Ten Million Throwaways

This is standard anti-porn & anti-prostitution stuff that's extremely repetitive and unoriginal. There are a few interviews with male sex addicts and former strippers or adult film actresses that are mostly activists against the entire sex industry. There's also a lot of stock or staged footage used in the film as well as audio from literally a handful of extreme porn websites only. The film teases some "behind-the-scenes" information on the adult film industry but rarely delivers on this at all. As other reviewers have noted, this film is really just about further stigmatizing the sex industry while, at the same time, complaining about former sex industry workers are stigmatized.

This is a terrible lost opportunity. The porn industry does abuse women, and men, terribly. Plenty of people are trafficked, drug addicted, suffered from childhood abuse that makes them targets. The industry has lots of organized crime involved. Some porn glamorizes brutalizing women.

Instead this purported documentary engages in lots of sex shaming, equating any desire for sex with evil and sin. It makes ridiculous arguments like passing by a Victoria's Secrets shop in a mall will lead to sex addiction and porn addiction. The title is ridiculous hyperbole. There obviously aren't 10 million people making porn films, much closer to tens of thousands, and that's in its whole history.

The fundamentalist view of the film makers is obvious. Their hysterical view that all sex is evil reminds you of Reefer Madness, where smoking one joint is claimed to make you murder your parents. That overkill does a lot of damage, making the viewer dismiss any attempt at a warning.

This self-described documentary film is flawed for so many reasons, it is difficult to know where to start. I will be brief. It will be easy to avoid spoilers as anyone vaguely aware of the topics involved will not be surprised by any content or opinions in the film.

Simply diluted soup that inadvertently ignores the most serious issue. This is due in part, I think, for three reasons. First, there is a minimal amount of factual information particularly regarding the very important and broad topic of child exploitation and abuse. To say that there are few or no laws or programs available to help these victims is fiction. Is there enough being done, not even close but much more than is implied. A simple internet search would reveal thousands of programs and research on abuse topics as well as countless laws.

Second, the content and style by the writer/director, regarding his seemingly recent discovery that pornography use is increasing world-wide (wherever a non-draconian government allows it), makes the slap-dash edits of the film look like a bad mix of Reefer Madness mongering and outtakes of Nancy Reagan/Phyllis Schlafly cutting rooms floor clips of a beautiful and pure America spoiled by insidious enemies. The approach comes across as grainy, outdated, dubious, and naive. It is as though he has not watched a modern documentary or any sincere film in decades. Many comments are included that cry out for editing or specific support, perhaps available, but are left hanging like a shirt on a clothes line with only one clothes pin: Flapping an incomplete effort with valid points obscured.

Finally, again trying to be brief, this poor effort at documentation seemed to offer again and again, the same images, interview clips, screes, and conflated statements on pornography and its addiction to MEN of America.

I've seen this said here before and it is worth repeating, but this is 90 minutes of my life wasted and irretrievable. I tried to be fair and stick it out hoping the first several minutes would not continue as badly, however I was wrong. Bad writing, editing, and directing cannot help to shed light on important topics.