Sean Finnegan would like to move on. After directing his award-winning documentary Out of the Darkness, featuring stories of people who escaped from the prison-like world of pornography, his production company, Anteroom Pictures, is ready for something more uplifting — maybe an account of the interior life of St. Thomas More.
“More started out with a Christological spirituality,” Finnegan said in a phone interview, “Not a simple devotion to the Blessed Virgin or to novenas. But when death was coming, he started to rely more on what our grannies relied on” — the solid, simple, time-tested devotions that the Church knows we need. “We need to hold onto these things, so when you’re faced with tough times, you have a strong interior life.”
Maybe this new direction for Finnegan is not so different from what he has already done. Out of the Darkness is very much a work that reveals the hidden, inner life of people we thought we knew. It’s about the struggle to build some interior strength through basic, ancient truths. It’s about the old idea that love conquers darkness.
The camera quietly attends as tears well in the wounded eyes of Shelley Lubben, who worked for many years as a prostitute, stripper and porn star.
In the film, Lubben speaks with theatrical poise when recounting her first transaction with a john and rolls her eyes comically over the dilemma of porn film etiquette: “What do you do when you meet the guy you’re going to have sex with? Shake hands? Say, ‘Hi’?” But when she remembers how she was molested at age 9 — how she was alone, unprotected and had no recourse — then her face shows grief that is still sharp and fresh.
Lubben survived by telling herself, “Just push it away” — don’t think about it. She hid behind sunglasses for eight years.
Seeing the Real Person
But if Lubben’s story uncovers the vulnerable interior of a hard and worldly woman, Mark Houck’s story shines a light on the other half of the porn industry: the consumer. Houck is a blue-eyed, baby-faced average guy whose openness illustrates another kind of disconnect: His porn habit nearly destroyed him because it was so very acceptable, so open.
For Houck, says director Finnegan, “[porn] wasn’t a massive problem or addiction. He wasn’t into anything weird; he didn’t lose his job. But it broke him down.” Houck’s story is remarkable in its banality: He was a football star, a good student, a hard worker, a decent guy. But he was exposed to porn at age 9, and no one told him he should stop — until, one day, he couldn’t. He looked in the mirror and saw that porn had become his whole life — and if that’s all it was, then why live?
The film is all about seeing the real person. “That’s what I wanted to come through,” said Finnegan. “The moral imagination allows you to see the significance of something beyond the immediate evidence. Porn takes away everything that’s significant about the person, about sexuality.” But even in the most casual encounter with porn, he said, “It’s not a victimless crime. Someone really had to endure this.”
Finnegan hopes that churches and other organizations dedicated to fighting pornography will use his film as a tool. He avoided compiling data and statistics to argue the case against porn, and instead presents real people who slump and shrug as they tell their stories; voices that occasionally crack with anger and grief, as well as laughter.
God’s Love
The documentary is also packed with professional insight: Judith Reisman, a world-renowned authority on the fraudulent world of popular sex science, gives her testimony, which is both academic and personal. Her own daughter was raped at the age of 10. She searched frantically for guidance, but got the same advice from everyone. They told her, “Well, children are sexual beings from birth” and “Your daughter was probably sending out vibes that she wanted it.”
Horrified, she searched for the source of these ideas. “I know a party line when I hear it,” she says cannily, in the film. Her research led her to Alfred Kinsey as the impetus for the sexual revolution, and she now works to expose what she sees as both his shoddy and perverse research and the damage done by his influence.
Another expert, psychiatrist Richard Fitzgibbons, also offers insight which is both professional and personal. An experienced family therapist, he was baffled at the increase in young patients who were narcissistic and desperately lonely, suffering great emotional pain. Fitzgibbons found a common thread: His patients all sought “a temporary lift of spirits” through pornography. “It’s the temptation of the lonely,” he says in the documentary, but these young people “have no idea how to have a friendship.”
Lubben, too, says that her first attempt at healthy emotional closeness was “physically painful — it felt like a heart attack.”
The film is not easy to watch. As Lubben says, “There is a place that God takes you to heal that is dark.” But Out of the Darkness avoids both censorious sermonizing with bleak statistics and the titillating voyeurism of a behind-the-scenes-style exposé. Instead, it confronts an inhuman problem of enormous proportions by looking directly into human faces. And, ultimately, they are full of hope.
Fitzgibbons offers healing to his patients by teaching them about the nature of God’s love. He tells them that the first thing God said about them is: “It is not good for man to be alone.” True love isn’t inward-turned, he shows them: “Love is diffuse; it goes out.”
