Orgasm Inc.

Orgasm Inc. (2009) is the first feature documentary by award-winning director Liz Canner. It premiered at the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival. In the documentary, filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic movies for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company called Vivus. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to treat a new disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Many women suffer from this, as males suffers erectile dysfunctions. However, women's issues with this sexual matter has been seen to be not as important as their partner. Over time women have become more involved in their sexual experiences and want to gain just as much from it as their partners by wanting to cure the issue of not being able to reach an orgasm. Liz gains permission to film the company's work in general for her own documentary. Initially, she plans to create a movie about science and pleasure but she soon begins to suspect that her employer, along with a cadre of other medical companies, might be trying to take advantage of women (and potentially endanger their health) in pursuit of billion dollar profits. The film continues from Vivus onto the more general question of whether there is a solid scientific foundation to medical industry claims about what constitutes "healthy" female sexuality and whether drugs and surgery are a suitable first-line approach to obtaining it. The film documents an emerging medical industry intent on convincing as large a market of women as possible that they have medical problems, and that those problems are best solved by expensive and dangerous medical treatments. Orgasm Inc. is presented as a look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping the public's lives concerning health, illness, desire, and orgasm.