Every day, in the suburbs of Los Angeles, some of the most beautiful and best-known
actors in America are making films that will be seen by millions. Stars such as
Shyla Foxxx, Tiffany Minx and Jasmine St Claire are among the top attractions of
the hard-core pornographic video business, one of America's fastest-growing and most
profitable industries.
America has become addicted to porn. Encouraged by the liberal atmosphere of the
Clinton era, adult entertainment has grown into a $10 billion-a-year business. As much as
$4.2 billion is generated by videos alone. Americans spend more on hard-core porn,
telephone sex and strip clubs than they do at cinemas. Porn videos account for a quarter
of all those rented or sold. A regional breakdown shows, however, that the pornography
moves off the shelves fastest in the north-east and west of the country where 40 per cent
of all video sales or rentals are adult; in the rest of the country, it is between eight
and 16 per cent. Strip clubs generate more money than all other live entertainment,
including rock concerts and Broadway theatres, put together.
Stars such as Traci Lords, who starred in 75 hard-core videos and Jenna Jameson,
the reigning queen of the genre, have made the transition into mainstream Hollywood movies
and television - helped by the success of such films as Boogie Nights and The People vs
Larry Flynt. Mainstream television actresses have crossed the line the other way, albeit
sometimes inadvertently: more than 200,000 copies of a private "honeymoon tape"
featuring Pamela Anderson, the Baywatch star, have been sold on the Internet.
The business is no longer the preserve of grimy, raincoated hustlers. Respectable
companies such as AT&T, with its telephone sex lines, Time Warner, which shows
hard-core sex on its cable networks, and hotel chains such as Sheraton, with pay-per-view
pornographic films, are among the main beneficiaries.
Nobody illustrates the mainstreaming of porn better than Kat Sunlove, a former
dominatrix, who publishes Spectator, a weekly sex magazine. Last November, Sunlove took a
paid post with the Free Speech Coalition, the industry's lobbying group. Backed by
$300,000 a year in sponsorship from the industry, Sunlove tries to convince legislators
that porn is not just a matter of free speech but an economic powerhouse in California,
generating thousands of jobs and millions of tax dollars. Last year the Free Speech
Coalition persuaded the California state legislature to halt a 5% "sin tax" on
pornography. As a sign of its determination to win respectability, the group has sponsored
legislation banning underage (ie 18 in the US) performers from
appearing in pornographic videos and has introduced monthly HIV tests. Sunlove said:
We have become less outlaws and more your next-door neighbours.
