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The Washington-based porno collector and one-time Library of Congress official Ralph Whittington is filmed by Jeff Krulik showing off his vast homebound assembly of hoarded porno treasure before it is moved to the Museum of Modern Art. Whittington gives a guided tour of his collection and explains in detail how it is categorized, indexed and catalogued. Like all collectors, his lifelong obsession must constantly deal with its perpetual incompleteness. Porn has always accompanied and even been responsible for the rise and fall of personal media systems, Whittington's rare first-issue-on-video of DEEP THROAT must, of course, have its own dedicated Betamax (one of the first on the market) video player, "It weighs up to forty or fifty pounds", says Whittington, proud that both media and player have been collected together. Another treasure is the "Candy Samples" love doll, the cheap lurid flesh-tone latex face pressed up against the five inch square transparent box lid says it all. This film begs a question as big as the proverbial elephant-on-the-couch: How could any porn collection be complete? The idea that porn might somehow be a form with finite limits and thus require a policy of private semi-historical documentation is curious in itself, especially today.
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Fun silliness, but I'm sure Mr. Whittington took the collection quite seriously. Porn is an interesting look at our society and its mores, and has a tendency not to survive, even if curated, but the Museum of Modern Art? Pop art, maybe. Does anyone know where all of this is, now?
Speechless...still speechless. not by the porn. That's so banal. But this guy's obsession...and he works for The Library of Congress? What was his job title??? Does he seem like someone who could maybe only work for the public sector??? So our tax dollars paid for his salary...and this is what we got for it? I tell ya, the next time Museum of Modern Art sends me a catalogue and asks me to buy holiday tchockes for the whole mishpocha or sends a desperate letter begging me to donate I'm gonna be thinking about that scary Candy Samples doll in a box that MOMA is so hot to get in their archives "for study purposes". Uh-huh and I only get Playboy to read the articles. -- Provacative little film, well-directed.