Behind the Green Door

There's no way I could have a blog about sexuality in film without saying something about pornography.  Unlike floundering Hollywood, the porn industry has managed to still stay afloat and as successful as ever

despite the ease of online pirating and digital media.  According to Forbes Magazine, the Adult Video sector alone is worth something between 500 million to 1.8 billion dollars. But because of obscenity laws, the world of American video pornography was almost entirely comprised of short, amateurish features that went straight for the sex scenes and ignored conventional movie devices like plot and storyline.  The standards for porn changed in 1972 with the release of Deep Throat, the first feature-length pornographic feature to feature developed characters and high production values.  However, the entire porn genre was still seen as at odds with the rest of the the film world, widely viewed as something of lesser artistic value.  The Mitchell Brothers' Behind the Green Door was an attempt to change that, melding the lowbrow hardcore sex scenes with artistic direction and cinematography for a crossover success that briefly bridged the gap between mainstream film and pornography while simultaneously changing perceptions on what constituted as "art" and even challenging racial barriers in film.   However, even in the controversial realm of pornography, the norms of mainstream society are still in place, making them much more of an excursion into pleasurable fantasy then something that dismantles cultural expectations for sexual conduct.

The crude plotline is framed around a story being told by two truck drivers to a cook at a greasy restaurant about their experience with the "green door."    What follows is a long series of sexual activity that begins with a young woman named Gloria (Marilyn Chambers) being kidnapped by four men at night.  They drive her to a lavish hotel where she is forced into sex with several women while formally dressed spectators wearing masquerade-like masks watch and observe.  The lesbian group sex is preparation for the entrance of Johnny Keyes, a black man who has sex with Gloria in what may be the first interracial sex scene ever shown on film.  The initially passive audience eventually turns into an all-out orgy after Gloria preforms fellatio on four men swinging from acrobatic apparatuses around her.  The climax of the long group sex-scene is a bizarre seven-minute money shot that utilizes a variety of innovative experimental film techniques.  The movie ends with one of the truck drivers from the beginning having sex with Gloria alone amidst a backdrop of city lights moving down the highway.

The surreal cult-like nature of the ritual sex scene that makes up a majority of the film feels very much like a product of the seventies counter-culture. But a deeper reading reveals the movie to be much less subversive than it may seem. The fact that the dreamlike sequence of events is depicted as a story being told by men is significant.  Is the entire orgy that is supposedly being recounted an actual memory or just a shared heterosexual fantasy?  Evidence for the latter is suggested by the romantic ending scene between Gloria and the truck driver.  Though the movie's main crux is showing scenes of sexual group debauchery, it appears to prefer imagining such actions as the stuff of imagination and daydreams, instead really supporting the ideal of a monogamous, loving relationship as shown by the much less psychedelic conclusion.  Take another look at the film's poster: there's a reason Marilyn Chambers is billed as an "All-American Girl".  She fits the "Madonna/Whore" notion perfectly as a woman who is both willing to partake in illicit sexual actions while remaining emotionally invested in being a romantic partner to just one man.  The anonymous audience present at her sexual awakening are us, the viewers: we are expected to don a different identity with different moral views while viewing pornography, only to take them off and resume our normal roles in monogamous, heteronormative mainstream society afterward.  The excessive surreal sexuality is simply another commodified product, similar to the food that the truckers are consuming at the dive diner - indeed, even before the sex scene takes place, there is a brief segment of two men discussing food that is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the film, other than to show that both are things that can be indulged in to satisfy instinctual urges.   Another factor of the utopian sex dream that I am only going to touch on here is the casting of Johnny Keyes in the film as Gloria's first on-screen hetereosexual encounter.  Portrayed as a stereotypically strong, dominating black male, his inclusion further reinforces American perspectives on African males as sexually dominating fantasy figures that represent a hyerpcharged form of the masculine sex drive.

Behind the Green Door proved to be a surprise success among mainstream reviewers.  Porn producer William Rostler was so excited by the porn-film renaissance that the picture was a part of that he proclaimed that "eventually [erotic films] will simply merge into the mainstream of motion pictures and disappear as a labeled sub-division."  This prediction proved to be somewhat off the mark.  What distinguishes art films that deal with sexuality like Shame and Fireworks is not just that the sex scenes are simulated or artfully suggested, but also that there is some kind of greater thematic meaning.  In Behind the Green Door, there is little deeper artistic intent to be discerned than the aesthetic experience of what is shown on screen.  The first words shown in the film are emblematic of this: a large marquee bearing the words EAT flashing above the diner.  The Supreme Court felt that the picture met the grounds for obscenity created by the 1973 Miller v California decision that it as sexually explicit material that lacked "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". Rostler's prediction ultimately did not come true - even when it maintains the sexual norms of society, porn remains a culture positioned outside the mainstream, furthering the notion of sexual discourse as something meant to stay behind closed doors - whether they be green or otherwise.  

