Anderson’s first memoir, Star, interweaves a narration of the path into soft-core porn modelling with an account of traumatic sexual history. The book relates the story of a fictionalised celebrity, Star, whose life so closely follows the narrative of its author’s that, when Anderson was asked ‘What comment do you hear most often from your readers?’, she claimed that readers respond to her books for their truth value, answering, ‘Thanks for telling the truth.’240 Even if we take at its strongest the notion that Anderson is not Star, the text must still reflect an attitude, attributed to Anderson as ‘author’, towards issues that are extremely pertinent to the facts of Anderson’s own life. In other words, the approach to pornography and objectification expressed in her book must inform an understanding of the way that Anderson’s star image is constructed (and this in turn then impacts upon the self- presentation in her memoir). The peculiar status of the fictionalised memoir that is read for insight into a ‘real’ extratextual person will be analysed later in the chapter. For now, however, I would like to introduce the sexual history presented in Anderson’s memoir as an example which illustrates how, in these porn memoirs, experiences of coerced sex are presented in terms which diminish their seriousness. We shall see that Anderson’s memoir draws a parallel between her experience of forced sex and her experience of posing nude for men’s magazines. The implicit link between these two experiences (one which could be argued to be reproduced in the production and sale of a memoir) is that she is treated as an object for consumption.
Not only does Anderson’s memoir depict a woman with a traumatic sexual history, but she narrates a wider model of sexuality in which consent is absent. Describing an early sexual experience at a party as a teenager the narrator states: ‘Bobby got them each a screwdriver from the absentee’s parents’ bar, then he led Star up to the wastrel’s room, where he locked the door, downed his drink, pulled out his erection, and pushed Star down onto the bed.’241 The sex is described in non-consensual terms, and yet the seriousness of such a situation is underplayed, and instead Bobby’s masculinity is mocked as ‘it was over too quickly for Star to find it objectionable.’242 The implication that, as long as it is over quickly, non-consensual sex is not objectionable (and can even be humorous) is further normalised when Star’s mother glibly replies, ‘welcome to dating’ – as if non-consensual sex
240 ‘Interview with Pamela Anderson,’ Goodreads, February 2010, retrieved on 11 June 2013 from
http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/484.Pamela_Anderson.
241 Pamela Anderson, Star (London: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 197. 242 Ibid.
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is a universal, even tolerable, inevitability of heterosexual relations.243 Even when
consenting, Star’s early sexual experiences are defined by negotiation and transaction. When relating the way her first relationship, began, she describes herself as conceding to sex she doesn’t want to have and trading it as currency: ‘“Put that away,” she said disgustedly, “I don’t want anything to do with your wiener.” “Please, just put your hand around it… You can borrow my mountain bike for a week….” “A month,” she said at last…And so their sexual adventures began.’244 This dynamic of stating that she does not want to have sex, but succumbing anyway, is sustained throughout the sexual encounters related as an adult. The passivity of ‘and so their sexual adventures began’ is compounded by the suggestion that ‘it had seemed only logical that they start going steady after that.’245 Whilst Anderson can be seen to be laughing at the arbitrariness of teenage relationships, what is presented as
innocent, childish, and somehow wholesome, is a dynamic of masculine power. This dynamic privileges the sexual desires of men and runs throughout both of her autobiographical
novels.
As a retrospective construction with the specific intention of securing a favourable reception amongst potential fans for the star author-subject’s continued celebrity career, Anderson can be presumed to be anticipating the possible judgements of her audience. The placing of benign and recognisable details at the heart of sexual negotiations (in this case a mountain bike) may be an attempt to ease the reader into a world outside their experience with some reassuringly wholesome familiarities. Likewise, depicting oneself as subject to patriarchal structures which deny women sexual agency is an active means of situating oneself within such power structures and negotiating with them. As crossover texts with an intended audience far beyond that of their original careers in pornography, these memoirs must explain their lives in terms which intended audiences will find acceptable, despite social opprobrium for women who enjoy their pornographic careers (or even sex itself). In this respect, Anderson could be seen to be explaining her later career choices in terms that society understands, appealing to the entrenched moral logic of the ‘fallen’ or ‘damaged’ woman that is an established theme in Western literature.246 This would suggest the ways in which the star author-subject is required to fashion a life story to accord with pre-existing stock narratives and perceived social norms.
The absence of consent defines Star’s sexual encounters – some of which are highly eroticised. The opening offers a teenage scene in which Star’s female friend, Brandi, presses
243 Ibid. 244 Ibid., p.199. 245 Ibid., p.200.
246 See for example Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (London: Harper Collins, [1722] 2010) or Samuel Richardson’s
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her to try marijuana, then offers her a massage: ‘A lot of stuff is amazing after you smoke a jay. Here, lean back; I’ll rub your shoulders. You’ll see.’247 This then escalates, again with no active participation on the part of Star: ‘A finger slipped under the leg of the loose-fitting shorts she was still wearing from work. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was unexpected.’248 Again, Star protests, but then capitulates: ‘”Br… Brandi,” Star began, but her objections were overruled. ‘“It’s okay, it’s perfectly natural,” Brandi urged, silencing her with tiny hungry kisses. Star fought and then succumbed, soft lips on soft lips. “It doesn’t mean a thing...”’ This eroticisation of sex as something that happens to a passive protagonist, who succumbs despite protestations, is a common trope of erotic fiction.249 What is especially problematic about this scene in Star is its uncomfortable parallel with and proximity to a scene of child rape that is described later in the memoir.
