POST-PORN-MODERNISM IN THE NOUGHTIES Hardcore from the Heart. The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance: Annie Sprinkle SOLO. Edited with commentaries by Gabrielle Cody. London and New York: Continuum Academic, 2001. Whaddya Mean You're Allergic to Rubber? By Rachel Berger. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 2001. Reviewed by Evelyn Hartogh Hardcore from the Heart is a selection of post-porn-modernist Annie Sprinkle's performance scripts and articles, transcripts of conversations about Annie Sprinkle by renowned performance artists such as Veronica Vera and Linda Montano, and essays by Gabrielle Cody. The book is kissed by academic and performative credibility with a forward by Rebecca Schneider, author of the feminist performance artist's bible, The Explicit Body in Performance (Routledge 1997). Hardcore is an excellent collection mainly due to the wide diversity of forms (scripts, articles, essays, conversations) and viewpoints in relation to Annie. The most exciting of these was the transcript of 'Annie's Dessert with Mae Tyme, an Anti Porn Feminist.' It is a most amicable and informative discussion and the women acknowledge this at the end, Annie confesses her longtime but thwarted desire to have such a conversation: 'Everyone I've ever met who is anti-porn would never sit down at a table with me', while Mae admits to never desiring such a conversation but concedes: 'I'm glad to be having it with you'. Mae winds up the discussion by saying: A conversation like this is possible when each of us has freedom of expression and no-one is required to change. I don't expect you to become anti-porn, and you don't expect me to become pro-porn. Annie Sprinkle came across to me as a thoroughly warm, compassionate and honest woman. She is in many ways the ultimate 'Hooker with a Heart of Gold', while at the same time possessing the kind of passion for contemplation that makes her a true philosopher. Philosophy is after all the love (philos) of wisdom (sophia), and Annie is a figure who has sought knowledge, experience, debate and discovery all her life. Sprinkle is most famous for her performance of displaying her cervix to audiences. This inside/out display of the ultimate hidden reaches of woman acts as a physical manifestation of the philosophies of Cixous and Irigaray. Annie's credibility in resituating porn in art, and celebrating female sexuality, lies in her 'herstory' of being a sex worker and porn star. She (literally) knows the industry inside and out and, although her work seeks to disrupt sexual repression and negative attitudes towards sex, she is not above critiquing her past. In an open letter to a New York performance space Annie says: 'I was sometimes quite naive, very immature, and in denial about a lot of things.... How precious to have a place which is so sex positive that we can be "negative." Please continue to maintain a good balance.' I wonder if it can really be said that Annie made a 'transition' from prostitution and pornography to performance art and academia (she's currently completing her PhD). Wasn't she always a performance artist? And does she still remain a prostitute? Jill Dolan in her 1989 article 'Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat' (Acting Out: Feminist Performances, University of Michigan Press, 1993), suggests that the 'positions of female performer and female spectator are collapsed into one; they become prostitutes who buy and sell their own image in a male-generated visual economy.' It is after all the 'oldest profession' and in the last decade many books discussing the politics of sex work have invariably brought up the image of the ancient temple prostitute. While the existence of a golden age of matriarchy is debatable, the image is strong enough regardless to still affect this age. The by-gone era of the sacred prostitute is also described as a time where female sexuality was worshipped and every woman was treated like a goddess. Vestiges of the goddess-whore remain in the sophisticated Geisha, legends of Concubines with political influence, the high-class Ancient Athenian hetaerae, and more recently in the untouchable (yet deeply intimate) worship of celebrity through mass media. Gabrielle Cody points out that pornography as a separate category did not appear until the nineteenth century, 'when lawmakers throughout Europe ostensibly sought to protect a predominantly white, middle-class female population from sexually explicit material and - by extension - knowledge of their own sexuality'. Suppression of pornography and the coding of it as a 'dirty' and 'unladylike' commodity does not diminish its audience, which is primarily men. Male