Destricted

“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?

In her recent “Op-Ed”, AVN’s Heidi Joy Pike writes:

“This is my main problem with many “couples” or “woman-friendly” smut stores that I enter. While there’s all the instruments of a good time present — most of these stores have a bitchin’ novelty section and even, in many cases, a superb BDSM supply section — but when it comes to the porno, well, the offerings often come up on the anemic side. I have the suspicion that it’s because too many “couples” retailers aren’t updating their concept of what couples really like to see these days. Sexually, people are more advanced than ever in their knowledge of what gets them off and more vocal about sharing that with their primary partner. While traditional, plot-based features may be able to serve their titillation needs, there’s the general fact that gonzo’s got the goods to fill those needs quickly.

“Plot-based stuff is thoughtful and gorgeous, but the basic fact is that many people don’t need to have some director’s vision of — as good as it might be — pirates or vampires in love to get off. Something uncomplicated taking place on a couch in Granada Hills with two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both will do the job, too. It’s real stuff. The couch encounter is taking place in the real world, and it has an undeniable set of emotions that people can relate to. There are no characters diluting the lust, the fear, the wanting, the ambivalence, the drive. Nope, just real people feeling what they feel and fucking so other people can watch. No gorgeous locale and no Herculean amount of art direction can save a lackluster fuck, and all that effort to make things look like eighteenth century America for the fuck vid can really wipe the players out, resulting in sex that’s sometimes on the stale side.”

Great novelty section, superb BDSM equipment, “anemic porn section” – it sounds like Ms. Pike has just paid a visit to the newly open Babeland store in Los Angeles. But I think Heidi’s got it wrong as to why the porn section is “anemic”.

Have a look at these butt plugs from NjoyToys.com.

Njoy’s finely crafted beauties were conceived by a fellow with a background in the engineering and design of consumer products. They’re fabricated in a facility that also manufactures aerospace components. These are not “novelties”, they’re the latest in a growing world of highly refined pleasure instruments that are available in medical grade silicone, Pyrex, and now, thanks to Njoy, stainless steel!

Where once people had to be satisfied with flaccid (and vaguely off-putting) rubber phalluses from Doc Johnson Novelties, this new generation of pleasure instruments have raised the bar on what people expect when they plunk down their hard-earned cash for something nice to shove up their asses. No wonder the “couples” or “woman-friendly” smut stores that Heidi visits focus their attention on these sorts of products!

Now compare these lovingly made and altogether lovely sex toys to the “thoughtful and gorgeous” porn features that bore Ms. Pike, or the “two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both” gonzos that she says many couples prefer. Do any of these videos look as well made and carefully crafted as one of Njoy’s beautiful butt plugs? Of course not! Making a film is an enormous undertaking, and there is simply no way to make a film that is anywhere near as refined as an Njoy plug on even the most lavish porn budget.

But now let’s set craft aside. You’re not actually going to shove a video up your ass, so it doesn’t have to be as polished as a butt plug. But what about the sincerity of the offering? When I pick up something from Njoy, or Fun Factory, or Pjur, I have no doubt that what I’m holding in my hands was made with the utmost consideration of what I’m going to do with it, that the plug or vibrator or lube is going be used in the most intimate of ways.

But when I put a porn DVD in the player, I don’t feel that way. In fact, I feel waves of cynicism and/or apathy (”It’s just porn”) pouring out of the scene – and this is true whether I’m watching a “two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both” (charming way to put it, no?) gonzo or a “thoughtful and gorgeous” (?) plot-based porn feature.

So when Ms. Pike says that “No gorgeous locale and no Herculean amount of art direction can save a lackluster fuck, and all that effort to make things look like eighteenth century America for the fuck vid can really wipe the players out, resulting in sex that’s sometimes on the stale side.” I completely agree with her. From a producer’s point of view, it’s just plain silly to try to make an “epic” on a six-figure budget, and from a director’s point of view, it’s probably a bad idea to muck up a good story with too much sex, or muck up good sex with too much story.

But when she goes on to say that gonzo offers an “undeniable set of emotions that people can relate to”, I honestly wonder what she’s watching.

Mostly what I see in a typical gonzo flick is bunch of people paid to show up at a sparsely furnished nouveau-riche Southern California McMansion (in Granada Hills perhaps), take off their clothes, and fuck while someone records it all with a handicam. That’s not an engaging fantasy or an emotional situation that I can relate to.

