It’s everywhere. Spreading like turbo-driven wildfire through campus, Goleta, Santa Barbara and beyond county borders. Rather than the usual daily chatter about Iraq, the recall, or who’s freak nasty with Britney’s behind, people seem absolutely consumed with talking about the dirtiest of dirties having infiltrated the UCSB bubble. That’s right, pornography has somehow magically jumped off the safe havens of computer screens and DVD players into the living room and bathroom floors of our very own Isla Vista. Smut-happy porn companies have loaded their disease-on-wheels vans up with boobified porn vixens and Dirk Digglers to shoot “reality porn” on the sanctity of Isla Vista soil. Terror! Tragedy! More than just shooting their mouths off, everyone’s got to have an opinion on this little bugger. It’s no clear-cut UCSB scandal and has, instead, sparked one of the long-standing debates concerning the ethics and merits of porn. Well, we here at Artsweek couldn’t give a hoot about whether you proudly display a Jenna Jameson vault or hold to more, say, Amish values. No, we’re all about one question and one question only: Is it good porn? Ethics, smethics. With one film major (Jessica), one geography major (Sara) and one global studies major (Kami) in tow, Artsweek busted out the reporters’ notebooks and popped in Shane’s World: Campus Invasion Vol. 1. Having thrown our morals to the wayside, it came time to, well, cum?
Overall, our trio of porn watchers was highly unimpressed with the selection. Of course, there was little expectation as far as narrative, dialogue, mis en scene, and such, but we hardly expected the jumpy, crude quality editing sandwich crafted by the folks at Shane’s World. No one is ever quite sure what city they’re in, what time of day it is, or if they’re even at the same party. Still, years of living in I.V. makes the Artsweek trio pros at spotting location markers, even being able to discern what streets the parties take place on.
The majority of the tape is dedicated to the now notorious party detailed in Rolling Stone Magazine, where Calli Cox and posse ride through the streets of I.V. (Artsweek even spotted a former residence out the car windows) discussing their hopes for the night. Says one spiky-haired bro, “My goal for tonight is to find some civilian hookers to blow me and have sex with me.” The party is packed with girls in matching, home-made team T-shirts that read “Rock Star” and plenty of flushed, booze-laden boys. While standing in the middle of the cheering crowd, tiny Calli brandishes a megaphone and yells, “People think you guys are little babies. Fuck them! You guys are fucking adults and you can do what you want!” And do they ever.
As the aforementioned article details, the Shane’s World girls enlist male partygoers to compete for a blowjob from Ms. Calli, only to have the first winner decline in the final moments before unzipping. Calli works mightily on the runner-up, hamming it up for the camera every chance, all while white junk dangles from her chin.
One of the more disturbing sequences in the film comes when two Shane’s World porn stars venture into the bathroom of the house and quickly begin having some of the dirtiest, ass-spanking sex Artsweek has encountered. Rather than just sticking to filthy talk and rump-pinching, though, the guy seems to genuinely enjoy slapping his partner across the face and roughly pulling her hair every spare second.
This degradation-style sex pops up in a later sex sequence filmed in a student bedroom, at the same party, all while ten or so people stand around in awe. In this later sequence, the well-known porn-star Dez arrives at the party, cracks a frosty can of Natural Light and proceeds to pour it on his partner, as well as in her, as they put on a public show. It came as no surprise to Artsweek to recognize one of the party hosts as the chump from a Women’s Studies seminar from freshman year. That’s right, it was that guy who constantly blurts out chauvinistic, insensitive comments like, “Why aren’t we talking more about male sexual harassment and male rape?” What a shock.
Another I.V. party shows Calli and her red-haired cohort, *** Vixen, encircled on the living room floor while demonstrating the variety of uses for dildos and strap-ons. It must be noted that, at this point, at least a handful of classmates had been spotted by Artsweek, gaping in the background, and even an Anacapa RA from freshman year. For shame. Who knew they even left those rooms?
The culmination of this party involved yet another blowjob contest to which one especially hairy, ginger-haired fellow won by default. With no other contenders stepping forward, he felt the need to proclaim his competitive nature by shouting, “Come on faggots! Come on!” In the bat of an eye, Big Red was stripped to his skivvies and ready for double-teamed action.
The rest of the porn involved a strange, “Dismissed-style dating game between an average Joe (Jeremy) and two competing porn stars (Mariah Cherry and Cindy Crawford). Overall, there was a desperate lack of background music and enough awkward conversation to last a lifetime. Take, for instance, “Cindy’s” self-description: “I like hang gliding, horseback riding and, uh, the water.” Priceless.
The flick continues on, for a bit, in San Diego in an apartment, before rejoining another blonde “correspondent” on the street of I.V. for a little Q&A with the locals (who mostly happen to be girls in sweatshirts telling boring stories about their sex lives), before yet another multi-positioned sex montage.
Overall, watching College Invasion was much less enjoyable than any of the Artsweek troupe expected. There was such fabulous build-up in hunting down the one copy left in I.V. (kudos to the kind staff at the Riviera Adult Store), toting around my brown lunch bag (with a pink smooch stamp) and anticipating seeing classmates in a nationally released porno. While watching the actual flick, though, an overwhelming sense of ickiness seemed to splatter over all of Artsweek. For some reason, the post-porno discussion seemed to focus much more on the strange reality of having the normally distant world of pornography move ever-so-casually from seedy Sunset Boulevard to Sabado Tardo Road. Truly, it’s a strange thing to have the fourth wall removed, in any sense. Yet, when a T.V. show is filmed in your hometown or a celebrity is shopping in your local boutique, ecstasy and giddiness are the usual stock of emotions.
In the case of porn relocating to your neck of the woods, there is only a sense of awkward discomfort knowing porn stars are giving eight blow jobs a night to classmates and neighbors. As much as Artsweek would like to brag that watching Campus Invasion was a breezy walk in smut woods, it poked and prodded us all more than expected. For the future, Artsweek politely requests Calli Cox and posse pass the Los Carneros Road exit and leave Isla Vista as the den of sin it already is.
