When filmmaker Liz Canner was hired to create a montage of sexy video clips for use in the trials of a new product designed to combat Female Sexual Dysfunction, she had little idea that she was falling down the rabbit hole of an entirely new reality. In the world of FDS, there is nothing that can’t be improved by the application of pills, creams, or electronic gizmos. Suddenly perfectly normal women were convinced that their orgasms weren’t right because they didn’t go into spontaneous writhing climax at the mere of sight of a man. This point is driven home, as it were, by a montage of films clips that depict women in states of other worldly orgasm.
It would be funny, if it weren’t quite so sad. Vivus, the American pharmaceutical company that originally hired Canner to put together her erotic videos, threw research dollars at the quest for what they called the “Female Viagra” but things didn’t go precisely as planned.
Canner takes careful aim not only at the drug companies but also the army of doctors, salesmen, and television hucksters like Dr. Laura Berman, who try to convince women that there is something terribly wrong with them. Gone are the days when Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party celebrated the vagina in all its colour, shape, size and diversity; now there is only one vagina that is acceptable and palatable. That this version resembles that of a 12-year old girl is perhaps one the most disturbing trends of contemporary sexuality. In many other parts of the world, the fight against female circumcision rages on, while in North America, the vaginal rejuvenation industry gets bigger (while actual vaginas get smaller) every year.
But even as the female sexual dysfunction industry explodes, ordinary women are increasingly confused about their own bodies. One woman interviewed in the film embarked on a radical quest to achieve the mysterious and elusive vaginal orgasm, a process that involved running electrodes up her spine and connecting her to a jolt of electricity. Another woman almost bled to death after undergoing labial surgery. This is an interesting companion piece to The Erectionman as well as a testimonial to the power of advertising, media and giant corporations (they’re all in cahoots, it would appear) to deny women the right to enjoy their perfectly normal orgasms, however they come.
"Liz Canner ended up making a shocking but hilarious film, Orgasm Inc., which is causing a storm in America as it sets out to expose the drug companies and doctors who are now locked in a race to produce a 'female Viagra' - a treatment that promises women a super-charged sex life in a pill."
- London Daily Mail
Director’s biography
Liz Canner has created numerous documentaries on human rights issues and her work has been broadcast on television and internationally in festivals. Her films have screened at The New York Film Festival (Video Sidebar) at Lincoln Center and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Canner work has also shown at numerous museums and galleries including Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Since earning her BA with Honors in both Visual Arts and Anthropology from Brown University, she has received more than 40 awards, honors and grants. Orgasm Inc. is Liz Canner’s first feature documentary.
