No Sadness, Anguish, Pain, or Suffering – Part 2
(From our upcoming BEN AND DESIREE)
More than two years ago, in post entitled No Sadness, Anguish, Pain, or Suffering I quoted a bit from Violet Blue’s blog about her upcoming edition of Best Women’s Erotica 2006. Said Violet:
“I don’t know, but I have to say that I’ve noticed a huge difference in the way that previous generations of women have edited erotic anthologies in comparison to my generations’ attitudes about sex. We don’t think that “literary” erotica, especially women’s erotica, needs to be somehow qualified by sadness, anguish, pain or suffering… A message to the publishers and editors (and filmmakers) who imbue the hot fuck with a moral: you’re not relevant anymore… I’m running totally sexually fucking amok with BWE ‘06. I’m tossing OUT all the fucking depressing submissions I’m getting. I want erotica that totally turns my head around, and makes me want to fuck.”
Two years later, The Guardians Josh Spero has identified “the disturbing nature of sex” as a hallmark of the Independent Film Channels “50 Great Sex Scenes in Cinema.” Says Josh:
“Many of the scenes are marked out by the disturbing nature of the sex. Take No 1 - Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland having grief-stricken sex in Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. It’s profoundly out of place given the rest of the film, yet it is tender, erotic and tells us about the characters, as meaningful sex scenes should.The disturbances continue through the top 10: Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello pound away at each other on the stairs in A History of Violence (2), with all the layers of deceit and mistrust involved; Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring have surreal sapphic sex in Mulholland Drive (3); while Secretary (8) and Betty Blue (6) are chock-full of odd, unhinged sex. Perhaps most disturbing is The Night Porter (12), where Nazi guard Dirk Bogarde and concentration camp survivor Charlotte Rampling reconnect.”
Let’s see; disturbing, grief-striken, deceit, mistrust, surreal, odd, unhinged, disturbing (again), and just for kicks, Nazi and concentration camp.
Notice anything?
Look, I know, drama require doubt, and as I said in Part 1, if you made a film about how great bicycling is, you’d virtually be *required* to subject one of the characters to a deadly, or at least greviously injurious wreck. That’s how story-telling (usually) works. But like Violet, I am simply sick to death of the idea that sex has to be contextualized by sadness, anguish, pain and/or suffering to be taken seriously.
Oh look! Another art-house film showing us how, even when people have wild, break the bedframe, smash the china, sing into each other’s assholes sex, they still can’t connect; not deep down inside where it counts. Did anyone besides me notice that in SHORTBUS when main characters finally got their restoritive, healing, last reel of the film sex, we didn’t get to see it!? Disturbing, grief-striken, deceitful, mistrustful, surreal, odd, unhinged sex is a reality worth of being closely observed. But sex that is merely connective, pleasurable, loving – well what sort of a pervert wants to see that?
Rant over.
I’m going to the beach!
