Candida Royalle

the interview with Olivia de Court

Part Four

Olivia : That is a really interesting point, I hadn't actually thought of the implications for men. There should be a lot more discussions about that in the media.

CANDIDA: Yeah, I agree. I've talked about this in a number of interviews. I'm not really someone who writes theoretical books and things, but there should be more about this because I think that it is destructive. Men could, this could be enlightening for them, in terms of male psychology and sexuality.

Olivia : Yes, and I think, ultimately, it would be better for women, too.

CANDIDA: Yeah, yeah, because we really do pay the price. They put us down for it. We pay for it. All religion, everything, we're the ones that, this is why our sexuality is repressed.

Olivia : I think religion is a huge part of it, the sort of religious and cultural messages we get. I understand that early on one of the big obstacles that your company faced was distribution in the U.S. and particularly abroad. In comparing American attitudes about porn in particular, and sex in general, with other countries that you’ve dealt with, where are we, as Americans, on the Erotic Enlightenment Meter?

CANDIDA: You know, everyone assumes that we're so far behind everyone and, in a way, we, in terms of our sexuality and being honest about it, yeah, we are pretty behind. We and Great Britain are pretty pathetic. But Australia's not much better and, Japan is terrible. We won't even talk about the Middle East and poor China.

Then you get to Western Europe and, that’s an interesting place, because everyone assumes that it's so much more evolved there, but the funny thing is, while they have a lot of erotic scenes in movies, in terms of their adult movies, it's a whole different scene there. It's very hard for me to get my movies into Europe because the adult industry is completely run by men, worse than here. They really don't accept that there is any kind of women's market for sex movies. It's really dirty, nasty pornography over there, or really super hard-core explicit. There are these kind of "art house" you know, ethereal, erotic movies, which I feel like, very often, when you really look at them, well, I don't even like a lot of those. Did you see the movie, "Romance?"

Olivia : It doesn’t ring a bell.

CANDIDA: Well, you should check it out. You’re gonna hear about it. It's an Italian or a French, I think it's a French filmmaker. A woman directed it. It's playing in the art theaters in New York, and it's actually got quite explicit content. There is explicit sex, but all the characters are so negative that really there is no sympathy for any of them. The lead woman is so confused; all she does is talk all the time. Her sexuality is extremely negative; she is very disturbed. Did you ever see "Betty Blue?"

Olivia : Oh, yes, that was an interesting one.

CANDIDA: I know a lot of people liked it. I didn't find it very -- I didn't like it. I thought it wasn't really sexy. Again, you have this heroine who was so confused and so crazy. I just thought, these men are so fascinated with really fucked up, confused, non-stop talking women. It's like this urge to rescue women or something, to see them as these poor little weak things that need to be rescued.

Olivia : Yes, and malleable, even more titillating to them, I think.

CANDIDA: Yeah. And so, I, I don't know, I think we give a lot of lip service about how sexually liberated Europeans are, but I don't think they are. I think we are more advanced in a lot of ways, probably because of the feminist movement. As hard as the feminist movement has been on relationships, and men, the difficulties we're seeing are things that had to be worked through; they had to come up. I think that it's really moving us to a more progressive direction than people in other countries. As screwed up as they still are (men), I think you can make American men better partners and better lovers.

Olivia : What I’ve heard is that America and Australia are amongst the most progressive in terms of having integrated the ability to come out and declare your sexuality and then to act on it, to a degree.

CANDIDA: That's interesting that you're putting Australia in that category, because I never would have guessed that.

Olivia : I think it's more in terms of the people, individually. They’re (the Australian Government) trying to pass the anti-obscenity on the internet law but, as far as individuals, I'm told by people from other countries, that have spent a lot of time there that the people are much more sexually open.

CANDIDA: I see. Because I had heard that men were not very advanced there.

Olivia : Well, they're very sexist. Going back a bit to what you were talking about with regard to religious influences, what are your theories on why America is still so resistant to sexually explicit material? Hollywood is attempting to mainstream porn, but there’s still so much resistance from political and religious circles. Do you think this is the primary problem?

CANDIDA: Ha! (laughs) America was really created out of a long history of Puritan and religious ethics. Western religion still has a heavy grip that religion on America. And I think that it's been politicized. The intent by this religious Fundamentalist movement is really to take away the separation of Church and State. I think that we've really got to be very, very careful about that. Religion and religious ideology are becoming politicized the political leaders really ... the churches and the Fundamentalists groups have learned on a grassroots level, how to get control of the votes, how to control the people running for office. This is really what we're dealing with. I don't think that they speak for everyone, but they know how to obtain a lot of power.

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