You remember the Tate, don’t you? Sir Quinten of the BBFC decided that DESTRICTED should get an R-rating so it could play in the Tate. The can of Artist’s Shit a few posts down is from the Tate Collection. Behold the latest Artistic Merit from the Tate. According the art critic/host of the video, the runners are “having the time of their lives!” I think he need to get out more…
DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER just got its first review on the consumer review site AdultDVDTalk.com, and what makes this review especially interesting is it’s from straight man.
Last year, when we had our one day Katrina fund-raiser there was a fellow who wanted to make a donation, but had already either bought or pre-ordered everything we offer, everything except DAMON AND HUNTER. He’s a customer I know by name, and I saw his name come through with a pre-order for D&H about 12 hours into fund-raiser, followed shortly by an e-mail that said, “What the heck, it’s for a good cause!” The below is from the end of his review:
Gay or straight, Tony has created a film that has something to offer everyone, even if the sex isn’t going to be up your alley, he has still painted an enlightening look into the lives of Damon and Hunter that can entertain, and possibly educate, viewers of all sexual orientations. And he does it all with class and a beautiful visual styling that should please all viewers. After the film is over, don’t forget to check out the extras, The Making of a Love Scene feature is worth the purchase itself if you are interested in the techniques that go into making a film. Even if you keep it to yourself that you viewed it, I’d give this film a chance, I’m glad that I did.”
A lot of people seem to think that it’s the erotic charge, the “intent to arouse”, that separates art from porn. When SHORTBUS was still in pre-production, John Cameron Mitchell was quoted as saying:
“The purpose of pornography is to arouse, whereas here the priority is the emotional life of the characters. Sex has been cheapened by porn. Why can’t we not focus on sex, as porn does, but make sex part of the film?”
Since SHORTBUS’s release he’s offered that the sex in SHORTBUS was intentionally de-erotisized to make cinematic space for other emotions.
When explaining granting DESTRICTED’s and R-rating, dispite its graphic sexual content, Sir Quentin of the British Board of Film Classification said that Destricted was so explicit that it would normally attract an R18 rating but he judged that it was a work of art not intended to arouse:
“In purpose and effect, this work is plainly a serious consideration of sex and pornography as aspects of the human experience. We think that there are no grounds for depriving adults of the ability to decide themselves whether they want to see it.”
I admire John Cameron Mitchell tremendously, and I’m sure Sir Quentin is a perfectly nice fellow as well. But on this “intent to arouse” thing, I think they’re wrong, wrong, wrong. (I really think they’re wrong.)
In fact, the central concern of my films is to try to find a way to create sympathetic and engaging characters, use their relationship to create an engaging story-line, without undercutting the eroticism of the sex, which is to say, the power of the sexual image to make cocks hard and pussies wet. In fact, if anything I’m trying to find a way to use character and relationship to make the sex more erotic and arousing in my films.
With that as the central artistic concern of DAMON AND HUNTER , Flash’s very kind review is especially gratifying. It’s exciting to think that I’ve made a film where the characters and their relationship are sufficiently compelling to not only get a straight man from the beginning to the end of a gay sex film, but to earn a five-star review in the process!
From the BBFC website:
“Occasionally, a work lies on the margin between two categories. In applying the criteria in these Guidelines in such a case, the BBFC takes into account the intentions of the film-maker, the expectations of the public in general and the work’s audience in particular, and any special merits of the work.”
I am curious by what process the BBFC divines intentions, expectations, who is or isn’t the audience, or what they regard as special merit.
Right now several dozen people are sitting together in the dark in a small theater in the Fitzroy district of Melbourne Australia. Along with the theater owners and the MUFF festival organizers they are about to become party to a crime. They are about to be party to the public exhibtion of Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together, a sexually explicit film that has been officially rated X by the Australian government. Because it is X-rated, it is illegal to present Damon and Hunter publicly, even to a theater full of adults who know exactly what they’ve come to see. Because it is X-rated, it’s even illegal to sell Damon and Hunter in many parts of Australia.
We could have challenged this rating (as 9 Songs did), but it’s rather costly (about $8,000) with no certainty of success – too much for a small studio like Comstock Films. So our lovely little film about love and sex goes into the world as a bit of a pariah, a scarlet letter X emblazened on its chest.