Lubben founded and now runs the Pink Cross Foundation, a charity “offering emotional, financial and transitional support” to porn workers and addicts; and Houck is co-founder and president of The King’s Men, which works to “unite and build up other men in the mold of leader, protector and provider.”
Finnegan doesn’t expect his film to vanquish porn. But he hopes that a few of the 40 million daily consumers of pornography will see these faces, hear their stories, and think twice before they “click on that site or press play on that movie” — before they continue in darkness.
Simcha Fisher blogs at NCRegister.com.
To purchase the DVD or schedule screenings: Anteroom Pictures
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Several years ago when Pat Buccannan ran for president he proposed bringing a measure to Congress that would expose the fraud of Alfred Kensey in the senate.Bringing his filth and child abuse in front of a country that was so damaged by his sick and ugly"research”.The media gave Kensey assistance,also foolish and dirty politicians.Hollywood still seems to love him.Fairly recently Leham Neesom stared in a film about him.Uggh! In order for the evil of Kensey to be expunged he and his deeds of depravity must be brought to the American public.May God help his victims.
As someone who is also personally fighting against porn addiction I can say that for me it was personally for escapism, like a drug, it let me forget about pain or emotional problems and everyday fears and anger for awhile. But just like drugs… the effect wears itself off, and soon even though I was no longer stimulated and didn’t want to waste time with it, I could feel my body acting on its own against my weak will. It formed a habit and it was running on autopilot. It was literally as if there were two separate consciousness within me. One that hated it and wanted to stop. Another that was simply robotic and beatial.
There is also a factor of lonliness. I don’t have a girlfriend. I’ve never had one. I couldn’t relate to them as a man. I grew up mostly in a single parent home by my mom. I don’t posess many things in life that would be defined as masculine. In fact if I ever did get married and had children, I wouldn’t want a son because I would have no idea how to raise him to be a proper man…
There are all kinds of factors that make one indulge in pornography… Those addicted to it are suffering in one way or another and are truly not getting the help or love or bonding that they require, or it’s simply just depression and porn, like drugs or alcohol becomes an escape where the overstimulation helps one forget, but of course it is only a temporary escape and you’ll return to reality and feel even worse off for what you have done.
This is why Confession and the Lord’s mercy is a strong and necessary thing for porn addicts to learn of as it helps them continue to strive forwards and try try again even after their many failings to rid themselves of this habit. It inspires hope by knowing that even should you continue to fail that you can throw your sinful self upon God’s mercy and trust that He will either in this life or after death deliver you from it.
It’s too bad the world wants God out of the picture and seeing no solution to sexual immorality and its ills now seeks to redefine what is bad as something good and pretend it is ‘natural’ and lie to themselves that it is unchangable.
Fortunately, secular science is finally catching up with the Christians about pornography addiction.
Folks, I strongly recommend the resources at the website “YourBrainOnPorn” (http://yourbrainonporn.com); they have a six-part video series which explains a lot about fighting the addiction and the damage it does, and the plague of men in their 20’s and 30’s fighting Erectile Dysfunction when they’re with a real woman because of the way their brain has become re-wired to focus on porn.
The series is delivered by a person with no apparent religious belief, but who doesn’t disparage religious belief. And, it gives a very detailed understanding of how pornography addiction affects the same portions of the brain as other addictions and what the consequences of this are.
There are also testimonies of people who kick their porn habit, the struggles they have doing this, and how long it takes for their brains to “re-wire” and return to a more normal dopamine response (enabling them to enjoy life and be ambitious and relate properly to real women again).
I grew up in a beautiful suburban area. Porn was introduced and joked about starting in middle school and I walked away from our ex-ed class in high school with the notion that: “All guys look at porn, it is normal”. I pray for that teacher and all the students he affects. How sad! Porn affects the whole community: the men who watch it and the women who go to extremes to win back their attention.
Thank you for making this film and may God bless you in your efforts.
I happened to catch a Dr. Oz episode yesterday (Oct. 25th)that appalled me and addressed this very issue. It basically told everyone watching that masturbation and porn were “okay” and just a “normal” part of a man’s every day life. Their “experts” okayed it (if Dr. Laura Berman is an “expert”) I’m really not too surprised at this. However, this is a mainstream show and I know a lot of women (and probably men too) watch it. The information they’re giving out to people is dangerous and incorrect—I don’t think they’d give the “OK” to snorting cocaine, but I’ve read that men’s minds can react to porn the same way it reacts to cocaine.
