by POLLY VERNON
According to some accounts almost half of all women suffer from sexual dysfunction. But does it really exist? And would a female Viagra make any difference?
In 2001, filmmaker Liz Canner was asked by American pharmaceutical company Vivus to help with trials of a new drug. Alista was a topical cream designed to remedy sexual dysfunction in women. It was branded, breathlessly, as an “orgasm cream”. Canner was commissioned to edit a series of erotic videos which would be shown to women participating in early clinical trials. She was perplexed, enthralled, a little appalled. “How could I take this job? How could I not take this job?” she says. Ultimately, she agreed. She was interested in the nature of female desire, and a little weary of making films about genocide and human rights violations. She had also gained permission from Vivus to make a film study of the process.
Through the course of her involvement with the Alista trials, Canner became confused about the nature of female sexual dysfunction (FSD). She hadn’t really come across the term before she began working with Vivus and yet the more she heard it invoked the more confused she became. Canner extended the lines of her enquiry beyond Vivus, and ended up devoting much of the next nine years to her film Orgasm Inc – a jewel of a documentary intended, Canner says, to: “Document the medical industry’s attempt to change our understanding of the meaning of health, illness, desire and that ultimate moment – orgasm.”
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