Bonnie Klein’s scathing, sometimes depressing chronicle of oppression still bites at society just as hard today.
The National Film Board of Canada was founded in 1939, at first with links to the government then expanding into film production and distribution. The company was instrumental not only in producing government films but in promoting important issues in Canada, and campaigning for indigenous and female representation in film production. In line with this, the National Film Board of Canada founded Studio D, the worlds first publicly funded feminist filmmaking studio.
Founded in 1974, Studio D was one of the most celebrated filmmaking units in Canada. The branch made many notable and important films until its dissolution in 1996, leaving behind a legacy of equality and justice that is still deeply embedded in the National Film Board of Canada. Three films to come out of the studio, I’ll Find A Way, If You Love This Planet and Flamenco at 5:15, won Academy Awards, evidence that the studio found both critical and commercial success until government budget cuts forced its closure.
One of the most renowned films to come out of Studio D was a documentary called Not A Love Story. This short piece of cinema was directed and made by Bonnie Klein, a filmmaker and author who focused on feminist issues and still campaigns today through film and her personal work for equality around the world for the disabled or belittled.
Not A Love Story is, at its core, a story about systematic oppression. Klein explores the world of exotic dance, pornographic cinema and peep shows in order to understand what drives the women who work in these industries to enter them. A critical part of the work, too, is the idea of violence, and its problematic permeation throughout the adult industry. The interviewees, for the most part, have entered the industry voluntarily, however the problems they find within their work are reflective of system wide issues, which Klein seeks to deconstruct and expose.
The film begins with Klein exploring the world of exotic dancing. Through shady corners, dimly lit rooms and smoky dance floors the documentary makers capture a strange mix of enthusiasm and misery, both among customers and workers. Most importantly, however, Klein meets Lindalee Tracy.
Tracy explains her theories to Klein on the world of exotic dancing, and how her own routines break the illusion of ‘woman-as-servant’ and bring more of a non-sexual performance to the stage. Her performances, where she dresses as story book characters, speaks to the audience and plays out a pantomime more than an erotic dance, are applauded by the smoking, drinking men in a strange turn of interest. Tracy joins Klein in her journey around the seedy underworlds, offering real industry insight into how her potentially respectable career struggles against disrespect and oppression.
There are fairly explicit images as Klein and Tracy enter peep shows and pay-to-view windows. Talking to the women who work there, there is a general consensus of disgust and belittlement, strengthened with interviews with authors and journalists who expound on their theories of a patriarchal history that has resulted in these kinds of spectacles. The rooms and working conditions are disgusting and offensive, mere windows that roll up when the customer puts money in. Klein and Tracy organise protests outside these sorts of venues, which results in a lot of hostility and debate from passerby and patrons.
The rest of the film consists of an analysis of the pornographic film industry. Klein visits cinemas and talks to ex-actors, engaging in heavy intellectual debate amongst groups of people in the industry. The straightforward, simple, almost news-story style of filmmaking makes these conversations hit home all the harder, as peoples raw emotions are screamed through the screen. Ex- adult film star Marc Steven’s testimony is particularly emotional, as he pleas for recognition as a human being after a career of being treated like and perceived as an animal. Many of the women in the film share his outlook.
Perhaps the most frightening and lingering theme in Not A Love Story is the prevalence of violence in the adult industry. Many like to link eroticism and violence for artistic purposes, but when it is presented for what it truly is and what this strange, horrible connection has led to, any ideas of artistic transcendence are abandoned. Erotic films and live events have shown a real preference to violence since the beginning, encouraging this as normal or attractive.
However, the women at the the receiving end of the violence, even if it is fake or acted, become subjects of abuse, nothing more than objects. This, Klein argues, and most people would agree, is the real problem with pornography or ‘adult’ entertainment. Watching Not A Love Story teaches us this and doesn’t let us forget it.
The inherently problematic and damaging nature of the adult industry is becoming more and more prominent. It is no longer considered funny, or awkward to discuss these things, but a real issue on how we define ourselves as people and how we relate to each other. Bonnie Klein and Lindalee Tracy’s work in Not A Love Story paved the way for the discussion we are seeing today. British writer Victoria Coren-Mitchell authored a book called Once More, With Feeling in 2003, detailing her experience trying to make a genuinely good adult film after becoming sickened with the pornographic films she had been reviewing.
Online communities are popping up on social media advocating for abstinence from viewing this kind of material and the destruction of the industry. Kleins’ daughter, Naomi, became a strong feminist and political voice in her own career, authoring the bestsellers No Logo and This Changes Everything. Evidently, the ban on Not A Love Story in Ontario and the critics cries of ‘bourgeois feminist fascism’ and ‘propaganda’ did little to silence the films legacy.
In this technologically driven age, adult content has spun out of control, so has its consumption. Not A Love Story serves as a sobering, bleak reminder of reality, that real people are behind screens, and real relationships need to be saved from the fake and unattainable images we are exposed to.
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