The Porn Industry Wrestles With Its Anxieties In “Rollerbabies”
Pornography directors and producers are human, too. Somewhere under the cocaine, booze, and semen-drenched misogyny, they have a psyche that is vulnerable to the same shocks and anxieties that we all have. Rollerbabies, made by Carter Stevens in 1976, is a frantic outburst of these fears writ large.
Rollerbabies is a science fiction film. Odd as it may seem, the porn industry has produced many science fiction films, and a surprising number share the same premise. Rollerbabies, Sex World (1977), Cafe Flesh (1982), Spermula (1976), and Beauties And The Tyrant (1992) all begin with the premise that in the future, sex will be made illegal. It’s unlikely that pornographers were actually afraid that this would happen, but they were afraid of conservatives and Christians who would like to see the porn industry banished. In their films, these directors conflate porn with sex and see themselves as the vanguard of the sexual revolution, defending humanity against the prudes.
In all the films, banning sex raises the stakes for the pornographic film industry. Porn becomes the sole outlet for a repressed nation. Porn is a humanist light in the dark dystopia of totalitarian rule.
In Rollerbabies, we meet porn producer Sherman Frobish, who is in a constant state of panic as he tries to negotiate the politicized world of porn production. He runs a television show called The Fuck and Suck Show, where they broadcast pornography. The show is a state-sanctioned means of population control. By promoting solitary masturbation at home, sexual urges can be minimized, thereby avoiding the sexual frustration that might lead to sexual congress with a real partner.
Along with compulsory masturbation, everyone is forced to take pills that suppress their sexual urges, in order to expunge the few urges that are left. Frobish has befriended a mad scientist named Professor Rocksoff, who speaks with a grammar and accent made from equal parts Yoda and Jackie Mason, which results in sentence constructions like, “Whatsah maddah wit choo boy? In yer head ya got matzah?”
Professor Rocksoff supplies Frobish with fake sexual suppression pills that actually amplify sex urges instead of dampening them. As the producer of The Fuck and Suck Show, Frobish needs the drug to assist him in his never-ending search for young ladies to be on his show.
During the application process, he explains to the candidates that having sex on camera is not enough to get them on the show. You have to have a gimmick. Frobish explains all this to an applicant over drinks, “When porno started surfacing in the 1970s (Rollerbabies was made in 1976), pretty soon you had chicks singing while they sucked cock. They had some guy with tattoos all over his body that got a lot of attention. Now tell me, what could possibly be erotic about some stupid broad who sprays Jergen’s lotion from her cunt 200 feet? Nothing! In and of itself, but that’s the whole point. Pretty soon, it’s not whether or not something is a turn-on, but whether it is different. The novelty itself becomes erotic. So ya gotta have a gimmick.”
Frobish seems troubled by this and troubled about sex in general, but not so troubled that he isn’t willing to continue producing porn. It doesn’t help that he owes the mob over a million dollars.
He decides to produce a game show where couples will compete with each other by having sex while rollerskating. Whoever delays their climax the longest wins.
Director Stevens takes what appears to be a real fear for the future of porn and not only parodies what he predicts will happen, but exemplifies it. He comes up with an absurd idea to illustrate his point, but then goes ahead and films that idea and dedicates the last 15% of his film to showing it.
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As Frobish prepares to produce the show, he continues to frantically flail around looking for other money-making schemes. Dr. Rocksoff, who seems to be on retainer to Frobish, continues to invent strange sexual novelties. Of course, he makes an android sex slave. The robot is played by a real actress who immediately demonstrates her skills on Frobish. Impressed, Frobish starts marketing this new technology. His contract for producing The Fuck and Suck Show has almost expired and he is thrilled to transition into this new revenue stream.
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A woman comes to his office to audition for the show and he gleefully turns her down, explaining that he doesn’t need people like her anymore, he has robots.
Even considering the source, it seems like this is yet another anxious prediction about what porn is doing to women. Even as Stevens positions himself as a sex crusader, liberating sex from its shameful secrecy, he sees that as capitalism takes hold of the industry, women will be exploited and dehumanized, or perhaps this is some perverse image of liberation where women will be freed from their role as sex objects by robots. It’s as though Stevens is trying to divine porn’s future. Will it leave sex and humans behind and become a purely capitalist circus hellbent on selling titillation in any form?
The sex-bot gambit falls through and momentarily Furbish is distraught, until Dr.Rocksoff invents a contraceptive pill, known to you and me as “The Pill”. Furbish is overjoyed and congratulates Dr. Rocksoff for solving the world’s problems. Sex will no longer need to be banned and he will make a mint selling contraception. I suppose it’s Stevens’ version of happily ever after.
Rollerbabies illustrates a strange moment in time where, in its infancy, legal pornography was unsure of its role in society. It was not only concerned with how it would change society, but it was equally concerned with how society would change it. Rollerbabies is a little like Sidney Lumet’s film Network. Both films look behind the scenes of entertainment to fearfully peek at what it all means. Both films illustrate how we create culture, and then culture turns around to create us, and both films stare fearfully at the increasing influence of capitalism over everything. To be fair, Network is a profoundly insightful film, and Rollerbabies is a clumsy piece of trash that stumbles into some interesting territory.
Carter Stevens, originally Malcolm Work, directed 86 films and “acted” in 58, so he knows what it’s like to be both in front of and behind the pornographic camera. Rollerbabies is not a good film by any stretch of the vimagination, and it is not clear what Stevens wanted it to be. As a confessional, or some kind of self-examination, it lacks substance. As porn, it lacks eroticism. Like many early porn films, Rollerbabies wants to be a viable work of cinema, while simultaneously being masturbation fodder. The two things do not have to be mutually exclusive, but they often are.
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