Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno

I have been preparing for next semester’s Evolution of Sex course by looking for new media that might help my students. I just spent a few enjoyable hours checking out Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno series, produced by the Sundance Channel.

I have been aware of Rossellini’s rather interesting foray into the world of animal sex and reproduction for awhile now, but I finally took the time to check the series out. It was worth it: Rossellini and her crew have produced some really funny, concise, and informative videos about the diversity of animal reproductive behaviors. Apparently Rossellini is a student at New York University’s Gallatin school, where she is pursuing a degree in animal behavior. With Green Porno she has put her learning to good use, carefully curating some of the animal world’s greatest hits.

Rossellini in full earthworm costume (from Green Porno).

The Green Porno series is broken up into short episodes, most of which are under two minutes, with none over the seven minute mark. Each short is dedicated to the behavior of a particular species or related group of species, and features Rossellini as both human narrator and individuals of each animal species. It is the latter portrayal that makes this series both funny and educational: Rossellini leaps into each role — no matter how absurd — without any reservation. Her personification of each animal gives the viewer a nice sense of the rationale for each species’ reproductive behavior. It is anthropomorphism for sure, but the kind that is so clearly intentional and abstracted that it effectively puts the viewer into the mindset of the focal animal.

Green Porno puts a premium on the visual: Rossellini dons an impressive variety of very humorous costumes, many of which are quite intricate. There is also a lot of puppetry, some animation, and a lot squirting fluids. Some shorts are pretty graphic, but the producers of the show have done a great job of graphically showing sexual behavior without ever making it seem icky. Rossellini is seen doing what can only be described as “humping” in all manner of costumes, but these more intimate moments are invariably funny rather than obscene. The oddball visuals and scripting keep the whole series light, which is the right tone for a serious discussion of sexual behaviors. When Green Porno is “naughty”, you are laughing.

Rossellini looks to seduce “the champ” in the “Deer” short

Rossellini seems mostly focused on a few major themes in animal reproductive behavior. Many of the shorts are really just about diversity: they show how variable the reproductive anatomy and behaviors of animals can be, allowing the viewer who watches the whole series to appreciate that there is no normal when it comes to reproductive habits. A few of the shorts tackle the issue of sex itself and show species that do not need sex to reproduce. She devotes a number of shorts — including one on Noah’s Ark — to the fact that many species do not conform to our species’ sense of “male” and “female”. There are also plenty of shorts that look at sexual competition and sexually selected traits. The only group that’s conspicuously absent from the current collection of shorts is our own group, the primates.

Rossellini ready to exploit a helpless caterpillar as a parasitoid wasp mother

I am not an expert on any of the species she portrays, but I am pretty well-read in this arena, and I found the series very accurate. Green Porno is far more reliable as a source than a lot of more mainstream nature shows, which consistently get evolution and evolutionary explanations wrong. In part Rossellini avoids some of these pitfalls by taking an adaptational approach: we get to see how particular behaviors and/or anatomical features function, but not necessarily how or why they were selected for over other phenotypes. There is a fair amount of ecology in the series, as predation, parasitism, life histories, perception of the environment, and conservation all make appearances throughout the episodes. I particularly like the Bon Apetit series, which profiles three marine species groups that are under threat of over-exploitation by the fishing industry.

If there is a weakness to these shorts, it is their shortness. I like how concise they are, so it is not a wholly-longer form that I was looking for. Instead, I want the shorts to spend just another moment providing a bit more explanation. Most of these are evolutionary teases: depictions of the proximate mechanisms of animal reproduction that lack any ultimate explanation. Perhaps this is good: the diversity of bodies and behaviors trotted out in Green Porno is likely to send many viewers looking to answer “why?”. But the series is so good at what it depicts that I frequently found myself wishing that a bit of creative attention had been given to the ultimate explanation for all this fun and funny stuff.

It is interesting how much creativity an interest in sexual and reproductive behaviors can spawn. Generally I struggle to find high-quality, informative source materials for my classes. There are a lot of boring but accurate sources out there, and there are a lot of flashy but too often wrong sources available as well, but when it comes to sex entertaining and informative seem to go well together. I now not only have Olivia Judson’s genius Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation as my major source for the non-human half of my Evolution of Sex class, but I also have all these great Green Porno shorts lined up. Now that sexual behaviors are so well represented with great media, can someone do something a little interesting on the Evolution of Cooperation or Ecology?

Green Porno is actually three series: the original, Seduce Me (which focuses on the diversity of ways that animals try to attract a mate), and Mammas (an unvarnished look at the behavior of animal mothers).