I recommend you see this film because it gave me an erection…
“Western man, especially the Western critic, still finds it very hard to go into print and say: ‘I recommend you to go and see this because it gave me an erection.” — Kenneth Tynan
Yesterday’s post about DESTRICTED drew a post from Ms. Naughty which I’ve excerpted:
“I would say [DESTRICTED's] definition is fair enough…“If society was OK with porn’s place as a masturbatory tool, we wouldn’t have to talk about art being “disguised” as porn or vice versa.
“I guess that’s your point, Tony. LOL”
Certainly attitudes toward sexuality and masturbation have their effect, but in the case of film it’s worth looking at this from a producer’s point of view.
When it comes to dollars and cents, the label “porn” is extremely marginalizing. Witness John Cameron Mitchell’s recent comments RE: SHORTBUS. “No one got a hard-on watching this film” says Mitchell. That’s a way of reinforcing the position that SHORTBUS isn’t porn. And with a budget of $2.5M — more than any porn film ever made — Mitchell and his backers can’t afford to have SHORTBUS shoved off into the porn ghetto, where returns are measured in thousands, not millions.
What I have noticed recently in reading reviews of films like THE DREAMERS, 9 SONGS, etc. is how venomously critics use the word “porn” - derision indeed. Whatever these movies’ failings, they look and feel nothing like any of the porn I’ve ever seen, and it makes me wonder just what sort of porn these critics have been watching that they feel a comparison is appropriate.
In fact it’s not, and in much the same way that “faggot” is used to dismiss a person’s sexuality as inappropriate and as the ultimate and overriding aspect of their humanity, these critics use the word “porn” to dismiss explicit sexuality as inappropriate subject matter and label the director’s interest in making such films questionable, and likely the product of a quirk or defect in the director’s psycho-sexuality.
In that respect, I would say that DESTRICTED’s and similar definitions of porn and erotica are anything but fair. At best it’s a useless construct that doesn’t really tell us anything about the work labeled “porn” or the work labeled “erotica”, save the economic ambitions of the person doing the labeling. (For some reason the phrase “straight looking/straight acting” pops to mind.)
More often such definitions are divisive, poisonous even; perpetuating a sort of Krafft-Ebing continuum for sexually explicit art, only instead of having poorly framed discussions about where the line between healthy and unhealthy sexuality lies, we have no less illuminating debates about where the line lies between porn and art. While this might lead to a lovely academic wank fest, it’s the wrong question, or at least a question I find utterly banal.
Let me lay my cards on the table about hanging the label “porn” on our work:
On one hand I have no qualms with being labeled “porn” because it lets people know in no uncertain terms that these films are absolutely frank in the way they depict sex and absolutely intended to arouse. If Mitchell proudly states that “all of the orgasms and all of the semen is real” but “no one got a hard-on watching SHORTBUS”, I am no less proud of the fact that my films also have real orgasms and real semen. Additionally, I am proud that my films have inspired countless happy erections, orgasms, and ejaculations. I’m please and happy that my films make people feel good about themselves and make them feel good about sex.
But along with the proclamation of sexual frankness, the word porn comes with a wagon-load of baggage and restrictions that I hope won’t be applied to my work. Like any artist, I want to have my work widely seen and widely respected. And like any business, we need to make money off the the work we do. The label porn is an obstacle to wider distribution of our films.
And just as I’m sure that directors who contributed to DESTRICTED don’t want to be lumped in with MEATHOLES, THROAT GAGGERS or CUM DUMPSTERS, I don’t want to be lumped in there, either. These are extreme examples, but by and large porn is cynical and poorly crafted; an insult to both sex and cinema. I am nothing if not sympathetic to filmmakers who do not want their work labeled as porn.
But what’s so very wrong about the the Porn vs. Art/Erotica vs. Porn question is that it supposes that whether or not SHORTBUS has crossed the line from art to porn (or whether our own DAMON AND HUNTER has crossed the line from porn to art.) is a relevant question.
It’s not; at least not if we’re evaluating the work without concern for its commercial potential.
Like Krafft-Ebing’s PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS, this porn/art nonsense supposes a continuum where there is none. It separates sex from the rest of life, porn from art, and then tries to draw a line, or at least define a grey area. (Lest we go too far!)
This, of course, is sillly.
Sex is not apart from the rest of our lives, and in this context “porn” is merely an inflammatory, and largely meanless descriptor. (So is “erotica” for that matter.)
Either SHORTBUS is or is not a worthwhile viewing experience; either you are comfortable or take issue with the methods JCM used to achieve his vision. Either you enjoy watching DAMON AND HUNTER and are comfortable with the way it was produced or you’re not. Whether or not you got wet or hard only matters in as much as it helped or harmed your enjoyment of the film.
The rest is marketing spin or sophistry, or both.
June 30th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
I’m commenting on this post rather late, but I’ll comment on it anyway. I think you’re right on the money on this issue. I wrote something similar on the Usenet group soc.feminism about 9 years ago:
“I agree with you that the whole pornography/erotica distinction
is a subjective and rather useless one. IMO, “erotic” and “pornographic”
are just adjectives for describing different qualities of sexually
oriented materials; the degree that something is pornographic has to do
with the physicality and amount of explicitness of the presentation, while
eroticism has to do with the mental and emotional aspects of sex. Good sex
is stimulating to both the body and the mind and good sexual materials
should do likewise; unfortunately, by creating the ossified categories of
“pornography” and “erotica”, we end up with material that only focuses on
one side of sex. Hence, there’s plenty of erotica which is all about
feelings and metaphors, but steers clear of the actual physical act (and
often steers clear of the body entirely) and plenty of pornography that
shows the act in copious detail, but the sex has a very fake unfeeling
quality to it. In both cases, what you end up with is pretty boring.
Pornography, erotica, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t have to be
this way, but that’s what were stuck with as long as we take “erotica” and
“pornography” to be two mutually exclusive categories, and Steinem,
Russell, etc. are doing a real disservice in trying to keep this division
going.”
(The blessing/curse of Google Groups – anything you ever write on Usenet lives forever!)
I still stand by what I wrote at the time. The porn/erotica or porn/art debate simply frames the question in entirely the wrong way, taking as a given that the two must be defined against each other, to the ultimate detriment of good smut. To me, the best porn/erotica hits both bases copiously.
I suppose my greatest difference with your persective (at least, from what I’ve seen of this blog) is that I’m not quite so dismissive of the larger porn world. I think over the last 5-10 years there’s been some very high-quality erotic porn produced, and I think the diversification encouraged by internet porn has played a big role in that. Some examples – some of the videos produced by Thursday Night Video, Abby Winters, Viv Thomas, Sweet Photography/ATKPremium.com, and Grigory Galitsin are very very good and manage a high degree of eroticism in the context of a sexually explicit movie. Obviously, most of these are not as naturalistic as the way you shoot sex videos, but I don’t think that invalidates their erotic content.
I also just saw “9 Songs” and really liked the sex parts. I don’t know if its going to have much influence in the film world, but pornographers could learn a lot from it.