sexuality is thus in many ways hidden from view, and it is male desire which is hidden, in the beats to which married men sneak of, in the darkened XXXX movie theatres, in the secret visits to prostitutes, in the Playboys hidden in the shed. Is this a masculine embarrassment or a fear of sexuality? Although men are predominantly the consumers of porn, and the customers of sex workers, it has been the women on display, or for rent, who have borne the brunt of the coding of 'dirty' and 'unladylike'. Women's expression of their sexuality has mainly been in response to male desire, yet in recent decades feminists have consistently challenged this. Annie Sprinkle is at the forefront of the redefinition of female sexuality. There is a war going on in people's bedrooms, people are ignorant, fearful and confused about sex, unsatisfied, lying to their spouses, there is rape, abuse, unwanted pregnancy, too much sexually transmitted disease ... we must have better sex education. (Annie Sprinkle's 'Peace in Bed') What better way to educate people about safe sex, and about the lives of HIV positive people, than to do it with humour. Rachel Berger's first novel Whaddya Mean You're Allergic to Rubber? zooms from Leather Bars to formal political dinners, to the AIDS Council, and to well-known cafes and bars in Melbourne. Berger is one of Australia's most successful stand up comediennes and, in the transition from stage to page, she worked on some innovative graphic design with her editor as 'a little treat for the reader', as she told Queensland Pride. Berger explained that in the situation of live performance 'I have my whole body and face to use.' Berger's main character is Lola Finklestein, a feisty comedienne who, in the tradition of Scooby Doo, accidentally falls into the role of detective. Lola's Scooby-gang is made up of Drag Queens, Leather Queens, HIV positive characters, AIDS Council workers, and public servants spilling the goods on corrupt politicians. Lola and her friends are trying to find out why Springfield Hospital, which predominantly treats HIV positive patients, is being closed down. The answer is an ugly combination of economic rationalism and homophobia since, it emerges, the hospital building is being sold for an American private prison. Berger avoided writing any physical descriptions of Lola and described her as a character that lives through her head. 'What was potent was what was coming of out of her mouth ... Lola does not rely on her physicality at all and we have had two decades of women being objectified and even now they are still being objectified but it's a little more sophisticated.' The novel also works not only to promote the importance and ease of safe sex but to also dispel myths about the lived experiences of HIV positive people. 'All the positive characters in the book are not victims. Smoky Topaz is potent, and Christopher Pillar is potent, and Dierdre is potent. They are all really potent, none of them are victims because anybody that I know that is positive - it is about reasonable adjustment', Berger explained. Dierdre is a heterosexual woman who, while she was married, was informed by her doctor that she was both pregnant and HIV positive. 'The three characters in the book who are positive are not gay - I didn't want to buy into those stereotypes.... I'm hoping the mainstream audience will understand that it [safe sex, HIV and AIDS] is not just relevant to the gay community.' Rachel Berger is primarily a comedian so, although this book is extremely topical and blatantly realistic in its critique of government policy and public opinion, it still is a very funny book. The characters are dynamic and believable, and the humour ranges from dry to banana-split-like slapstick. Lola is a bit of a haphazard creature but is extremely likeable - she is courageous and naive at the same time, which distances the character from the super-perfect protagonists of most detective fiction. This novel crosses many genres, not only Detective Fiction but also Comedy, Political Satire, Farce, Romance and Queer Fiction. My only criticism of it is that perhaps some of the dialogue is overly wordy and repetitive - but the reader always has the options of skimming over conversations that reiterate information already presented. On the whole, I'm very impressed with Berger's debut novel. Evelyn Hartogh has a Masters in Women's Studies from Griffith University (1997) and recently completed and submitted her Masters in Creative Writing to the University of Queensland. She writes a fortnightly column for Queensland Pride Magazine entitled 'Evelyn Hartogh's Pop Cult Sheroes' which discusses historical and fictional representations of women.