Scanning in old photos a few weeks ago I came across the pics we took at the Sydney performance of Annie Sprinkle’s Post Porn Modernist in 1996. Annie positively insisted that the audience took photos of the show so these blurry images are the result of our participation. I’ve also still got one of the rice-filled shakers we used to create a wall of sound during Annie’s orgasmic meditation.
This show was like a first step into a wider world for me. I’d had my interest in sex and sexuality stirred by the then-risque pages of Australian Women’s Forum mag but beyond a few furtive visits to a sex shop, I was still pretty naive.
Advertisement
Support independent, ethically made, award-winning porn. Bright Desire features all of my erotic films and writing. A membership to Bright Desire gets you access to every movie I've ever made and lets me keep making female friendly porn!
Click here to find out more.
-------------------------------------------------------
And then Annie Sprinkle came to town amid much fanfare and negative press. I don’t think I paid much attention until the day the police paid her a visit. Suddenly it became imperative that uniformed officers determine if “obscene” acts were being performed in the Belvoir Theatre, something that couldn’t be allowed to go on if drinks were being served.
The libertine in me was galvanised. I booked two tickets to the show, partly to say “fuck you” to conservative censors who would tell me what I could and could not see.
Once I was in the theatre, I found myself feeling rather nervous. What was I in for? Was this really my kind of thing?
And then Annie appeared in all her positive, cheerful, bewigged glory and related the fascinating tale of a life lived to its fullest. She made us laugh and she made us share in the sad times. She also made us squirm. I can still remember my shock at hearing the story of a customer who enjoyed anal fisting: “I’d reach up and around and tickle his heart,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. I think that’s the first time I’d even heard of fisting, let alone the anal kind.
In the interval she invited audience members to come down and have a photo taken with her boobs on their head – for $15 of course. I was too shy and I still regret not doing it. The above photos show that we enjoyed it vicariously.
And then she performed her amazing breath orgasm which was just a stunning thing to watch (I actually tried it a year later with mixed success). It was a mind-expanding experience, to be in the same room as a woman who could achieve orgasm through breathing and mind power alone. I was just so impressed and Annie has been a heroine for me ever since.
Indeed, she showed me that sex can be a positive and feminist experience and that one can make a living out of prostitution or porn or sexually-based art without having to be all those negative things that society insists a woman should be. In a way, Annie’s Post Porn Modernist put me on the path that I’m still walking today: a feminist pornographer out to change the world.
I dug up my old Sydney Morning Herald and Age data CDs to see if I could find the news reports of Annie’s visit here. They’re so out of date they don’t work on Windows Vista but I did salvage some articles after much mucking around. Here’s a sample of some of the media from Annie’s 1996 visit.
Sprinkle’s tour into realm of the censors
By Mark RayIN a city accustomed to sordid revelations at the Wood Royal Commission on corruption within the New South Wales police force, New York-based performance artist Annie Sprinkle seemed an odd target for a burst of censorship fervor.
Sprinkle, a former US prostitute and star of 200 pornographic movies, has just finished a sell-out week-long season of her show ‘Post Porn Modernist’ at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre, despite threatened police action against the theatre. The show opens at the Athenaeum in Melbourne on Tuesday for a two-week season.
During the week, the Belvoir Street Theatre was told its liquor licence might be revoked because of Sprinkle’s explicit one-woman show. There are no longer any censorship laws in NSW but police action against the show was threatened by recourse to provisions of the Liquor Licensing Act.
By Friday that threat had been abandoned – apparently after the Minister for Police suggested to his commissioner that the moves against Sprinkle were inappropriate.
‘Post Porn Modernist’ is certainly explicit, but the atmosphere at one performance here this week seemed unlike that of a sleazy porn show.
An audience of apparently unremarkable suburbanites, dedicated fans and the curious broad-minded staged no walkouts, made no complaints but responded with much laughter…
WHAT I LIKED ABOUT ANNIE.
SHANNON HALBERT, 26, high-voltage linesman.
“It was bizarre. Much more spiritual than I expected. I thought it’d be the life and times of a porno queen but it’s a decent show.”
AMANDA GARLAND, 29, film producer.
“I didn’t know what to expect but it was nice to see sexuality brought out so openly and presented so positively.”
ROBERT SKAPPEL, 50, interior decorator.
“I liked the fact that she included spirituality into her sexual experience. I’m all for that message.”
DIANA COXSHEAD, 35, naturopath and pharmacist.
“She seemed most comfortable in the last part of the program, going into the spiritual, tantric side.”– The Age, 31st March 1996
Annie’s Happy Ritual
By Jim Schembri
…The reaction to the show has been strictly divided, Sprinkle says. “I’ve had the best audiences in Australia and the worst press. The audiences have been the most appreciative of anywhere I’ve been in the world and the press has been the most vicious.“I’ve been misquoted here in Australia more than I’ve ever been. I wouldn’t say (the coverage has been) the most conservative, (but) I would say (it’s been) the most misinformed, the most taken out of context, the most uneducated. And very judgmental, extremely judgmental.”
Sprinkle says she’d never bring Post-Porn Modernist back to Australia because of the stress of bad press, but will bring her new show MetamorphoSex here. “I would have to think hard if I’d want to bring something back that has that potential to be controversial. The bad press inspires a lot of hatred.
I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
– The Age, 4th April 1996
In deep water with Annie
By Emma TomNOT LONG into the all-nude Annie Sprinkle bath-house interview, I wish to inform Houston that we have a problem.
Note-taking in a ginseng bath is turning out to be almost as difficult as the well-documented “where the hell do I put my wallet?” nudist nightclub dilemma.
Plus, for some weird reason, the unclothed subject matter is not proving conducive to family newspaper photographs. No matter how low we sink in the spa or how strategically placed the sauna towels, there’s always a stray nipple or three vying for camera attention.
This is Annie Sprinkle, live performance sextress and former porn film starlet, after all. Asking her to keep her money- makers out of the camera would be like asking Eva Cox for a lap dance. Just wouldn’t seem right…
– The Age, 29 March 1996
Reading through some of the other pieces I’m somewhat depressed that Australian society hasn’t progressed in the 13 years since Annie’s visit. A 1996 article called “Have We No Shame?” used Annie’s public cervix announcement as an excuse to bewail the alleged decline of society’s morals. You could easily reproduce the piece in today’s papers and the conservatives would happily nod along. The visit by the police was reproduced during the Henson art gallery censorship incident in 2008. Seems that Australia’s attitude to sex is still very furtive and juvenile.
Annie hasn’t come back and I don’t blame her. Looks like I’ll have to make the effort to go to the US and seek her out. Maybe then I can finally get that photo of her boobs on my head.