I want to recommend a forgotten little film that was actually many years ahead of its time: Brainstorm (1983.) Now, the movie is mainly remembered as the last on-screen appearance of the late great Natalie Wood; one of my favorite actresses. The plot, in brief, is about a group of scientists who create a machine that allows others to feel and experience the actions, thoughts, and emotions of another person. Rather quickly, the device is nefariously used to create a pornographic video. When one of the scientists turns up missing, he is found in a darkened basement, semi-comatose, and drooling, hooked up to the device, as the machine loops back the sensations of an orgasm over and over again.
The movie is remarkable as it anticipates the pandemic of porn addiction by about 20 years. At the time of the film's production, 1981, the release of Brainstormwas delayed by the sudden death of Wood, porn was still stuck in the adult film houses, dirty book stores, and seedy strip clubs; porn on home-video cassette was just making the jump into the American family room. It had not creeped into the full consciousness of most Americans; especially children. As I relate in my book, during this period, I was still taking hurried peeks at my brother's stash of Playboys, and the collection of Penthouse magazines belonging to my best-friend's father. Watching X-rated films, was a distant non-reality.
Today, the movie serves as a startlingly admonition concerning the mind-draining and brain-numbing influence of pornography. In the movie, all the victims of the machines' pervasive power - are adults; it would have been horrifying, in those days, to replace the participants with children. But, that is actually what has happened. Children are the ones whose psyches are wired into the voyeuristic spell of second-hand sexual deviance. They sit in their gloomy rooms, headphones on, eyes bugging-out at the screen, saliva running down the chin – as the images flash before them.
In the future, I hope there is a major reevaluation of the film's merits and historical significance.