There seems to be a stereotypical mainstream media formula with regard to porn, particularly women in porn. The unalterable script reads that once a wonderfully wholesome lass from middle class America is exposed to the corrupt sleaze and fast life of pornography with its unprotected sex, large disposable income and drug party scene, it ultimitely leads to her downfall and untimely demise at an early age.
Back in my teen years of the mid -1980's as I was just beginning to be obsessed with skin mags and what lay between women's legs, a porn star blew her brains out in Palm Springs. Shortly after that, a feature story called "Death of a Porn Star" appeared on the news show Frontline. I'll never forget the opening sequence, a high contrast still B&W photograph of Van Nuys Blvd. taken with a telescopic lens to lend the dramaticly compressed perspective of the street with its gas stations, billboards and strip malls, the very definition of concrete jungle. An announcer sadly intoned "before she committed suicide that fateful night and before the pornography, the drugs and alcohol had exacted their toll, before she was Shauna Grant, she was Colleen...Colleen Applegate from Farmington, Minnisota." As the announcer continued speaking, the camera did a slow dissolve shot from the B&W photo to a rich vibrant live color shot of the (wholesome) wheat fields of Minnisota rustling in the fresh breeze under a billiant blue sky. An adorable photograph of a cute pug-nosed girl, Colleen/Shauna, showed her along with her family. With plot foreshadowing like that, does the viewer even need to watch in next 56 minutes?
Exactly a decade later the same thing happened to another drop dead-in this case literally- gorgeous porn star. The media, never satisfied with just the superficial facts of the case, had to embellish for dramatic effect. The sleek white Corvette with the beautiful blonde behind the wheel sped through the hot summer night. It turned off Cahuenga Blvd. and climbed high, high into the Hollywood Hills, leaving the lights of the city far below. It made it sound like Savannah (Shannon Wilsey) lived in a mansion on top of Mt. Wilson, not the little stucco home a barely hundred feet above the busy throughfare off the 101 freeway. I was really sad to see this porn star go; after all I had invested mucho dinero in her dumb videos and wacked off gallons of cum imagining my super long dong penetrating her intimate areas, areas that were only for the privilaged few rockers like Greg Almann or Hollywood offspring dorks like Pauley Shore. Sill the media formula remained, a beautful porn actress totals her 1988 Corvette, and because of the porno lifestyle her mental state is such that her only remedy is to blow her brains out.
Perhaps the elder spokesmen like grizzled porn veteran Nina Hartley can reverse this distorted media image. I sincerely hope so for as I transition to married life, and swear off pornography, a new generation of guys need their Shauna Grants and Savannahs.