https://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011...ey-matter/
Photographs courtesy of VICE Books
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Last week, before interviewing the actress and former porn star Sasha Grey, I found myself skimming “Being and Nothingness,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s 800-page existentialist treatise. In her new book of photos, “Neü Sex” (Vice, $30), the 23-year-old Grey invokes the philosopher several times and specifically his concept of “the gaze.” “As individuals we are what others perceive us to be,” she writes. “They objectify us, and in turn we objectify ourselves. What’s important is how we define ourselves, allowing us to be free.”
The incongruity of brushing up on French philosophy before speaking to a young woman who, at 18, leapt into adult films with a 12-person orgy is not at all lost on Grey. In fact, she’s made a career out of creatively and willfully exploiting her body while nodding at an assortment of weighty topics: performance art, philosophy and girl power among them.
For our meeting, Grey sat demurely in a lounge of the Standard Hotel. She was outfitted conservatively, in a plaid magenta A-line dress. She looked a bit sleepy. We started our conversation by talking about books, and I asked where she first encountered Sartre. Grey grew up in Sacramento but says it wasn’t until she discovered San Francisco and its bookstores that she was exposed to literature and philosophy. “God, I sound so pretentious, but it was at City Lights,” she says. “I didn’t have enough money to buy a book, and I would just sit there and read. But, actually, the first time I read about existentialism was on the Internet.”
Now that Grey has given up negotiating the fleshy imbroglios of hard-core pornography, she is recasting herself variously as a musician, D.J., performance artist and actress — continuing to parlay her crossover successes in the 2009 Steven Soderbergh film “The Girlfriend Experience” and on “Entourage.” So she is a multi-hyphenate, but it remains to be seen if she’s multi-talented. Her photography work is, like a lot of what she does, less interesting than the issues it raises. This is part of why “Neü Sex” is at once forgettable and also kind of weirdly compelling.
Grey sees the book as the first compendium of her meta-porn personas. “Somebody earlier was asking me about my views, as a performance artist, on using porn as a medium,” she says. “For me it’s easy to say this is what I did and this is why I did it. But obviously someone who’s going to watch a 30-second clip online isn’t going to see that. So something like this literally puts it all down on paper for you.”
The bulk of the self-portraits are racy nudes, but several photos of Grey seem intentionally unsexual: she squats on a sidewalk as if to relieve herself; she cleans up a pile of her own vomit; she invites us into her toilette, and not to watch her apply makeup. “That’s life,” she tells me, explaining the inclusion of the throw-up photo. “As this was happening, I was like, ‘Dude, grab the camera.’ This is just one of those ‘Get this’ moments. Why not?” (Grey’s longtime partner, Ian P. Cinnamon, took several of the photos in the book.)
“As a woman,” she continues, “and as somebody in the public eye, we always have to be ready for the red carpet, and have the nicest outfit, work with the best makeup artist. While all that’s nice, we’re also human beings. And this is just reflective of life. And it’s a side that we don’t often see and we’re afraid to share. We’re just completely afraid to share. We have the same experiences.” She then explains, somewhat indelicately, that she uses the bathroom in the morning, like most women: “Oops, sorry!”
Since Grey seems to revel in challenging mainstream notions of vulgarity, I wondered if there was anything she does in fact find crass? “I find it vulgar that people are so fascinated by natural disasters and we allow footage of young people that are looting because they have no choice, because of natural disaster. Footage of young people getting shot. That bothers me. It hits a nerve. By showing this footage, in my mind, it is pornographic.”