Tuesday,
July 24th, 2001
I found some interesting court documents about Ginger Lynn on the CourtTV.com site.
Ginger was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois. Her father, Wayne Allen, was 18 when she was born. Her mom, Marilyn Allen nee McBride, was 19.
As of 1991, Ginger's parents had divorced. According to 1991 court documents in Ginger's sentencing for tax evasion and drug use, Wayne Allen worked as a dock supervisor for an aerospace company, and Marilyn worked as a switchboard operator. She was very ill after a double masectomy in 1990. Ginger's sister Kari Ann Pyzinski, born in 1966, lived in Rockford. Kari Ann has a history of mental instability.
According to criminologist Sheila Balkan, writing Judge Ronald Lew on September 17, 1991:
(Report written by a criminologist submitted to the court by Ginger Lynn's lawyer, on September 18, 1991, demonstrating that Lynn's choice of profession was dictated largely by the environment in which she grew up.)
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Ginger's family background was in some respects typically "working class". She was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois, an industrial town of approximately 200,000 population. Neither of her parents had any education beyond high school, and neither has ever held employment beyond "blue collar" level. There was a strong religious element in the home, as her mother was raised Southern Baptist, and "lived by religious doctrine," according to Ginger. However, from all accounts, family dynamics in the Allen household ranged from dysfunctional to pathological.
Ginger's mother, Marilyn, was born in Tennessee, the illegitimate child of a prostitute. Marilyn was adopted by the family of the putative father, who was the son of a Baptist minister. She was brought to Rockford, Illinois, as a teenager. Ginger recalls that her mother made sure that, even as a little girl, she was aware of this somewhat sordid background. The dark quality surrounding this one aspect of her life is suggested by Ginger's one memory of her maternal grandmother, which comes from a visit she made with her mother and younger sister to Georgia, when she [Ginger] was twelve years old.
"For some reason I expected my mother's mother to be pretty and elegant like Miss Kitty in 'Gunsmoke.' Instead, she was this poor, ugly, deformed woman with a crippled arm. Her house was an awful mess. There were little piles of dust and dirt just sitting around on the floor and the carpet. It smelled awful. It was creepy."
She concludes, 'We heard a few years later that she'd died in a mental institution."
Ginger's father, Wayne Allen, was the son of a Rockford police officer. Wayne was an alcoholic, a "blue collar brawler sort of a guy," and a woman chaser. He was apparently highly intelligent, extremely volatile, and largely irresponsible.
"Ginger states that her mother was eighteen and still living at home with her "holy damnation Baptist parents" when she met Wayne Allen, who was seventeen and in the Air Force. She says, "My mother decided she wanted out. So she got herself pregnant by my father and then got him to marry her. He didn't really want to. He wanted to keep chasing women."
The coercive nature of the marriage and the individual characters of her parents created a highly dysfunctional home situation almost from the beginning. Ginger recalls that her parents fought constantly because of her father's drinking and "womanizing." She says: "My mother was always screaming about my father running around with whores. They'd have their fight, my father would hit my mother, and then she'd take it out on me."
Physical abuse was a regular part of Ginger's childhood. This was primarily by her mother. Ginger remembers, "She mainly hit me with a belt or one of those big wooden kitchen spoons. Sometimes I could tell it was coming, but mostly there was no way to predict it." Ginger also recalls occasional assaults by her father when he was "drunk and mean." She notes, "One time he hit me so hard, my back is still dislocated because of it." However, she adds, "Usually when my father was sober, I could go to him to keep my mother from beating me up. I usually didn't get hit when he was around."
Ginger's father left her mother when Ginger was six years old. Although he was "in and out of the house" during the next several years, he was effectively a non-factor in Ginger's life after this time. Ginger's situation with her mother deteriorated after her father left, as her mother then turned all of her anger on Ginger.
Ginger remembers that her mother might be "as sweet as you could want" at one instant and "a raving lunatic" the next. By Ginger's description, Marilyn Allen appears to have been frighteningly unstable. She recalls having her mother come into her bedroom and while she slept and "chopping chunks out of my hair with scissors." The verbal abuse Ginger received from her mother was degrading and gratuitous.
She says: "My mother used to scream at me how ugly I was, and she'd tell me I was evil, and talk about how she was going to send me to reform school... I see my mother as having always been very detached. I remember her being very racist, filled with hate. Everything to her was ugly. She saw no beauty in the world."
It was after her father left home that Ginger began to spend more time with her paternal grandparents. She recalls many occasions when she ran to her grandparents' home to escape her mother's anger and abuse. She recalls, "My grandparents were everything to me. They loved me and told me nice things. They gave me hope and encouragement." However, Ginger's contact with her grandparents was regulated by her mother and used as a mechanism of control.
Evelyn Allen recounts: "Ginger's mother was very abusive towards her. She was forbidden to come to our house when she was little. It was a way for her mother to hurt me. I guess because of the problems with her and my son. When I would see Ginger, she could never tell me anything that was going on at home. She was scared to death of her mother and what she might do. Ginger was a shy, sweet, adorable little girl. We knew what was going on but there was nothing we could do about it."
