GUADALAJARA – Over the 20 years or so I’ve been working within and covering the adult entertainment industry, I’ve found myself defending the rights of people to do a whole lot of things I will never do myself, from high-risk sex acts to outrageous publicity stunts and sometimes combinations of the two.
Still, there comes a point when garnering attention for your porn-fueled shock artistry crosses the line into territory porn should steer clear of, less for legal or business reasons than because the public relations nightmare created by such conduct often extends far beyond the person who engaged in the objectionable behavior.
One such case, I think, is performer Janeth Rubio’s recent decision to shoot a scene in a Guadalajara graveyard.
I had never heard of Rubio prior to coverage of this scene, so I suppose if the goal was to get her name “out there,” this constitutes a successful publicity stunt. On the other hand, filming porn essentially on top of a grave strikes me as the worst sort of notoriety-at-any-cost approach to getting attention.
Looking at it from the broader perspective of the people directly involved, the adult industry has plenty of public relations headaches without having to deal with blowback from bullshit stunts like this.
I’m not saying at the next round of U.S. congressional hearings about “the problem of porn” (and believe me, with Republicans in control of both houses, another round of such hearings is more likely than not) is going to include someone holding up a poster of Rubio taking it from behind while leaning against a gravestone. But if you think this incident is equally unlikely lead to more scrutiny of the adult industry within Mexico, my guess is you don’t have much experience with Mexican government or law enforcement.
I mentioned legal risk near the start of this post. As it turns out, in addition to needlessly infuriating a shitload of people, Rubio may have violated Mexican law in shooting the scene. The mayor of Guadalajara, Enrique Alfaro, has said an investigation is already underway.
I’m not going to get into a detailed discussion here of the differences between Mexican and U.S. law and the extent to which our system goes out of its way to protect the rights of the accused in comparison to how Mexico handles the same question. (If you’re interested in such, though, I recommend Jane Kingman-Brundage’s layperson’s guide on the topic.)
Suffice to say in Mexico, the degree to which your potentially criminal actions piss off a fellow like the mayor of Guadalajara could be the decisive factor in whether you get prosecuted by the state with as much zeal as possible. In the context of a situation like this, angering such officials also can impact the degree to which local government and law enforcement pay attention to things like rumors of film crews setting up in public spaces or even assembling to shoot in a studio, if they stand out enough to be noticed by residents of the area.
Whether Rubio and co-creators of the video are prosecuted isn’t really the point. The point is, whatever benefit she may derive from the video in terms of increased traffic, name recognition or revenue, Rubio’s name will be forever associated with a severe, fundamental lack of respect for the dead.
I don’t care if we’re talking about Mexico, the U.S. or any other country on the face of the planet, the notion you shouldn’t go messing about with the resting place of the dead is as about as close to a universally sacrosanct principle as we have today. Even in the middle of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet army, for example, native Afghans reportedly responded by killing their own allies in the jihad when their foreign fellow jihadists desecrated Afghan graves, apparently feeling the graves were too decorative for their Wahhabist tastes.
If you think I’m being prudish, overly respectful of tradition, or just plain uptight about what Rubio has done, then forget about common decency as a good reason not to film porn in a graveyard. Instead, ask yourself this question: If I’m filming porn in a graveyard and the adult sons of the dead man whose tombstone we’re using as a support for our standing doggy-style romp happen to walk up with a bouquet of flowers to lay on their father’s grave, is it more likely they’re going to call the police, or beat me to death with the nearest blunt instrument?
Do either of the above possibilities appeal to you? Do they maybe sound like a risk too big to justify a shock-value publicity stunt, at least?
What it boils down to is this; if you think these people are fucking assholes, then you must concede Rubio and company are a big bag of utterly tasteless dicks, too.
