Eco-Porn -- the Latest Frontier in Nude Protest

My correspondent on nudiana [is there such a word?] writes to inform me that Norwegian eco-activists are now using porn to raise money for their cause.

This actually is getting beyond the normal bounds of nude protest, but what the hell!

Der Spiegel reports:

A young Norwegian couple think they have found the way to save the world's rainforests. What better way to raise money to help the environment, than by starting a pornography Web site? With $120,000 banked in just seven months, eco-porn may be about to change the world.

They recently ran into trouble with the law as they sought to expand their activities beyond the internet.

[T]hey had sex on stage -- to the hard rock riffs of rock band The Cumshots -- in front of 50,000 titillated fans during the Quart music festival. A big no-no in Norway. The couple were duly fined $1,400 each but not before Tommy Hol Ellingsen, the male half of the duo, dropped his pants in the courtroom to show the judge exactly which bit of his anatomy had gotten him into the fix in the first place. Unmoved, the two refused to pay the fine -- and promptly left the country and headed to Germany.

Yet what at first sounds like a back-page tabloid story is actually a tale of youthful idealism. The two -- Leona Johansson is Ellingsen's better half -- see themselves as environmental activists and their public fornication foible was simply the medium through which they hoped to raise the profile of a cause very close to their hearts: saving the world's rain forests. F*** for Forest (FFF) is the eyebrow-raising fruit of their philosophy, a pornography Web site where online subscribers can access films and pictures of the couple and their friends getting up to all kinds of tantric, tree-hugging mischief. And far from being scared away by the Norwegian court, the couple has now set up shop in what they hope will be a slightly more liberal environment: Berlin.

Things seem to be going well for them in their new home.

[T]he biggest problem the couple faces is that there are just not enough hours in the day. When they are not having sex in front of the camera, they have to respond to hundreds of e-mails (many from supporters offering their acting services), as well as updating their Web site and contacting environmental organizations. Plus, the pair is also negotiating with a US documentary maker about producing a film depicting the FFF actors visiting a South American tribe, whose way of life is threatened by deforestation. And just for good measure, they also tour festivals and outdoor events all over Europe, on the look out for voluteers and to spread the FFF philosophy.

"Sometimes it can be really too much," Johansson laments,

I would agree.

As simply taking off your clothes in public loses its shock value, protesters are being driven to ever more extreme actions to gain attention for their pet projects. I wonder, though, if in this case we are seeing porn in support of activism, or activism as a cover for money-making porn. The couple claims that most of the organizations they support refuse to take money from them -- so they are apparently keeping most of the funds they raise.

Read the whole thing here. Pictures [one of them not work safe] included.