Ginger began to create her own world. This had some elements of a healthy exercise of imagination, but was more indicative of a frightening level of emotional retreat in a young child. She says: "I got to the point where I used to try to make myself believe that my mother wasn't my real mother, and the life I had wasn't my real life. I would pretend that reality was just my imagination, and I would create plays and shows and pretend that was my real life."
Her grandmother, Evelyn, remembers that Ginger would have imaginary playmates when she was very young. She notes that these playmates were very real to her and that it went on for some time.
Ginger was in elementary school when she first began putting on performances in the garage and charging her friends a few cents admission. She says: "I used to make up little plays, or shows where I'd sing and dance, and I'd charge the kids in the neighborhood to come and watch the performance. It was the greatest feeling in the world when the kids would like my shows. It gave me the feeling I was worth something."
Ginger states that she attempted suicide when she was twelve years old. She took more than a dozen prescription sleeping pills which belonged to her mother and, according to her recollection was "out for about three days." Ginger remembers: "I didn't quite die, I just laid there. My mother didn't do anything to help me, no food, no doctor, nothing. I remember walking into a wall at one point when I was half-conscious. Eventually I just came out of it."
It was not long after this that Ginger's grandparents took her out of her mother's home for good. Ginger relates: "My mother had given me a terrible beating with a belt. My grandfather called for some reason, and I just started screaming. He came over and saw the welts on my back and called the police. The police didn't do anything, but my grandfather took me. He filled a paper bag with all of my clothes that would fit and took me home. The next day my mother told my grandfather that she would let them have me if they would give her $500. They gave her the money and I stayed with them from then on."
Ginger states that she had virtually no contact with her mother for eight years after this.
Ginger developed serious addiction problems by her early adolescence.
Ginger says: "On the 'lower class' side [of Rockville] where I lived, it was normal for kids to drink and use drugs. We spent a lot of time hanging around outside the school or in the park getting high. A lot of the teachers and parents knew and nobody did anything."
Ginger states she was soon drinking substantial amounts of alcohol, smoking marijuana regularly, and was also using "acid, PCP, muchrooms, everything there was to do."
Ginger also developed what appears to have been an almost addictive need for male relationships. Ginger says, "I felt a really desperate need to feel that people liked me, that they wanted to be with me. I was willing to just about do anything to feel like I could be assured of that."
By the time Ginger was 13, she had her first serious boyfriend. This was an older boy whom she had met while "hanging around in the park." Ginger says: "This guy always had a lot of drugs - stuff like acid and pot and mushrooms. I first got into drugs with him. He was the first guy ever had sex with. I'd been going with him a couple of years and I was pretty serious. I had planned on us getting married. I even had a piggy bank that I used to save money for us to get started with."
Ginger became pregnant at age 13 and had an abortion. She says, "My grandmother realized that I was having sex and she got me started on the pill.
"I never thought of myself as pretty. My mother used to tell me I looked like a witch. I never even wore makeup. My life became focused around doing drugs and being with my boyfriends. I felt like if someone thought I was pretty and I could please them, that made my life all right. I mostly went out with older guys, not guys from school. They had cars and money, and they made me feel grownup. I really had no goals for the future. As long as someone would make me feel like I was worth something, that seemed like enough."
Ginger's friend Patte remembers: "Ginger was pretty much controlled by guys throughout high school. She was petite and had an attractive figure, and guys liked her. Most of the guys she went with were creeps. Some of them were really abusive. I remember one guy coming to my house loooking for her and dragging her away down the street. Ginger was really true to these guys, but most of them were terrible to her."
Fred writes: Your post re Ms. Lynn was pretty interesting. Did you get this from the Federal Court yourself? Or did someone give it to you? If I might be so impertinent to ask, who gave it to you, and what do you think their agenda was? Has Ms. Lynn contacted you concerning this post? I speculate she may not be too happy about the post, but I don't think anyone can accuse you of not checking your sources on this one.
It would be interesting to see what else one can find out about the talent in the industry by looking at court records. In many ways, I find it curious that such an attractive woman (who clearly has the physical assets required to manipulate lots of men) can nonetheless be so insecure. I understand, of course, that one thing has nothing to do with the other. It's just an artifact of human life that I find interesting.
The phenomenon by which women are attracted to abusive or low-life men is also fairly interesting to me. I wonder whether such women sense, before the relationship even starts, that they will eventually be abused during its course. I suspect that women are able to sense that, but they continue on to establish the relationship anyway. Whatcha think?
Luke says: I snatched the Ginger Lynn material from court documents first published on CourtTV.com.
Porn Can't Attract Quality Women
Pat Riley writes on RAME: The facts are that, due to the low pay and worse working conditions, porn cannot attract high quality females and only a tiny subset of the ones it does attract could ever make the quality level demanded by mainstream. All too often viewers are fobbed off with and unfortunately accept the marginal, the aged, and the deteriorated, a prime reason why the industry treats the viewer with contempt.
Industry motto (from the industry toilet paper): "Remember, there's a new crop of guys turning 18 each year." Read: We've got as much mileage as we can from Gina B'fugly and the 19 year old viewers are now leaving in droves. Not to worry, the next lot of 18 year olds will be just as gullible as the previous lot were so we can keep Gina around for another year or two.