Works Cited:

Lust, Erika. Good Porn: A Woman's Guide. Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2010

Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "frenzy of the Visible" University of California, 1999

Shame

The movie I chose to examine for this entry is, again, an exception from the norm: although I intended to only write about American films, this movie by a British director is too relevant to our course material not to be mentioned.  Our discussion last Thursday about the effects of postgenderism and transhumanism on sexuality made me wonder about the different ways in which technology has changed our sex lives.  People brought up the possibility of robotic sex machines that could fulfill your every desire without the pesky problem of actual human interaction.  However, this kind of reality is not some dream of the distant future - in fact, it is very much a part of our world today. With the use of cell phones and the internet, we live in a way that the Progressive-era reformers most feared: one where sex is readily available any time you want it. It is now  easier then ever for people to receive instant sexual gratification through online hook-ups, sexting, and an unlimited amount of free pornography.  And yet, despite the seemingly endless array of ways available to fulfill our carnal urges, we still live in a post-Victorian era where sexual discourse is kept private and personal.

What are the consequences of living in a world where sex is just a mouse click away but it's still an act kept behind closed doors?  This is the question Steve McQueen asks in Shame, a movie about a man named Brandon (played by Michael Fassbender) who can't get enough sexual stimulation.  On the outside, he appears to live the perfect life: extraordinarily handsome, cushy marketing job, and a beautiful Brooklyn apartment.  But in the great American tradition of corrupt wealthy men like Don Draper and Jay Gatsby, Brandon has secret.  Beneath the impeccably clean exterior of his white-waled home, his personal life is entirely dominated by an insatiable addiction to pornography and prostitutes.  He can't even go a day at work without watching porn on his computer and making several trips to the bathroom to masturbate.  Things are complicated even more when his emotionally needy sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) asks to stay with him.  His life is further thrown into disarray when he tries to form an actual sexual relationship with a co-worker; their first date is painfully awkward, and he ejaculates in his pants far before even taking them off.  Frustrated by his social inadequacies and his inability to forge a close human relationship, he resorts to even more sexual indulgence, going so far as to hit on women with boyfriends and receive oral sex from men at gay bars. Meanwhile, his sister attempts suicide after he threatens to kick her out of the house.  After going to visit her at the hospital, Brandon walks into a downpour and breaks into tears, the first genuine sign of emotional despair he has shown through the whole film.

The type of sex-crazed madness that Shame deals with is called hypersexuality, a uniquely modern problem that remains a taboo subject.  The condition was thrusted into the public consciousness when Tiger Woods professed that he was addicted to sex and receiving treatment.  But hypersexuality's status as a psychiatric disorder in the same way as drug addiction or alcoholism has been repeatedly rejected by the American Psychiatric Association, and it is not included in the DSM.  Although a craving for sex can become something that takes away from a person's life much in the same way substance abuse can, there is uncertainty among psychiatrists as to whether it actually affects the brain chemistry in the way that a true pathological addiction does.  The film itself leaves this question open ended.   Brandon's uncomfortable relationship with his sister seems to suggest some level of sexual tension between them, either from childhood abuse or taboo incestual feelings that are impossible to act upon.  The theme of brother/sister incest has been a popular film art that was seen in the first book we read in class, The Power of Symapthy, between the two protaganists, Harry and Harriot, whose elicit desire for eachother is the root of their demise.  Are Brandon's intense sexual urges are a result of his internalized feelings for his sister?  The film doesn't offer any  clear-cut answers as to what the "Shame" in the title could be.

