During Thursday night's film screening of "ORGASM Inc.," the Watson Forum contained a full house brimming with anticipation for the climactic documentary and Skype question-and-answer session with the director.
Anne Harris, director of women's studies and an organizer of the event, welcomed the crowd with a suiting, "Thank you for coming," igniting giggles throughout Watson Forum, which served as a reminder of how taboo sexual topics are — an issue the event hoped to change.
Directed by Liz Canner, "ORGASM Inc." "is a powerful look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping our everyday lives around health, illness, desire — and that ultimate moment: Orgasm," as described by the film's website, orgasminc.org.
After taking a job as an erotic video editor for a pharmaceutical company, "developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to treat a new disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD)," Canner suspects her employer, along with other medical companies, are taking advantage of women for the sake of profits.
What she discovered was that Female Sexual Dysfunction was merely a disease created by pharmaceutical companies in the hopes that they could discover the drug that would cure their made up illness. Along the way she also discovered the dangers of these drugs and the horrors of vaginoplasty, which is cosmetic surgery to the vagina.
"After seeing the film, I sympathize with the people who argue that Female Sexual Disorder is blown out of proportion," said sophomore Garth Synnestvedt. "The marketing made possible by pharmaceutical companies is a large factor in determining what women think their sex lives should be like … To me that's a big marker that this is influenced by finance and pharmaceuticals and by social conceptions rather than a pure medical point of view. And I think that came out in the film and the discussion afterwards."
The discussion with Liz Canner after the film provided the audience with an inside look and a follow up to the film. For 40 minutes, the conversation topics ranged from off-label prescriptions to the media's portrayal of sexual encounters always causing orgasms and each question resulted in a friendly, informative answer from Canner.
"She was a warm interviewer," Harris said. "I really like how savvy Canner was and that she used humor."
Harris was thrilled by the interaction and how the "audience was really warm and accepting."
She said her goals for the film were that it "be a positive message about pleasure and an analysis of why pleasure, especially female sexual pleasure, is surrounded by so much baggage and negativity. I was really hoping that there would be a kind of sense of empowerment and awakening — that sex doesn't have to be this negative thing."
Junior Laila Howard agreed.
"The movie itself raises a lot of really important issues that are important contemporary sexually, which you don't find a lot," Howard said. "A lot of what we talk about when we talk about sex has already been talked about by the generation before us. But I think this film brought in not things that haven't been talked about before but put it in a context where we can actually go somewhere with it."
Ruth Poor, a junior, added that documentaries such as ORGASM Inc. "give you more information or substance to an argument that we've already discussed."
"I really like the idea of sex positive — that sex is a good thing," Harris said. "I want students to feel empowered and for students to have pleasure. I think it's an important part of life."
"There's room for a sexual revolution here," Howard said, emphasizing empowerment. "The problem this really stems from is silence. From a young age we don't talk about sex. We don't talk about what it means. Women, 80 years old, 60 years old, 40 years old, 20 years old, don't know where their clitoris is — that's a huge problem."