What she has to say has much more relevance to me now than her gaping the asshole, multiple cumshots, slapping, being choked out, the baseball bat routine, etc. Thus, she has advanced out of my cannon of those I want to see in porn. Although, I still find her hands down the most sexually appealing performer in adult.

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After watching Primetime Live, I came away with the following thoughts and observations: 1.) I'm never watching Primetime Live again. 2.) The state of television "journalism" continues to sink to new lows. 3.) Diane Sawyer should be ashamed of herself. Her asking and timing of certain questions was disgustingly predatory. 4.) C. Everett Coop is a massive tool! His generalizations about everyone working in the industry and the people consuming it's products was, imo, the most insulting aspect of the entire piece. 5.) Bella looked damn fine in several clips(debut scene in Real Sex Magazine and the strip tease from The Fashionistas come to mind), but I still had no desire to see her having sex on screen. Seeing her so emotional only made me want to give her a big hug. Nothing more. 6.) The girl's a Mormon from Utah? I thought she was a Latina, even a black woman, from pictures I had seen. And finally 7.) Bella struck me as being one of the nicest and most adorable human beings you could ever hope to meet. Her interaction with Nacho was especially cute.

My opinion of Bella now is even higher. Having read the new interview at Rock Confidential and the rebuttal interviews she gave after the program initially aired, it is clear how much ABC distorted the truth about her life and experiences in the adult film world. Bella continues to stress that there is only one incident(the Anabolic gangbang shoot) that is a true regret AND that the majority of her experiences in the industry have been positive. I choose to believe that she is telling the truth.

With all that being said, I finally picked up The Fashionistas(due to the glowing reviews of the film, dvd set, and of course the fact that Bella stars in it), but have not gotten around to popping it in my dvd player. So I still have yet to see Bella "perform" on camera. I am with FastForward in stating that there is zero possibility that I will ever watch that Anabolic Gangbang Girl movie(for moral reasons). Or for that matter, any of the more extreme work that she seems to specialize in. This is more a matter of personal taste. I find things like double anal and double vaginal to be visually repulsive. Baseball bats up the ass? What the fuck is that?

In response to the original question "How did the ABC show affect you?". It didn't make me hate the porn business, that's for sure. I guess the program failed on that level, with me at least. I guess it just made me aware of, interested in, and a fan of Michelle Sinclair the person. Not necessarily "Belladonna The Porn Star". But I'm certainly not opposed to becoming a fan of hers as well. Peace.

Edited by - Lonborg on 3/11/2003 6:35:10 AM

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1) my interest in Belladonna grew even bigger. I do really adore her body and her work ethos. I asked a friend to buy me Gangbang Girl 29 in West and watched it the evening I got it. And was very impressed. And I watched it again and again afterwards; and with lots of joy. It seems clear to me that Bella did have some hard moments, but also enjoyed a lot of it. And that she did get payed very good money for that.

2) learning more of the payment aspect and learning how much US-born girls can get for their acting on porn set, made me dream about setting up office to promote Russian girls travelling and working on porn sets in West. (It is still only dream)

3) It also made me more concerned about business acspects of porn.

4) but also feelings of porn actresses.

5) It showed that even most witch hunt journalism actually rather promotes thing it wants to defeat. Which in case of porn is good thing.

6) Reading thread about <Aftermath: Time for some changes?> end of January made me think a lot about some peoples honesty discussing here. I dont want pick anybody - also not the person posting his canges first, but many who posted very concerned posts there have posted less caring for girls health posts later.
I think this is example of what we speak here of <American exaggerated Emotions>; once they are over top but than they cool down fast again.
Maybe it is also because of your wellfare state ideas. Many think girls are not able to decide themselfs. They need different councellings (health, financial, psychological etc).

7) This <Aftermath>-tread finally convinced me to try write to forum and try sharing other viewpoint. Maybe less rose-cloured sometimes, but more based on daily hard life in capitalism experience I think.

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Regarding that thread, here's what my real objective was: it was to inspire a discussion that might actually lead to some voluntary changes in the porn industry, changes that would result in improved conditions for the performers. What I had wanted was for people to use my ideas merely as a starting point in developing improved policies, procedures, protocols, etc, in the porn industry to the benefit of the performers.

