Ms. Naughty Says Context is King (And I Agree)
Friday, November 30th, 2007
Have you every noticed that talking/debating about porn is (mostly) more engaging than actually watching it?
Anyway, Ms. Naughty, just back from bushwalking and wine-guzzling has added her two cents to the porn/blowjob/feminism debate in a post entitled Boring Blowjobs and Feminist Facials. This is the part that jumped out at me:
“Can a facial ever be “feminist”? My answer is yes. As always, context is everything.”
I agree. Context is everything. I’d even go as far as saying context is the only thing. Porn is often criticized for being fake and/or lacking context, but this is utterly untrue.
Porn is vividly real and hypercontextual. The very essence of photographic pornography is the depiction of actual sex, and it doesn’t get more “real” than two people actually fucking.
The problem is that (overwhelmingly) the reality depicted and the context in which it’s placed is utterly unappealing if not downright offensive. But when it comes to photographic images of sex, like the words “porn” and “feminism”, “reality” and “context” are at least as slippery.
Is “reality” the degree to which the viewer becomes engrossed in the narrative conceit of the film, or does “reality” extend to how well the narrative conceit jibes with the particulars of the production?
Similarly, is context limited to the moment when the house lights go down to the final fade to back? Or does it include the director’s Q&A after, or the Behind-The-Scene on the DVD? Or how about an e-mail exchange between the film’s director and a disappointed viewer? This is a post I made back in September of 2005 entitled Real Porn (No, Really):
Two days ago I received a note from a fellow who, although he liked many things about Marie & Jack and Xana & Dax, was rather disappointed that both love scenes ended with external ejaculation. Here’s a bit from his note (used by permission):
These videos have what I have been looking for that is missing from the usual “porn” videos with one exception. You claim that these represent real sex but in both cases the man pulled out prior to cuming and we were shown proof that he came… Maybe these couples actually have sex in this way but I doubt it. If they do I suggest using some couples who do not as well. This was a particular issue in the Xana & Dax video where he spent some time masturbating himself to climax. Why miss out on the wonderful sensations of being in your woman before cuming unless you are not able to do so for some reason. That, to a large extent, ruined the movie for me.
Also, my wife does not often watch explicit videos because she misses the loving relationship aspect of sex that makes it good for her. There is much in these movies that I suspect she would enjoy but I am sure she would be put off by this as well. She has made similar comments about other explicit videos.
He was also concerned that this might also be the case in Matt & Khym, which he had on pre-order. I wrote back:
Dear XXX,Thank you for your thoughtful e-mail. It very succinctly addresses some of the vagaries of shooting sex scenes of people having unscripted and and undirected sex. With your permission I’d very much like to use your letter in an upcoming blog post. FYI, Matt and Khym’s love scene ends with Matt ejaculating inside of Khym. No particular effort is made to “prove” that he ejaculated, but afterwards Khym does reach down to catch a little on her finger and taste it.
Yours,
Tony ComstockThis seemed to (mostly) satisfy his concerns:
From your response I take it that Xana & Dax and Marie & Jack choose to handle the men’s ejaculation without any direction or suggestions. If so I wonder if that is how they normally have sex or if they did it that way because they thought that it might be expected, maybe from watching “normal porn”. You might want to make it clearer to those you film that they don’t have to do things differently, especially that.I am not complaining if that is normal for them. It just seemed faked because of the way men’s ejaculation is handled in most porn.
The “might make it clearer” comment reminds me of the conversation I had with Desiree in the weeks prior to shooting her and her husband Ben.
“Oh, so you don’t want him to cum all over my face then?” she asked in response to my saying I just wanted them do have nice normal natural sex.
“Um well,” I stuttered, ” I don’t want you to do something you don’t enjoy when it’s just the two of you just because the camera is there, or because you think we want or need you to do something like that.”
“Oh no. I love having Ben blow on my face. I think it’s great, we do it all the time!”
“Well okay then. Please don’t let our being there inhibit you!” (It didn’t. Desiree had three orgasms that were very nearly disturbing in their intensity.)
Meanwhile, a tempest in a teapot seems to be swirling over similar question about what is and isn’t real over at SuicideGirls.com. Between kids, station wagon, suburban tract house, and a BMI of 26, I’m not really an alt kind of guy, (and even when I was young and broke and played my guitar too loud, I still wasn’t wasn’t an alt kind of guy) so I don’t really know that much about SuicideGirls, besides the fact that the chicks have downtown hairstyles, tats and piercing, and the photography style tends toward the deep focus/small focal plane style that I don’t really dig.
I do know what I thought I knew about SG, which was that I thought it was some hip, alternaporn site, run by technologically empowered female scenesters who were using the internet and cheap digital cameras to deconstruct the traditional pin-up. Okay, that’s cool in concept, even if I don’t really dig it as art, let alone as stroke material. Now it turns out that maybe SG is just some site run by some guy who’s making money off a lot of 18 year old girls’ yearnings to be a little less anonymous in the celebrity-obsessed world that we inhabit. Somehow that doesn’t seem quite so hip.
So what’s it all about, Alfie?
Back during that internet thing, people would sometimes say, “Content is king,” and the inflection they used seemed to indicate they thought they were offering a pearl of wisdom. Well here’s my pearl of wisdom, at least when it comes to making sex films: Context is king. Context is king, and when you use ‘reality’ as your conceit you walk a fine line. Most audiences are sophisticated enough to know that “the truth” is not the same thing as what you would have seen if you were on the set that day. But they’re also sensitive enough to know when the “reality” you try and present is too far way from what they would have felt if they had been on the set.
I don’t know what the “truth” is about SuicideGirls. The truth about Comstock Films is that all the way along there is a conspiracy between me and the couple I’m working with to present a very idealized portrait of their sexual relationship. It’s no more (or less) real than the nightly news or a novel.
Before their scene I asked Matt and Khym how they intended to enjoy Matt’s orgasm (experience has taught me not to assume that a “real couple” doesn’t enjoy the “so fake” external pop shot). When they told me that he was going to cum inside of her, I made a couple of suggestions for how we could visually signal the audience “yes, it really did happen.” The result can be seen in that lovely Comstock Films button that Mrs.C made for us.
Does that ruin it for you? I hope not.
As a director my ideal is that everything that an audience needs to know to enjoy one of my films should be presented within the confines of the film itself. If any information from “outside the frame” enhances the enjoyment the film, that’s fine, but the film itself should be the essential experience. If a viewer is on the fence until I’ve explained my intentions at the Q&A, or they seen everyone goofing off and having a good time in the BTS, or been given my assurances that it was “real” in a private e-mail exchange, then in my mind, the film has failed that viewer.
But film is first and foremost a commercial undertaking, so as a producer and marketeer, I recognize that creating and shaping an external context for our work is an essential part of the art and business of making films. “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex”; that’s the “frame” with in which we present our “erotic documentaries.” (Of course “erotic documentaries” is yet another frame.)
But for all the effort we put into framing our work, there’s a limit to how much control we have over the context in which our films are understood. By my reckoning, at the very most even a filmmaker like Steven Speilberg only has control over 49% of how any given viewer sees and understands one of his films.
I work on the assumption that I have even less control, so a lot of my effort goes into being mindful of vast space into which viewers will pour their own understanding and life experiences, and recognizing that each viewer is going to create their own context, based on their own understanding of sex, relationships, and pleasure.
Sometimes this works.