On The Set Of Quasarman's Sleepwalker
Curious writes: Just got back from a 5 hour drive from Quasarman's new movie, "Sleep Walker." Had a great time! I met Felicia Fox, Nina Ferrari, Sunrise Adams, Bridgett Kerkove and my personal hero ... SKEETER! Oh yeah, and Quaze and Mike Adams too. Here are some photos from the set and I'll write a full report later.
Porn writer Rodger Jacobs (rdjacobs@concentric.net) writes: Luke: In response to Legs McNeil's assertion that snuff films do not exist and are just another part of our rich urban mythology, I submit the following article, "Snuffed Out", that I wrote for the June 1999 issue of Eye Magazine.
David Moye writes: "I interviewed Legs McNeil and he refused to consider the German Snuff case. First, he hadn't heard of it. Then, he said his report focused on America."
RPM writes: "Legs McNeil makes the same mistake as most newbies, which is to go along with the FBI's definition of a snuff film as footage that's made "commercially available." The porn industry relies on that dopey definition, too. It sounds like Legs McNeil's knowledge of the industry is mainly based on reading the AVN website. Once again, some gullible goofball will turn out another crappy work on porn that would benefit from your skepticism."
Ian writes: "Hi Luke, I think it's silly for Legs McNeil to insist that there are no such things as snuff movies. He covers himself by insisting that, in order to qualify, they must have been made for 'entertainment'. I would have thought it was enough that they were made to show others and not just look at oneself. I belong to pictureview.com, a site which hoovers up the movie clips and pictures submitted to internet newsgroups and publishes them. A lot of it isn't porn at all, though a lot is. The site owners don't pre-censor the pics and clips, though they say they will respond to complaints. Over a couple of years I have come across a number of pics which might well have been extracted from snuff movies, and two movie clips (which I immediately trashed in horror) certainly classifiable to that genre. In one, an unconscious oriental woman is deliberately shot by a silenced gun, and quite obviously expires from the resulting hole in her chest. In the second one (labelled 'decapitation') I saw the first few seconds of a man having his head cut off with a large knife. The participants looked like soldiers and their prisoner, and the movie might well have been taken during the Chechnya war. If I (someone definitely not looking for this kind of stuff) can accidentally come across examples of it, is it plausible that those kinds of people for whom it is meat and drink are not having it deliberately made for them?"
“SNUFFED OUT” ONE REPORTER’S PERSONAL DECISION TO STAY OUT OF THE DARKNESS
“Snuff films are those in which the final act is sexual murder. No hard evidence has ever been presented that such films do exist, but rumor has it that there are a very few 8mm films to be had at a very high price. The major trouble with producing this sort of film is that you are constantly forced to be on the lookout for new talent.” --- Stephen Ziplow, “The Film Maker’s Guide To Pornography”
It’s like walking into that seedy bar on the wrong side of town. The stench of stale beer, spent cigarettes, and moral decay assaults your nostrils. All eyes are on you with suspicious and hostile glares as you push through the door, bringing with you a momentary glimpse of the sun outside, the harsh rays spilling over the darkened room and illuminating the nasty bit of business going down in the corner. There’s a sudden sharp pain at the back of your head and seconds before you slump to your shaking knees to embrace the piss-stained floor with your face you realize that someone had come up from behind and struck you with a blackjack. God only knows what they have planned next.
That’s how I felt upon receiving the ominous warning; like I had stepped into a sordid establishment I had no business being in and it was time to back out the door, pretending I never saw the place before. Forget the address, forget the street it’s on, forget even what city it’s in.
“Stay away from the snuff film angle,” the strongly worded advisory from Henry, a fellow journalist, began. He sent me the e-mail on May 11, less than a week after I began probing into a ghastly tale that debunked the widely held notion that snuff films are nothing more than an urban myth. “Stay away from the topic completely as a journalist, in conversation, and in every way you can think. Just stay away from it.”
Henry is a trusted friend and advisor, a seasoned writer with keen insights and a few friends in law enforcement. If someone like that tells you to back away from a story you had better do as told or ponder the reality before proceeding any further that you may spend the rest of your life living in fear.
The macabre story of Ernst Dieter Korzen and Stefan Michael Mahn, both sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for committing murder during the production of a snuff film, fell into my lap quite by accident. On the morning of Thursday, May 6, 1999, I stumbled bleary-eyed to my computer and went on-line to summon up my daily dose of porn industry gossip from Luke F-rd’s website. Luke, a porno outsider, is the leading purveyor of tabloid journalism targeted at the billion dollar smut industry. His reporting is often sloppy and inaccurate and he has been rightfully accused on several occasions of running with a story before pausing to verify the facts, which is why I immediately phoned him after seeing the story on his website that morning.
“Where the hell did you get this story about the German snuff film, Luke?” “A source sent it to me last night,” Luke replied lazily in his soft Australian accent. I could hear him clacking away at the keyboard while we talked, no doubt adding more salacious chunks of gossip to his website from the modest bungalow he occupies literally in the shadow of the monolithic structure of glass and steel that houses Larry Flynt Publications in L.A.’s Wilshire District. “I think they pulled it off a wire service.”
