SHINE LOUISE HOUSTON INTERVIEW BY SADIE LUNE When I think about who I want to pay me to get naked, fuck one of my friends and then put the whole she-bang on the internet for me, Shine Louise Houston is at the top of my list. The queer porn entrepreneur and visionary behind Pink and White Productions is famous amongst aficionados of smut for both her beautifully shot features (The Crashpad, Superfreak, The Wild Search and Champion), and for her website serial www.crashpadseries.com. All of Shine’s porn features a stunning array of talent from a constellation of points on the gender and body type spectrums. And unlike the mainstream porn market, people of color are consistently represented in her work without being racially objectified or separately categorized, which sounds like a “duh” but sadly for the porn industry is not.
She has, in my opinion, one of the best aesthetic senses for what makes porn compelling, fun to watch, visually beautiful and hot as hell; and lucky for us she is using it for the queer agenda. And sometimes, when she thinks something is really funny, she snorts when she laughs; which is always incentive for me to work harder to be clever when I see her.
While I’ve worked with Shine a handful of times I never got the chance to ask her about her background and really get into her personal beliefs about her work. So I met her at a cafe in San Francisco and inquired her about her childhood, masturbation, the responsibility of pornographers, and her future projects. She even bought me coffee! We sat outside; it started to rain. We went back in, I spilled my coffee. She had a meeting right after; I didn’t know what I was doing with the audio recorder. But I worked it out, and just like my experiences with her as a director, Shine was patient and generous and once we got going, the going was goood.
Sadie Lune: Thank you for coming to meeting with me. Shine Louise Houston: No problem. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Southern California, mostly in San Pedro/Long Beach area, by the beach, beach culture. Surf punk - so punk music, surf culture.
Did you identify as a surf punk? I used to boogie board so, yeah. I spent so much time in the sun, you see my hair now - it was blonde, blonde like copper at the ends, it was crazy, like long and copper. (laughs) Were you like a surfer-bra? Dude! Yah! Like awesome dude! Yeah I still do it like in a lot of my talk if you hear me say “ah that’s so awesome!” that is my Southern roots coming up. Duuude!
When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grow up? When I was a little kid I wanted to be a veterinarian, and then I wanted to be an archeologist, and then once I was really into painting and drawing and stuff for awhile there I wanted to start my own design firm.
How old were you when you were thinking about starting a design firm? I think I was twelve. I see... (laughs) I wanted to do advertising, marketing and design.
Interesting, so you were like a small businessperson... Already! Ok, so in my science class I used to do other people’s homework, like homework packets for $2 a packet and our science teacher used to sell donuts so I always had money for donuts in science class. (laughs)
And do you see any parallel between that and your lifestyle now? I guess, I don’t know, I guess I always had like, ambitions or something although I wouldn’t have classified them as ambitions then... it was just like opportunities. Do you think, in just, purely like in a financial way, you were a more successful businessperson as a 12 year old with the donuts or now as a pornographer? (laughs hard) Man, well that’s a hard one because they were both really, really good. Oh, great! Perfect. So, consistently successful. Yeah yeah, we’ll say that, it was consistently successful. That’s an awesome question.
Now, what did you masturbate to when you were wee, a young person? I think my first like sexual fantasy was about Charlie’s Angels. Ok, and here’s the weird thing because, my fantasy was about this woman who was on Charlie’s Angels, and she was being pushed down a hallway, and while she was being pushed down a hallway part of her shirt comes off and so I had this whole thing about like shirts kind of coming like half off. How old were you? Man I was young, so I’m thinking like four or five? Whoa. So it’s like before you even understood like what all the parts are and how they work or how sex works or anything, it was Charlie’s Angels. And kind of like what we would categorize now as misogynist, kind of violence towards women, nonconsensual, types of images that were very prevalent on a lot of TV shows at the time. And that was the first one. Have you ever re-created or kind of reformatted that early imagery in any of your work? I haven’t. I think some people have pushed the consent/nonconsent boundary on the site, but I think if I were to do it the way my fantasy would really do it, you would really see that it truly was nonconsensual; and that to me has some problematic issues, like putting that out there. I mean I’ve always toyed with the idea of ‘making’ one of my primary fantasies, which is semi-consensual, but not really, it’s really coercive. I’ve held off from making this because I’m not too sure about its implications. It’s completely and utterly politically incorrect. Do you want to tell me about what the imagery’s about...? Yeah sure...
