Girls Gone Wild packaged amateur voyeurism into a lucrative franchise.

Evidence

Raunch culture’s grip extended into low culture, as epitomized by the Girls Gone Wild video series. These videotapes and DVDs, sold through late-night infomercials, captured young women at spring break or Mardi Gras flashing the camera or engaging in casual lesbian scenes. Creator Joe Francis, a USC graduate, made a fortune in packaging up this amateur voyeurism. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 66

Categorization

• CANDY: Francis’s claim that ‘feminists love us’ as a sales pitch is a darkly funny anecdote.
• XREF: The commodified spring-break flash is a live instance of an omnivore/taboo-flattening norm relevant to Marx’s era thesis.