“Is it a reputable wire service? Send me everything you have on this. I need to verify that the story isn’t a hoax.”
“Why?”
He seemed bored and distracted, still banging away at the keyboard, unaware or indifferent to the gravity of the story. Over the years gallons of ink have been shed in magazines and newspapers to discredit the existence of snuff films, most naysayers citing the lack of direct evidence as proof that the trade is as mythical as Hydra. No such film had ever been discovered by any police force in the world --- until now.
“I want to run with this, Luke,” I said through a burst of adrenalin, that certain surge all writers get when pursuing The Big Story. Six weeks had passed since I turned in my last feature article for Hustler magazine; titled Beyond Extreme, the 3,000 word dispatch was a dark and gritty expose of the underground porn market. The article only vaguely touched upon the subject of snuff films. Now, with this horrific story filtering out of Hagan, Germany, I might have the perfect follow-up piece: SNUFF FILMS EXIST.
“I find it hard to believe that there are people that get off on seeing other people murdered in a sexual situation. I think it’s a myth. Of course, it makes a good story.” --- Larry Flynt, Premiere Magazine, March 1999
Three months of research for the Hustler article on underground porn led me into some dark alleyways that should never see the light of day.
Discussion groups on the World Wide Web are perhaps the best venue to locate purveyors of taboo pornography like bestiality and rape videos but be careful where you step because there are some twisted souls posting missives of perversion beyond your imagination. In a discussion group devoted to sexual sadism I followed one very busy and popular conversation thread devoted to “building the perfect guillotine to slice off a woman’s breasts.” A fan of the rather unpleasant subject wrote, “I can think of nothing sexier than seeing the sharp blade of a guillotine cutting through a plump breast.” If anyone ever needed the Lorena Bobbitt treatment it’s this group of gleeful psychopaths. Moving on to another subject in the same discussion group I stumbled upon a posting from a demented contributor who wanted to know if anyone shared his fantasy of “seeing naked young women burned alive at the stake.” Backyard barbeques must offer up some intriguing fare at his house.
There are demons walking among us, far too many to count, and I pored over their maniacal writings for weeks on end. Some of their fantasies are simply unspeakable, played out on the Internet in a blazing Heironymous Bosch-like tableau of sexual mayhem, mutilation, and torture. On a bad day Hell can look a lot like the World Wide Web.
Within this context it was hard for me to believe that snuff films produced for a commercial profit did not exist --- certainly there are monsters out there who would buy the product --- but my editor at Larry Flynt Publications urged me to “stay away from snuff films” in my article “because LFP’s editorial position is that they are an urban myth.”
But if the laws of science and metaphysics have taught us anything it’s that you cannot discount the existence of something just because you can’t see it. Through a discussion group devoted to underground videos I happened upon the man who calls himself Snuff King, a Denmark-based collector of esoterica and a student of the snuff film phenomenon who assured me that “a few real snuff films exist.” While he has never seen the films himself Snuff King avows that “one (of the movies) showed a young, Asian female being strangled to death in a hotel room. It was impounded by the police before it reached the public. The other case that I know of is from the Bosnian War and was apparently recorded in a Serbian prison camp. It showed the rape, torture, and murder of several Bosnian women.”
I believed Snuff King. After three months of reading a laundry list of sadistic lust to prepare for my article I had more reason to accept his word than to dismiss it.
“Soon ... hardcore films will be medical films. People will be jerking off to women laying around with open wounds. There’s nowhere else for it go.” --- from the screenplay “8MM” by Andrew Kevin Walker
“Even the people involved around the fringes of that crap are extremely dangerous,” Henry’s e-mail warning me off the snuff film story continued. “You don’t want to be on their radar, not at all. Even as a journalist you don’t get a free pass with those types of people.”
To underscore the danger inherent in pursuing such a story Henry invoked the account of a New York City newspaper reporter who disappeared while investigating a similar story.
With Henry’s warning bouncing around in the back of my head like a wild pinball I contacted one of two reporters who contributed to the snuff film story for the news service bureau referenced on Luke F-rd’s web site. It was after midnight in Vienna, Austria, when the very British and baritone voice of Nigel Glass, a frequent contributor to the BBC and London Times, came on the phone. I explained that I was a freelance journalist in the States looking for more detailed information on the murder trial of Korzen and Mahn.
“What exactly do you want to know?” Glass asked in a most accommodating fashion.
“Is it true? Did they actually make a snuff film?”
“Oh, it’s quite true,” Glass replied placidly.
The gruesome nightmare began on a November evening in 1997 when 36 year old Ernst Dieter Korzen and 27 year old Stefan Michael Mahn picked up Juleyha Akpinar, a 21 year old prostitute, on the streets of Cologne, Germany. Wolfgang Rahmer, the Chief Prosecutor in Hagan, Germany, would later describe Korzen as “a very dangerous man” known to police for his history of sexual violence, but the authorities had been unable to snare him because his victims were too terrified to testify against him.
Korzen and Mahn took their victim to a bungalow in Kierspe-Roensal, near the city of Hagan, where they repeatedly raped and tortured her while a video camera recorded the details. And then the story takes an even darker twist: the intended “star” of their snuff film died too quickly, strangling to death by the rope knotted around her neck, so the would-be producers of the most heinous film on earth were forced to procure another player for the grim drama that they hoped to sell in the United States, according to prosecutors, for the odd sum of $16,000.
