‘Gloria’ or the ugly truth behind feminist porn

Carl Jung once said: ‘Shame is a soul-eating emotion’.

I know what he means. I have felt dead many times in my life, because of sadness or anxiety. But Shame is a very specific and annihilating zombie state. There is nothing you can do about it, except own it. I guess that’s why a lot of people transform their shame into pride, like a survival instinct. That’s kind of what I did with porn. I was ashamed of my body, so I showed it to the world. I ripped off the band aid. I put myself in a position where I would have no choice but to be ok with other people’s opinion of me. I would literally have to stop caring or suffer forever and die of self-hatred after a long boring life of selfies and brunches. I’ve always been like this. I would suddenly feel my body move and find myself waiting in the line of a huge rollercoaster. Every bit of it might be excruciating, but at least I would prove myself I could do it or learn something from the experience. No pain. No gain. This is why I have vertigo. Bridges look too damn appealing.

Granted, I’m somewhat addicted to pain. I realised that, to overcome some pain I experienced in my early life, I had to adapt to it, to let it in and bathe in its chaos and the infinite new ideas that come with it. I turned it into something positive. It just couldn’t have been for nothing. Pain became a way to measure myself. It’s a bit of a Stockholm syndrome situation. I had to love the pain so it wouldn’t kill me or drive me insane. Then, I just couldn’t live without it. ‘If I can take that, then I can take anything’. The adrenaline of the jump, the rope tightening around your waist, the ink injecting your skin, the excitement of the unknown. My old lack of self-esteem, as disgusting as it was, also took my ego down and even though that made me look yummy to some predators in the world and I had to learn a few things a bit too late, it also allowed me to do things other people wouldn’t do. I didn’t care about myself in the way that I could put myself through intriguing experiences, see what it’s like, and understand things that most people don’t and thus, often judge. The thrill of discovery is intoxicating. Are we not simply a library of experiences? I couldn’t do much for the first 20 years of my life, I wasn’t going to settle down for a boring job and a French boyfriend. That’s why doing porn because of a fucked up childhood might seem pathetic and predictable, but I never really felt that same judgement. I always thought that, in the grand scheme of things, my getting naked on camera seemed unimportant and a small price to pay for feeling alive.

I just want my life to be an adventure. The reason why I make movies is because our lives are epic stories. There is meaning, dots to connect, mistakes to be solved, levels to win, prizes to collect, big bosses to fight, hacks, cheat codes, princesses and wild creatures. Getting naked was a way to hail the life cab and beg the Universe not to leave me to die in this uneventful, unchallenging, robot-minded society. And the Universe opened the door. Porn was my way of hitchhiking to my epic reality, rushing through the first chapters to try and compensate for missing the beginning of the story, back when I couldn’t read the cosmic language.

But, there is always a ‘but’. This whole impulsive strategy of shooting myself in the foot to see what it feels like did not go as planned. I was naive on so many levels.

It kinda worked out pretty well, at first, but we can never truly take a break, can we. Or maybe it’s just that I switched my game play from easy to expert without practising on medium difficulty first. When I moved to Berlin, three years ago, it was like going on hyper speed mode. The Berlin vortex. Everything happened faster and more intensely. I learned more lessons in three years here than anywhere, any when else. I left Barcelona because I was not challenged enough. Be careful what you wish for, right?

So, it was all good for the time I thought it was only impacting me. I had made peace with the fact that I would probably be alone forever. Nothing could hurt me. But I was still a girl, then. I thought the means of misusing my body justified the end. With porn, I had the illusion of being in control. Reality is different. Last year, everything changed. One of the main events that led me to question porn, feminism and everything else really, was the shooting of one particular movie. Gloria. I already mentioned it here a while ago. This shooting was a disaster and I have just found out that it is going to be aired on TV in a couple of days. As much as I try to see it as a much needed, unavoidable wake up call, I cannot ignore the shame I feel.