At the point of her big break on a nude shoot with Mann Magazine (a thinly veiled reference to Anderson’s career with Playboy), the male photographer’s coaxing of her to perform sexual poses triggers a flashback to her childhood: ‘“Relax Star, it’s going to be great,” she heard his voice, felt his breath on her neck, his hands on her. She had only been twelve years old.’250 The soothing yet insistent words parallel those of Brandi and, just as with their encounter, the situation escalates from an intoxicated massage:
It started innocently enough. Bringing her a fresh, forbidden, and hence decidedly grown-up rum and Coke, he’d come up behind the chair where she was sitting and rubbed her shoulders. “You’re so tense,” he’d said, “How about a massage?”251 This is the only time non-consensual sex is, even indirectly, acknowledged as rape as the text states: ‘She thought of the experience with Al as forced, but never rape.’ This represents the victim’s struggle to make sense of what has happened, the challenge of being taken seriously as a 12-year-old girl, and the difficulty of holding her rapist accountable in a victim-blaming culture which routinely naturalises male desire as aggressive. In the model of sexuality offered in the text, however, this reads as part of a wider paradigm that also naturalises male sexual aggression. The parallels with the way the scene with Brandi is related – the
similarities in dialogue, the massage, the intoxication further diminishing agency and the ability to consent – raises the question of the nature of the reading pleasures offered by these texts, with strikingly similar events narrated once as trauma and once as titillation. Such
247 Anderson, Star, p.28. 248 Ibid., p.29.
249 Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press [1984] 2009).
250 Anderson, Star, p.174. 251 Ibid., p.176.
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close proximity and parallels raise the question of what erotic or entertainment value either scene confers on the other.
Scholars such as Boyle have argued that the histories of abuse contained within the memoir of the female porn star demonstrate ‘the conditions for her entry into pornography. She may go on to exercise a degree of choice in her porn career, but her account is a potent reminder of the limitations of arguments about choice in relation to women's involvement in pornography: this is choice exercised in a situation of extreme constraint.’252 Whilst it is beyond the scope of this thesis to engage in debates about potential causative links between histories of sexual trauma and entry into the sex industry, it is Anderson’s memoir that explicitly draws a link between the two: ‘She never even thought about [the forced sexual encounter with Al] anymore, but then that morning, in the studio with those strangers, her clothes still in the dressing room, her body touched and adjusted, it had come back to her.’253 This has the potential to offer a moment of resistance through critique of her industry, demonstrating the parallels between work in the sex industry and abuse argued by anti- pornography feminists. However, whilst the narrator makes a connection between being ‘adjusted by strangers’ for a nude photoshoot and her experience of sexual assault as a child, this link is disavowed as positive self-sexualisation and is simultaneously presented as both the emotional trigger and the means to triumph over abuse: ‘Star felt angry and indignant that a man so many years before could make her feel ashamed of herself at this, her big moment. She arose from where she was sitting and crossed to the mirror. She dried her eyes carefully with a tissue… And then, very deliberately, she took off the robe.’254 This positions her experience of sexual assault as formative in her attitudes to, and motivations for, her entry into the industry, while positivising the latter in a way that disavows gender politics or any sort of institutional critique. The narrator segues between discussion of the photoshoot and the assault, concluding: ‘It had been fun and liberating. She could not get back what had been taken from her as a young girl nearly ten years earlier. But she didn’t have to give up anything more.’255 Thus, structural issues of gender are ‘reprivatised’256 as a postfeminist sensibility frames experiences of gendered violence ‘in exclusively personal terms in a way that turns the idea of the personal as political on its head.’257
In this example we have seen how the tension created as narratives of erotic titillation and testimonies from working in the sex industry are placed in close proximity to, and given explicit parallels with, narratives of abuse. This demonstrates that questions of agency
252 Boyle, ‘Producing Abuse,’ p.596. 253 Anderson, Star, p.176.
254 Anderson, Star, p.177. 255 Ibid., p.179.
256 McNay, Foucault and Feminism, p.106. 257 Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture,’ p. 153.
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situated within patriarchal structures cannot be put aside when the texts invoke them so directly. Moreover, while these memoirs are not without potentially resistant moments, which appear to be approaching critique, structural inequities of gender are ultimately disavowed. Beyond the sensibilities of postfeminist media culture, we can see these tensions as intrinsic to the celebrity memoir form. The celebrity’s commercial investment is extended and capitalised upon through such photoshoots and necessitate the construction of a reading position from which audiences have permission to continue consuming such images free from concern. Here we see the competing agendas within a porn-star memoir that attempts to simultaneously fulfil the promise of voyeuristic satisfaction integral to both pornography and autobiography, and the strange position of testimonies of sexual trauma within them. These narratives appear repeatedly, offering a voyeuristic quality of their own, but must ultimately be positivized or, at the very least contained, to put the reader at ease despite their apparent appetite for celebrities ‘telling the truth’.258