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BOOK REVIEW & INTERVIEW
THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (Georgina Spelvin)
Little Red Hen Books, Los Angeles California, 2008 (ISBN: 978-0-6151-9907-8) First Edition (April 2008)
302 pages, paperback; CONTACT: GeorginasWorld Inc. PO Box 3170, Los Angeles, CA 90067 USA; georginasworld.com

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Georgina Spelvin is a living legend in the X-rated erotica industry: as the subtitle to her book puts it – “erotic icon of the seventies”.

An experienced and independent woman in her late thirties when she freely chose to make adult “porn” movies, Spelvin rapidly shot to fame in the early days of the narrative adult film era after a starring role in one of the most acclaimed adult films of all time, The Devil in Miss Jones directed by Gerard Damiano. This film, and Spelvin’s subsequent work, emerged at a time when porn, although still only quasi-legitimate, was beginning to be reviewed by mainstream presses such as Variety and the New York Times. The legitimization of porn as adult erotic entertainment developed in tandem with Spelvin’s career in what she describes as “fuck films”. This makes her memoir an important social document of the immediate post sexual-revolution era.

The sexual-social-cultural revolution of the 1960s had birthed the adult film genre and it was in the process of becoming an accepted part of the movie landscape in the early 1970s due to the restriction of censorship law. From the initial one-day wonders of such directors as Eduardo Cemano to the burgeoning features of such as Gerard Damiano, Alex DeRenzy and Henry Paris, “porn” was a revolution in screen erotica, freed from all Judeo-Christian moral restraint regarding sexuality and the so-called proper status of women. In these early porn films, though skewed through the lens of male fantasy, women had the same freedom to express themselves sexually and a number of performers found tremendous personal and sexual satisfaction in the making of “fuck films”. Spelvin was one such performer and recounts her experiences with the mature intelligence of a woman who found reward and fulfilment in what she did.

The Devil Made Me Do It is Spelvin’s recollection of her entry into the porn world, the making of the film The Devil in Miss Jones, her subsequent life as theatrical performer and stripper through to her writing of the memoir and her cameo appearance in the Paul Thomas directed recent remake of her seminal film.

As such, the book falls into a category of what might be termed the “porn star memoir”. Linda Lovelace, star of Deep Throat, initiated this trend with the book Inside Linda Lovelace in which she enthused about the adult industry as giving her an immense personal and sexual fulfilment. Shortly after the publication of that book, however, Lovelace came into the manipulative clutches of anti-porn radical feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon and wrote another book, Ordeal, in which she denounced the porn industry and her experience as rape.

Ever since Lovelace’s Ordeal any confession, biography or memoir of an adult actress has been filtered through the radical feminist perspective of victimology. Recently Traci Lords and even Jenna Jameson to a degree have maintained that sense of the adult star as being abused and even shameful of the work done in the adult field. Spelvin as author, to her credit, refuses outright to kowtow to the victimology argument – in fact in the caveat that begins The Devil Made Me Do It, she rejects this radical feminist judgment altogether. Spelvin assumes all the responsibility for her choices, actions and consequences. Never once was she victimized, coerced into doing something against her will or forced to perform. The experiences of the adult industry in her book – which range in description from the extraordinarily vivid and candid to the anecdotal and objective in detail – reveal the triumph and fulfilment this woman found in such experience.

Georgina, you were 36 when you made your first adult film. What was your attitude and experience of sex (and sexual pleasure) prior to making the film and what effect did this experience have on your attitude to sexuality?

Answer: My attitude toward sex was succinctly summed up in Budd Schulberg’s novel, What Makes Sammy Run. One of the female characters says of sex, “it always seemed to me to be the friendliest thing two people could do.” I eagerly tossed my cherry to a trombone player in the high school band when I was fifteen. Because my dad’s job (seismologist for Humble Oil) required our moving from town to town, I had no need to “think about my reputation” as other girls did. I didn’t enjoy sex. In fact, it was usually rather painful. But, if that was the price of a date for the prom, or a movie and a burger on Saturday night, so be it. When I got to New York it became just another arrow in my quiver as I fought my way into show biz jobs. Needless to say, with all that practice, I was pretty good at it. I’d heard I was supposed to enjoy it as much as the grateful swains in my swath of destruction, so I became very good at leaving the impression that I did. And, as every aspiring actor learns in drama 101, you can “fake it ‘til you make it.”

