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| Pornography: The secret history of civilisation |
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| TV,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F3
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Heavily trailered yet Channy Four are playing close to the line on this one. On one side putting this across as the first non-exploitative television investigation of porn while also not exactly putting off wank freaks with the saucy yet smart moniker and actually quite horny title sequence.
Starting off before the phrase even existed, the opening show gives us the discovery by the Victorian archaeologists of the Roman ruins at Pompeii. Eyes were soon popping at the tasteful artefacts that adorned the living rooms of the long barbecued locals, tasteful scenes of debauncery! boobs, nobs, fannies – the lot! So our stuffed shirted forefathers locked up the lot, so as not to start a wanking craze taking hold back home. A fat lot of use that did of course, all the talk and hoopla that the censorship created kept porn bubbling on the undercurrent. They even gave it a cool name so we’d know what to ask for at the newsagents years later – the origins of the word were made apparent but by then I was ‘busy’.
Stylistically the show treads safe ground, the core narration backed up with the relevant footage in a school slideshow fashion. A set of talking heads, the ‘experts’ are dropped in to back it all up and invariably these folks come off best because of their enthusiasm for the subject matter, and the chance to ‘talk dirty’ academically. The one to watch is the dotty Auntie figure with the cool stacked haircut who orates from behind a fence of glass cabinets, like she’s just escaped from one herself. Second prize to the laconic short sexy guy who peppers every sentence with at least three uses of the term ‘erotic’.
If the show slips anywhere it’s in it’s overuse of it’s reference material – the statue of the satyr bonking a goat is horrendously overused (although it is great), and some of the rostrum shots are repeated to very little effect. At least we know as following programmes track forward into the later Twentieth Century history there’ll be not such shortage.
Channel 4 Thursday 22.00 BST
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