So as much as it is a celebration of sex and love, the public exhibtion and distribution of Damon and Hunter is a wilful act of defiance, a challenge to the status quo, a pointed question – why is the depiction of joyous, passionate, carnal love treated like a crime?
Meanwhile, in another part of the Common Wealth, The Tate Modern, one of Englands most prestigeous museums is preparing to show Destricted, a collection of sexually explicit shorts. Says the British newspaper The Telegraph:
“Destricted, an Anglo-American production, is a two-hour compilation of seven short films made by artists and independent film-makers who were commissioned to “explore the fine line where art and pornography intersect”.“It is supervised by Gaspar Noé, the French director whose 2002 film Irreversible featured a nine-minute rape scene. Critics who watched it at the Sundance and Cannes film festivals say it leaves little to the imagination.
“It features numerous acts of sexual intercourse. The contribution of the British artist Sam Taylor-Wood, the wife of the Old Etonian art dealer Jay Jopling, is an eight-minute scene of a man masturbating outdoors in Death Valley. Another section shows a man having sex with the driveshaft of a 50-ton lorry.
“After considerable agonising, the British Board of Film Classification granted an 18 rating for Destricted this week, to be released uncut on DVD. But it said that it must carry a warning that it “contains strong, real sex”.
“A source at the board described the film as “awful”. Unusually, it was not approved until it had been seen by the board’s president, Sir Quentin Thomas.
“The board had considered granting a Restricted 18 DVD classification, reserved for work intended to be arousing. That would have meant that a Destricted DVD could be sold only in sex shops and would have ruled out the possibility of its being put on sale in the shop at Tate Modern, where the film is to be given five screenings in September.
“Sir Quentin said that Destricted was so explicit that it would normally attract an R18 rating but he judged that it was a work of art not intended to arouse.
“He said: “In purpose and effect, this work is plainly a serious consideration of sex and pornography as aspects of the human experience.
“We think that there are no grounds for depriving adults of the ability to decide themselves whether they want to see it.”
“Tate Modern said the film was art not pornography.”
A man rubbing his penis on the drive shaft of a 50 ton lorry? No, that doesn’t sound like it was intended to arouse, does it? But is it art? I suppose that depends on whether it’s presented in black and white or color.
But the gist of the Destrict ratings kerfluffle doesn’t seem seem to have anything to do with art or porn. It seems to have to do with whether or not the Tate Modern will be able to sell DVDs of Destricted in the museum gift shop. If Destrict is art (18-rated), they can. If Destricted is porn (R18-rated), they can’t. As is often the case, issues that are offered as questions of morality or aesthetics are actually questions of commerce.
My films are not about “the fine line where art and pornography intersect”, they are about the broad vista of love, sex, desire, and pleasure. I have said and will continue to say that my films are made with the absolute intention and hope that my audience finds them arousing. (Which is why it’s unlikely you’ll ever see rape, or lorries, or Death Valley in my films.)
It’s my sincerest hope that right now, in a darkened theater in Melbourne, people are getting turned on by Damon and Hunter. I hope jeans are getting stretched tight by hard cocks; I hope panties are being dampened by wet pussies. I hope people have smiles on their faces as they think about how wonderful it feels to love and be loved.
What do you suppose Sir Quintin would have to say about that? What would the Tate Modern say? What do you say?
“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.
“If porn is work that serves no purpose other than causing sexual arousal, then erotica is usually explicit material that has artistic merit beyond its ability to arouse. Erotica, for that matter need not even arouse. Somtimes the sex in an erotic story makes us laugh or cringe or cry. Where porn depends on its ability to inspire a physical response, erotica has something broader to say about human beings as sexual creatures whether it gets us off or not…
“The Destricted brand is the first in a continuing series. The seven films presented explore the fine line where art and pornography intersect. The films highlight controversial issues about the representation of sexuality in art: opening up for debate the question of whether art can be disguised as pornography or whether pornography can disguised as art or something else altogether. The result is a collection os sexy, stimulating, challenging, provocative, strange and sometime humorous scenarios that leave it up to the viewer to decide.”
Thanks for clearing that up. Can I have my hard-on now?