Porn Star Performance as Transgressing Line Between Woman as Sexual Object and Sexual Subject

But the joyous read that is Spelvin’s book comes not from the positivist recollection of making porn and stripping but from the cleverly constructed sense of narrative through this memoir, in which her sexual experience and fulfilment reveals her not as a sexual object but as a sexual subject.

Although porn is now a billion dollar a year industry, it is still considered taboo for women to find fulfilment, let alone sexual self-actualization in such a “bad-girl” role. The stereotypical view of porn, inherited from the radical anti-feminists is that porn represents the degrading sexual objectification of women. The victimology argument so popular enhances this, making porn despite its widespread acceptability a morally problematic art form for women.

The majesty of Spelvin’s The Devil Made Me Do It is that her perspective as a woman who found sexual fulfilment in what has traditionally been considered an objectified role (porn star and stripper) transforms her from object to subject. Although Spelvin describes in detail what she did (from her first facial cum shot to her last gig as a stripper dancing with a snake) never can she be considered an object. The porn world seen through her eyes makes her a sexual subject, an active, willing and equal participant in the screen realization of sexual fantasy. Although porn may still be a domain catering to male fantasy, Spelvin clearly shows that porn itself far from objectifying her within that fantasy allowed her the opportunity to act (literally perform) as a sexual subject.

That fine line between performance and sexual self-actualization was always the beauty of Spelvin as a performer. Not only could she act well enough to carry a feature, but her figure, with the shape of a tradition that dates to the Broadway chorine, carried with it in her films the grace of sexual discovery and expression.

The rise in explicit sex film was an outgrowth of the counter culture now termed the “sexual revolution”. As you were an adult during this epochal transition in American moral and societal values away from Christian ideals of marriage and monogamy, please describe the attitudes to sex that existed before the legitimizing of adult film and how these films have changed these attitudes.

Answer: I grew up believing in the movies of the 40’s. I couldn’t wait to hold a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other. In my third-grade photo, I held my hand as if holding a cigarette and made my hair fall over my eye – which wasn’t easy. I have very fine hair, and not much of it. I tried to follow the rules, though, and was aware that “Nice Girls” didn’t “do it.” I was torn between wanting to believe in and follow all the proscriptions and being quite sure I was missing out on something GREAT. Hypocrite was one of the first three-syllable words I remember coming across that I couldn’t wait to use in a conversation: this at about the age of four. Yes, I was precocious. No wonder I never had any friends. As for porn films being responsible for the current level of candor, I think they are more the result of that evolution. And whence goes the standards from here? I hope to a place where there’s room enough for everyone to thrive within a community that suits them. Of course, we’re gonna have to address the population bomb before we can hope to get anywhere near enough space for such a Utopia.

And, unlike the young girls so often attracted to porn, Spelvin was a mature woman: that was beautiful to see. In Spelvin, one could see the interplay of performance and pleasure, the sexual intelligence that finds fulfilment in the work not as sexual abandon but as performance art. When in The Devil Made Me Do It, Spelvin describes the sex in The Devil in Miss Jones and her stripper routine she does so with a passionate intensity that states the daring religious allegory of the former (with allusions to Jean-Paul Sartre) and the artistry of the latter.

The Devil Made Me Do It although concerning the porn trade for its initial third, slowly widens in focus to include more of the details of Spelvin’s life – from her romantic attractions to her personal sexual experiences to her relations with her parents, particularly her mother who was with her backstage during some of her stripper appearances.

Spelvin is also most revealing about the limitations placed on such performers – specifically that such women are not expected to be educated, intelligent or literate, which Spelvin undoubtedly is. As Spelvin recounts the details of audience interaction, it is clear that her male audience see only one tiny aspect of this woman’s achievement. But that too is the culture of objectification, the refusal to see the porn star / stripper as a thinking, feeling sexual subject.

In skilfully, shamelessly breaking through that barrier between sexual objectification and sexual subjectification, Spelvin has written a bold and distinctive memoir.