The film further parallels The Power of Sympathy in the fact that it is a typical seduction narrative. Despite being a relatively art-house film with an NC-17 rating preventing it from becoming a mainstream sensation, Shame seems to idealize the values of a "normal", heteronormative relationship rather than those that challenge convention and shows sex as a source of societal dysfunction that can even lead to death, as was the case in The Power of Sympathy when Harriot realizes she had been seduced by her brother.  Sex is shown as a crippling problem rather than a natural act of humanity. Brandon seems to receive no pleasure from the sexual acts in which he takes part; his face always appears to be in a state of pain or apathy. It is a routine part of his life that has dulled his senses and enjoyment of anything else.  However, despite his need for sexual release, he still seems to hold on to heteronormative conceptions of the sanctity and importance of marriage.  After his sister sleeps with his boss, he chastises for failing to notice that he was wearing a wedding ring.  While in the subway, we also see women with marriage and engagement rings on making suggestive looks at him.  His face appears reluctant to approach them, suggesting that he values monogamy in spite of his overpowered sex drive.  The life that he seems to desire is a working family relationship, hinted at by the ambiguous nature of his own familial history as well as by the scene where his boss David confronts him about the porn on his hard drive while simultaneously video chatting with his son.  In addition to holding conventional views on marriage and family life, the film also portrays of homosexuality as a foreign, viscious 'other', as it shown as a desperate last resort for Brandon after his failure to have a working, heterosexual relationship.  The gay bar is depicted as a black underworld of red neon lights and anonymous men preforming sex acts in the dark.


Although McQueen hates it being brought it up, it is also worth mentioning that he is of African descent, a rarity among movie directors.  The three movies that he has made have all dealt with slavery of some sort: whether it be literally in this year's successful 12 Years a Slave  or 2008's Hunger, about the imprisonment and hunger strike of IRA member Bobby Sands.  McQueen has repeatedly insisted that race is not a major factor in his work, but it is interesting to note that he is a member of a minority group that still receive unequal treatment and prejudice in many parts of the world.  His cinematic focus on struggling to overcome adversity could be interpreted as related to his own ethnicity's struggle to achieve fair treatment in the Western world - but this would be a subject for an entirely different blog post.  Shame, although backed by a somewhat problematic moral agenda, is still a marvelous and powerful piece of moviemaking that reflects on the over-sexed nature of our times.


Works Cited:
This YouTube video contains some comments from Steve McQueen on the issue of race: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG4ytB4z-WE

Fireworks

So far, all of the moves I have written about have been large-scale Hollywood productions, made with expensive budgets and released in theaters to mass audiences.  It's doesn't take backing from a major production company to make a movie that changes the world, though. All you need is a camera, a vision, and a house to yourself for the weekend.  That's all that Kenneth Anger needed in 1947 to make Fireworks, a sexually charged short film that propelled the seventeen-year-old into the center of the burgeoning world of independent American cinema.  The innovative piece of cinema drew as much wild praise from the film community as it did controversy from sources that sought to suppress it's abstract, sensual depiction of homoerotic relationships, as homosexuality was still a crime under sodomy laws punishable by imprisonment and hard labor.

The surreal film opens with Anger waking up from a dream of being held by a sailor.  He then proceeds to get dressed, look in a mirror, and then open a door labeled "GENTS" that leads to the world of his fantasies.  Inside he meets a shirtless Navy sailor, who offers him a drag from a ciagrette.  The situation soon goes from idyllic to terrifying when a gang of sailors approach Anger from behind and begin to brutally beat him to the ground.  The men rip open his chest to reveal a ticking clock located deep inside his guts.  A thick white liquid is poured over his body, a roman candle erupts from a sailor's crotch, and Anger turns into a massive burning Christmas tree.  The movie ends with Anger lying in bed with a man whose face is obscured a flickering white doodle.  Interspersed throughout are montage-like flashes of burning photographs, blowing newspapers, and city lights at night.


Fireworks is an deeply personal piece of art created by Anger as a way of dealing with and understanding his outlawed sexuality.  The dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness structure allows him to explore depths of his mind that would not be possible to express through traditional narrative.  Inspired by nightmares about  race riots between white navy soldiers and Mexicans he witnessed in L.A., Fireworks explores  Anger's confusion over his attraction towards violence and sado-masochism.  The movie's rape scene contains a powerful shot of fingers being jammed up Anger's nose, resulting in a massive flow of blood.  It is contrasted later by the white liquid, which has a dual meaning as a both a sexual release and a spiritual cleansing.  Through the course of the movie's events, Anger directly confronts his taboo desires by way of looking through the mirror, a symbol lifted from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass: it stands for the world beyond, a dark and alluring world that only existed for him in his fantasies.  The dreamworld of his desires is examined by through archetypal American images.  The sailor is a representation of Anger's conflicted feelings towards sex as both a source of protection and a threat.  The phallic image of the tree with a star on top is a celebratory symbol, as by enacting his sexual fantasies he feels an experience of happiness comparable with the familial holiday love cherished by hetero-normative American culture, a kind of feeling he can never truly experience due to his sexual orientation. As the director and star has said himself, "This flick is all I have to say about being 17, the United States Navy, American Christmas and the fourth of July."