“The second woman that they captured to complete the video managed to befriend one of the men” Nigel Glass related to me, “and as a result was able to escape and alert authorities.” Mahn and Korzen were promptly arrested. Police withheld details of the crime for over six months while embarking on an international investigation into the snuff film trade, an industry that prosecutor Wolfgang Rahmer believes exists, telling the London Sunday Times: “We know that there is no sexual perversion that cannot be marketed, and you would be amazed at the sums offered for such perverse videos.”
“The greatest harm buyers of these films do is to provide incentive for producers to continue having innocent victims murdered.” --- Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices
“This is a major story, Rodger. This is the first time that police have direct evidence of a snuff film being made for profit.” David Buchbinder, features editor at Larry Flynt Publications, judiciously considered my proposal to interview the key figures in the case --- mainly police and prosecutors --- before putting a damper on the whole affair by suggesting that I step deeper into the shadows.
“The only way I see this as a feature story,” David said, “is if you can interview the perpetrators, the girl who got away, and maybe the family members of the victim.”
That’s when that small inner voice started speaking to me, the same voice that suddenly begs you not to get on an airplane, for instance; you follow the voice’s commands, even though it seems paranoiacally illogical at the time, only to turn on the TV news two hours later and learn that the plane burst into flames after making a crash landing in a remote farm field. “All passengers and crew were killed upon impact,” the news anchor says in somber tones as you stare transfixed at the TV and try to wipe the sweat away from the palms of your hands.
I lived in Munich, Germany for two years, 1972 and ‘73. I watched the Olympics massacre unfold on television, a bloody and tragic episode occurring no less than half a mile from where I was living. Furthermore, the rabidly anti-American terrorist group The Baader-Meinhoff gang was merrily setting off pipe bombs all over Munich during this time. And if that’s not enough, I had Thanksgiving dinner in 1973 at a U.S. Army facility outside the gates of the notorious Dachau Prison Camp.
I have the misfortune to associate Germany with death and tragedy, and suddenly the idea of traipsing around the Deutsche countryside poking and prodding with a journalistic stick at things better left alone had a smell of bad fate about it. On an instinctive level I knew that snuff films had to exist even before I ever heard the names of Ernst Dieter Korzen and Stefan Michael Mahn, so what benefits could I possibly derive from pursuing the story any further? They don’t award the Pulitzer Prize for this kind of journalism --- it’s the kind of story people do not want to know about, a little bit of horror that everyone wants to believe is an urban myth, evidenced by the fact that American news services have been slow to respond and offer coverage of the apprehension and trial of Korzen and Mahn.
But I can understand why nobody wants to hear about this story. Let’s face it: if we have evolved as a species to the degrading point where sexual murder caught on film or video tape is considered entertainment to even a small percentage of the population at large then it’s time to change your name to Noah and start building an ark because a hard rain is gonna fall, baby.
I’ve been in the darkness far too long. When your work and research can compel you to make the casual conclusion that such acts of barbarism as snuff films do indeed exist then it’s time to lighten your load a bit, maybe bury your head in the sand with the rest of the human race and pretend that there is indeed some limit to human cruelty.
“There are some stories that really aren’t stories, but something for law enforcement,” my friend Henry wrote to me the day I decided to back off of the story.
Henry is right. Korzen and Mahn will spend the rest of their days rotting behind bars in a German penal institute, and hopefully they won’t spawn any imitators. If they do, I won’t be there to cover the story.
Lynne writes: What an incredible article, Rodger! Not only because it portrays Luke so exquisitely, but because you've really done some nasty homework. I'm glad that guy who told you to "stay away from the story didn't entirely succeed."
Documenting the torture of victims for later enjoyment is extremely common among serial killers, whenever the technology is available that lets them photograph or, better yet, videotape their illicit activities without involving processing by others. Dahmer's souvenir Polaroid collection was a vast improvement over Jack The Ripper's collection of rotting uteri. As they say in the schoolyard, "Take a picture...it lasts longer."
Black & white 35mm film is relatively easy to develop and print, and many serial killers have been amateur photo buffs. The first case I know of is that of Harvey Glatman, who photographed women in bondage before he raped and killed them. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley took pictures of child victims and recorded their torture on reel to reel audio tape; Jerome Brudos killed his victims first and photographed them afterwards (before amputating their feet for deep freezing.)
Technology improves. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng videotaped their torture games. Roy Norris and Larry "Pliers" Bittaker made audiocassettes of their screaming victims. Randy Kraft and the afore-mentioned Dahmer had dozens of Polaroids of dead & dying boy toys.
Type "forensic" and "photography" into any search engine, and you'll pull up sites chock full of sickening photos of men and women with knife wounds, heads blown away by shotguns... Gay with a fetish for dark meat? Pick up a scholarly book on lynching if dead black men hanging from a noose rings your chimes.