I’ve emailed the show to let them know my disappointment in their programming, but I’m also pretty sure they aren’t really going to care what I think. It’s a shame people are being fed such outrageous and inaccurate information. More prayers!!
I grew up in a home where there was porn—lots of it. My father thought it was what normal men did and he fought with my mother over its existence for years. Every single member of my large family discovered his stash at some point or another and it has had a dramatic effect on all of us. I have one brother who is a sex addict. Another one who has struggled a lot. As for me, a woman, I was made aware, very early on, of a consuming gaze directed at women: the woman in the magazine, women on the street implied by the scenarios described in the magazines…even me. It was almost like incest. It certainly warped my sense of my own agency and who I was in the eyes of God. Because the gaze of your parents is the first gaze you experience; therefore it is possibly the first way you picture the Lord!
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Any men and women who think that their porn use is a private thing is totally deluding themselves, particularly if they have kids. Children do not understand those old lines about “healthy sexuality”, or a separation between the people who acts as subjects and objects in the porn relationship, and themselves. Children DO understand the messages we send about being, and meaning, and roles. Consume porn and you teach your children to consume and to be consumed; possibly in a much more dramatic manner than just looking at magazines or videos.
Excellent article, Simcha. And for any men struggling with sexual/pornography addiction, I would highly recommend a Catholic men’s apostolate called The Kingsmen, http://www.thekingsmen.org (Ful.l disclosure: I’m an active member of their ministry). We have excellent resources for men who struggle with this, and we also have accountability meetings/retreats around the country where men can share their experiences and grow in faith, virtue, and holiness.
Simcha, thank you for posting this. I taught a section the Intro. to Ethics course on pornography here, and the research is so devastating. We need as many tools as we can get to work out of this problem. I keep thinking of Flannery O’Connor’s comment: “You need to push as hard as the age that pushes against you.”
To be honest, why do we always talk about freedom, when we must invedebly follow a path, either of Truth or Falsehood. The false claims of our society, such as masturbation or pornography is good for you, has harmed millions amongst us who beleived and followed this falsehood. When we try to impose rules and boundaries to follow, in order to protect ourselves from societal harms, those in opposition, say we are oppressive, and that we are going against freedom. In reality they are the truly evil ones, who seek not for the betterment of themselves or society, rather seek temporary enjoyment and false desires such as porn, drugs, fornication ect. that will surely lead them to a path of destruction, however they are not willing to give those pleasures up even at the cost of their own eventual destruction. They follow their evil desires, and anyone who opposes them, they make it seem as if they are extreme, or harsh, when they are just trying to uphold the moral fabric of society by use of boundaries and barriers that protect us from these harms. Its funny how most people do not care for morality these days, and anyone who calls for such is seen as outdated and extreme. Its funny how Islam is so hated, but when I researched this religion, I found it was based on putting boundaries and barriers from many ills, such as fornication, alcohol, pornography ect. Its funny how women here in the west will whore there children in beauty pagents, making them dress so scantly, yet when muslims call for hijab, and modesty, they are looked down upon. Its funny how women don’t seem to understand, that men and women are diffrent, thus there roles must be diffrent in societ and in life all together, yet when these roles are defined, the feminist scream for equality. Its funny how almost everybody seems content to follow a path blindly without first questioning if the path they follow is either Truth or Falsehood, yet they rather follow desires based on short proof. Its funny how we say we stand for freedom, yet impose democracy as the unshakable way of governing. But think, if democracy is the majority rules, then what if the majority wants something thats bad? Should not then the Truth be what governs society…but then again, are we willing to search for the truth, or just continue following a path that suits are desires?
My husband is a member of The Kings Men. He has met Mark Houck. The Kings Men is a really good resource for men. Better than the run of the mill social club-type groups that seem to be the norm for men.
Maybe after they recoup their costs from DVD sales, they could release a version of the movie on Youtube? It would touch even more people that way and it could be easily shared using social media.
My husband is a recovering porn addict. His addiction and my inability to deal with it almost ruined our marriage. God is good though and led him to a program run by the Archdiocese of Kansas City called “My House”. The accountability and teaching he found there has helped him to understand how devastating porn has been in his life and in our marriage. After almost a year of separation and a lot of work he has been free from his addiction for over 3 years and our marriage is stronger than ever. So strong that we are expecting our seventh little one this spring, or maybe that’s just because we like each other!
God bless this work. As an “average, everyday” guy who knows all too well the temptation and emptiness of porn’s promises, I hope this film helps people keep those promises where they belong: under their heel, ground into the dirt.
As someone who has struggled with this addiction, the Sacrament of Reconciliation has had a powerful part in my healing.
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