WORLD / America
Sex on screen: Porn or art?
(AP)
Updated: 2006-10-12 09:24
In this undated promotional photo provided by Thinkfilm, Sofia, played by
Sook-Yin Lee, and Rob, played by Raphael Barker, navigate between the
paths of sex and love in modern day New York in the film 'Shortbus.' [AP
Photo]
Los Angeles, California -- When a longtime married couple bounces all
over the bed in every imaginable position in "Shortbus," or when a
particularly limber character bends into a yoga pose that proves he, um,
never has to leave the house, that's all real sex, not simulated.
But writer-director John Cameron Mitchell says his intention is to
educate, not titillate.
Unlike in porn, the sex in "Shortbus" and other recent films featuring
actors in the act ("9 Songs," "The Brown Bunny") is injected as a means
of character exploration. We learn that despite her creativity in the
bedroom, the wife in the married couple (Sook-Yin Lee) is incapable of
having an orgasm; even more ironically, she works as a sex therapist.
"We have to keep reminding people it's not pornographic -- it's not a
film that's meant to arouse," Mitchell said. "We try to de-eroticize the
sex to see what kind of emotions and ideas are left over when the haze of
eroticism is waved away."
But the inventive filmmaker and performer behind the 2001 critical hit
"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" knows some people will merely write off his
latest movie as porn. That's why he's purposely placed much of the
graphic content at the beginning, to get it out of the way and make room
for his intertwined stories about New Yorkers who visit an underground
salon to explore their sexual curiosities and relationship hang-ups.
"When they have seen it, my guess is that by the end of the film the last
thing they'll be thinking about is sex," Mitchell said. "We always tell
people, 'This film isn't a one-night stand, it's a relationship,' and by
the end if you're thinking only about the sex, then you have a problem."
All of the recent movies that feature real sex have arrived in art-house
theaters, unrated, from independent distributors -- Wellspring released
2003's "Brown Bunny," in which director-star Vincent Gallo was on the
receiving end in a now-infamous oral sex scene with Chloe Sevigny; "9
Songs," in which a couple alternates between rock concerts and romping in
bed, was released by Tartan Films.
Still others that suggest actual sexual activity -- such as Bernardo
Bertolucci's "The Dreamers," from Fox Searchlight and "Young Adam" from
Sony Pictures Classics -- have gone out with the dreaded NC-17 rating,
severely limiting where they can be shown.
Mark Urman, head of U.S. theatrical distribution for ThinkFilm, said he
wanted to pick up "Shortbus" after seeing it at the Cannes Film Festival
and finding that "it didn't function as an erotic experience, it
functioned as entertainment."
"The film did take me back generationally as someone who emerged from the
Woodstock generation, as someone whose movie appreciation was formed in
the late '60s and early '70s," Urman said. " 'Last Tango in Paris' and
the theatrical experience of seeing 'Hair' on Broadway very much shaped
my sense of what's permissible and what's not permissible. This really
made me feel nostalgic.
"What I found interesting in watching the film, one did not feel
provoked. One felt enchanted. There's something Edenic about the sex in
the film," he said, adding, "I'm not naive -- I understand that it is
hardcore sex and that there might be people who are offended and won't
want to see it."
Terry Southern son: 'The time is right'
Although "Shortbus" is scheduled to open gradually across the top 40
markets in the United States, that doesn't mean you should expect to see
the major studios release movies like this, Urman said, because of a fear
of drawing large, organized protests against the corporations that own
them.
"An increasing acceptance is still not the same as multiplex, at a
theater near you, big studio," he said. "Big studios have theme parks."
Mitchell agreed that his movie and others that include graphic sex, both
real and simulated, harken to a time when cinematic boundaries were being
pushed.
"I saw people starting to use it again in the late '90s. It started
happening after AIDS came off the front page," he said. "It kind of came
back ... but with a very different tenor -- it was very negative because
of AIDS, because of a certain conservative resurgence, there was a lot of
guilt."
It was back in 1970 that Terry Southern, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter
of "Easy Rider" and "Dr. Strangelove," wrote a satirical novel about this
very concept: "Blue Movie," in which a Stanley Kubrick-type directs a
major actress having actual intercourse in a mainstream film. While that
isn't happening just yet -- most of the actors in these movies are
unknowns who help craft the dialogue through improv -- we're getting
closer.
"Now more than ever, the time is right for this kind of film. It does
have a chance at the box office, to put it crudely," said Southern's son,
Nile, an author himself and co-trustee of the Terry Southern Literary
Trust.
"Why that is, I think, is a cultural phenomenon, an era similar to the
Age of Aquarius in the '60s and films of the '70s like 'Carnal
Knowledge,' a similar wanting to connect to the roots of what life is all
about and make a statement, as well."
"I think what my father was proposing," Southern added, "was an actress
feeling so comfortable and right with the director, knowing she was doing
it for art, that it was going to be beautiful and important and
meaningful. Of course it becomes a farce -- the process of making a film
is so mechanical and chaotic, it has nothing to do with art at the
moment."
Which brings us to Joanna Angel -- a journalist and Web designer who's
also directed adult films including "Joanna's Angels" and "Joanna's
Angels 2: Alt. Throttle" and starred in many more. She sees no threat of
porn bleeding into mainstream film, or vice versa.
"They're still Hollywood movies," Angel said. "The difference between
mainstream movies and porn, no matter how high-end the porn industry gets
-- people are making movies in HD, with bigger budgets and plots -- porn
is still being made with the intent that some guy will buy it and
(masturbate) to it. If you can't succeed in that you've failed.
"I want to make something that's hot before I want to make something
that's good," she added. "If people are saying these movies are porn they
should sit down and watch a porn and find out."
Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours
Today's Top News
� Plan unveiled to build harmonious society
� Helicopter hits New York high-rise
� French minister questions nuclear test
� Sex on screen: Porn or art?
� Manhattan plane crash kills two
Top World News
� U.S. indicts American in al-Qaida video
� Denmark warns of new cartoon crisis with Muslims
� Hamas rejects demands in Qatar proposal
� Boy faces assault charge in Mo. shooting
� UN Security Council plans Afghanistan mission
Alibaba is the largest B2B marketplace in the world. Source model ship,
wooden puzzle, one-piece toilet, RC hovercraft, photo album, prom dress,
pocket bike, Vaginal Speculum, Samurai Sword, String Panty and PVC Pipe.
Learn Chinese, Learning Mandarin, Learning Materials, Mandarin audio lessons, Chinese writing lessons, Chinese vocabulary lists, About chinese characters, News in Chinese, Go to China, Travel to China, Study in China, Teach in China, Dictionaries, Learn Chinese Painting, Your name in Chinese, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese songs, Chinese proverbs, Chinese poetry, Chinese tattoo, Beijing 2008 Olympics, Mandarin Phrasebook, Chinese editor, Pinyin editor, China Travel, Travel to Beijing, Travel to Tibet
No comments:
Post a Comment