Pornography: the TV musical

Television has never depicted anything like it. TV Channel is to broadcast the most sexually explicit TV programme yet - Pornography: The Musical. It is the product of an oddball collaboration between one of Britain`s leading poets and an award-winning documentary crew. Focusing on an in-depth exploration of the work of real-life hardcore porn actresses, the extraordinary film makes for graphic, often unsettling, viewing. What sets it apart from most films about the subject is its bizarre juxtaposition of candid interviews with the women and sequences in which they sing about their work while stripping or performing sex acts. Though the words they speak are all their own, the lyrics have been written by the prize-winning poet Simon Armitage. Before it has even been broadcast, feminists are criticising the programme, with one calling its premise "deeply dodgy". In the film`s most graphic sequence, a porn actress breaks into song in-between performing oral sex on a group of 12 men at a "bukkake party" - a practice purportedly based on a traditional Japanese punishment for unfaithful wives. She later gives an interview while cleaning herself up. Another scene introduces us to Karina Curry, a young porn star with a live webcam in her bedroom, who portrays herself as a witch-like "mistress" luring internet users into her shadowy domain. She is shown writhing semi-naked on her bed while performing a song about the recruitment of fledgling porn actresses, which opens with the chilling lyrics: "Girl next door, Girl with the scar, You`re beautiful, beautiful, Get in the car." More amusing, if unsettling, are the scenes featuring Karina`s mother. She is introduced as a supportive but concerned parent, but it soon emerges that she too has become involved in the porn industry. Along with Karina and her boyfriend - "porn stud Aaron Member" - she joins in a graphic discussion about the mechanics of anal sex. In another sequence, actress Kelly Cooke is shown taking a break from a shoot in which she is expected to urinate on camera and roll around on a wet mattress. The makers of Pornography: The Musical, to be shown next month, insist it does not try to glamorise or dilute the industry`s more disturbing aspects. However, it concerns feminists, not least because all but one of the actresses profess to love their work and to find it empowering. The writer and academic Beatrix Campbell described its premise as "deeply dodgy", adding: "What`s interesting about the depiction of the work of women in the sex industry is that there`s an endless quest to confirm that they are not exploited, that they do it because they love it.They are talking to women working in a world in which most are ambivalent about what they do. Yet the only people they talk to here are not ambivalent about it." Denying that the film is exploitative, Mr Armitage, said: "If you watch it and you are sexually stimulated, I would say that either we have got it wrong or there`s something wrong with you. Some women involved in its making are of a feminist persuasion. They have watched it and said they think it is a sad film that shows women in this position in a sad light." He said he had intended to give a voice to women involved in porn and portray them as "members of our species", not "freaks".