'Skins in Skin Flicks: A Modest Proposal on the Most Adequate Means for "Telling" the "Real" Indians from the Wannabes among the "Reel" Indians in Pornography

'Tis a singularly cheerful phenomenon for a contemporary Indian¹ person who surfs the Net these days to discover—when he (or she) accidentally, or even deliberately as the case may be, wanders into X-rated territory—there is a whole hell of a lot of 'Skins working as porn actors and actresses. Most truly it would thus seem, there are braves and maidens galore in most excessive numbers—nay, even whole war parties, clans, mayhaps even tribes—of 'Skins who have joined the ranks of the John Holmeses and Marilyn Chamberses and Jenna Jamesons and Dirk Digglers, a place where nowadays legions of Cherokees and Cheyennes and Dakotas (I refer here not to tribes, mind you, but rather to performers' noms de buff) roam the assorted bedroomscapes and orgy-inspired terrains, all outfitted—or un-outfitted, as the case is more likely to be—as 'Skins thereunto shaking booty for all to behold.

Lest my scholarly colleagues are failing to keep up with the times, I fain must take the liberty of calling attention to this rather amazing phenomenon that has sprung up these days in public and, in particular, on the Internet. Dear reader, are you aware of how pervasive porn is on the Internet? No longer confined to back alley rundown theaters or over-coated dirty book salesmen or "underground" raggedy covered Tijuana Bibles surreptitiously exchanged by servicemen in barracks, porn is now an incredibly lucrative business, what with video sales and website inducements and enticements. As such, it has arguably become "that other Hollywood," a whole new "entertainment" Industry² replete with its own versions of Academy Awards and Halls of Fame while annually raking in billions. Granted that one is already cognizant of the exceeding prevalence of porn pervading our premises, it is perhaps also not surprising to learn that, since Indians are still in the ever-enduring procession of Exotic Others in American culture, there appears these days to be a buncha Indians in porn flicks (or skin flicks, as we called them when I was in the Marine Corps back in the Dark Ages). And now all of it is available to the public through the Internet. Wow! To paraphrase a well-known Indian poet—Indians are everywhere! Even in porn movies!

Who, then, more than one of you is asking, are these Indian actors and actresses? From whence have they sprung? And how actually pervasive is their presence? As that weighty and highly decibelled savant Rush Limbaugh would intone, "Well, let's look a little more deeply into this." (However, we will do so somewhat longer than the usual ten seconds that Rush-Bo expends in subsequent analysis.)

Well, thanks to the aforementioned and incredibly ubiquitous Internet these days, particularly IMDB and IAFD and Wikipedia,³ and to various other websites devoted to star bio data, the information is there for all to see—a performer's working name or names, sometimes his or her original birth name, sometimes birthdates and birthplaces, date of death (if applicable), lists of actors' and actresses' porn films, color(s) of hair, height, weight, measurements, and ethnic/national origin. The sheer amount and variety of information, as one learns, is quite simply astounding. There are, according to IAFD's home page, over 110,000 actors, actresses, and directors listed by name (or names, since some enterprising thespians work under numerous names) in the directory. Of course, one must assume that they are also counting aliases and variant spellings of particular persons—as with, say, Jeanette Littledove, who is also listed under aliases and spellings as Janett Little Dove, Janette Little Dove, Jan Littledove, Janet Littledove, Janett Littledove, Janette Littledove, and Jennett Little Dove. As well, nearly 120,000 films of several varieties are catalogued in the site, where variant titles also apply. Nevertheless, such numbers bespeak a huge Industry.

As I say, it is one of the more intriguing issues pertaining to the proliferation of porn—at least for those who are concerned about...