Documentary porn.

• Author: Russell, Thaddeus
• Position: Soundbite - Fenton Bailey of World of Wonder Entertainment Co. - Interview

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbado founded the World of Wonder Entertainment Co. in 1991. In the decades since, World of Wonder has produced a wide array of documentaries and TV shows that have brazenly violated the taboos of mainstream American culture, ushering Americans into the worlds of pornography, prostitution, and transgenders. Their show RuPaul's Drag Race, a reality competition series featuring drag queens, has been a hit on the Logo Network, and it was recently renewed for its sixth season.

In October, Reason TV contributor Thaddeus Russell spoke with Bailey about sex, porn, YouTube, and the "terrible mistake" that is the Federal Communications Commission. The following is a condensed and edited version of the interview.

Q: Most of your shows deal with sex quite openly. Why?

A: It's a big absence in television. Sex is kind of an important part of who we are. If there were no sex, there would be no civilization; there would be no society. It's kind of the engine, so it always struck us as odd that it was never talked about, or it was just invisible in the TV landscape.

It took us 10 years to get Pornography:

The Secret History of Civilization, the six-part documentary series, made, because the idea was that pornography, sexually explicit expression, has been this sort of midwife of new media. Whether it's novels, or movies, or video, or the Internet, sexually explicit expression has been that initial killer application that gets these media accepted by people. This is how people get exposed to new media.

Q: A tot of people see porn as, at best, just a release from repression. Do you see it as anything more than that?

A: Yes. Pornography is like the first expression of documentary filmmaking. I mean, it's real what you're seeing. When porn stars are going at it, they're actually doing it. It's not a body double. They may be faking it, but they're faking it while they're doing it. Pornography is sort of a...