Lens Wide Shut: “Aroused” (2013)

          “Aroused”     (2013)

   The collision of artistically celebrated photographic sensibilities and the illusion of the pornographic fantasy image is intended to be explored in what is meant to be a sympathetic exposure of the “real” women behind the painted masquerade of the virtually anonymous physionomic cloning of the modern female sexual fantasy girl  in Deborah Anderson’s “Aroused”, a film which purportedly intends to strip away the rancid veneer of the intentionally crafted falsification of the adult female porn performer as an indistinguishable living sex doll in which the assortment of working orifices is of paramount commercial consideration. That this denial and limitation of the adult actress’ identity as anything but an object leading to masturbatory release would appear-   in any rational discussion  -to automatically lead to a sincere attempt at the humanization in its subject portraitures-  the sixteen adult film actresses chosen for Anderson’s photographic reinvention  -might also lead to some stark and important revelations concerning a number of questions which Anderson herself poses near the beginning of the film:  Why are porn stars looked down upon by the very society which uses their “debasement” for its own sexual pleasure, and-  perhaps even more importantly  -why and how has sex become (in media and culture-at-large) the ultimate power tool, determining both desirability and commercial worth? Naturally such questions ask more about the society outside the realm of the sex worker than directly of the pornographic ethic, but any substantive discussion of the subject must include an unflinching exploration of the hypocritical symbiotic relationship between public sex worker and the silent consumer class..

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