Or not, in case you make it? Well, yeah I don’t know, in case I make it...
Or give me a vague...? This is the vague thing: so basically like girl at a party stays too late at a party, you know, and it winds up turning into like a gang bang, which she kind of wants and kind of doesn’t want, and so then there’s that blurry line between consent and not consent cuz like if she wasn’t... Anyway it’s just kind of blurry.
That’s kind of close to a fantasy that I have, of being like the girl who passes out at the party. Yah! Yeah yeah.
I’ve totally played that, and definitely wanted to play that more. Interesting... So your politics around objectification or around what to me, it sounds like feminism, I don’t know if you would use that word, um, sexual politics around objectification of women and consent, it sounds like really inform the kind of porn you’re willing to do? Yeah.
More so even then your own fantasies? Yeah. Can you talk a little about that? I think that is so interesting and I really relate to the like “what’s ok in the head, vs. what’s ok being shown”. Because I think media images, images that we see in certain formats have way more power than if we’re just talking to somebody about them. Images on the big screen, on the TV screen, on the computer screen have this weight of truth, they have the weight of, um, not approval... Validation? Validation. They have a weight of validation in a way that says this is ok. I’m showing this in a public forum: this is ok. So I feel like, as a filmmaker, as an artist, you have a responsibility about the images that you produce. And I think that that is also done on an individual basis. Each artist has to look inside themselves and be able to be like: ok, I can make this and I can stand behind it. I have reasons for making it and I can explain it. Where I’ve come in my brain it’s like there are certain images that I can make and feel ok and totally back up any reason why I made this image, and then there are some that I haven’t found a way to create or explain in my mind like I can’t really justify making certain images. I know a lot of people look at images and learn from images and not to say that monkey-see, monkey-do, like the whole violence thing on TV, but you know it influences culture. I just feel like there is a certain responsibility with images.
Do you remember what you first felt or thought about masturbation when you first were doing it? Well, I knew that it should be secret. I knew it should be something you do alone and it should be secret. I went to Catholic school for a couple years, that’s like 5th and 6th grade, and Catholic school, wow, that’s I think where I learned about guilt. (both laugh) Y’know I would do things like: Ok if I just do it this one time I’ll never ever ever ever ever do it again. You know what I mean? And I thought like for sure I was going to burn in hell, and you know I had nuns for teachers, and you went to mass every Friday. It really completely affected... I stressed out! Catholic school stressed me out for two years. Do you think that you’re still... Affected by it? No. No, nooo.
Great. That’s good to hear. Yeah, by the time I hit high school and dropped acid for the first time and read On the Road and Dharma Bums, I think everything was fine. Glad you worked that out! What did you think was sexy when you were a teenager? Ay yah. Ok, this is like total, objectification. Mmhmm. That’s fine. ...but like, um, Chinese girls were the cutest thing on the planet to me. I went to High school in Long Beach, so there’s like a pretty high Korean, Chinese, and also Cambodian populations in that area, and for whatever reason I totally like fixated on this one style. They were super cute, they had these little bangs and always very well dressed and super hip and cute and I was just like “awwrrr”. (laughs) What are your thoughts on the ways that the sexualization of women of color has changed over your lifetime? If you think there has been one. (sighs) Well ok, there has been some changes, there are some differences. I think there are some stereotypes that are still mainstream stereotypes like the hypersexual, allknowledgeable black woman who’s either a stripper or a hooker or a crack whore or something, do you know what I mean, but they’re a lot of times... When you say “all-knowledgeable” do you mean all knowledgeable as far as sexuality goes? As far as sex acts. So there’s like that type of stereotype. And I think because there have been a lot of people of color producing their own shows and all this kind of stuff, some of those stereotypes have been dispelled but I feel like especially in porn it hasn’t changed. There’s a lot of weird stuff still in mainstream porn, like if you look at the interracial section, I’m like: wow. Those are some really really scary and potentially damaging stereotypes to perpetuate. Whoa! But this one thing that is still pretty much invisible is women of color, like butch women of color, trans women of color. I think a lot of black culture is like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. In certain areas I think there’s more homophobia. But that’s a generalization that I can’t really say either because it kind of depends on where you are. But definitely there’s a lack of images of butch women of color. Which is really weird because when I was in Paris, and I was in London, on two separate occasions I was asked why was I perpetuating these stereotypes about women of color’s sexuality. And I realized that their stereotype, overseas, is that all black women are masculine and butch and gay. Hunh! Interesting. So it’s the absolute completely opposite of what’s in the U.S., because in the U.S. they’re femme, they’re straight, and they’re hypersexual, that is the stereotype here.
