Dirty Pornos by Johnny Maldoro for the Village Voice, NYC-



Abu Gag!


You may think I have no shame, but technically, that's not true. I was raised Catholic. And in fact, there's some porn I won't watch. For one, I hate non-Japanese bukkake. Non-Japanese cartoons don't do it for me, either. And then there's the JM series Gag Factor, which I've never had any desire to view, even though the DVD covers always show women with their heads back, dicks down their throats, and phlegm running into their eyes. (Sounds great on paper, right? I dunno, there's just something icky about seeing it, take my word.) "Cum eating" is promised "in every scene," which is fine, great even, depending on how hungry I am for that sort of thing, and you surely know by now how much I enjoy displays of advanced oral technique. But these usually involve a suppression of the gag reflex, not proof of its function. In other words, there's flesh sword–swallowing, and then there's digested-flesh-puking (assuming the actresses aren't vegetarian).



Of course, this is all irrelevant seeing as how I watched Gag Factor 15 the other night. What, you must be wondering, changed my mind about the series? Was it the little black X's they put over the cover gal's drool-drenched eyes? The spermy-looking font spelling "gag"? Or was it the song printed on the back: "The girl says she wants to be a star/(Her head's upside down)/Jim says this will help her go far/(Her head's upside down). . . . She feels not a person, just a body, a place. . . . The camera zooms in on her pitiful frown. . . . But it looks like a smile because/(Her head's upside down)"? No, I took Gag Factor 15 home because it stars Julie Knight and Ashley Blue, oral talents nonpareil, and I ain't talking about how well they speak French.



Porn, predictable as it is, drops bombs more often than any mannered media. I expected a few rounds of particularly brutal face fucking, and got an allegory on American might. The message, however unintentional, gets shoved down the viewer's throat. The movie opens on a roomful of men in head scarves and masks; one rants angrily at the camera in gibberish intended to sound Arabic, and another translates: "We will do to your women what you have down to our men—you degraded our people, now we'll degrade yours. The streets will spill over with spit!" All the while, they're holding up Polaroids from Abu Ghraib. Their case made, the ringleaders spread apart to reveal Ashley, on her knees and dressed in an olive green T-shirt, military hat, and dog tags. "I was only following orders!" she shouts, before letting out a horror-flick scream that ends in a gurgle.



Speaking of flesh swords, the main Arab bad guy brandishes an actual sword as if he's about to cut Ashley's head off (which would defeat the purpose of the movie, but whatever). Introducing the intersection of Iraqi prisoner–abuse pics, hostage-beheading videos, and plain old American skinema is a threesome more awkward than that one I had in high school. JM's 1996 oral extravaganza Stuff Your Face 4, meanwhile, just shows a rowdy woman in a biker bar and some lady buried entirely in the sand but for her head (which the men find under a bucket). At a time when much of America has its head in the sand concerning Abu Ghraib and our image abroad, it's kinda nice to know porno's cracking wise about it. If only we could swallow our pride.

This guy completely missed the American-excess allegory unintentionally inherent within Stuff Your Face 4. I view that Abu theme in Gag Factor 15 as more of a satirical parody rather than a political statement, but you can't dismiss anything when it comes from the punk rock mind of Jim Powers. At least this clown gives Simp's poetry some props.

The review IS from the Village Voice after all Smut, I wouldn't expect anything less. Although In college they used to leave a stack of em around campus for freebies ( at that point I didn't look down on it so much, shit if somebody gives me the NY times for free I'd read that too).