Sex and Drugs

There are many players in Orgasm Inc. Evil pharmaceutical companies, complicit doctors, good and evil sex therapists, the advertising industry, women’s magazines, sales grunts, me, you, even Oprah. It’s as complex a story as sex is an act, and the genius of Orgasm Inc. is that director Liz Canner tells this story, with all of these players and their motivations, with remarkable lucidity, fluidity, humanity, and where appropriate, humor.

Here’s the gist, as stated by one of the sane people in the film: “There’s a lot of money to be made telling healthy people they’re sick.” Pharmaceutical companies are eager to create a drug that will stimulate the female orgasm, but in order for a drug to get FDA approval, there must first be a disease that needs treating. How convenient then that big pharma is promoting the idea of a disease called“Female Sexual Dysfunction” (FSD). And what are the symptoms of this disease? Decreased sexual desire and inability to achieve orgasm through vaginal intercourse. I’m not an expert, but decreased sexual desire seems less like a disease symptom and more like something that happens when you’ve lost interest in your partner of x years, have kids, are too tired to get it on, and/or you’re getting older. Not being able to orgasm via vaginal intercourse doesn’t sound like much of a symptom to me either. From what I understand (again, not an expert) this is a rarity even among the most dynamic lovers out there.

The quest for the female Viagra, then, leads to some greedy and unethical behavior; big pharma sees those big dollars and gets a really big hard on. If one were conspiracy-minded, one might suspect a cabal of scheming media people, right wingers, doctors, and advertising professionals, all under the direction of pharmaceutical corporations. “Moving image people, you create thousands of images of women in the throes of orgasmic bliss because a stud has his penis inside her. Right wingers, you make sure sex education is NOT taught in schools. Doctors, act authoritative and get behind these sketchy studies claiming 43% of women in this country are suffering from sexual dysfunction. Advertisers, standby, you’ll be needed to make those great commercials about our new wonder drug.”

Thankfully, Orgasm Inc. doesn’t go there. That conspiracy theory stuff is great when it’s in a Dan Brown novel, but when you’re dealing with individuals, it begins to fall apart. Instead, Canner shows that this is a complex story involving real people: a woman who feels so incomplete that she's willing to have an electrode implanted in her spine that will trigger arousal at the appropriate time (the "orgasmatron," really, that's what the inventor calls it, and just in case you were thinking of running out and getting the procedure, it doesn’t work); a woman who works a booth at a trade show who is so deeply disturbed by one aspect of her company’s work--labia surgery--that upon dealing with Canner’s response and questioning the woman decides she’s going to look for a new job after the show (at the release of the film, she was still employed by them; can’t blame her, it’s tough out there); a woman who nearly died from labia surgery. (The labia surgery sequence is kind of a side bar, since it doesn’t have to do with achieving orgasm, but at its core this procedure is about self-esteem issues and susceptibility to the media, and these are certainly related to the film.)

Orgasm Inc. doesn’t shed new light on the greed of pharmaceutical companies, or the complex nature of desire, or our vulnerability. We know these things and have known them for a while. What it does is remind us that we should be enraged.

Orgasm Inc opens in New York City (The Quad) and Chicago (Gene Siskel Film Center) February 11, and in Los Angeles (Laemmle Sunset 5) and San Francisco (Roxie Theater) April 1.

Here’s the trailer.