Reading about her sexual self-actualization in tandem with her experiences in adult film, its repercussions on her private, public and personal life and a brief hint of the legalistic and moralistic obstacles she faced is a rewarding demystification of porn. Spelvin in the caveat to the book states that it is not a reference work. Indeed, it is not. However, it does fill in and personalize the details found in reference books from the narrative perspective of the participating woman as sexual subject. That makes the book not only honest, but defiant and assertive, the triumph of an erotic life lived not in regret but to the fullest.

By personalizing a type of filmmaking and sex culture that while accepted is still greeted with moral condemnation, Spelvin in The Devil Made Me Do It makes it accessible. Elegantly, fluidly written in a manner which combines anecdote and recollection with the detail of a well-sustained and well-characterized narrative, Spelvin provides a valuable addition to the growing material now covering “porno chic”. Spelvin can be honest, erotic and personable. She was a genuine pioneer in the transformation of porn from objectifying women to subjectifying them, carried on in the work of Candida Royalle who did what the circumstances of the time could not yet offer Spelvin as a woman – take creative control of the behind the scenes process - and her memoir is a revealing and entertaining read.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ADULT FILM LEGEND GEORGINA SPELVIN
interviewed by Robert Cettl

RC: You performed in numerous films before ending your adult career (including Radley Metzger’s The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann). As a performer a generation more mature than many of the young women finding sexual liberation in adult film, what did you see women gain from performing in sex films (other than money) and how did adult filmmaking tie into the values of the then sexual revolution?

GS: I wasn’t paying that much attention to what anyone, including myself, was gaining from doing the films. The pay in those days was $100 a day. I know that one good buddy from my wild and wooly days as a chorus dancer on Broadway pointed out that I could make a hellova lot more dough hooking. I was incensed. I wasn’t a WHORE! I was an ACTRESS! The only revolution I was interested in was the economic one I thought was way overdue. Most of my fellow actors in those films were in their mid to late twenties. The rage for the underage look hadn’t hit yet. My mother used to say that everyone was born the age they would be their whole life; and I was obviously a one-hundred-and-two-year-old Martian. My inner me is the same age now at 73 as the ballet besotted teenager I was in 1950 – but I hope I’ve learned a few things.

RC: In your book, The Devil Made Me Do It, you describe your first Damiano film in relation to Jean-Paul Sarte’s play No Exit but do not confirm whether or not director Gerard Damiano was aware of this analogy. When did you become aware of the plot premise of The Devil in Miss Jones having this literary basis and what are your thoughts on the film in those terms (the film is rather bleak and condemning of religious belief – Damiano was a Catholic - in contrast to the empowering comedy of the more celebrated Deep Throat)?

GS: Oh boy. I wish you had asked that while he was still here to answer it. I know that when I actually got to know Jerry on about our third film together I was delighted to find a very well-read, extremely intelligent man under the trappings of the Italian Goomba Pornographer. But not until we began a dialogue on email that culminated in my flying to Florida to celebrate his 80th birthday last August (three months before he died) did I really get to know him well. It was a kick to learn that his wife (an amazing and wonderful woman) had sat at their kitchen table, typing, and re-typing the script for TDIMJ as it sprouted from his head. We never got into any deep discussions about moral values. I’m pretty sure he was totally comfortable with the condition of his soul, as am I.

RC: Cinema’s essential transgressive scene in The Devil in Miss Jones is your erotic encounter with the snake (whose fondness for a certain part of your anatomy you describe in your book). Please describe that as a sexual experience – how it felt, what you got out of it, its symbolism AND considering the religious symbolism of a woman and a snake (Eve and the Devil) how does this scene function within the overall film?

GS: Transgressive? As in “a really serious transgression?” The snake was a piece of pure serendipity. Marc Stevens brought the snake with him to the location because he didn’t want to leave him alone for the weekend. Jerry saw me playing with the very tame reptile and decided to add a scene to the script that would have me doing so in a more exotic setting. The symbolism was certainly not lost on any of us. Writhing around in front of a camera was my big turn-on anyway. Adding a slithering, writhing co-star was very stimulating on many levels. Let’s face it, sex boils down to friction and snakes are well-equipped to provide a surprising variety of that, if allowed to do so. It was, as I state in the book, a very erotic experience.

