Review: Hardcore Profits, BBC2

(c) mørt'n

Tim Samuels’ two-part BBC2 documentary Hardcore Profits delves into the pornography underworld. In a mish-mash of discussions about the economic, social, ethical and health issues which emanate from this dirty-little-secret beast of an industry, Hardcore Profits fails to tackle any aspect comprehensively. It does nonetheless serve as a platform for a crucial discussion about an industry whose public profile is characterized by embarrassed blushes and under-the-counter profits.

Samuels seeks to understand where the porn industry’s money comes from and leads to, who profits and who gets hurt. Through a series of flimsy interviews with the actors, actresses, producers and investors, each as vacuous as the next, a patchy picture of a seedy and ferociously business-savvy world emerges.
The outlasting message which Samuels rams home is that the tentacles of the porn industry stretch far and wide. Direct and indirect investors and profiteers in pornography range from hotel chains, search engines, British pension funds and the American Catholic Church. The documentary does well to expose what makes public information about the porn franchise so necessary: its under-the-radar status and its proliferation in both our socio-cultural and economic globalized world.

Perhaps Samuels’ most resounding revelation is that figures for the profits which major international corporations – Google, Amazon, Visa and Vodafone among others- make from porn advertising, investment and provision, are universally kept under wraps. Similarly, many US politicians who publicly condemn the industry receive six-figure funding from many household corporations which profit from or invest in porn and porn-related business. In an industry worth billions of pounds per year, and around which there exists an abundance of health, social and ideological issues, there is a pressing need for greater transparency about the money trail which it leaves behind it.

The attempts to address the moral issues surrounding pornography are, however, very limited. Samuels appears to take it as a given that everybody considers the consumption of porn an immoral, shameful burden that men across the world have to bear, and speaks to nobody that defends pornography as a morally innocuous or perhaps even healthy phenomenon. Similarly, there is only a notional nod to issues of exploitation and feminism; motivation for participating and the problem of coercion are touched upon, but Samuels soon returns to the more tangible issue of money.

Samuels’ visit to a Ghanaian village where US porn is shown via a generator in a mud-hut to local men and the evidence he finds that often extremely violent films provide many men with their only sex education is, however, very valuable. The impact on global health of an industry which is simultaneously so under-the-radar and so pervasive, not to mention on sexual mores and gender equality, clearly requires this kind of exposure. But once again Samuels’ discussion falls short, as he fails to link the developing-world scenario to any discussion of the effect of pornography on his own armchair-ensconced peers in the UK.

Hardcore Profits is a scrappy documentary, but one which provides a rare insight into a dazzlingly powerful underground which touches us all, be it in terms our investments or in terms of our sexual ethics. More than anything, it is a reminder that the grand questions about sexual agency, liberation and satisfaction can only be debated in any meaningful sense if the full facts about a world as influential and inevitable as the porn industry are made available. The secrecy surrounding the industry at present only breeds exploitation and abuse. Those making a hefty buck from it as well as those consuming it have a responsibility to dig deeper.