What's the price of porn? Morality in the face of pornstar pleasure

Tuesday books - Diana-Alice Ramsauer

«There's an equation that can no longer be made - it's the one that claimed that a girl who likes sex is a girl who doesn't have much to say.» This sentence by Virginie Despentes, in the preface to the paperback reissue of The wet process (2007) by Coralie Trinh Thi, is a concentrate of what this book wants to tell us: no, a pornstar is not inherently stupid. Yes, you can get pleasure from double penetration. Shit, leave yourselves alone, this morality kills. Libertarian, anti-«ism» and deeply wounded, hardcore performer Coralie Trinh Thi's writing is explicit and transparent. Very explicit.

The wet process is neither erotic nor pornographic. Unlike a sex film - «which is just for masturbation», according to Coralie Trinh Thi - this story is an autobiography. That of a 90s pornstar. But let's be clear: an autobiography is always much more than an autobiography.

To cut a long story short, Coralie Trinh Thi was born to a Hells Angels father and an irresponsible mother. A family that pushed her to become a «child-adult» at a very early age. What followed was an adolescence that was neither particularly sad, nor particularly tortured, nor particularly complicated. Relative independence in foster homes. High school classes that didn't excite her, except perhaps in literature and philosophy, where she excelled. Encounters. Some with doggy punks, who taught her how to beg. The gothic milieu: music, but also multiple petticoats, corsets, torn stockings and under-eye features. A young adult sexuality with some pretty cool boyfriends. A bit of drugs, to open up to new dimensions. The Cure and its album Pornography. The Cure. And maybe The Cure.

Casting in the subway

It's true, Coralie Trinh Thi's style is eccentric. So one day, on the subway, a photographer approaches her. He just wanted to take some shots. She refused. After the third guy, she slips into his apartment. She gets paid. She likes it. And little by little, she starts doing nudes. The transition she recounts isn't creepy. Why should sex be? It's a choice. She likes the lens. She quickly feels at ease. So, when she sees a classified ad offering a sort of long-term contract to take photos and maintain correspondence with the recipients of those images, it's bingo: a stable income that gives her the independence she needs to continue her studies.

This is his first work for the magazine Hot Video, This was the '90s. Porn is consumed almost exclusively on glossy paper, VHS tapes and Canal+. The working relationship the young woman forged with this specialized magazine would promote her like never before.

Gang bang, king size and DP

Coralie Trinh Thi has just come of age and wants to try and discover everything. She wants to know the limits of her body, to know what makes her tick, to understand the mechanisms of sensuality. She starts shooting. Not afraid of double penetration, hates limbs king size, She doesn't mind the old guys and the gang bangs, but loves to get together with a variety of partners, both male and female. And she enjoys it. The descriptions of body-to-body sex, both in her private life and on camera, are a literary delight.

She's becoming a high-profile harridan. Maybe for her naturalness. Because she doesn't fake it. And because directors see that she's enjoying herself. She even went on to win a Hot D'or in 1996, which is the equivalent of a César in the porn world. We won't have time to talk about the experience. Fuck me - the film based on the book of the same name, written by Virginie Despentes and which they will direct together. But this adventure will change her perception of the world, for better or for worse.

It's hard to say at what point everything changes. But let's say, for the sake of brevity, that the magic is broken the moment her activity ceases to go unnoticed by the general public. When she began to be known not as Coralie, but simply as «the pornostar». When the first malevolent glances appear in the street. Or when her friends« friends »warn" them that their buddy is shooting porn videos (even though they know it very well). And perhaps worst of all, when her boyfriend, and his successive boyfriends, can no longer accept her for who she is. She realizes that her job hurts the people she loves. Starting with herself.

We can never understand

The wet process, is the story of a young girl who plunges body and soul into sensuality with an uncommon thirst for learning. But it's also the story of a woman shattered by raw exposure and moral, commercial and Christian standards.

This book is a way of denouncing what she's been through. She wants to talk. To tell. To explain. Yet she seems to have a visceral fear of being misunderstood before she can even open her mouth. That's certainly why her story is explicit in every way: her feelings, her sexuality, her doubts, her rage, her death drive. Some 800 pages to tell it all, and to be sure we're measuring the nuances. And yet, we're left with the feeling that we'll never be able to grasp all the subtleties of her journey and her way of thinking.

Dear Coralie, no matter how many tales you tell of shooting experiences to the point of overdose, how many love stories you tell us about - and how many you argue about your libertarian thinking, we'll never know you as you are. And a book won't stop those who have judged you. (By the way... forgive my use of the familiar form of address: perhaps it's too easy to think that your life - because you've decided to describe it to us in the depths of your intimacy - belongs a little to us? Note to self your itinerary and you belongs).

Feminist anti-feminism

If Au diable Vauvert has decided to re-release this book today, almost fifteen years after its original publication, it's certainly not for nothing. Coralie Trinh Thi is, despite her avowed anti-feminism, one of the figures of freedom, libertine, libertarian, who has inspired, at heart, a new generation of consenting women who reclaim the fact of cumming, with or without a partner, in practices and relationships as diverse as they are varied. It was not all in vain.

Write to the author: diana-alice.ramsauer@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Diana-Alice Ramsauer for Le Regard Libre

Coralie Trinh Thi 
The wet process 
Au Diable Vauvert 
2022 [2007] 
781 pages

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