RC: A lot has been written by the radical feminist movement (such authors as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon) about pornography as being men’s instrument of oppressing women through demeaning and exploitative sexual objectification. The experiences you describe in your book make it clear that rather than being victimized by pornographers, you gained from the experience. As a sexual subject rather than a sexual object, what was it about sexual performance in adult film that you found empowering?

GS: Having attention riveted upon oneself is a very powerful aphrodisiac, at least for a ham like me. I’m not sure what people mean when they speak of being empowered. Most people realize their autonomy at a fairly early age. I believe it’s referred to as the terrible twos. Family expectations and local standards of acceptable behavior are generally tested to greater and lesser degrees by everyone as we grow into ourselves. Finding others who share our feelings of what is right and what is not is the first thing our nature seems inclined to do. Having to live in a situation that doesn’t fit with our own feelings of that moral structure is , at the very least, damned uncomfortable. I suppose empowerment is being able to move on until a situation that is comfortable can be found. Regarding Ms’s Dworkin and MacKinnon’s views about pornography – they are entitled to them. All actors are “exploited” by the entity that buys their services. That’s what we’re selling: our services. If that means we break down in uncontrollable tears when our dog get’s hit by a car, or we experience multiple orgasms in the course of portraying sexual ecstasy, we are expected to earn our pay. If we don’t, we don’t get further work. Nothing particularly peculiar or exotic about that.

RC: Now that the adult filmmaking industry is a legitimate business and “pornography” is protected free speech, how do you feel the content and ethical values behind contemporary “porn” has changed since the pioneering 1970s when obscenity busts and criminal prosecution of women for performing in explicit sex films was common?

GS: As long as there’s an envelope, there’s gonna be somebody pushing it. Stasis cannot exist in life, so change is the only constant. I haven’t been interested in watching fornication since I was about twelve. I have watched very little of my own film record, and less of others, so I really have no basis upon with to evaluate films of today vis-a-vis those of my era. I don’t even try to evaluate the movies we see at the SAG screenings. I’m not paid to evaluate. If someone asks me, I’ll tell them that I liked, loved, adored, despised, or was thoroughly bored by a film. That’s about it.

RC:Again about the radical feminist movement: Catharine MacKinnon has said that all pornography is the coercion and rape of women, without exception. Your book gives a radically opposed view of pornography: as thought-provoking erotic art and sexual self-actualization – how do you respond to the feminist accusation of women in pornography as 100% abused victims?

GS: My mother taught me that nobody could make me a victim unless I allowed them to. Granted, this was in response to a tearful escape from the usual schoolyard bullying, but understanding that has made for a very pleasant life. I don’t tell people who feel they have been victimized this because I don’t want to spoil their fun.

RC: How do you feel the increasing mainstreaming of pornography will affect both the feminist movement and the empowerment of women? OR: what do you feel that pornography has to offer contemporary women?

GS: Pornography has existed since the first cave drawings were made. I don’t think we will see it disappear under its own weight. How it will change as humans evolve is the stuff of science fiction (my favorite genre, btw). I don’t think it’s going to do much to free the enslaved females of those cultures that still go in for that sort of thing. If pornography has something to offer contemporary women, they’ll find it. Fears that the new technology is going to flood the world with unwanted pornographic images are, I feel, unfounded. You really have to look for it, you know. Whilst surfing the web, I have never “stumbled across” images of children or animals being abused. I’ve never even “stumbled across” any images from my own films. It’s been an arduous exercise to find most of them. It was a lot easier to find pictures of the human anatomy in medical books in the public library when I was about eight years old. I presume other children with the same sort of prurient curiosity were able to do the same.

RC: In your book, you mentioned that you were hoping to step behind the camera in the making of adult film. At the time, the creative personnel making pornographic features were primarily men (with the exception of such as Roberta Findlay, who was denounced by the feminist movement after she made the infamous Snuff). Although as a filmmaker yourself you did not make the move to directing adult film, many women who performed in pornography after you, Jane Hamilton and Candida Royalle for instance, now direct and produce. What do you think of adult film made by women as distinct from men and what does “pornography” as a genre offer women who are looking to express their sexuality creatively both on and behind the camera?

