What is it? Six provoking, uncomfortable documentaries about the modern relationship between sex and tech.
Why you’ll love it: Rashida Jones from Parks and Recreation continues her first-rate contribution to popular culture with these six films (she co-produces and directs with Ronna Gradus and Jill Bauer) exploring porn, dating apps, webcam performers and the teen obsession with live-streaming every aspect of life. Jones previously made Hot Girls Wanted, a 2015 feature documentary, which is also available on Netflix.
The series aims to stand back and remain nonjudgmental about its subjects. It largely succeeds, albeit not uncontroversially. The first film, directed by Jones, is a cautiously positive look at female filmmakers in the porn business, who are trying to succeed in a climate of dive-bombing production values and free-access content. Holly Randall squats on a wooded hillside, looking through a viewfinder at her armour-clad star. The warrior girl swings her sword unconfidently, trying to contain her chest under a flimsy breastplate, warming up for the main event: the sexual conquest of her burly opponent. Randall is the daughter of Suze Randall, Playboy’s first female photographer. Mother and daughter have seen it all, but the elder urges the younger to walk away from what has become an amateur-hour free-for-all. No one cares about good lighting and authentic-looking costumes any more. And no one pays for porn. Jones also speaks to Erika Lust, a Swedish director and TED talker, whose latest project turns her female audience’s sexual fantasies into short films.
The six films paint a picture of western culture’s broken relationship with sex. The second, Love Me Tinder, meets a walking Black Mirror episode called James who appeared on US Big Brother in his 20s and now lives in Vegas; a 40-year-old screen-swiper with a trail of tearful, ghosted women in his wake. Why go beyond superficial connection when the online vagina shop is open 24 hours? By the film’s end, faced with some of the collateral damage, the penny starts to drop.
While the women press on with their responsibly sourced porn, the third film focuses on Bailey Rayne, a young woman who describes herself as empowered, in control and the owner of a porn agency. She swings into the pick-up lane at LAX to retrieve two young, green out-of-towners hoping to sign up. Except of course, it’s not her agency: she’s the “assistant agent” to the dirty old man who really runs the show. He carts his sexy cattle from office to office, getting them to undress in front of agents while telling them they’re the ones in control. They earn extra dollars on the side performing solo sex shows on webcam and selling their used knickers to punters. Totally their decision.
Bailey is as manipulated as her “girls” and shows a worrying lack of action when one of them sinks into drug abuse and self-hatred. Bonnie saw porn when she was six and has been watching ever since. Before trying her luck in LA, she became a stripper, but the men kept trying to force their fingers into her pants, so she thinks porn will be better.
But it’s the final film that truly disturbs. In 2016, Marina Lonina, a teenager in Ohio, livestreamed the rape of her friend on Periscope. When we meet her, she is facing 20 years in prison and a lifetime on the sex offenders’ register. That intersection of technology, immediacy and exploitation is almost too worrying to contemplate, but director Peter Logreco draws the story out of Marina and her devastated father with skill and lack of sensationalism, creating a truly important work.
Where: Netflix.
Length: Six episodes (40-60 minutes long), available to stream now.
Stand-out episode: Don’t Stop Filming is a devastating essay on the disconnect between reality and social media, and will give you nightmares.
If you liked Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On, watch: Hard (DVD); Louis Theroux: Twilight of the Porn Stars (Netflix).
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