Adult Entertainment: Disrobing an American Idol (2007)

Simply A Masterpiece

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good concept, poorly executed.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Pornography is such a huge business today it dominates the U.S. psyche like few others. On the other hand, one has to appreciate just how difficult it is for the average person today to view this subject in a truly objective fashion, when so many now enjoy pornography on a regular basis. This reflects the prevailing pro-porn mythology. This myth teaches that regular porn usage is harmless but this is in no way the whole story. This documentary, although not exhaustive, studies the effects of just 30 days of regular hardcore porn usage on 3 adults. Its findings mirror other more exhaustive scientific studies that show that pornography has real adverse effects on important issues like mental health, respect for marriage, respect for women as well as tolerance for sexual crimes like rape and pedophilia. This is a deep subject and one which should not be taken lightly. If you are able to put pro-porn bias aside, there is much to learn from this well-done documentary. One of the most shocking things is how many famous mainstream corporations are now discreetly in the hardcore porn business!

This movie has fundamental flaws including: 1) insignificant sample size, 2) imbalanced presentation, 3) presented as a scientific study but far from 100% true to the "scientific process". However, this film has some takeaways and is particularly relevant to married/monogamous couples.Pornography, much like many forms of technology, serves as alienation taking man further away from his/her natural state. Couples that don't communicate and/or are afraid of the unknown aren't going to be successful in the long run, whether or not one or both of them choose to watch pornography.I would offer that the most insightful attribute of this film is pointing out the omnipresence of denial. Anyone who thinks that pervasive denial is anything new probably won't learn anything from this one, at any rate.

I have always enjoyed documentaries that touch on taboo social subjects, so when I came across this film on Netflix, I had to watch it. It primarily delivered what I was expecting - that is, a number of sides positing arguments for and against the pornographic industry. I was, however, surprised that it didn't go in some of the directions I was expecting it to when I first began watching, such as highlighting violence and drug use in the sex industry. Those subjects were slightly touched upon, but for the most part, the focus of the movie dealt with the question of whether or not viewing pornography was harmful to mental health - and mental health was often treated as an amorphous concept.The film centers on a study conducted on a single male and a married couple...and this hacked study is where the film fails. A previous reviewer noted that the study did not include females or homosexuals, which makes the study unscientific. I'd argue that there is nothing wrong with obtaining a homogeneous sample, so as long as results weren't generalized to a heterogeneous population. The narrator refers to the study as an "expirement" throughout the movie, when in actuality, it's a quasi-experiment...or a really bad unfinished repeated-measures design if you want to give it a little more credit. It may seem like I'm splitting hairs over semantics, but the fact that the study is a quasi-experiment - that is, there is no control group (or with this obscenely low sample size, control participant) - is incredibly important to being able to infer any amount of causality to the treatment, the treatment being exposure to pornography. The participants are given a pretest survey and are then exposed to porn for 30 days. After which, they are given a post test survey and are placed into a control period; then they are given an exit survey. The problem is that within those 30 days, a number of things could have taken place that would have affected the participants' post test results. Social scientists refer to these things as threats to internal validity. The idea of an experiment is that the control group will also experience these confounding factors, but the investigator will be able to parse out the difference in post test scores due to the treatment and due to the spurious factor. In short, the results at the end of the movie were interesting, but take them with a grain of salt, especially considering the sample size. It's also worth noting that in the real world, if any self-respecting internal review board caught wind that (potential spoiler alert) the investigators prompted a married man to go into a private booth with a lap dancer as part of a study, especially without the ability to opt out, the study would be halted and the investigators would be kicked out of their institutions and spend the rest of their careers busing tables to fast it would make their heads spin.But what about the rest of the movie? The interviews were interesting to say the least. While we're on the subject of social science, many of the interviewees make giant claims of pornography's affect on individuals and society without actually moving beyond correlation. I could forgive this a little bit if it were the layperson making these claims, but many of these people have doctorates. They should know better. "Correlation doesn't equal causation" is a maxim that's drilled into every student's head who's taking an undergrad level research methods of stats course. To be fair, that can't be held against the filmmakers. Interesingly, Ron Jeremy was one of the most reasonable people interviewed. My favorite interviewee, however, was Sharon Mitchell. She's a former porn actress who now runs a clinic to test participants in the porn industry for STDs. She was frank about the porn industry without being judgmental. Plus, it was funny to hear this founder of a clinic talk like a sailor at times. The singer and guitarist of Everclear even makes an experience, shamefully discussing his addiction to pornography.All in all, I dug the movie. I just would wince a bit whenever the narrator would take the study seriously. Obviously, most of the interviewees were interested in pushing an agenda. If you're like me and have an intellectual interest in the porn industry, I recommend this film. Just be sure to put on your critical thinking cap before you start watching.

Though it started out as an interesting documentary, it fast became a "DON'T LOOK AT PORN" and "THIS IS BAD." and there were so many different routes that the filmmaker could have gone down but ignored.For example, as much as he spoke about women's degradation and spoke to women who viewed porn as evil and disgusting, he failed to speak to women who enjoy porn. Not to mention the entire homosexual population. The only mention that gays got at all was a bookshop owner talking about buttplugs, and a few mentions here and there when talking about porn scenes. It could've been so much more, but ended up feeling like a 50's propaganda piece.