The following comes from a Feb. 1 story on Salon.com.
You don’t imagine a child at the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater. It is a place, after all, that Hunter S. Thompson called “the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.” A place known in the ’70s for drugs, fully nude lap dances and live sex shows. But Liberty Bradford Mitchell spent plenty of her childhood visiting her father, Artie Mitchell, at the legendary San Francisco strip club. She was introduced to porn and G-strings before kindergarten.
Incredibly, that is perhaps the least remarkable aspect of her family history. Artie and brother Jim directed and produced the 1972 porn classic Behind the Green Door infamously starring Ivory Snow girl Marilyn Chambers. They produced porn upstairs at the O’Farrell, showed the films downstairs and eventually introduced live entertainment. As a result, they fought more than 200 obscenity cases – when they weren’t partying and making millions. In the end, Jim shot Artie dead with a rifle, for reasons that remain unclear.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Bradford Mitchell has swung in the opposite direction of her father. She’s a fan of the work of controversial psychologist Melissa Farley, a self-described prostitution abolitionist. She feels passionately about the blight of sex trafficking, which she ties to the adult industry. Needless to say, she is no fan of pornography. At the same time, she speaks highly of the Mitchell brothers’ work and allows, “I’m all for whatever floats your boat, as long as everyone involved is safe and consenting.” It isn’t easy to find one’s own identity in the shadow of an infamous father.
She’s turned her personal story into a one-woman show, The Pornographer’s Daughter, which is currently playing in San Francisco. Salon spoke with Mitchell by phone about what it’s like to be exposed to porn at such a young age, her feelings about her father’s legacy and how she’s made sense of his murder.
When did you first find out what your dad did for a living?
I remember having an awareness of it when I was around 3 or 4 that he made naked movies, which I thought was really hilarious. I think I imagined more like naked cartoons or something.
When was the first time that you saw pornography?
Growing up, I’d go to the O’Farrell Theater, we’d stop by the office when we were in the city. When I was 4 and a half, I became really cognizant of what I was viewing on the screen in the screening room. I describe that experience in the play of the first time I locked in on a full-screen close-up of a penis and vagina in coitus. I thought, “What are they doing? This is not what I thought a naked movie would look like.” At the time it wasn’t so disturbing to me, it was just very weird.
Once I was the age of 6 or 7 I was much more conscious that this was not stuff that I should be seeing and it did not make me comfortable when I was by the office, especially at the point where the theater went live and there were dancers that were basically naked walking around. None of it was really explained to me. There was no thoughtful conversation about sexuality and pornography and its role in the world. Especially when I was much younger, I think my father figured, “Oh, she doesn’t even know what she’s looking at.” That was true, for a good amount of time.
I know now that was the culture of the ’70s. A lot of kids were reared in the ’70s with progressive parents — they lived on nudist colonies or communes. There was a lot of interesting experimental living going on in those days.
Did you have classmates at school who knew who your dad was?
Very few. I kept it very secret. I did have a best friend in fourth grade who knew. Once I was in junior high, I was completely closeted about what my dad did. I changed my name, I was very shy. I was not in a space to stand up and be brave and say, “My dad’s a pornographer, big deal.”
It was complicated. I loved my father. We had a lot of fun as a family. We had a lot of dysfunction as well — but who didn’t in divorced California families of the ’70s?…
You came to see your early exposure to pornography as abuse. How did that shift in your thinking happen?
What happened was I worked as a yoga instructor and had to do an online child abuse training. I was going through the motions and at some point something about pornography came up on the screen and it said, “Exposure of pornography to a minor is a form of sexual abuse.” It really struck me. I’d never thought about it like that and then it seemed so obvious once I read it. There was something about putting it in that context, it made me feel better. I know that I wasn’t intentionally abused by this exposure — and compared to what a lot sexual abuse survivors have gone through it’s child’s play — but it was for me psychologically inhibiting and scary.
To read the entire story, click here.
“The banality of evil” are the first words that come to mind. The changing reactions of Liberty (what irony in that name!) as she grew up seem so tragically normal. She sees and does not see what her father did to her, so she condemns prostitution but can’t bring herself to turn against pornography, as an abused child will often condemn the abuse but defend the abusing parent. Yet perhaps some day her enlightenment will be complete.
the Mitchell brother’s were shameless pornographer’s, who were instrumental in the 70’s, in attempting to make pornography acceptable in the eyes of America, by marketing a string of “artsy” flesh films…they were San Francisco based pornographer’s, who also ran strip clubs in the tenderloin district…”filth merchants”…agent’s of the devil
INTENTIONALLY viewing PORNOGRAPHY is a MORTAL SIN.
Do not receive Holy Communnion until you have gone to Confession, or you commit the additional sin of Sacrilege against the Body and Blood of our Lord.
CCC: ” 2354 Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other.
It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others.
It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.”
CCC: “2396 Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.”
Pray that the soon coming meeting Synod of our “bishops” does not become yet another even more damaging attack on the Church!
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Why is pornography not only a sin but also, as mentioned above, child abuse when a child is involved? Because it teaches a child that misusing the body of a human being for the titillation of a stranger is 1) possible, 2) pleasurable to the viewer, 3) somehow instinctively recognized as wrongdoing, but the viewer is getting away with being bad, sometimes in the company of others, thus teaching a child that it is okay to do bad things, and 4) it teaches that viewing others from a position of your own imaginary superiority in contrast to their degradation is a pleasurable thing. It teaches children than the abuse and misuse of the human body and other human persons is a good thing, and it obliterates a child’s sense of fairness in one’s relation to others. It becomes okay to degrade and misuse others, even though the child senses that this is wrong, thus creating confusion in the child’s mind regarding the worth of the human person, especially the female person, who is generally portrayed as an object, rather than as a human being.
Pornography is the obliteration of the spirit, personality, character and human worth of the human being and that person’s reduction to a body, not to be appreciated and honored as a miraculous work of God but as a mere object to be used and discarded without concern regarding the destiny or even the existence of the used object.
Thus it is an immoral attempt to strip the human being of her humanity, or his in the case of homosexual pornography, and to leave the objectified human being to fend for herself or himself as a degraded human being. This degrades both the viewer and each and every other human being on the planet from living miracle of God to dehumanized object to be judged only in terms of their usefulness to others as an object of fleeting lust.
Maryanne,
” or his in the case of homosexual pornography,” do you actually think that the only pornography that affects men is homo porn? If so, you are dead wrong!
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Back in the early 80’s my best friends dad in Simi Valley used to play porn flicks at around midnight, every Friday…we used to hand out at his house, drink, smoke weed, dip Copenhagen and wait for the porn flicks to commence…today, this man would be up on fresh charges of child endangerment and worse!…CPS would now be all over this guy, like white on rice…shocking times the early 80’s, replete with spandex, sexual promiscuity and lone star…glad I became reconstituted, I now cherish my faith…like a rare and precious jewel, only infinitesimally more precious…
A Brief History of Sex Ed: How We Reached Today’s Madness
by Miriam Grossman – https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/07/10408/
Today’s sex ed curricula are based on the widely-accepted teachings of depraved human beings.