Porn on stage and screen – too hot to handle?

Hardcore pornography is now widely available on the internet, prompting many to wonder what effect it is having on society. A number of recent plays, documentaries and films in the UK and US have been exploring the topic, but have any of them a done good job, and what are the pitfalls of documenting porn?

This week, a production at London's National Theatre We Want You to Watch, tackled the subject with mixed results. The play is a collaboration between physical theatre company Rash Dash, and young playwright Alice Birch.

We Want You to Watch asks what the world would be like without pornography. It follows two militant feminists on a mission to wipe out internet porn by any means necessary. They interrogate porn users, beg a hacker to switch off the internet and even tie up the Queen in a bid to get her to ban pornography.

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But critics have been largely unimpressed. Claire Allfree in Daily Telegraph calls the production "random, incomprehensible and plain bad". It's a frustrating work, says Allfree, that raises issues like pornography's relationship with free speech and whether violent porn actually breeds violent men, but quickly moves on.

"No one wants a po-faced lecture on the commercialisation of sex," says Allfree, "but We Want You to Watch descends into absurdity". It's a shame, she says, the piece spends "so much energy, saying so little about something so important".

Michael Billington in The Guardian says he sympathises with the playwright's revulsion at internet porn, but finds their "absolutist, all-or-nothing approach leaves little room for nuanced debate".

Other playwrights have been more successful. American writer Jennifer Haley's hit play The Nether, opened in Los Angeles in 2013, and enjoyed a successful run in London's West End earlier this year.

The Nether is a crime drama set in 2050, where the internet has evolved into a virtual playground where people can escape the morals and laws of the real world to explore their darkest sexual fantasies.

The Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish called it "riveting", and says the "genius" of the show is that it's "not a flashy attempt to summarise a multitude of topical issues or generally bedazzle us with science, but a bid to open up a debate".

Filmmakers have also tried to tackle the online porn industry with uneven results. The 2009 film Middle Men, starring Luke Wilson as a sleazy web-porn hustler, sunk with little trace at the box office.

The story is very loosely based on the real experiences of Middle Men's producer Christopher Mallic, who once ran a "middleman" internet supplier that connected porn producers with porn consumers.

Variety called it "Boogie Nights meets Goodfellas" and described it as a "relentlessly sleazy but undeniably intriguing" immorality tale about men who can't resist giving in to their basest instincts.

But the film ended up going straight to DVD in the UK, possibly, The Guardian speculates, because its release coincided with the more successful and "respectable" internet tale, The Social Network.

Documentary makers have also been tackling the online porn industry – most recently a US film called Hot Girls Wanted, which has just become available on Netflix.

Hot Girls Wanted explores the world of paid amateur pornography recruitment agencies in Florida. But according to the Daily Beast, it doesn't "get it right" either.

Most studies of pornography, are either in the "anti" or "pro" camps, writes Aurora Snow, and this one is anti. Hot Girls is a fascinating look at the seedier side of porn, says Snow, but its attempts to shed light on the adult industry as a whole "fail miserably".

Snow says that viewers looking for honest insight into the porn industry will have a hard time finding it. She concludes: "in porn as well as politics, the truth won't be found along partisan lines".

We Want You to Watch is on at the National Theatre until 11 July. Hot Girls Wanted is available on Netflix now.