Flesh Trade

Flesh Trade

Bruce Bernard (Critical Vision, 2005)

With increasing regularity I hear particularly porn directors and performers, on both sides of the Atlantic, talk about working in the sex industry. Just how much it is an industry that actually manufactures something and how much a business, where products and services are simlpy bought and sold, is open to question. It might have been useful for Bruce Barnard to define his terms before embarking on this review of the sex business in the UK at the beginning of the 21st Century.

In Flesh Trade Bruce has produced an entertaining but at times a little rambling account of his investigations into the shadows of the pornography business at a time when its acceptence, particularly by the young, is becoming more widespread. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the business, phone sex or sex shops are given a general review while some of Britporn's more colourful characters, Marcus Allen, Terry Stevens and Sandie Caine are afforded long interviews and their own chapter.

For the uninitiated Bruce's explanation of the goings-on at a Bukkake party and at a gay porn shoot will be revelatory; while the interviews with John Beyer of Mediawatch UK (the current incarnation of Mary Whitehouse's Viewers & Listeners Association) and Peter Johnson at the British Board of Film Classification reveal the sheet anchor that prevents the UK joining the rest of Europe in our treatment of sex. Although the BBFC at least does seem to living in the real world.

While Bruce is generally pro porn, Flesh Trade lacks a real point of view. The fourteen-odd chapters are more like a collection of essays or articles. No less entertaining but without a coherent central thesis. While claiming, unlike the Sunday tabloids, to make his excuses and stay, he nonetheless occasionally adopts a censorious tone. Britporn is still a largely underground industry and Bruce is careful to avoid naming too many names. However his writing style requires names to be used, so the text is peppered with random first names used as substitutes for the real ones. Occasionally required I'm sure, but is it really necessary to change the naame of your best mate who comes round to watch a couple of dvd's during a 24 hour porn marathon? Even less necessary when the name of a club is given a full made up name, never to be referred to again.

For the most part Bruce's research has been hands on. Spells working on a sex chatline, early morning starts with the bootsale porn vendors and on to a detox programme for pornography addicts all afford rich anecdotes. But getting people to talk, even to Buce's sympathetic ear, was difficult, achieve a strike rate of little more than one in ten, and for the dogging couple, he missed out completely.

An entertaining read with lots of human stories that will raise an understanding smile from those who are familiar with the business and mild shock for those who aren't. But Bruce isn't out to change people views, he's a reporter and he tells it like it is.

Review by Bayleaf
March 2006

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