PG Porn: Nailing Your Wife

I wrote this post about a week and a half ago and then never got round to posting it so, pretty much, I'm way behind. But I still think it's worth mentioning.

There is a man called James Gunn. He is a writer and a director. He has previously been responsible for such gems as Slither and Tromeo and Juliet. His most recent project is PG Porn (the tagline of which is: "For people who love everything about Porn...except the sex. "), which he is undertaking with his brothers. They have recently released their first PG Porn offering on spike.com entitled "Nailing Your Wife". I watched it. I found it awful but I recognised that it was meant to be awful in terms of production and acting. I saw the ending and was shocked, amused and disquieted by it. I thought very little else about it because, get this, I went to see it because it had Nathan Fillion (aka Mal in Firefly) in it and I forgot to put my critical hat on. I do this sometimes, which is unfortunate because, when I have my clueless non-hat on I internalise the BS that surrounds me (or, more precisely, all of us as BS is everywhere). I also fail as a feminist.

Anyway, I watched it. I forgot about it for a couple of days and then I saw a mention of it on Whedonesque because, get this, a woman dared to highlight its misogyny. And James Gunn? He's not happy about it.

To sum up Darklady's point, she argues that making PG Porn- porn without sex- and having it climax with a woman nailed (literally) in the head with a nail gun is, well, problematic. It's problematic because it depicts a sexual woman as a woman willing to cheat on her sexually inadequate husband and as willing to initiate this extramarital sex as a person whose murder is funny. In other words that sexual women being punished (with death!) for being sexual is absolutely fucking fine.

The Gunn brothers apparently consider violence against women to be not just acceptable but sexy, so long as nobody actually gets laid or engages in any wet spot to erogenous zone contact.

And this, Darklady says, is misogynistic. I have to say that I agree with her although I'm not convinced that it was supposed to be "sexy". I'm not convinced it was meant to be seen in the same light as actual porn but rather to play on the tropes of the porn genre.

However, that said, James Gunn's response to this analysis is, for me, absolutely horrific. More horrific than anything in this PG Porn episode or his movie which, if I could bring myself to look at Slither again I could have a field day talking about what is wrong with it (although I don't remember it being particularly misogynistic but just gross and everybody hating) but, having seen it once, I have no desire to see it again, not even for my Nathan Fillion fix. He says that she is a stupid ("Ms. Reed may be mildly retarded."), that she is "fat" (and therefore, what, too unattractive to listen to?),

"And, fourthly, in your picture, tilting your head like that and cutting off the frame right below your chin doesn't trick anyone into thinking you're not fat."

and that she is an example of someone who just shouldn't be allowed to express an opinion.

" your article pisses me off because it's just another example of how every idiot thinks his or her voice is worth hearing on the internet."

Oh, and lets not forget that she's "humourless and just plain doesn't "get" the joke.

"I have no idea how Ms. Reed doesn't understand that PG PORN is, uh... a joke. But she doesn't."

Because, after all, if he thinks its funny then it's funny. And if he thinks his vid. is just a joke and not a cultural artefact or, even, a representation of what he and his brothers think, then, clearly that's all it is. And the woman who dared to criticise them? Well she's just a stupid fat bitch who shouldn't be allowed to speak. And, out of this whole debacle, that is the thing that I find most problematic.

EDIT: In typing up this post I went back to James Gunn's blog (to get the link) and I noticed that he has responded to some of the responses to his entry. I have to say that, while I question his logic in some places, the fact that he has responded and the tone that he took in it actually impresses me. I still disagree with him, but I am impressed that he has responded.