I’d like to give the director and the performers the benefit of the doubt that some more is happening, and perhaps if I knew the players better (as I presume an industry insider like Ms. Pike does), I would see these videos as an unvarnished document of a lusty sport fuck. Sex for sex’s sake is hot—most of the sex my wife and I have it sex for sex’s sake!

But that’s not what I see when I watch these videos. And if that’s what’s actually happening on the set, it’s not being recorded and edited in a way that I can see it. Apparently the “couple” and “women-friendly” smut shops with “amemic porno selections” can’t see it either.

Of course for me, the whole discussion begs the question: What about those of us who aren’t turned on by “thoughtful and gorgeous” features or “two people who fuck each other like they don’t care if the encounter will kill them both” gonzo?” Are we even on Heidi’s radar? Or have we simply been written off as prudes who just have hang-ups about sex and porn?

15 years ago, I bet the folks at Doc Johnson thought the same thing about people who weren’t interested in the cadaverous, flesh-colored rubber dildos they wanted us to buy. Of course this simply wasn’t the case. We were just waiting for someone to offer us something better – something worthy of the privilage of being shoved up our ass. And thankfully they did, and now there’s a wealth of very lovely toys and lubes for people like us to choose from.

Of course Doc Johnson is still out there, probably doing better than ever, and you can buy their stuff if you want to too. The point is it’s no longer your only choice if you want to shove something up your butt. Do you think that 15 years from now “the rest of us” will have a wonderful variety of sex films to choose from too?

The true meaning of porn, especially bad porn, continues to be discussed in the little corner of the blogosphere I wander (did I use “blogosphere” correctly), and no discussion of porn would be complete without a detour into taxonomy and/or semantics – what is porn, when is porn art, where’s the line between porn and erotica – that sort of thing.

My films get labeled all sorts of things: couple’s porn, women’s porn, erotica, amateur (on film?), pro-am (wha?), docurotica, pornumentary, all sex, educational (ouch!) and most recently “artisan porn”. Mostly I don’t really care what people call my work, so long as they buy in sufficient quantities that I can pay my bills, continue my work (which I like very much) and put some money away for a rainy day. That said, I don’t really like the word porn, and wish there was some other word for the films I make.

I don’t like porn because I think for too many people the word (rightfully) connotes a film or video that is going to demand the viewer lower their expectations with regard to conception and craft below tolerable levels. Make no mistake, expectation management is the indie filmmaker’s first and most important skill. But porn has leaned too heavily on the idea that the audience will forgive almost anything to see a little pussy. I won’t do that, and a lot of other people won’t do it either.

Another reason I am uncomfortable with the word “porn” is because for many people, porn means something is going make them feel bad if they watch; they’ll feel bad about themselves, or bad about the people on the screen, or bad that they’re aroused by something they know is cheap and shabby, made without care or craft. That last thing in the world I want my films to do is make people feel bad, and it breaks my heart a little that my films are (deemed to be) part of genre that makes so many people feel bad about themselves or bad about sex.

This is why I don’t like the word porn. It’s too laden (justifiably) with all sort of negative baggage, and more than that I think it keeps my films from being seen by people who would enjoy them.

So then how about erotica?

Well yes, almost. I like the word erotic, so erotica should be fine. Except it’s not, not for me at least.

My awareness of the word “erotica” goes way back to when Dworkanites and social conservatives first banded together and began together began to float the idea that “pornography” did all kinds of bad things to people and society (rape, murder, that sort of thing), and that it should be banned, or at least more heavily regulated. Up until then, porn was chic (remember pornchic?); no need for a euphamism, porn was porn.

But by the early 80s, the video camera was already sucking the creative life out of porn (you’ll never see The Opening of Misty Beethovan ever again) and the moral tone of the country had changed. Now porn was bad, and something needed to be done about it. (I still have a picture of Ed Meese going into a Times Square porn shop burned into my memory – talk about erototoxins!)

