Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Porn Again Christian

By Mark Driscoll

Jenna Jameson was born in 1974 in Vegas, of course, and is regarded as the “Queen of Porn” and the most popular porn starlette in the world, having appeared in more than 100 porn films. She began stripping at the age of sixteen by lying about her age and taking the braces off her teeth with pliers in an effort to make herself appear older. Before she graduated from high school she was making upwards of $2,000 a night dancing.

She has since gone on to be something of a pop-culture icon, having appeared as herself in the television cartoon show The Family Guy, and her voice appears in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In 2004 she published her book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, which spent six weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.

At this point of my blog there are likely only three people left reading. The guys who got this poor blog from some link hoping to see naked pictures have already left because there are only a lot of words. But here’s where the story gets even weirder.

Not long ago I was flipping through the cable channels and found VH1 Confessions, which is a biography show (without nudity if you were wondering) on famous people. They were airing the biography of Jameson. To be honest, it was pretty sad. Her dad was not a great guy, she was repeatedly sexually assaulted and taken advantage of from a young age by older men, and did not have a mom to help raise her. It was the typical poor-broken-family-produces-a-sexually-abused-girl-who-ends-up-using-her-beauty-to-pay-her-bills kind of story.

What I found most curious, however, was her adamant declaration that she was a Roman Catholic Christian. In 2003, she married porn-studio owner Jay Grdina in a Roman Catholic ceremony. The biography included a tour of their 6,700 square-foot Spanish-style palace in Arizona. Lining the walls were numerous Catholic-looking religious icons and artwork. Showing off her religious artwork, she declared herself a devoted Catholic, despite the fact that she is a porn star who has done films called “Hell on Heels” and “Jenna Depraved.”

For the blogger record, I don’t watch porn, have never seen one of her films, and pulled some of these facts off of Wikipedia and not my personal collection.

Now, back to the story.

She then went on to explain how she would give it all up if she could just be a wife and a mother because her deepest desire was to be a monogamous married mom. She even said that if she became a mom she would leave the industry and never do another film because she would not want her child subjected to the porn industry.

To not commit adultery during her marriage, she stopped sleeping with anyone on camera other than her porn-star husband as some very peculiar form of morality. Her and her hubby spent two years trying to fulfill her dream of becoming a mom with no success. The latest word is that they are separated and that she is now seeing rocker Dave Navarro who has apparently split up with wife Carmen Electra.

The most peculiar quote she gave in the entire biography was her attempt to defend how she could be a Catholic Christian porn star: “No one can judge me but God.”

In the end, it was an incredibly confusing biography. On one hand is the fact that Jenna, though depraved as her movie title says, remains an image-bearer of God. As a result, she believes in God, believes in judgment for sin by God, and deeply longs to fulfill her feminine role as a wife and mother. Yet, on the other hand she remains the world’s best-known porn star.

I guess the entire point that stuck out is that we sinners are a crazy bunch of conflicted people torn between the dignity of creation and depravity of the curse, who, apart from Jesus saving us from ourselves and renewing our minds, are a hopeless mess.

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