GS: I believe in my book, I mention thinking about (not hoping to) trying to go behind the camera. Jane and Candice are two of the ladies of porn which whom I’ve stayed in touch – or rather, who got back in touch with me when I came out of my cave and published my book. These are very smart, very creative women. I have no way of knowing if the films they produce are more erotic for a woman than those produced by men, as I don’t, as I’ve said, watch porn. But I can testify from experience, that Jane Hamilton is one hot lady. She loves sex and is not shy about saying so. I now believe the real reason I didn’t try to go behind the camera was because I would always wish I were in front of it.

RC: In addition to acting in adult film, you were also a stripper, once again a generation older than most. In your book you describe your experiences of stripping in terms of your direct engagement of the audience. Specifically, that you were to keep things simple and even restrict your vocabulary – you joked that strippers were not meant to think. As an intelligent, mature woman how did you control and interact with the men who would come to watch you as a stripper? Did you find it exploitative, objectifying or condescending in any way?

GS: All of the above. I did meet some very wonderful people along the way during that year of living dangerously. But the world of stripping and live skin shows was just too public for me. The bubble of light in front of a camera is actually a very private space. Nothing else exits while you’re suspended in that make-believe. And talking about sex has its own objectivity to shield one from any feelings of embarrassment. Shaking your booty inches from the noses of horny guys who couldn’t care less if there’s anything above your tits can make one feel rather like a rare steak in a butcher’s case. Many remarkable women take this in stride (literally) and make a damn good living at it. I salute them. I just couldn’t reconcile my own feelings of love for my body and the repetitious parody of stripping.

RC: Much of the prosecution of women in pornography at the time you were actually making X-rated films was on the basis of prostitution. Pornographers organizing film shoots in California for instance were charged with pandering. Contemporary sex worker alliances include adult film workers alongside (but different to) prostitutes. The radical feminist movement continues to vilify both and deny them a voice of representation within “feminism”. Please comment on your sex work on film (for which you were paid) and prostitution: specifically, does it differ?

GS: I actually tried prostitution a couple of times. It’s unbelievably hard work. Sex workers really need a union. The primary difference is that a film is fiction. It’s make-believe. You can be anyone you want to be. Of course, there’s a lot of “role-playing” in servicing a man who has paid for it, too: on the part of the payer as well as the payee. But the fact is, you are YOU, doing your best to get your client to reach a climax as quickly as possible so you can get on to the next job. Making a film – at least those I worked in for the most part – involves an entire, wonderful, fantasy engagement that can be the thrilling first time with a sweetheart, the warm familiar embrace of your life partner, a weird and exciting tryst with a stranger – limitless possibilities. They are very different experiences.

RC: Your book describes the filming of the facial cum-shot scene in Devil in Miss Jones. Without giving away too much, you accepted it as being part of the genre. The same radical feminists who oppose adult film in particular condemn the act of male ejaculation onto a woman’s face as demeaning. As a woman who participated in such on film whilst retaining your sexual subjectivity, please comment on the “facial” within pornography in terms of its place in the genre, what women may get out of it (if anything) and how it fits into the male fantasies behind so much pornography.

GS: I cannot lay claim to any insight into the male psyche. If spilling their beans on a pretty face is that exciting to them, and it doesn’t hurt anybody, what’s the big deal? It’s not toxic, you know. And if it’s symbolic of submission, isn’t donning an apron and serving a hot meal having spent the day at the beauty parlor just to be pretty for that precious commodity – the bread-winner – the height of submission? Yet, I find that scenario quite appealing on some levels. Still, I applaud the women who have given of their skills, time, and commitment in the fight to achieve equal footing for females in this life. I wish I could live to see the day when that freedom is extended to every female on the planet. That ain’t gonna happen, but I’m ready to do what I can to further that goal at every turn. I’m sorry that so many who toil in those trenches find pornography to be anathema. But, they are entitled to their views – just as you and I are entitled to ours.