Virtual lover: a "Point of View" review
The first time I stumbled onto porn, it was an accident. I was twelve years old, curious and already suppressing initial thoughts of being gay. I searched up the word on Google, wanting to see what popped up, and ended up finding RocketTube. With that, my innocence was obliterated. I spent afternoons after junior high locked behind my bathroom door, watching videos of a buff redhead have sex before moving onto other stars, other sites, longer clips. It was an obsession I couldn't stop. I didn't talk about this with my friends, parents, or even my brother; this was a secret meant for me that no one else deserved to know about. I hid it from everyone, digging a deeper hole every time I looked up something on my phone and had to explain away another thirty minutes. The problem kept building, and although I wanted to stop at two specific points (coming out at sixteen and becoming an adult at eighteen, when I could legally watch it), I failed both times. Pulling the plug only led me back for more, and gay porn helped me feel better about myself whenever I was ashamed about the habit in the first place. It was a bad coping mechanism, one that led to wasting time and constant shame. I wanted out.
When I found Point of View at the library near where I go to school, I was surprised that it existed. Porn is rarely talked about in YA, less so when it comes to porn addiction itself. To see that featured in a novel for teens was new to me, and I decided to check it out.
After reading it, I can say this book was exactly what I needed. With a relatable protagonist, unique framing, and deep dissection into how porn can be a toxic drug in its own right, Point of View accomplishes a lot despite being under two hundred pages. Lucas's journey may be dramatized, but it's honest and shows the hidden nature of pornography addiction that, when exposed, can be met with ridicule and anger, the victim spiraling down. The present narrative is interspersed with past flashbacks and perspective switches, giving brief glimpses into the minds of other characters that reveal their own pain or their perspective on Lucas and what he's capable of or not now that his addiction has come to light. It can be awkward at points due to the translation and Lucas's bumbling around when it comes to women, but it's earnest as well, acknowledging the helpfulness of therapy to articulate feelings, the realism that is obscured by the facade of porn, and the ability to find yourself again when you feel like you've lost a part of yourself that you want back. While brief, this book is the start of an exploration that deserves to be shown in young adult fiction, one I hope will let kids know they're not alone or disgusting, that they can get out and realize there's more to sex than what they shouldn't be seeing so young.
Sixteen-year-old Lucas wakes up one morning to find his laptop and phone not working. Panicked, he tries to hide this from his parents, but it isn't long before they find out. Sebastian, his father, offers to take it into work for him, and despite Lucas's refusal, he relents, hoping that what's on there won't be so revealing.
Lucas is addicted to porn. It started when he and his eleven-year-old friends wanted to pirate a superhero movie and found an older woman having sex instead. This first video sparked something within Lucas, and he found himself investigating further once his friends had left. It led to site touring, long nights spent in front of his computer screen, watching video after video, hoping to get the thrill he felt that first time. However, all that illegal website hopping has clogged his computer with viruses and graphic clips, and Sebastian, thinking it's nothing more than pirated movies, gets a rude awakening when his coworker drops the truth. He even finds a photo of a nude fourteen-year-old Lucas on the computer, a picture when he tried to get the attention of a crush.
Horrified, Sebastian meets his wife in a cafe not far from where they work. There, they talk about what they should do about their son. Marie (the wife), due to a history of clinical depression, thinks that it would be best to have Lucas talk to a psychologist. Sebastian, the primary caretaker when Lucas was young following periods of negligence by Marie, wants to confront him. The two reach a compromise, showing their son a documentary on the horrible working conditions of porn actresses. Properly humiliated, Lucas gives up his electronics and swears to himself he'll never do it again. But will he? And what happens when sneaking around leads to further restrictions and a desperate attempt to escape?
While I've never spent nights hunched in front of a computer guzzling Coke and going from video to video, the frenzy of porn addiction and the way it can consume someone's thoughts is familiar and captured well. In the depths of addiction, my brain was wired to find more, even though I had a life to get back to. After I finished, I would tell myself that this would be the last time, and then I'd come back hours later or the next day for more, kicking myself every time. Lucas's struggle (grappling with shame but only finding relief through porn) resonated, especially when he thought what he watched applied to everyday life. Seeing how the scenes affected how he talked to girls and how he thought sex would go with them broke my heart because it shows just how much damage porn can do to sexuality. It makes people think everyone is expecting a step-by-step procedure for sex when, in reality, wiring doesn't always work like that. There are people who aren't sexually attracted to people, others who only like doing certain forms of sex and not others. All of it is valid and beautiful, one of the blessings of being part of this world.
It helps as well that Point of View looks into just how damaging pornography can be to young people. Bard includes statistics showing how many have seen porn by age eight to eleven (below 10,000) and how arousal is the only thing porn succeeds in affecting. There's also the issue of how the adult film industry has sexualized women and treated them horribly in exchange, how straight men and queer women and non-binary people believe that's how women will be in real life sex. Some of this seeps into Lucas's narrative, and a few of the comments were unfortunate despite them coming from an understandable place. The moments where facts are dropped do feel clunky during the therapy sessions, partially because the real world is inserting itself into the narrative and doesn't fit with the translated dialogue at points (this novel was originally published in French, and although accomplishing what it set out to do, there are sentences that weren't adapted well). However, it's those moments that show the truth behind the fictionalized story, and while Lucas's journey has its dramatic moments that may feel unrealistic to some readers, it represents one person's journey in a sea of diverse experiences.
Lucas is at the center of Point of View, but Bard expands the lens to feature brief snapshots of other characters. Marie and Sebastian have their moments discussing Lucas's future and blaming the other for their son's current troubles, and despite Sebastian's raging anger that makes him unlikable, they're both complex people within Lucas's story (if only they got more time on the page). Marie in particular, a woman who cares deeply for her son but has become distant due to her past with mental illness, does have moments where a reader wants to reach through the page and tell her to push more for her son's mental health. Another highlight: Eloise, a patient at the treatment facility Lucas stays at near the end of the novel, whose past with compulsive online gaming in her family provides insight into more addictions. She's a good foil to how Lucas envisioned women, and the role she serves in his life outside of a romantic interest is nice to see, even if other character development gets sacrificed. She provides the realism beyond what he has believed his whole life.
Although short and sometimes clunky in its translated prose, Patrick Bard's Point of View is an excellent conversation starter and mind opener on porn addiction among teenagers. It has a gripping protagonist at its center, other fascinating characters, and great discussion on how porn can affect the wiring of the brain, how it's a drug like other substances, and the force it has on teenagers. While I don't think porn is completely despicable and can be empowering for some of its performers, the effect it can have on people below the restricted age is devastating and can leave them hooked (this even applies to older viewers who can't manage their viewing in a way that doesn't devour their life). Should this allow for greater restriction for minors so they aren't able to bypass the simple click to lie about their age and get to the porn? I think that may be necessary, especially because sexuality isn't wholly represented within porn. There's so much more out there than the how-to guide to smut presented, and Bard's portrait of a young man becoming lost in his addiction before getting help to find better habits did a great job showing that. I hope we'll see more books discussing this issue in the future, and this definitely helped me grapple my own addiction and how I can end it.