I wrote this movie with the girl who was, at the time, my best friend. We managed a deal with a big production company in France and worked on what was supposed to be our ‘big break’. It broke alright… My friend recommended a team of French guys, friends of hers, for the crew, and sanctioned by the producers, and I would both direct with her and perform as well. It was my first feature film shooting. Seven days filming in different locations in Berlin, with many actors, most of them from France, since the movie had to be in French. When we began shooting, I noticed that the team was not listening to me at all. They kept filming boobs while I was constantly telling them to focus on the faces and expressions. ‘Nobody cares about faces.’ When my turn came to perform in a sex scene, everything collapsed. The guy had trouble getting it up, and I was also very nervous, which I understand because we were surrounded by at least five people constantly making lousy sex jokes and being completely inconsiderate of the performers’ well being. We ended up just doing a cunnilingus and it was fine for me. I never needed a boner for my movies. Whatever happens, happens. After the sex, we were having a spontaneous little chat at the end, you know, like people do, and the camera guys stopped shooting because ‘it wasn’t in the script’. Then my friend, the co-director, came to us, as we were still naked on the bed, taking our breath. She said ‘That’s it?’. She then proceeded to tell me that we needed penetration, because ‘it’s on the list’, and that’s what the producers want to see. Even though the male actor wasn’t French, he could definitely understand what she was saying. I not only felt ashamed of how she was treating him, but also felt deeply hurt that she was not respecting me enough to care about my well-being, as if I was some kind of employee, that because it was my movie, it didn’t matter to make me feel comfortable on the set, as if it was an easy thing to take off your clothes and fuck on camera. That’s why directors who don’t perform are worthless, in my opinion.

I took her outside and explained we were not there to make the same shit movies other people make, for money. The four or five days of shooting after that, the whole team ganged up on me. My friend pushed me aside. They were all her friends… I pretty much withdrew from the whole thing and watched this miserable shooting happen before my eyes. The cliche decor, the bad acting, bad filming… It was all I ever fought against, and I had the main role in it. They took me as this stupid girl when I was the only one there who really knew how to shoot sex in a healthy way. And we had gotten this movie deal because of my name and reputation. I hadn’t had any news from them since, until I saw on Twitter that the movie was going to be released this week.

They have been editing images of my body for months, manipulating it, and I was helpless. Damn contracts… I’ve told them I didn’t want to be labeled as the director, since it just wasn’t my movie at all, and that I wouldn’t take any money from it. It’s going to air anyway, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

This is feminism, people.

Now I have to bear the shame of all of that being shown on TV. My humiliation, my betrayal, my body, my sex. It will stay forever. And the people close to me today share this burden with me. All that because a big production company wanted to tag their new product with the feminist label.

My only way to cope is through art. At least something good has to come out of this terrible mishap. At least, I might have the opportunity to share with people my mistake and make them understand why it was a mistake. If it hadn’t happened, I would probably still be a feminist robot, but the price to pay for awareness is high. I go very high when I climb, but I also fall harder. There is no reason why only the good stuff should be intense. My mistakes are intense slaps on the face, too. The only way to not let it disrupt my karma is to do what I’ve always done, put my ego aside and turn a negative into a positive.

I don’t regret porn in general. It’s got me where I am today and I’ve learned many things about the world and about myself. But it only takes one crappy experience like this one to shatter one’s life. However, I’m not about to let talentless people take me down, because one thing I’ll never let go of is my integrity, and life is way more cruel to people who betray their friends than to those who search for the truth.

Shortly after that shooting, I decided to shoot my own feature film, my own way, with my people. The music is being done now and it will be released in a couple of weeks. Funny that the timing is so perfect. It was a painful and awakening process and it is the little piece of gold I made out of a big pile of shit. Alchemy, right?

I’ll post the trailer as soon as it’s up. The picture below is a little preview, starring Magena.

And thank you for all your support.