The stuff is out there, people! There's more than one kind of of crazy: there's crazy enough to become aroused by fantasies of the existence of violent obscenity, and then there's crazy enough to make souvenirs of one's own handiwork. With the German case mentioned in Rodger's article, are we assuming that the perpetrators didn't enjoy torturing and killing in the least, and ONLY did what they did for potential commercial gain? Or were they trying to combine pleasure with profit, killing two birds with one weapon, so to speak? And that the latter is somehow worse than just being a murderous sociopath for one's own enjoyment?
Apply the argument to garden-variety pornography. Is it criminal to document variant sexuality, or is it criminal to document it if it is to be sold? Or is the crime selling the documentation? And if the producer enjoys his product, is that more or less evil than when he only makes porn for the money?
Hannibal Lechter, the fictional cannibal killer In "Silence of the Lambs," Hannibal Lechter, in his cell, is willing to trade information for just a glimpse of crime scene photos. Real-life sociopaths like Ted Bundy act as their own lawyers in part so that they can continue accessing photos of their handiwork. The tools of law enforcement, as Rodger's article concludes, become pornography in the right hands.
Serial killer Ed Kemper said, when asked what he thought when he saw a pretty woman, "Part of me says...I'd like to date her. But another part of me says...I'd like to see her head on the end of a stick." I, personally, wouldn't want to do either, even for money. Pat Riley's favorite pornography disgusts me, but then I like bukkake Go figure. My most favorite pornography disgusts most everyone (right, Goddess?) Wanna jack off to dead people? That's not illegal, and there's no need to shoot one's own. There's plenty already out there from which to choose, even though "snuff" is only form of tobacco to stick up one's nose.
johnny_rockin: What is the history of porn? How did the industry start?
Legs McNeil: It was loops and stag films Until "Deep Throat" came out
in 1972, which was one of the first feature-length pornographic films
with a plot, and an original score, and was actually funny. "Deep Throat"
launched the modern porn industry. It was made with a $22,000 investment
by the Peraino family, a low-level mob crew, and it grossed $100 million,
which made everyone in the Mafia sit up and take notice.
Lynne writes: Why do we confuse the history of porn with the advent of film and videotape? Men being men, porn began with cavemen drawing smutty pictures on the walls. Erotic writing...erotic art...French Postcards...Asian "pillow books." Indian bas reliefs of statues entwined in positions from the Kama Sutra. Irving Klaw photo sets. Commercial porn sales in this country blossomed with the distribution of "Tijuana bibles" featuring popular newspaper comic strip characters of the 1920's engaged in hardcore action. These little books were passed around schoolyards years before comic books were even invented. The porn distribution network for pseudo-photography, nudie cutie and nudist magazines evolved out of the comic book distribution network. Hedy Lamarr's "Ecstacy" was released in the 1930's without Wil Hayes' seal of approval, effectively classing it as porn. What about "I Am Curious, Yellow?" That's pre-"Deep Throat" porn. "Deep Throat" was a pornographic landmark, but it was hardly the beginning of porn...
Heather Lyn Responds
Tell Truth writes: "Does anyone really give a f---a bout Heather Lyn and Alec Metro. it is a sick relationship amd they will be back together again. They are both nuts. Didnt Heather sit in Jail for a day because she whacked Alec with a frying pan. Didnt he actually try to get her out after he called the police. Doesnt that sound a little sick??? Maybe Heather caught Alec sniffing Summers feet and got Jealous he didnt stay loyal to her tootsies??? They both cheated and both hid the secret SOMETIMES, since we all know Alec loves to watch Heather f--- other men at their home as long as he watches??? Maybe her recent pregnancy and subsequent termination just made her lose her mind. Both of them are cokeheads and will soon be back together huffing lines soon."
Heather Lyn responds: To whomever you are, Who do you think you are? Why don't you tell me who you are? Who are you to talk about our relationship? Alec and I are not nuts! When you love somebody or think you do, you do things that seem weird to others. I never hit him with that frying pan. He called the police and in the state of California, somebody automatically goes to jail when called. There was no proof I hit him and he tried to tell them that as they were taking me away. That's why he tried to get me out of jail. So what? What do you care? And no, we will not be getting back together. If we someday can be friends that's our decision. We never hurt anybody in the process. As far as the termination of my pregnancy goes, f--- YOU ASSHOLE! It was a very hard decision for us to make and until you have to do it, especially as a woman, don't talk s--- about it! It was Alec's baby, not from work or play with others, and we did what we thought was best. Who the hell are you to call us cokeheads? Have you been to our home and partied with us? If so, then you are one too. If not, then how can you speak about something you haven't seen? I won't say that we've never partied, but who doesn't? As long as we get our work done and don't bother others then why the hell not?? Let's see if you have the balls to tell me who you are. Write me back or, since you seem to know me so well, call me.
Luke says: I spoke to Heather Lyn Monday afternoon.
Heather: "I never hit Brendon with a pan. It was just a threat. In the state of California, when the police are called, it's an automatic arrest. As for the termination of my pregnancy, it was Alec's. We wanted it but it just wasn't a good time to have it.
"Alec and I are not getting back together. We did talk civilly on the phone last night. But as far as coke heads go, if we party every once in a while, that's nobody's f--king business. Everybody in the business does it.
"I don't hide anything I do. Somebody asked me the other day and I straight up told them."
