Day Eighty-six - After Porn Ends, "Can the degraded find normalcy... and learn to love themselves again."

Netflix has a habit of throwing every documentary under the sun into its suggestion queue because I've watched things like Jiro Dreams of Sushi and People Are Strange. One such title was the somewhat depressing look at former porn stars called, you guessed it, After Porn Ends.

Interviewing a few recognizable names from porn over several generations (including Asia Carrera, Richard Pacheco, Raylene, and Tiffany Million), After Porn Ends is a sort of confessional-style documentary that takes down first hand accounts from these folks who often enough have suffered quite a bit due to the lifestyle they traversed filming sex for money.

It's a side of the story you were never going to see without a documentary being done.

Even when former porn stars make the leap to the mainstream and non-sexual niche markets, they're often still playing a character and that character doesn't often speak of their real selves.

Here there are quite a few very non-flattering testimonials of just how harsh the porn life is, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Several of the interviewees turned to religion to pull themselves back up while others used drugs to dampen their pain.

I was particularly taken with Asia Carrera's story as she was hit with the tragedy of losing her husband and has to raise her children alone. To hear a longitudinal view of her life going from geeky girl to centerfold to retirement and beyond really hits you in the emotions, especially since her story isn't ending all that well.

Quite a few of the people the doc follows struggle with their lives after their stars have faded and you can see it on their faces and in their tears (some obvious, some hidden... wicked away quickly in an attempt to shield them from the camera).

That's not to say that all of the stories are harsh.

In a few there are stories of hope, redemption, and a well-lived life, despite the stigma that porn leaves on one's record.

Seka, in particular, seemed to have ridden the wave quite well and Nina Hartley is frank and seems quite centered and at peace with both her porn career and her life in general... but then there's Raylene, who you think is finally back on track, but is shown in the denouement as being back in the life... and Mary Carey, who ran for California's governorship and just seems... off.

Maybe that's just her character as she still has an image to maintain, doing her best to sell that image for as much as she can as long as she can, but nothing gives me hope for her future. And this feeling carries over to the majority of the doc's subjects.

Overall, the doc makes several salient points concerning what we as a society do to these folks in exchange for using them for our masturbatory fantasies... and you can't help but agree with said points, but you also can't help but shake your head and feel ashamed as well.

I can't say I recommend the doc, but I don't hate it either.

It's not exactly groundbreaking, but it is interesting to take a peek behind the curtain of the porn industry and see just how much of a toll it can actually take on a person.


Fair warning, the doc doesn't pull a lot of punches when it comes to archived footage. While the majority of the film is the interviews, several segments from the performers' sex scenes are shown with nudity and the like. The doc is definitely not for children unless you're using it to start a frank discussion about the state and history of pornography in our culture... and the price it exacts on its performers.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~