The Coolidge Effect review – the insatiable demand for internet porn
Stories to Connect Us is the name given by the Glasgow company Wonder Fools to its online season – and with good reason. In our months of lockdown, connection is exactly what we’ve missed. It is ironic, then, that The Coolidge Effect, the second show in the season, should be about disconnection. Its theme is internet pornography, something that could have been purpose built for a time of social isolation.
Playwrights Jack Nurse and Robbie Gordon point out that porn sites attract more visitors than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. Yet if porn is talked about at all, it is in furtive tones. You could call it a secret pandemic.
Given a polished audio makeover in its transfer from the stage, The Coolidge Effect takes its name from a 1955 experiment by Frank A Beach. He theorised that sexual arousal is governed not by the act of sex itself, but by variety of sexual experience. The sexual appetite of a male rat given a new female partner every day never diminished.
In its lively mixture of lecture, storytelling and interviews, the play suggests the similar variety of sexual experience available online has produced an insatiable demand. Next comes addiction and sexual dysfunction. That’s especially problematic for a generation of young men who graduate directly from their Game Boys to Pornhub.
It’s not all prudish alarm, however. Performed by Gordon and Jamie Marie Leary against a backdrop of eerie electronic soundscapes by VanIves, the play finds room for porn justifications ranging from the feminist to the sociological. It is less concerned with moralising than with the need for debate. “A history of silence,” it warns, “never did us any good.”
Available online until 31 October.
