Not a Love Story (1981): The Celluloid Dungeon

Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography is a 1981 Canadian documentary, directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein. It includes interviews with adult photographer Suze Randall, stripper Lindalee Tracey (aka “Fonda Peters”) and porn performer Marc Stevens. There are also interviews with and footage of second-wave feminist figures like Kate Millett, Robin Morgan, Margaret Atwood, Susan Griffin and more.

Obviously, a lot has happened in the 44 years since the film was released. In 1981, the home video revolution was just starting, almost no one had heard of AIDS, Times Square in Manhattan had porn theatres and live sex shows, and the Internet only connected a few universities and government agencies. Cruising came out the previous year, and the “lesbian sex wars” were just gearing up. However, the issues in this film are still very relevant, especially considering the neo-Puritan movements of the 2020s.

For my purposes, I want to focus on how the documentary uses sadomasochistic imagery. While Klein does not address SM directly, there are plenty of references throughout the film. Early on, Klein’s narration references the cover of a particular issue of Hustler magazine, seeing it as a sign of increasing misogyny and violence in pornography.

As Klein presents it, these images are self-evidently violent, therefore the circumstances of their production are violent, and the people (i.e. men) who consume them will become violent (towards women), if they are not violent already. Merely presenting these images is supposed to be an argument in itself.

For example, one shot shows a man quietly making a piece of bondage equipment in some kind of workshop. We learn nothing about this man, not even his name, much less his work, who will buy it, or how they will use it. The clip itself is supposed to be disquieting. (I have to wonder if Klein did interview him, but decided not to use the material.)

In my opinion, Klein’s narration is the weakest part of this film. In her on-screen appearances, she repeatedly returns to the idea that pornography leads to violence against women. She presents as given claims like pornography is run by organized crime, or the “escalation theory”, that a pornography user will inevitably become desensitized and turn to more extreme material. Poet and writer Robin Morgan, in her interview, repeats the escalation theory and then claims that when the Nazis invaded Poland, they engineered a proliferation of pornography so that people would be alone in their rooms masturbating instead of resisting. Escalation theory is repeated a third time by Dr. Ed Donnerstein.

Klein and Lindalee Tracey visit a porn shop and peep show in Times Square. Tracey goes into one of the booths to watch a film loop called “Beat the Bitch”, showing a man tormenting the breasts of a bound and gagged woman. When the manager asks Tracey what that did for her, she says she didn’t like it. He says that they’re just pretending. She said that, even so, it bothered her. After this, Tracey and Klein talk, and Klein makes some strong suggestions about Tracey’s role in the porn industry, rather than letting Tracy speak for herself.

Furthermore, Klein’s narration is often at odds with her interview subjects. Suze Randall says, “It’s all play, play, fantasies. I wouldn’t take it too seriously. I certainly don’t look for a deep meaning in this.” Tracey describes how she dislikes being condescended to about her work as a stripper. A woman who does live sex shows with her husband on 42nd street talks about how her job is much better than being a call girl or street walker, and how she disagrees with the sign outside calling what she does with her husband “raunchy”. She (a white woman) also dislikes how white men in the audience react when she performs with her husband, a black man. (He appears in the film but is not shown speaking.)

One of the most interesting interviews is with Marc Stevens, a male porn actor. He talks about the pleasure, affection and closeness he feels with the women he works with, which he’s not allowed to show in his filmed performances. He also talks about doing sadomasochistic scenes with women. “‘Listen darling, I have to smack you around and piss on you and cum all over your face, but I’m only fooling around’ …. I did a lot of leather things and a lot of things I found very detrimental to women and that’s why I got out of it two years ago. I didn’t like degrading women.”

Not A Love Story was one of the first documentaries about pornography, and is therefore an important work. However, Klein approached her material with a preconceived thesis from late second-wave feminism, that pornography leads to, or is, violence against women by men. Everything she encountered was made to fit that one idea. There’s no consideration of gay or lesbian pornography, or the possibility of women as consumers of sexual media. Pornography, both as an industry and as a cultural form, is a monolith, with no distinction between the softest softcore and the hardest hardcore. Sadomasochistic images and film and video clips are scattered throughout the film without context, with no discussion of their production, their content or their audience.

Klein structured her documentary as a feminist morality play, with Tracey as the protagonist on a consciousness-raising journey from sex worker to liberated woman. (Tracey went on to work as a journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker.)