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Directors Gone Wild
A few days ago the LATimes carried a less than complimentary article about the man behind the Girls Gone Wild empire. I’m sure you’ve seen the commercials - girls at bars, all a little tipsy, bare their breasts and sometimes do more for the camera.
In this amazing article (which gets more astounding the further you read) the author explores issues of consent and inebriation, youth and the perpetual party and just what motivates people to take their clothes off for a guy and his attractive camera crew (and yes, he scouts out attractive camera crews). Another interesting tidbit is that crew members receive an extra $1000 if they can find a girl who just (and I mean just) turned 18.
There are two sad things about this article. One is how pathetic this guy seems. He’s an older, sleezy bar crawler who just happens to be out with a camera crew and a bag of t-shirts to give away.
The other thing that depresses me is that what he makes pales in comparison to some porn that’s out there, yet his industry is huge. I understand the appeal of “real people”, not porn stars. However, it’s possible to get those things with out having to essentially drug people before they’ll do something. Films like Xana and Dax, Urban Friction and Pornograflics have real people who are really hot and who are really consenting to these activities. In my mind, that can never compete with teenagers doing something they may not even remember in the morning.
Here are some other blogs that have mentioned this article, if you want to see other perspectives on it:
BoingBoing, ahniwa.com, Bernie’s World, Vivian’s Sex Carnival
August 9th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Hey, thanks for the link.
I think that maybe the most disturbing thing for me was the mention of Francis insinuating his brand into the American consciousness. Girls Gone Wild has spread, pervasively, to the point where almost any adult in the States knows the name even if they’ve never seen the videos. That has a scary and real effect on people, and as the article begins to relate, especially on young women.
If I felt like Girls Gone Wild were a healthy approach to sexuality, that would be one thing and fine. But everything about it screams cheap, and I think it demeans sex and sexiness through overproductization, among other things.
Fun blog you have here. Catch ya around.
Ahniwa
August 10th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
I discovered the ‘girls gone wild’ franchise during my last pregnancy. I couldn’t sleep through the night and would get up at 3am and watch TV. Channel surfing always led me to one of these shows which made me so mad I found it harder to sleep! As a mom raising two girls, and as someone who remembers drunken frat parties from college, I despair that this is what the world has to offer my girls when they come of age. I at least grew up in the age of feminsm when women expected better and could actually get fraternities suspended when they got too wild…now we reward men with cash and a chance to discover the next hot drunk girl. Ugh.