SEX: The Annabel Chong Story

Synopsis: Grace Quek, a Singaporean Chinese achieved notoriety in the world of video porn in 1995 when under the nom-de-plume of Annabel Chong, she had sex with 251 men during a 10 hour gang-bang. Lewis’s documentary follows the time leading up to and after this ground-breaking event.

Feminist theory frequently drives women into the arms of their sisters. In Grace Quek’s case, as a student at the University of Southern California, with characteristic contrariness, it drove her onto the pork swords of 251 men (she was aiming for 300 but had to withdraw as a result of vaginal damage). According to the ruminative Grace herself, this comprehensive rogering was a kind of role reversal (if a man were to fornicate with 251 it would have been lauded), a challenging of social mores, an exploration of her sexuality, and an act of empowerment. Which seems analogous to a slave who’d just been whipped by 251 masters claiming that she’d achieved mastery by making the masters whip her. As feminist theorists might say, abysmal logic.

Clearly there is something else at work in Grace’s psychology and that is, understandably, what this skilfully-made documentary explores with a good deal of breadth, though not with equivalent depth. That there is no definitive answer may be a function of the mystery of the human psyche itself rather than a short-coming of the documentary-makers. Yet the latter tend to make a good deal of the fact that there is no apparent explanation for why someone from a very ordinary middle-class family developed such a talent for self-abuse. There’s the strait-jacket of Chinese culture but nothing more tangible. The film tends to adopt an observational, rather than probing stance (it’s not easy to avoid bad puns). And not just in relation to its principal. We also get a fairly good look at the unsavoury bunch of males that make porn, but only from a distance or as they (in all their smugness) permit it. Much of what we see is staged (or at least carried out in awareness of the camera) and that detracts from its truth-value.

Notwithstanding, there is much we do see (little, but enough, of the actual gang-bang) and particularly for those who experience a voyeuristic fascination with watching people whose lives have spun out of control this will offer a deal of gratification. Like a heroin addict, but with sex as her drug, Grace is a tragically-muddled figure and one gets the impression that for her the worst is not over yet.

 

 

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