Our Little White Board by the Fridge
We’re getting to a point in the semester where everyone’s getting tense about pretty much everything. In my apartment, my roommates have listed on a little white board by the fridge several topics that we must not under any circumstances talk about. Mostly, they are meant to avoid thinking about our football teams losing, or problems we had with girls, or about the shitshow that has been our very own Brazilian presidential election, which at the time of this publication was just around the corner.
They have also listed a discussion about whether or not pornography is art.
Welp, I can’t talk about that in the apartment, and frankly I don’t want to talk about that here. (Or anywhere else.) So instead of discussing the artistic endeavors behind Lawrence of a Labia, I’d rather take some time to discuss a few articles recently published by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter about French-Argentinian filmmaker Gaspar Noé.
In case you don’t know him, Gaspar’s a curious guy.
I’ll admit that I’m not the greatest connoisseur of his work, but he’s definitely made some of the most visually stimulating things I’ve seen in recent years. Enter the Void was a fitting title, given how much the movie made me trip. Irreversible is a nightmare in the best possible sense of the word. I am still to see his shorts and his first feature, I Stand Alone. I’m also super curious about his latest film, Climax. But maybe the most relevant film for this discussion might be a little project called Love. It’s a sexually explicit (and I mean explicit) drama shot in 3D, about a love triangle between very open minded millennials. Let’s just say he likes closeups.
As one would expect, there was some controversy.
I remember having a discussion with a friend who walked out of the theater in a screening of Love. At the time that bothered me; she understood a lot about cinema, and had once told me that no matter how much she disliked a movie, she’d still watch it until the end. To her, walking out was a political act, and she felt outraged that she had paid to go see what she felt was “porn with good lighting”.
I disagreed.
By definition, pornography’s primary objective is intrinsically arousal. That ranges from a Snapchat nude to a higher budget porno with an actual crew involved, à la Boogie Nights. But the presence of sex and nudity, however explicit, does not automatically convert something into pornography. Nude Greek sculptures are not porn. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, especially for today’s standards, is not porn. Courbet’s L’Origine du monde is not porn. Pasolini’s Salò is not porn. Blue Is the Warmest Color is not porn. But they are all part of a huge list of works of art that culminated in public backlash, whether at the time they were made, or afterwards. (Or both.)
It seems to me that people don’t usually react rationally to genitals.
While Love was obviously suggestive (to put it mildly) in their marketing strategies, and had no shame in portraying pretty much every sexual act conceivable, it was not meant to arouse. (That may come as a side-effect, and indeed there were many couples in the audience when I went to see it; you could tell they were not the usual public of a Brazilian arthouse theater such as the venue they were attending. They all behaved during the screening, though.)
But Gaspar uses his film to question our perception of certain subjects. After all, sex is sex. However intimate it may be, it’s natural. Still, it is the only thing that cannot be portrayed realistically, mostly in film but also in other arts, without having someone calling out the immorality of it all. Bullshit. Most of us will engage in sexual activities repeatedly in our lives, yet I don’t think I know many people who have seen someone being shot and dying in front of them. I don’t know how many of my friends have seen others overdose on heavy drugs. I’m guessing, and I’m quite sure of it, that not many. Sex seems to be the least dramatic of all of those.
Why then did the articles condescendingly paint a picture of Noé as a ridiculous little figure who likes to randomly show dicks onscreen?
«Cannes: Gaspar Noé on the Sleazy Paradise of ‘Climax’ and Why He Decided to Make a Film Without Penises». Really? «‘Climax’ Director Gaspar Noé Defends On-Screen Male Nudity, Explains Why He Hated ‘Star Wars’ and Walked Out of ‘Black Panther’». I mean, that isn’t as bad as another one, which literally read «Gaspar Noé Hated ‘Black Panther,’ Thought It Was ‘as Bad as ‘Star Wars’’». Blasphemy! How could someone conceivably dislike those things? Isn’t Black Panther the only film released this year (so far) that actually deserves the Oscar? (https://bit.ly/2Rgo29O)
I mean, it isn’t. Far from it.
And Gaspar is a very smart guy. He’s vocal about pretty much every topic — that shows in his work. He’s unafraid, and dominates his craft and language. He belongs to a select group of unique filmmakers, and regardless of whether or not his films are palatable to general audiences, they are certainly expressive and original, unlike most of the utter BS that comes from the big studios today. Noé knows his references, and is well educated in the medium. No question.
Granted, he may be hard to watch for many people. But think about what he does with his cinema; he kind of has a point. I mean, you really don’t have to watch anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. His depictions of rape and violence, for instance, fall easily under that category.
But nudity?
What exactly is it that makes you uncomfortable? Seeing penises? Why? How intrinsically offensive can that be? Where exactly is the obscenity of it? It does not have to be associated with a weird sexual «deviance». In fact it doesn’t even have to be sexual at all. Or crass. We should know how to separate them.
A reader wrote in the comments section of one of the articles that “there is a reason why we call them private parts”. Please, let me know what that reason is. I’m genuinely curious. I want to learn what is behind that “why”, on a larger scope. See, that doesn’t mean that every Tuesday is now #DicksOutForHarambeDay. It means only that some people have dicks, and to quote from Sinatra, that’s life.
Ok, Love is provocative. If I ever rewatch it, I’ll probably think Gaspar’s point was too on the nose. But it does try to say something through its weirdness. Please respect the argument — try to absorb it. I’d rather have more Loves out there than a bunch teenage-level pseudo-sexual romances such as 50 Shades of Gray being rated R. In France, 12 year olds were deemed mature enough to see that.
I’ve seen too much blood and open wounds onscreen. Gratuitously. I wish we could sort out our priorities on what’s inappropriate.
I was born with a penis. If I wanted a gun, I’d be a Republican.