Anyway, “erotica” became code for “porn that fits my moral code”. No one ever wants the sexually explicit stuff that they like banned, so it becomes erotica. Erotica is fine, but nasty stuff that other people wank to is porn. Ewww! This always made me think, “Oh, so if you diddle your clit while reading erotica, it’s okay. But if I want jack to pictures of a buxom brunette with her ass in the air, that’s not okay. That’s porn.” That sort of parsing of what turns people on didn’t fit my moral code. (It also probably had something to do with the fact I am a photographer and took exception to the idea that there are things you can write about, perhaps even paint, but can’t photograph.)

And then as the Meese Comission cloud descended on the erotic landscape, and Penthouse and Playboy started dispearing from 7/11s, “erotica” became a code for sexually themed photos or videos you hoped would be explicit, but never were (*cough*skinamax). “Erotica” was about knowing there’s no place in descent society for cunts, cocks and cum.

And so just as I don’t want to use a label that makes think our films are going to make them feel bad, I don’t want them to think they’re not going to get to see cunts and cocks and cum in a Comstock production, because absolutely you will. Our films are about cunts and cock and cum. So sorry “erotica” is out. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m still pissed the Dworkinate for making me feel like I should be ashamed of loving ass so much, or still pissed at Skinimax for not delivering the goods, or maybe I’m still pissed that of all the truly horrible things I’ve trained my camera on in 20 years of photojournalism and documentary filmmaking, the thing that gets people the most upset is a nice pink pussy. But whatever it is, I don’t like the word “erotica”, so it’s out.

So then what should you call Comstock Films? If you enjoyed Xana and Dax and you want to tell a friend about it, what kind of movie should you tell them it is? I say I make sex films, or films about sex. Hardcore love stories could work, but I think somebody is using it.

Maybe we don’t yet have a word for the kinds of films I make. (Ack doesn’t that sound pompous!) But I am absolutely delighted with the words that people use when they say why they like my films; words like “passionate” and “tender”, words like “real” and “raw”. That’s what I feel when I have sex with my wife. Isn’t that what we want to feel when we watch a film about sex?

-TC

Violet Blue is hard at work editing the 2006 edition of Best Women’s Erotica, and today on her blog she writes:

“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.”

While it’s relatively easy to write a “Penthouse Letters” stroke story with happy ending (no pun intended), it’s no small trick to keep a more substantive story about hot sex from veering into “sadness, anguish, pain or suffering”. Drama requires elements like balance and consequence. Never mind steamy sex, if the characters in a story are having too much fun riding bicycles, you can be sure that someone’s going to have a bad wreck. That’s just the way that story-tellling works. (I think we have the ancient Greeks to thank for this.) Add to that our deep cultural suspicion of pleasure (sexual and otherwise), and it adds up to a lot of stories about people having really great sex, but paying for it in the end. (Let that be a lesson to you, dear reader!)

How then can you tell stories about good sex that don’t end badly? I’ve had some success avoiding sadness, anguish, pain, and suffering by employing the “slice of life” device. In my “hardcore love stories” the much needed sense of drama and consequence comes from constantly being aware that the people on screen are real flesh and blood human beings; that their friends and neighbors and family might see them fucking; that by choosing to share themselves with us in such an intimate way they are, in fact, taking a very real risk.

Of course this “real life” approach is a limited way to explore both sexual pleasure and story telling, and as long as we’ve been doing this work, Mrs.C and I have also been throwing around ideas for how we could produce fictional sex films that wouldn’t tumble off the sadness/anguish/pain/suffering cliff. Between story-telling considerations, audience comfort, and the ever-present constraints of low-budget filmmaking, it’s a tough nut to crack, but I think we’ve laid a good conceptual foundation, and we’ve even got a couple rudimentary of treatments we’re working on. After Violet’s proclamation this morning, I’m very eager to see Best Women’s Erotica 2006. I want to hear more stories about people having good sex and not having to pay for it in the last reel!

Speaking of good sex and happy endings, I’ve got a new tease for you; the first from last February’s San Francisco Bay Area shoot:

Barely out of their teens when they first got together, Matt and Khym spent many years generously taking care of others instead of concentrating on themselves. Now in their thirties, Matt and Khym have taken the time to rediscover the joys of married life and married sex. In this clip, Khym and Matt talk about their first encounter and their first impression of each other, and Khym reveals a surprising secret…

Matt and Khym: Better Then Ever

I think you’ll find this clip utterly free of sadness, anguish, pain or suffering, and hopefully it will make you want to fuck too!

-T.C.