Pornography is one of the biggest media industries worldwide. As the accompanying graphic reminds us, every second 28, 258 internet users are watching porn. Porn is also exceptionally popular in the mobile media industry.
Sadly, Christianity and porn all too often share the exact same headlines. Either because the church is denouncing the latest sex scandal or because some high profile Christian has been caught in some unsavoury incident related to porn. The media delights in jumping all over the perceived judgementalism or the hypocrisy of these kinds of scenarios.
This type of focus on porn means that too often the church loses sight of the real people involved in the industry. We forget their stories, their lives – the reasons why they find themselves involved in such an intrinsically denigrating industry. No little girl dreams of being a porn star growing up – so how exactly do so many young woman (and men) end up posing nude before a camera?
These are issues that the church should not lose sight of and they are exactly the kind of issues that ‘Footnote’ – a Christian TV show that tries to capture the funny, the sad and raw stories of real people - is concerned with dealing with.
Donny Pauling, an ex-porn producer, recalls seeing young women get started in the porn industry. They would be paid $500 a day just for having some photos taken of them, which sounded better than a $200 paycheck every two weeks at Starbucks.
But the women would be led into "harder stuff" once they got used to the pay. And Pauling would eventually see "the lights go out in their eyes" and their lives fold.
"The industry breaks them," Pauling says in the first episode of "Footnote," "They're just people who have bought into a lie and it's so easy to get caught up in."
One porn star, who calls herself Kyanna Lee, states, "Pornography is my boyfriend. It actually hurts but we have to make it look good because we have to sell the product."
"Footnote" is a project launched by Back to the Bible which is producing episodes in conjunction with Brad Knull and Cooke Pictures. Producers hesitate to call "Footnote" a "ministry" because of some of the stigmas associated with the word and because of their desire to reach audiences that would never get involved with a ministry.
The show is also targeted to people like them who grew up in the church but went through and continue to go through times of "disillusionment and cynicism towards the usual idea of what a 'Christian' should be." They say their aim was to produce something that they themselves would want to see on TV and something that actually starts conversations, says the Christian Post.
(To read the full article please go to www.christianpost.com)