Luke: "So did Alec call the police on you?"
Heather: "Oh yeah, I was handcuffed in the house. They never told me I was under arrest and they never read me my rights. I sat in a holding cell off of Van Nuys Blvd for 45 minutes before they ever read me my rights. Then a three hour in-processing at the big station off Van Nuys Blvd in Sherman Oaks.
"It was in October. I was getting ready to cater a VCA shoot. We were fighting. He was screaming in my face and I wanted him out of my face. I came to grab my dishes to go to work. I held a pot up in the air but I never hit him.
"Neither one of us give up easily. We're strong and we fight for whatever we believe in.
"I'm starting to go out more and meet new people, people who have nothing to do with this business. Which is really nice."
Luke: "How long do you plan to stay in the video business?"
Heather: "As long as I have work. I do catering too. I told you that I've done a lot of things in my life, it's not like this is my only skill. I'm getting in shape and changing my hair color. I feel good about myself."
Luke: "Alec thinks it is a mistake for any woman to enter this industry."
Heather: "He would. He's a guy.
"My first rule when I got in [to porn] was not to date anybody, period. When I met him, I dropped that rule."
Luke: "It's hard for us guys to understand why any woman would enter this industry?"
Heather: "For the same reasons why a guy would."
Luke: "Guys just want sex."
Heather: "There are plenty of girls that just want sex. And everyone wants a paycheck.
"Girls get contracts and are known throughout. Some crossover to mainstream stuff. Others become directors, producers, photographers.
"Summer stayed at my place. When she was sick, I held her head all night long, even though I had to work the next day, all day long.
"I never asked him [Metro] to not do his foot fetish thing at work. I've been on many of his sets to support him through that. And I've done things to get him through scenes."
Kevin Korey writes: Concerning "Tell Truth" comments about Alec and Heather and their relationship. Both Heather and Alec are good people......this is a hard business to deal with both professionally and personally, everyone is in each others personal lives and sometimes we just are not sure how to handle it. We live in a glass house, don't throw stones! None of us received the "How to be a Porn Star/ Boyfriend / Girlfriend/ Producer/ Director" hand book. To even bring something up publicly like her "pregnancy and subsequent termination" is just plain rude and disgusting.....let them deal with this in the manner that they feel fit and stay out of it. I am sure this was NOT an invitation to the cyberworld to chime in and try to hurt them. This is the type of s--- that is killing this business........it's time to grow up and treat this industry as a business and stop the childish games that seem to resonate from every direction you turn......trust me, if we (the adult industry) don't stick together.....we are all done.
Duddy Dearest
Sheldon Teitelbaum writes in the September 5, 1991 Los Angeles Times:
However much his books are admired elsewhere, Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler's books are greeted by many of his fellow Jewish Montrealers with the aplomb of Inquisition victims about to have their thumbnails yanked out. In such satirical novels as "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," "Joshua Then and Now," "St. Urbain's Horseman" and last year's "Solomon Gursky Was Here," Richler has painted an unforgettably sardonic portrait of Montreal's Jews as vulgar, grasping, nouveau-riche social climbers.
But this year the city's Jewish community (about 89,000) is seeing Mordecai Richler get a taste of his own medicine. Revenge has come in the appropriate guise of a book: "Kicking Tomorrow" (McClelland & Stewart), a hilariously wicked first novel by Daniel Richler, Mordecai's eldest son.
The younger Richler is a 34-year-old arts writer, TV programmer and former rock critic living in Toronto, Montreal's arch-rival. His chronicle, which lampoons his father mercilessly, is based loosely on his own troubled adolescence. The elder Richler is depicted as a habitually slothful and emotionally ineffectual couch potato, who seems incapable of completing a coherent sentence.
"Someone did say to me recently that they had laughed uproariously to realize how I had assassinated my old man in the first chapter," says Daniel Richler. "But I hadn't thought of it as Oedipal revenge. I had no intention of doing anything but tweaking Dad's nose."
"Kicking Tomorrow" has reached No. 2 on the Toronto Globe & Mail's best-seller list. It has been purchased by Random House, which is planning to publish a U.S. edition next summer, and some Canadian filmmakers have expressed an interest in adapting it for the screen.
Besides lampooning Dad, the novel probes the distasteful and unwholesome underside of Canadian youth culture. "There aren't many tough books here about youth in Canada," says Richler. "When you write one about a middle-class kid who has all the privileges and benefits of decent Canadian culture and life and still spits in society's face, some people don't like it."
The story is set in 1976, a seminal period in Quebec history that saw the election of the separatist Parti Quebecois and the culmination of what appeared to be a genuine cultural revolution within Francophone society. Oblivious to the rumblings of history, the nihilistic teenager Robbie Bookbinder devotes his youthful energies to disrupting his family's Passover Seder, wrecking their home in the largely Jewish upper-class community of Westmount, ingesting copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, mooning for a deeply disturbed and unattainable girl and hanging out with a motorcycle gang.
What's most striking in "Kicking Tomorrow" is the younger Richler's refashioning of the mythic Montreal landscape in his father's novels. The book shows something of the same Dickensian scope and feel for the city.
