March 1998 net worth by Brian Kennedy |
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Literate Smut, My Ass:
Anybody associated with NYC publishing world gossip knows the story. Book
editor shmos Genevieve Field and Rufus Griscom meet, fall in love, and quit
their jobs to follow their dream -- to publish an online highbrow porn mag, a
website that offers what they call "Literate Smut." In traditional
monosyllabic online publication style (sorry, Leslie), they decide to call the
thing Nerve. (There's supposed to be a little dot after the E, but I can't figure out how to make it. Sorry.)
A lot of hard work and seven-million-odd pageviews a month later, Genevieve
and Rufus are seemingly riding high - they've been adding new staffers, posing
for The Village Voice in standard-issue Urban Hipster Gear, and getting
accolades and advertising from such respectable, big-name sites as
Salon. Good deal? Great deal!
The only problem's that Nerve's a terrible product. It's by turns laughably
pretentious, hopelessly muddled, and just plain annoying; most of it reads
like a freshman English major trying to write his first Henry Miller parody.
It's about as enlightening as an episode of Silk Stalkings, and about
as sexy as being tied up and whipped by somebody dressed as a hippie. If
Nerve's the first semi-successful attempt to put a respectable face on porn,
it sets a truly disastrous precedent.
You want specifics? Here's what Nerve has to offer:
You get the idea. Sure, there's some redeeming content here; some delectable
photos of punk-rock bondage babes
by Richard Kern (check out his own
website for more),
Lars Eighner's
genuinely moving article about sex among the homeless, and Liza Featherstone's whip-
smart book reviews, to name a few. But they shine out like the proverbial
diamonds in shit -- and there aren't nearly enough to justify paging through
all the other crap.
I'm not going to take the cop-out of stating that smut should never have
pretensions to quality; I think there's both a market and a cultural need for
pornography for people who profess not to like porn. Sensitive Guys need
something they can jerk off to without feeling guilty about exploiting women
Don't laugh, I have friends who think they're setting back the cause of
feminism 20 years every time they enter a strip bar), and yuppie chicks need
something to crank up the Hitachi Magic Wand to besides their worn-out (but
unrated!) videos of 9 1/2 Weeks and The Lover. And the rest of us would dearly appreciate some porn stars who don't look like they've just come from the front row at a .38 Special concert. Nerve's identified a definite need,
they've capitalized on it, and they'll probably be quite a success. I hear
they've got a print version of the 'best' of their content coming out soon,
too.
For now, though, gimme Inrearendence Day 4.
back to the junk drawer
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