VORE KING - A Documentary by Dan S.
with Filmmaker Dan S. IN PERSON!!!
We will have a pre show of some of Dan’s other works starting at 7:30pm.
October 19th, 2024
7:30pm Doors (pre show starts)
8:00pm (not punk time) screening.
2114 Market St,
Denver, CO 80205
$15 or pay what you can. No one turned away.
Statement: Vore King is about a man named Ray P Whalen (from Wisconsin, USA), who some people might consider problematic. Ray makes pornographic films that involve otherworldly monsters eating women, catering to a niche fetish called vorarephilia. There is a common assumption that anyone associated with this kind of expression, or any other form of adult entertainment, is vile and corrupt. Even while a majority of the world’s population consumes pornographic media, we have a tendency to objectify anyone employed by its production, casting them as either victims or villains, stripping them of any humanity. What I found in Ray was a gentle, kind, complex individual who maintains friendships with all of his performers, treats them with love and respect, pays them well, and is simply doing what he must do to survive using the skills he’s been given, just like most of the rest of us. But, of course, that is not the story the general public is always clamoring to see.
It is easy and profitable to document the salacious aspects of sex work or pornography and objectify those who create it, but it is challenging (and less commercially viable) to confront an audience with the complex interiority of a person who produces the adult content they consume. A recent documentary called Tickled, about a diabolical faceless tickling fetishist taking advantage of young men, is a perfect example of how corporate media continues to perpetuate the perception that adult entertainment is only exploitative while reinforcing a dehumanizing villain/victim paradigm (and perpetrating the same sort of exploitation they pretend to critique).
With Vore King I wanted to use the sensational nature of a film like Tickled to pique public interest in a story that was ostensibly about a bizarre sexual fetish, then blindside viewers with a nuanced meditation on the struggles of a working person battling excruciating isolation and dehumanization caused by our technological age. I felt that this battle was nearly universal and that Ray’s story would resonate with a wide audience, but maybe I was wrong?
This screening was helped by funds from The Denver Theatre District
and the RiNo Art District.
