Gail Dines: The Shocking Suspension of Dr. Price:
exgynocraticgrrl:
As colleges become more corporate, we are hearing more and more
stories of academics being sanctioned for having the audacity to speak
out against corporate malfeasance. Not only does this limit the free
speech of academics, it also serves to scare teachers into adhering to
the hegemonic discourse.
The latest example is quite stunning. Jammie Price, a full professor
at Appalachian State University, was suspended last month for showing
the documentary The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships. Distributed
by the Media Education Foundation, one of the most respected producers
of progressive documentaries in the country, the film sets out to look
at how mainstream pornography has not only become more violent and
misogynistic, but is actually in bed with major financial institutions
such as credit card companies, venture capitalists, cable companies and
hotels (they make more money from porn than mini bars).
After showing the film to 120 students, three evidently complained to
the university administration that Dr. Price was showing “inappropriate
material” in class. Dr. Price was not allowed to learn the names of the
students or to meet with them, was denied a hearing, and was
immediately suspended and told that she could not enter any offices
or classrooms in the Arts and Sciences buildings. Should she want to
obtain “materials, computer files, pick up mail …” she needed to make
arrangements to be escorted by a member of the faculty.
How interesting that a university decides that an academic analysis
of one of the most profitable industries in the world is
“inappropriate.” What exactly are we supposed to teach about? Maybe if
Jammie Price had been in a business school and taught a case on how to
make a killing in porn, she might have been given a pass. Or maybe, to
be on the safe side, Dr. Price should have instead invited a
pornographer to class to promote their products. In 2008, the porn
press was abuzz with the great news that Joanna Angel, owner of the porn
site Burning Angel, had been invited to speak to a human
sexuality class at Indiana University. No pretense was made that this
was going to be an educational event by the porn news site X Critic,
when they wrote, “She will be showing the students clips from her
movies, handing out sex toys and enlightening them with a positive view
on pornography.”
I wrote a letter of complaint to the president of Indiana University
pointing out that the role of a university classroom was to educate the
students, not provide a captive audience for capitalists to push their
products. The president’s office responded in a rather odd way. They
asked the professor to apologize to me for bringing in Joanna Angel, as
if this whole case was a personal insult to me. I think we should be
speaking about porn in the classroom, but not as a fun industry that
sells fantasy, but rather as a global industry that works just like any
other industry with business plans, niche markets, venture capitalists
and the ever-increasing need to maximize profits.
It seems to me that Price’s crime was to provide a progressive
critique of the porn industry, rather than wax lyrically about how porn
empowers women sexually. She showed a film that takes an unflinching
look at the real porn industry. Instead of claiming that we are all
empowered by porn, The Price of Pleasure delves into the
underbelly of the industry, illustrating its points with images drawn
from some of the most popular porn websites. These are not pretty, nor
are they very erotic. We see women being choked with a penis, women
smeared in ejaculate, women being slapped and spit upon, and in a
particularly horrible scene, a woman retching after she has licked a
penis that was just in her anus (called Ass to Mouth in the industry).
I have never before heard of an academic suspended for either talking
about or showing porn. This is not really a surprise because the trend
in academia is to avoid talking about the actual industry and how it
interfaces with mainstream capitalism. At a recent academic conference I
attended in London, I found myself surrounded by post-modern academics
who could use a good dose of political economy. The plenary session
consisted of academics making the argument that there is no “it,”
meaning the porn industry, because there are so many producers of porn
and just so many types of much porn on the internet, that it is
impossible to locate any actual industry. Interesting that while there
is no “it,” there are, in fact, porn trade shows, porn business web
sites, porn PR companies, porn lobbying groups, and so on. All these
things that would suggest that there is indeed a porn business.
The failure to lose sight of how the industry functions has been
noted by the pornographers themselves. Andrew Edmond, President and CEO
of Flying Crocodile, a $20-million pornography Internet business,
explained to Brandweek that “a lot of people [outside adult
entertainment] get distracted from the business model by [the sex]. It
is just as sophisticated and multilayered as any other market place. We
operate just like any Fortune 500 company (Brandweek, October, 2000, 41, 1Q48). Jammie Price did not get distracted by the sex, and for that she paid dearly.