MMM

Sasha Grey is my new hero. Sure it probably makes me appear somewhat slimy announcing a 19 year old hardcore porn star as my new hero, but so be it. She rocks. She is also one of many people to emerge from being a guest on the Tyra Banks Show offended by the chopping and editing job they made of her appearance. You can watch her appearance here. As is usual, the show had an opinion, the dull mainstream conservative and faux-feminist opinion that pornography is merely exploitative. Tyra and her cadre of editors did their best to edit Sasha's responses and tailor her questions to make her appear as an innocent mislead girl lost in the corrupt world of porn.
According to Sasha's blog (on Myspace):

When the camera would cut to my responses a majority of the time they were showing you a shot of me listening to Tyra's questions (ie reaction shots).... so it appeared as if I had nothing to say. Believe me, I had plenty to say. I started out by voicing my thoughts on the negative aspects of this business, I told Tyra she was judging me, I referred to Pasolini, Madonna, and Peaches... "Every edit is a lie"-Jean Luc Godard.

I have read several other accounts of the restrictive edited narrative of Tyra's show. Of course, railing at a trashy TV show is futile, it still pisses me off. The best is after Sasha describes a gangbang scene and Tyra says she needs a break to clear her head, wtf... like Tyra didn't live through shit 10 times more scandalous living the coke-addled life of a supermodel.

Luckily, despite the hack job, you can still get a sense of Sasha's insightful justification of her chosen life. She doesn't hide from the risks and controversies of her line of work (unfortunately the producers revel in these admissions) and she appears as a strong person who is not afraid to vastly explore her sexual side. Her background was anything but sordid and her introduction to the world of porn was clearly a matter of choice. But as expected, the show goes out of its way to portray Sasha as a wayward girl ignorant of what is best for herself.

This is also not the first time the Tyra show has reveled in this porn star exploitation to the offense of her guests. Alt-porn star Violet Blue recently explained her surreal Tyra experience on her blog. Fuck Tyra and her safe brand of "empowerment". If Sasha Grey is not empowered I don't know who is.

Let's hope that Sasha Grey is the future of porn: a smart independent starlet who does everything on film short of breaking the law, all with a solid moral justification. She refused to be victimized yet acknowledges the bullshit of the porn industry. If that weren't enough, in her newest movie, Dave Navarro's Broken (that's right, Navarro from Jane's Addiction), she opens the movie with a masturbation-while-crying scene. She's brought my favorite joke to life!