-bath-type videos" for her fans, but she is an exception. This mainly male crowd doesn't want to get naked. They want to be "suits," Sam Goldwyns of smut. That's wise, for as our lecturer explains, the life of a wannabe porn stud is far from easy. Performing under conditions that would make even Priapus pause (Viagra helps, apparently), men are props, not star attractions. As such they are not likely to make much money. Most people aren't renting adult movies to gape at the guys. So the women are paid more. As even the EEOC might agree, this is not discrimination, it's the marketplace.

Which is really the theme of the evening. Naughty pictures are now a significant American industry. The Nude Economy is for real: By some estimates, annual sales of pornography in the U.S. alone already exceed $10 billion. That's a Fortune 500, Wall Street Journal kind of number, one that tells us, among other things, that proper management has finally come to this improper trade. And that's where the Learning Annex fits in. As Candida's students earnestly take notes, she briskly runs through the economics of adult video, who gets paid how much to do what to whom, the complexities of copyright, the perils of distribution, and the market in foreign licensing.

It's surprisingly dry stuff, and the ensuing discussion is matter-of-fact. In the United States, business is a serious matter, and while we have come a long way from the Comstock laws, our cheery, upbeat lecturer is subject to an equally demanding set of rules, those of American enterprise. To Candida's obvious delight, it's a tough code and a little austere. And in the way she describes it, with relish and without irony, there's a touch of Cotton Mather, a hint of the old Puritan idea that self-denial is the key to success. The boogie nights are clearly over. The film set should be free of drugs and alcohol and carefully budgeted. The artistic impulse must also be kept firmly under control (only "one-third of the film can be story, with 60 minutes for sex"). There's respect for hard work, suspicion of ripoffs ("Watch everything, watch everyone . . . if it's yours, watch it like a hawk"), and a shrewd appreciation for what counts—the bottom line in every sense.

Unfortunately, these days the bottom line is not enough. Sanctimony has evolved, not died. We live in a time when many businesses, particularly those with a potential image problem, feel they have to go beyond the buck. They like to demonstrate, at least in their advertising, that they have some higher—usually vaguely politically correct—redeeming social purpose. Forestry companies become model environmentalists, brewers natter on about "responsible" drinking, and "the people of Philip Morris" are so busy sheltering abused women and feeding the hungry it's amazing they have any time for making cigarettes.

Candida Royalle is no exception. A few years ago the former "teenage pony girl" founded Femme Productions to make films that, she says, that men too will want to watch. Now she takes herself, well, a little seriously. As her website notes, Candida has "addressed many conferences . . . including the World Congress of Sexology, the Smithsonian Institution, [and] the American Psychiatric Association." Sadly, it's not enough for her films to be dirty, fun, and profitable. In our relentlessly didactic era they must also promote "positive sexual role modeling."

What's that? Well for one thing, something that, as we are clearly expected to know, Republicans oppose. Like most corporate piety, Candida's spiel has a liberal tinge. As some readers may remember ("House of Porn," October 27, 1997), Ms. Royalle is a founding member of Feminists for Free Expression, and presumably someone well able to understand that the principal threat to her business comes from a much larger group, the feminists against free expression and their fellow-travelers in the "progressive" camp. Despite that, her talk is punctuated by moments of leftish political commentary. There's an almost nostalgic swipe at "Reagan/Meese" and a dark warning that if George W. is elected, "we're really in for it."

But her audience doesn't seem worried. This is a Coolidge crowd. Their business is business. They have no more interest in discussing threats to free expression than a moonshiner would have in debating Prohibition. To these aspiring pornographers, the First Amendment is a commercial device, not a human right. They want to concentrate on record-keeping, employee relations, soundtracks, budgets, legal obligations, and the uses of DVD ("save your bloopers"). It's all about the economics of sex. Though far from romantic, it is still a pursuit of another American fantasy, the dream of success. Is it true, asks the exotic dancer, that one porn star makes "as much as $150,000 a year"?

At that, two stockbrokers in the class exchange faintly superior smiles. Still, they understand where she is coming from.