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At retail, the selling of porn has become less lurid. Vivid is happy to peddle videotapes in a more Main Street manner through the Adam & Eve catalog, which is mailed to 2.5 million people a month, and Tower and Virgin record stores, where the "Vivid girls" have done signings. Castle Superstores, a chain of eight Wal-Mart-size outlets in the West, is trying to bring a sense of class to the business. By getting rid of peep shows and strippers, the Castle stores have been able to attract a clientele that is nearly 50% couples, much higher than the 20% most stores get. "People want to have a retail-shopping experience," says Castle CEO Taylor Coleman, "but they end up having to go to some scummy section of town. The 'I'm O.K., this place is O.K.' issue is very important to us."
The industry got these opportunities to open up to a larger audience partly because young adults grew up with VCRs, cable TV and the Internet and thus have been exposed to more adult material. And the AIDS epidemic has prompted a turn to voyeurism as a prudent alternative to sex. But an equally big factor, say the porn manufacturers, is that since Bill Clinton took office, the Justice Department hasn't prosecuted any new interstate transportation of obscenity cases.
So the video companies have started to market their products more aggressively. For big releases, there are screenings and premiere parties. VCA, one of the four big adult-film companies, has put promotional billboards along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, and Vivid has placed ads at the Burbank airport as well as along Sunset. Vivid's actresses also appear in ads for Fresh Jive clothing and Black Flys sunglasses.
Intellectuals have just about accepted pornography's place in pop culture. This month's World Pornography Conference in Los Angeles, sponsored by California State University at Northridge, included a Georgetown University professor talking about "Gonzo Pornography." Keynote speaker Nadine Strossen, president of the A.C.L.U. and author of Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex and the Fight for Women's Rights, says, "My very strong impression is that the tide has turned." Of the $10 billion sex industry, she says, "It's not 10 perverts spending $1 billion a year."
Even antiporn feminist Andrea Dworkin thinks the battle has been lost. "People don't have a sense of outrage that women are hurt. They don't seem to care," she says. Her 1979 tract, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, just went out of print for lack of buyers. "It makes me ill, but it may be related to who's winning and who's losing here. Larry Flynt isn't facing the demise of Hustler." Her colleague Michigan law professor Catherine MacKinnon agrees. "Society has made the decision they want the abuse to continue rather than to stop."