April 20–27, 2000

movie shorts

Sex: The Annabel Chong Story

They say if you like sausage or politics, you should never see either one being made. After watching Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, you can add pornography to that list. Though Gough Lewis’ documentary provokes more than it probes, it certainly gets far enough inside the porn industry to challenge the notion that the adult film industry is a hotbed of female empowerment.

Most frequently advanced by pro-porn feminists like Susie Bright and Annie Sprinkle, that idea comes to be at the heart of Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, mostly because of the frequency with which it’s stated by the film’s subject. In addition to being an adult film actress, Chong, whose real name is Grace Quek, is a student at the University of Southern California, and though she frequently expounds on her desire to have sex with as many men and women as possible, she makes a pretty convincing attempt at painting her porn career — which she refers to as her "art" — as a conscious attack on patriarchy. As a friend and classmate of hers puts it: "Grace got pissed off in a feminist theory class and ran out and did a porno just to prove a point."

Chong — the movie is structured so you don’t learn her real last name until the closing credits — doesn’t have the extreme silicone enhancements of most porn stars; instead of a body by Lara Croft, her claim to fame is her participation in what was billed as "the world’s biggest equal opportunity gang bang," a 10-hour marathon purportedly involving 251 men which instantly made her one of the most well-known names in the biz. (The movie opens with a clip of her appearance on The Jerry Springer Show.) Some in the industry frowned on such low-rent publicity stunts — one "Michael J. Coxx" opines, "It just gives porno a bad name" — but Chong defends it as "a piss-take on the whole notion of masculinity… I get to be the stud."

Sex: The Annabel Chong Story works both forward and back, simultaneously tracing Chong’s entry into the world of adult films and exploring her post-gangbang notoriety, which at one point lands her in front of the Cambridge University Debating Society. Throughout, Chong preaches the gospel of personal choice: "It is every woman’s right to express, flaunt and otherwise exploit her sexuality."

But though it’s easy enough at first to take her at her word, it becomes increasingly difficult as the film reveals deeper layers of her personality. The filmmakers catch her slicing her arm repeatedly with a knife just to experience the sensation, and eventually drop the horrific revelation that she was gang-raped in a London tenement. Meanwhile, the film is busy tracing her fall from grace, as her record is broken by an up-and-coming porn star named Jasmin St. Clair and she becomes increasingly concerned that her parents, who still live in Singapore, may suspect what she does for a living.

Lewis includes interviews with a number of industry figures, each of whom proves to be as much philosopher as pornographer, and all of whom have an opinion on Annabel Chong. The producer who set up the gangbang shoots laments the way she supposedly squandered her money taking care of her drug-addict friends, while a caption reveals that he still hasn’t paid her $10,000 fee. A teacher from her parochial school in Singapore leers ever so slightly at her when she pays him a visit: He knows about her double life, but she doesn’t know he knows.

But the figure who makes the most perceptive observation is outside of the industry altogether. The art teacher for whom she once modeled proclaims, "Grace isn’t an extrovert, but she wants to be one." Indeed, the dual nature of her personality goes well beyond Chong/Quek’s two names. As eloquent as she is at Cambridge, she’s equally tongue-tied on Springer; she presents herself as a free spirit, but is clearly haunted by traumas the movie only hints at. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Sex: The Annabel Chong Story can’t resolve the many questions it asks. In the end, the movie finds no more answers than Grace Quek herself.