So cultural context, even kind of similar seeming cultures... Yeah. Totally, totally, completely different! And I was like floored; I was like what are you talking about? Are you kidding? (laughs) This is radical to me!
Tell me about the timeline of becoming a parent and your timeline for launching Pink and White and was it plotted out in any sort of pre-planned way? Not planned. I feel like everything is just kind of happening - there’s so many things that you just can’t plan for so you’re just like: “ok I’m just going to do it!” So you know: start a business, get married, own a house... there’s no good time to do any of those things! There’s no good time to do any of that. So I’ve just been doing it, and keeping up with it the best that I can.
Did you have your baby before you started the business or after? Ummm... After! Whoa. That was so weird. I was like “I don’t know anymore!” (both laugh)
What has being a queer pornographer helped or taught you about being a parent, and what has being a parent helped or taught you about being a queer pornographer? (long pause)... Wow, that’s a tough one. I don’t know.
If it’s easier to think of, are there similar skills that you use in work and in parenting life? No, it’s different..
Super different? It’s super different. Way different. It’s super different.
What’s your new big scheme? (laughs) I guess my new big scheme is, well, we’re starting a couple new sites but the one that I think is definitely queering capitalism is the Point of Contact project. So, we’re giving people across the country cameras and an opportunity to create their own content.
Oh! I didn’t know you were giving people cameras! Oh! Cool! Oh yeah. I give people a camera, give people a small amount of money, and we say make this content, people are really interested in making their own stuff but sometimes don’t have a venue to show it so, we’re like: ok, you make the content, we edit it and clean it up all nice, we distribute it, and we profit share. Cool! We profit share for the life of the content on the site. That is so great! I didn’t understand the full scope of this when you kind of sneak-peaked me before. Yeah! See?
That’s awesome! You get to make content, and then you actually get to make something.
That’s kind of like a dream though, because you get like, professional editors and people who are really good at doing the things that probably people who want to make content are mostly not really good at. Right! Exactly.
It’s like a collaboration. It is like a collaboration, and we do like, really decent profit sharing. Sweet! We take a lot of the financial hit; we take the legal hit for you. So it‘s pretty much risk free for the producer. And it‘s great for people who just want to do it once, or theydon’t know about the industry and they want to try it for the first time and then say “oh yes, this is what I really want to do!” And then they already have a foot in the door and they can say to somebody else hey look at this stuff that I made. Who knows maybe this will get them a contract with somebody else or get them a contract with us or do something. So basically if we want to talk about creating a community of a new wave of queer pornographers, we need to start a community, and this is it! Bam! Hot bed! Building Stars! Can I ask you one more question? One more question, and then I got to go.
Ok. What’s your favorite thing a model has said to you after shooting a scene? I still think it’s this one girl who said “It made me feel pretty.” Because she had a genetic condition which left her body with lots of scars and she was like, “this was amazing. I actually felt pretty.” She felt totally fine being in front of the camera, she didn’t get totally naked but she was like this was one of the most empowering experiences that I’ve ever had. She’s always gone through life being butch and so people think she’s a boy or think she’s a girl or blah blah blah blah blah and never really being seen as an object of desire. So it was really nice to be an object of desire!
That is so crucial. In everyone’s sexuality. Absolutely.