But Daniel's Montreal is not his father's the post-war Jewish ghetto, a five-block-or-so expanse bordered by St. Lawrence Boulevard, that was the launching pad for a now-affluent community. Fletcher's Field, which figured prominently as a locale in his father's novels, has been paved over with a shopping mall. Robbie Bookbinder passes Moe Wilenski's landmark sandwich shop with no glimmer of recognition.
Bookbinder expends little effort contemplating his Jewish roots; he knows his grandmother is from the Old Country, but never bothers to ask which old country. "In some respects," acknowledges Richler, "my father mowed the grass and I was able to walk across the lawn. He marked out a certain map, and I was addressing certain of his landmarks antagonistically or satirically, intending to poke fun. I wanted to take the mickey out of his portrayal of the city."
Richler vs Quebec
Sheldon Teitelbaum writes in the November 7, 1991 edition of The Jerusalem Report:
Montreal author Mordecai Richler, in his inimitably caustic style, has once again put the screws to his native province, this time in an article in the New Yorker magazine. The piece, which appeared in September, ridiculed the province's excessive and repressive language laws, while holding French Canadian society in general up to charges of xenophobia and acute parochialism. But it is his charge that widespread anti-Semitism - like the idea of sovereignty is "alive" which has provoked the greatest furor. For Quebecois nationalists, worried about their image in the United States, the mere fact that the witheringly condemnatory piece was published in so august an American magazine was infuriating. And the rancor generated by the flap is making some of the 89,000 Jews left in Montreal - described by Richler as a community "wary of the tribalism that has taken hold" in Quebec increasingly uncomfortable, following as it does some of the recent examples Richler himself recounts.
Among the incidents and examples Richler cited to illustrate perennial antipathy toward Jews in Quebec:
In 1989, a Quebec Liberal Party member opposing a Jewish candidate in a provincial election said the province's Jewish community risked a cut-off of funds to its public health and cultural institutions if the man was elected. A bid in 1986 by the 3,000-strong Vishnizer hasidic community in the Montreal suburb of Outremont to build a synagogue was blocked by the city council, one of whose members, a convicted Front de Liberation de Quebec terrorist, declared "We don't want Outremont to become a hasidic city." A study conducted in 1987 by Irving Abella - a history professor at Toronto's York University and author of "None is Too Many," a damning indictment of Canada's World War II immigration policy - showed that 84 percent of French Canadians harbor negative opinions of Jews, twice the rate among English Canadians.
One of the "patron saints" of Quebec nationalism, l'Abbe Lionel Groulx, a contemporary of the notoriously anti-Semitic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin in the U.S., was an ardently anti-Semitic fascist sympathizer during the 30s. Groulx, unlike Coughlin, Richler argues, "did not fade away, a blight limited to his times, but went on to become a major influence on many of Quebec's leading intellectuals," such that one called him after his death "the spiritual father of modern Quebec."
In April, 1990, Pierre Peladeau, the publisher of the French tabloid Journal de Montreal, rebuked his staff for running articles praising Jews. In the ensuing flap he countered critics saying, "I have a lot of respect for Jews, but," he added, "they take up too much space."
During World War II, "French Canadian society was actively on Hitler's side, through its church, its leaders and its public opinion and by any other measure you care to make," says Montreal-based Jewish historian David Rome, author of the just-published book "Jews and French Canadians."
But things have changed since then, though thousands of Jews have left since 1976, when the separatist Parti Quebecois won a general election. The Catholic Church in Quebec, responsible for propagating so much anti-Semitic sentiment, has declined dramatically since World War II. Quebecois politicians and successive provincial governments have strenuously denounced anti-Semitism. With each generation, there seems to be a perceptible decline in anti-Jewish sentiment among French Canadians.
Richler, though, didn't stress such distinctions, possibly because in his mind, as in those of most Montreal Jews, nothing has really changed. Quebecois editors and pundits were quick to respond to Richler's charges. La Presse editorialist Agnes Gruda called on Quebec's Jewish community to denounce the article's "insanities." Michel Belanger, a former bank chairman and the influential co-chairman of a prestigious constitutional commission, told reporters in New York that though "foreigner" was not the right expression with which to characterize Richler, "he doesn't belong." Reaction to Richler's piece within the Montreal Jewish community was muted, particularly at the organizational level. The Canadian Jewish Congress responded to growing pressure to denounce the article only by issuing a vague document condemning anti-Semitism in any guise. In fact, says Rome, most French-speaking Quebecois would probably be surprised to learn that "the overwhelming proportion (of Montreal Jewry) agrees with Richler, with what he said, what he thinks, and with his intentions."
One reason Richler's article made such waves is that it appeared at a stormy time. Canada's federal government has just unveiled a new plan to amend the constitution to redefine Quebec's place in the federation and head off its secession after last year's failure by Canada's 10 provinces to ratify the similarly intended Meech Lake accords. Many believe it to be a make-or-break effort whose outcome will prove decisive in next year's province-wide referendum on whether to declare Quebec's independence. La Presse managing editor Marcel Desjardins characterizes Richler's broadsides as "inimical to Quebecois national aspirations." But he doesn't view them as particularly damaging, despite their appearance in the United States - merely unfortunate.
