Early in Juliet Bashore’s Kamikaze Hearts (1987), the porn performer Sharon Mitchell tells the audience at her striptease show that cameras and microphones are filming the event for her next movie. After reassuring the audience that they won’t be seen, she explains, “It’s sort of a surrealistic look at myself and my girlfriend and how we look at the X-rated film business and our relationship with each other.” A voice asks: “Is it more truth or more fiction?” Mitchell replies, “I don’t know because I don’t know whether I’m more truth or more fiction.”
Pornography lends itself to this kind of chin-stroking about the line between truth and fiction. It’s a genre built on the tension between the documentary appeal of seeing private acts performed “for real,” and how stylized…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 93 - Winter 2023