What I got, instead, was woefully disappointing and frustrating to me. I got a lot of what I would describe as apologetic (defensive) and self-serving posts by porn insiders, and a lot of defeatist thinking from both porn insiders and porn fans. What I got very little of was anything even remotely resembling originality and creativity (there are some good ideas, however, buried in that long thread). But a great many of the posts (I think a large majority) were negative, defeatist, and unproductive. It's so very easy for a poster to shoot down an idea as impractical, but it takes much more mental energy than most people are willing to expend to formulate a practical alternative. Sometimes it really does seem to me that 99% of humanity are wired to think of reasons why something won't work, rather than think of reasons why it can work or come up with suggestions to improve on an idea to make it work.

Regarding the porn industry as a whole making what I still believe are needed changes, the bottom line is this: it is almost completely impossible to change the status quo.

Whenever you try to introduce change, even in yourself for that matter , there is often a lot of resistance, for myriad reasons. Look at how difficult it is for most people to stick to their New Year's resolutions. Whether it's losing weight, quitting smoking, getting along better with your mate, etc., it's extremely hard for most people to make permanent changes. Heck, most people won't even attempt to change in the first place, even when they are completely convinced that change is needed. And this is just with individuals. The level of difficulty increases exponentially when you attempt to get a whole industry to make voluntary changes.

Because change is so hard, what people do is resist change. They resist change by insisting that there is no need for change, by engaging in subterfuge and smokescreen tactics, by attacking or criticizing any idea or suggestion relating to change, by refusing to come up with practical alternatives to the ideas or suggestions that they attack, by attacking or questioning the person or the person's motives who proposed the change or changes, by placing blame on others, by shifting all of the responsibility to others, etc. I've never met a person in my life who didn't deserve an honorary Ph.D in the fine art of resistance to change (and yes, I include myself here).

Here is an idea for change that should have had a perfect consensus (at least in theory):

That STD testing in the porn industry is inadequate, is still very much a live issue. The mainstream media does legitimately continue to harp on this aspect of the porn industry that is screaming for improvement. Remember that recent L.A. Times story with Brooke Ashley? Remember how Bella Donna mentioned on the Primetime Special that she contracted an STD that might render her sterile someday? I also remember reading somewhere that the super popular Amee Donavan has had a lot of health problems as a direct consequence of being a porn performer.

Coincidentally, here are comments that Bella Donna made on STD testing in the Rock Confidential interview mentioned above:

Even if all of my other suggestions had been summarily dismissed, no problem. But the one idea that should have been embraced and immediately implemented by ALL of the studios was the one about better STD testing. Did that happen? Not only no, but hell no! Given the choice between spending more money to provide better health protection for porn performers, or not spending more money and letting things continue as they are, the studios are going to naturally go with not spending more money (plus, they don't have to expend any time or effort affecting any changes in their policies and procedures). And how do they justify this? Easy, by either refusing to address the problem at all, or by simply asserting that the performers must bear personal accountability for their decisions. Rubbish! It's true up to a point that the performers must shoulder responsibility for their decisions, but only up to a point . The studios are supposed to bear some of the responsibility, too (and they do, but not to the extent that I believe that they should). Tricia Devereaux was one of the few studio reps to state the following, which I applaud her for:

Shameless, I genuinely do care about the porn talent, but I'm also still very much a porn fan. While I'm frustrated to this day that changes aren't being implemented on a wide scale to better protect the health of porn performers, I still like to watch porn. However, I see no hypocrisy in this. As you've suggested yourself, we live in an imperfect world, "Maybe less rose-cloured sometimes, but more based on daily hard life in capitalism experience I think."

Other ways that I have been affected by the ABC Primetime Special with Bella Donna is as follows. It made me love, respect, and cherish Bella even more. If anything, I'm even more sexually attracted to her, not less. I still very much enjoy watching her movies. Her big, beautiful butt looks just as sexy to me as ever, and I would just love to plant my whole head up it. In fact, if Bella let me, I'd pitch a tent and camp out in her ass until the year 2012.

In the aftermath of the Primetime Special, I also find that I feel much more protective of Bella Donna when other people say insulting things about her. Although I've stopped posting rebuttals when someone happens to post something unkind about Bella, I can tell you that it really rubs me the wrong way when someone does.

Regarding ABC, I now hold that network in such utter contempt, that I refuse to watch any ABC show, not just ABC Primetime. The one exception was the Martin Bashir interview with Michael Jackson. Other than that, I've stayed away from ABC. Even in the case of the MJ interview, however, ABC Primetime engaged in the exact same hack journalism it did with Bella Donna (this is in stark contrast to the Fox network, which presented the MJ interview in a much more fair, complete, and evenhanded way).

Well, Shameless, I hope I've put things in a clearer perspective for you. The next time I have a Vodka, I'll think of you.

Pontus

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Pontus

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