Out comes the screen, in comes the altar!
I didn't want to believe it. I had to go see. Another porn cinema frequented exclusively by men turns into an evangelical church in the center of Campinas (SP). Through social media, I discovered that this is not just a demerit for my city.
But, I couldn't bear to see just the facade, even without going in, I peeked at how the porn room looked like with the altar. Empty. It doesn't even compare to the Wednesday promotional fairs that guaranteed the eager circulation of more than 700 men in front of the screen. Of the groans from the most varied actors, and also from those less discreet in the audience, there was nothing left. If they didn't become loyal, where are all those customers?
Something that also caught my attention was that the replacement of the screen with the altar did not cause an uproar. Nobody protested. Very different from when this cinema opened in the city center. Many said it was absurd, a shame! It also wasn't like the closure of the other porn cinema a few years ago, bigger than this one and in an even better location. On that occasion, the municipal secretary of culture even said that the place would be used from now on by "good people" (meaning "people WITH assets"), because it would become an important cultural center. But who said that bitching is not culture? Or is it not important? And that "good people" don't consume or produce pornography?
However, shortly after the secretary's announcement, the building's owners preferred not to rent it to the mayor, but accepted the proposal from an evangelical church. Now, who were the owners of the building who preferred the pastor's money and not the city hall's money? Who had valuable real estate that was used daily for good, cheap bitching? Believe me, it was in the newspapers without any ceremony, it was the same owners of the SANTA Casa de MISERICÓRDIA hospital building in Campinas! Some benefactors!
Capitalist contradictions aside, I remember that, during the long period in which the cinema was closed, while the transition from pornography to blessing afternoons was taking shape, a small room next to the main door was used by one of these "fast credit" companies. is easy". Hebe Camargo did the advertising and looked beautiful on a panel at the entrance to the space. One of my teachers got scared when he imagined that they would show a porn film with Hebe, because he was poorly informed about the changes that the place was beginning to undergo.
It is important to make it clear that I am not against the opening of evangelical churches in the city center, after all, if Catholics have already built their temples so long ago and almost no one has complained, why refuse these new possibilities? But, I also think that all other religious expressions should occupy the city, whether more or less institutionalized, seen as being "of God" or not. The city's visibility logic should even privilege atheists, and without prejudice. However, my frustration is justified because I believe that consensual bitching should not lose visibility for anything, not even for churches.
Because without "sin" many prayers would no longer make sense. Including those that many Christians, not always well intentioned, insist on doing: asking for the sexual conversion of gays and lesbians into straights, or transvestites into real men! Those who, when criticized, usually clarify: "Just as God loves sinners and hates sin, we love homosexuals, what we do not accept is their homosexuality." I think we could appeal in the same vein by saying, "We love Christians, what we don't like is their Christianity."
Deep down, what is in the middle of this opening and closing, this exchange-exchange, removing canvas and putting up an altar, is related both to the market and to the stigma of sin, or the insane search to face it. Today, unconfessed desires and devotions considered pure and holy are absolutely negotiable under the logic of profit, and evidently, in many cases, interdependent on it.
If it is true that customers have not become loyal, even though in many cases they are the same people, it is also true that if you don't hear groans in the same places it is because they are in other places. Or does someone believe that because there is no cinema there is no pleasure? Or that prayer won over joy? In fact, no one became a Puritan, nor did they become less profane. On the contrary, what is judged as evil because it is pornographic is restructured amidst another, more profitable visibility, that of faith in God. So, until another center of whoredom establishes itself invitingly in the center of the city, everything will adapt to remain as it almost always was, apparently pure and holy.
*Tiago Duque is a sociologist and has experience as an educator in different areas, from teacher training to street social education. Milita no Identidade – Fight for Sexual Diversity Group. He likes to think and act with those who want to do something new, in search of another possible world.
