Swedish filmmaker Ninja Thyberg discusses her debut feature, Pleasure, which has been criticised for being “too honest” about the industry
When you ask someone what they’ve watched recently, the answer might not be entirely honest. During the pandemic, more people in the UK watched Pornhub than BBC News, and a 2020 study estimates that Pornhub receives more traffic than Amazon, Reddit and Netflix. So what does it mean when the most popular videos on adult tube sites revolve around racist stereotypes, misogynistic fantasies, and an obsession with step-relatives that would change the dynamic at Christmastime if those viewers left their internet browsers lying around?
As pornography is such a taboo subject in everyday conversation, Swedish filmmaker Ninja Thyberg decided to embrace it full-on in her debut feature, Pleasure. “I wish (porn) was something you just did on your own and didn’t have an impact on anything,” the 37-year-old filmmaker tells me over Zoom from LA. “But it’s sexual education for everyone on the planet because we never see explicit sex anywhere else.”
“What we get turned on by is a social construction,” she continues. “Almost all porn is made from a male perspective. As a woman, we learn that sex is about us being sexy and fuckable, and it’s about these different positions that are satisfying the man. The total male gaze on everything is really damaging, and it affects, probably, everyone’s sex life.”
At an airport, 19-year-old Linnéa (first-time actor Sofia Kappel) is asked if she’s flown over for business or pleasure. In this coming-of-ager, both apply: under the pseudonym of Bella Cherry, the Swedish youngster yearns to be a “Spiegler girl” – the name for porn actors managed by Mark Spiegler, a real agent who plays himself. It’s also a grounded drama in which the second act hinges on whether Bella can handle double anal.
When Pleasure started as a 15-minute short in 2013, its plot also focused on a young woman undertaking double anal to boost her career, which means that Thyberg has been documenting pornography for nearly a decade. As there’s no adult industry in Sweden (“It feels like most people in the world watch porn that’s produced in LA”), the director visited sets in LA and befriended industry folk, many of whom appear in Pleasure. “I thought I knew so much, and it turned out I knew nothing… the American ideology is so different from the Swedish.”
As a 16-year-old, though, Thyberg was an anti-porn activist who got arrested for “sabotaging” shops that sold porn. With a friend, she would also block the entrance of a nearby strip club. “But after a while, the women came out and were like, ‘You’re taking away our income. Please don’t.’ So we started collecting money to pay the strippers. We were just teenagers trying to do the right thing. Since then, I’ve become a little more nuanced!”
With its docudrama aesthetic, Pleasure is often educational on the actual nutting and bolting of a porn shoot. Before any actual sex, Bella signs the paperwork and agrees with the director about safe words, what she will and won’t do on camera, and an alternative for a safe word if her mouth is occupied. At least, that’s what happens on the newbie’s happier gigs, such as on a BDSM shoot directed by Aiden Starr, who plays herself. (It’s worth noting that in June 2020, Starr quit two major companies, Evil Angel and Kink.com, explaining, “Many of my projects when viewed by the public do more harm than good. I have been complicit and I apologise.”)
“The type of content that they’re shooting in that scene is still about physical violence to the female body,” Thyberg says. “It’s still about a man being dominant. Even if (Starr) is the camera operator and director, the people consuming it are still men.” She adds, “But the working conditions can be totally ethical, and you can shoot that type of content without pushing anyone’s boundaries. There are so many people that enjoy BDSM and power play.”
Also complicated is a shoot that pairs Bella, a young, white, blonde girl, with two older Black men whose scripted roleplay dictates that they’re stealing her innocence. However, Thyberg doesn’t believe porn actors or directors should be blamed for perpetuating racist tropes. “The workers are just doing what the customers pay for. We need to address it on a more structural, cultural level. By looking at porn, we can see that racism is very present because that’s what people secretly search for.”
While Bella’s co-stars are generally supportive, she’s hired by a website whose male performers bring her to tears through slapping and roughness. During a timeout, Bella, who’s there unaccompanied, is pressured to complete the shoot and not waste everyone’s time. The sex is then presented from Bella’s perspective, with the men staring into the camera like sweaty Bond villains.
I tell Thyberg that, off the top of my head, I can only think of two films that depict sex from the woman’s POV: Ruben Östlund’s The Square and Lukas Moodysson’s Lilya 4-Ever. By chance, Östlund’s company is a co-producer on Pleasure, and Moodysson is Thyberg’s favourite director. “That scene in Lilya 4-Ever (which shows rape from Lilya’s POV) made such an impact on me. I realised that all the rape scenes I’d seen before were from the predator’s point of view. They’re so uncomfortable: the camera is focusing on the woman’s face, her reaction, her body.”
If it weren’t for the pandemic, Pleasure would have premiered at Cannes 2020, and it instead launched at Sundance 2021 to rave reviews and an acquisition by A24. However, some of the porn figures who acted in Pleasure have since publicly criticised Thyberg. Lucy Hart told IndieWire the film is “not very sex-positive” and “just another example of mainstream media taking advantage of sex workers”. Axel Braun tweeted, “We all got duped into helping (Thyberg) make a movie that would have never happened without our support.”
Thyberg admits she was surprised by the responses, but notes that Braun’s complaint was that the film was “too honest” about the industry. “(Braun) saw it again, and he messaged me. He said he’d changed his mind and apologised. He was at the premiere yesterday… I honestly think a lot of men in the industry aren’t bad. They don’t want to hurt women. They just don’t understand it. Maybe they haven’t made a huge effort to understand the female perspective.”
Next up for Thyberg is a remake of The Witches of Eastwick for Warner Bros, but she can’t comment on it. She’s also reluctant to elaborate on the conflict with A24 that led to a parting of ways. All that’s known publicly is that A24 wanted to release an edited cut in cinemas. “I can just say that I’m very happy and relieved that Neon is releasing it (instead of A24 in America), and it’s the way that I intended, and I get to show it to the audience in the way that it was supposed to be.”
Although Pleasure is more sexually explicit than a typical MUBI release, it’s tame compared to what’s streaming on the porn versions of MUBI. Kappel isn’t an adult performer, and much is left to the imagination. “Yes, we see nudity, but I wanted to stay away from making anything look pornographic,” Thyberg says. “It’s from Bella’s point of view. I’ve heard people say, ‘It’s going to take a while for me to want to have sex again after this.’ There’s all the things that women need to do and hide to create a male fantasy. There are so many things that are unsexy about porn.”
As part of an ongoing partnership with the curated streaming platform MUBI, Dazed will hold an exclusive screening of Pleasure,hosted by Dazed Club creative director Jack Sunnucks, on June 14 at London’s Garden Cinema.
Want to get involved? Tickets are now on sale here for £8 (or £5 for Dazed Club members) – complimentary drinks included.
Find out more about the Dazed Club, and become a member yourself, by signing up here. You can also revisit MUBI’s trailer for Pleasure below.