FILM REVIEW: ORGASM, INC.

Orgasm Inc. director Liz Canner.

The load down

By Ed Rampell

In the early 1960s Pres. Kennedy announced America would land a man on the moon by the decade’s end. Science’s current counterpart to the space race is the cum-petition to send women over the moon. That is to say, to create something that’s a gender equivalent to those drugs and treatments aimed at overcoming erectile dysfunction. This sex aid for women to achieve orgasms could take the form of a sort of female Viagra, or perhaps cream, shot, surgery or even electrodes invasively inserted into the spine. In any case, the race is on, and, as every salesman knows, sex sells, so there’s gold in them thar hills.

Director Liz Canner’s uncanny documentary may have started out as a cinematic rumination on female pleasure, but it ended up becoming an expose of Big Pharma. According to Canner, she was originally hired by a pharmaceutical firm to edit erotic videos that would be used during clinical trials of a cream intended -- with a little help from our pornographic friends -- to aid human female lab rats to attain orgasms.

However, the company that hired the cagey Canner -- who has a background of making human rights documentaries about subjects such as Nicaragua, LAPD and the L.A. riots -- got much more than they bargained. Like that health insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter, Canner grew increasingly disturbed by what she was in a unique position to witness, and the filmmaker went rogue.

The result is Orgasm Inc., a probing look at what could be called the “Female Sexual Dysfunction Pharmaceutical Surgical Complex” (FSDPSC). Pills, surgery and other treatments can be costly and contain health risks, so according to the doc, in order to overcome these objections Big Pharma, et al, concocted the myth that Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) is a “disease.” Not only that, but having identified a dire need, the FSDPSC is riding to the rescue with the cure to this ailment it has identified and propagandizes about.

However, there’s a fly in the ointment (literally and figuratively). Females happen to be different from males, and the solution (assuming, of course, that there’s even a problem to be solved to begin with) is not simply a feminine version of those boner pills exalted in those schmaltzy commercials advising men what to do if their erections last longer than four hours, etc. As Dr. Sigmund Freud asked: “What do women want?” That’s the $64,000 question or, in the quest to create a female Cialis, etc., probably more like a $64 billion question. Like braggadocio partners, so far these pills, etc., promise more than they deliver, and in a sense, this is the perfect film to open in L.A. on April Fools’ Day.

Canner provides a valuable service in her doc by exposing the fact that most of the public pitchmen and women for these various drugs, etc., aimed at inducing vaginal and clitoral orgasms are paid by the same industry they are ballyhooing. In addition, these TV therapists, scientists and the like do not disclose their financial ties to the firms manufacturing the products they’re appraising and praising. During the Iraq War it was exposed that a number of those retired officers, etc., pontificating in news media outlets were actually paid by the Pentagon, and even provided daily talking points to them. When it was exposed that pundit/ bandit Armstrong Williams was secretly taking money from the Bush Administration while pushing Bush educational policies and bashing those of opponents, Williams’ “defense” was that he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong.

Perpetrators of these covert conflicts of interest are worse than immoral, they’re amoral, absolutely lacking any sort of ethical compass. When Charles Ferguson confronts culprits of “say for pay” and insider trading in his Oscar winning Inside Job, the perps have cognitive dissonance, since they operate in a realm that’s so sleazy and corrupt they simply can’t recognize what’s right and wrong. (The legal definition of insanity, by the way.)

The corruption Canner cannily exposes in Orgasm Inc. makes a strong case that during this High Renaissance of Insider Trading and Conflicts of Interest we need a sort of truth in advertising law applied to pitchmen/women, requiring them to disclose their financial ties regarding what they’re pitching. Instead of being fobbed off as an independent expert, if some talking head (no pun intended) is taking money from a company whose products or goals he/she is endorsing, this should be disclosed to viewers/listeners/ readers, etc. So when some behind-the-scenes Pentagon goon poses as a disinterested commentator, but is really being paid off by a think tank funded by the defense industry, a label will identify him/her as such onscreen, etc. Let’s call a flack a flack -- and Canner does a great job doing just this. (BTW, in the interests of full disclosure I think that the United States of America should now be legally forced to change its name to the Incorporated States of America. I’m just saying…)

The worst abuse Canner exposes in Orgasm Inc. has to do with what’s called Designer Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation surgery. Much has been revealed about the dangers involved with “boob jobs," but this doc exposes plastic surgery on female private parts, to reduce the length of their vaginal lips and so on. (Maybe soon we’ll need labia labels?) In any case, the doc’s feminist spokespersons make a strong case that this is just a high tech version of the kind of female genital mutilation decried in “backwards” Third World nations. Holy clit!

Sexuality is a very powerful force, and our acceptance, sense of self-worth, being attractive, intimacy, need for physical and emotional satisfaction, and much mysteriously more, are wrapped up in it. Human beings are social animals; we’re not created through asexual reproduction. What Canner craftily shows is that the Female Sexual Dysfunction Pharmaceutical Surgical Complex preys upon women, exploits and heightens their insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, promising them pleasure, cum-panionship, approval, etc. All of which they, and their purveyors, stand to profiteer from -- whether they deliver the goods or -- like so many snake oil salesmen/women of the past -- don’t.

Canner’s technique (filmmaking, that is) is pretty conventional here. No Michael Moore-ian panache or cinematic style a la The Kid Stays in the Picture, that well-made 2002 doc about producer Robert Evans. She is also guilty of a certain amount of Puritanism when it comes to nudity. Like the pill pitchers she exposes, Canner knows full well that sex sells -- hence her doc’s catchy title, and its titillating, provocative ad depicting an apparently naked young blonde embracing a bottle of pills in between her spread thighs, head tossed back in what seems to be an orgasmic delight worthy of Meg Ryan in that famous When Harry Met Sally restaurant scene.

Yet there is no graphic nudity in Orgasm Inc. -- even when this could have greatly benefited viewers. For instance, when discussing vaginal plastic surgery, it would have been useful for audiences to actually see what’s being spoken about. Labia, vulva, etc., before and after operations. After all, film is a visual art form, not just talking heads (of which this doc is full of), and artists have fought valiantly for decades for the freedom to depict sexuality openly. It’s a mystery that, having legally won this free expression battle in America, so few of today’s (non-porn) filmmakers use that hard fought for liberty. The only genitalia to be seen onscreen in Orgasm Inc. comes in the form of pubic puppets (I kid thee not, Dear Reader). If there is sexual dysfunction en masse in America, it is precisely this unnatural attitude toward the human body, male and female, which results in puritanical perversity, obsessions and sexual repression. Alas, this otherwise insightful, inciting documentary may be somewhat guilty of perpetrating what it condemns.