Reception to Fireworks in France was wildly positive.  Two of Anger's heroes, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet, were floored by the film's innovative cinematic style and jarring sexual metaphors.  Cocteau hailed the teenager as one of the most important new filmmakers, and awarded Fireworks the title of Best Poetic Film at the 1949 Festival de Film Maudit in Biarritz, France.  Its first American screening was in Los Angeles, where a variety of art-world members were in attendance, including playwright Tennessee Williams, who called it "the most exciting use of cinema I have ever seen."  Authorities, however, were less enthusiastic.  Anger was arrested for the shocking nature of the film's content on obscenity charges.  The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who in a landmark ruling deemed worthy of artistic merit rather than an illegal piece of pornography.  The case set a precedent for the avant-garde in America, and gave Anger free reign to continue making provocative films.  His work would continue to push boundaries, climaxing with his 1967 magnum opus Scorpio Rising, a bikesploitation fantasy notable for being one of the first films to incorporate pop music in the soundtrack.  It was cited as a large influence on Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets and David Lynch's Blue Velvet, as well as being credited as one of the first music videos.  A true American original, Kenneth Anger is a revolutionary filmmaker whose exploration of sexual representation elevated his work to mythic status at a time where such frank depictions of sexuality were unheard of.

Works Cited:
Hays, Matthew. "Kenneth Anger, Director: Fireworks at Sixty." The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 14.2 (2007): 46-47.
Hutchison, Alice L. Kenneth Anger: A Demonic Visionary. London: Black Dog Pub., 2004. 
Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943-2000. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.

Rope

Switching gears from the strictly Progressive-era heteronormative content covered in the last three posts, I would like to examine the way that Hollywood has treated homosexual characters throughout history. Between 1931 and 1964, openly gay characters were unheard of in American cinema.  Under the Motion Picture Production Code, which was in effect from 1931 to 1964, no film could contain any material relating to "sexual perversion or any inference of it."  This resulted in a variety of pictures that depicted homosexuality through subtext and suggestion.

Few films did this quite as fabulously and artistically as Alfred Hitchock's Rope.  Based on a play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton, Rope is a fictionalization of the story Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; two University of Chicago law students who killed a 14 year-old boy for the thrill of committing the perfectly executed crime.  Rope transplants their murder to a New York City apartment and replaces Leopold and Loeb with Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger), two wealthy New York students who seek to prove their intellectual superiority by strangling their close friend David Kentley, whom they consider to be an 'inferior' human being.  The duo store his body in a box on top of which they place the food for a party they hold promptly afterward, which includes among its attendees their prep-school housemaster Rupert Cadell, whose teachings on Nietzche's Übermensch theory lead Brandon to believe that he will admire the artistry with which they executed the killing.

The film presented Hitchcock with several challenges.  To effectively translate the play to the screen, he used complex camera movements to capture long stretches of dialogue in single takes.  There are only ten cuts total in the entire film, all of which are obscured by characters moving in front of the camera so as to create the illusion of one single, uninterrupted, eighty-minute shot, something unheard of in any movie prior.  Another obstacle Hitchcock faced was in presenting the relationship of Shaw and Morgan, as Leopold and Loeb, the killers they were based on, were a romantic couple.  While blatant portrayals of homosexuals were prohibited by the aforementioned Motion Picture Production Code, gay characters could be identified not just for their often stereotyped mannerisms, but also because they were frequently depicted as sadistic, criminal antagonists.  In contrast to the image of the foppish dandy that prevailed in pre-war cinema, the real-life story of Leopold and Loeb fit in perfectly with Hollywood's agenda to marginalize homosexuals as sick individuals suffering from a mental disorder, which was the official classification of homosexuality by the American Psychiatry Association until 1973.

The fact that Phillip and Brandon are two young men living together would have been enough to raise eyebrows, but the film was still streamlined enough to get past censors.  A large portion of the Rope's homosexual undercurrent is expressed through double entendres that comment on the societal restrictions gay individuals faced.  Even the rope used for the killing itself seems to be a sort of phallic object.  Within the first few minutes, after they've done away with David, Brandon opens the blinds while telling his partner Philip that its' "a pity they couldn't have done it with the curtains open, in broad daylight."  The murder itself often serves as a representation for their sexual relationship: both factors were hidden parts of their lives that were bound to come to the surface. It can be further interpreted as an event motivated by what Halberstam describes as "queer failure".  Are their murderous tendencies driven by frustration at their inability to second bedroom". - cleverly avoiding the awkward discussion on why there would be only one. These are just a few of many suggestive lines littered throughout the movie: from Phillip's declaration of "you're amazing" to Brandon after the killing to insinuations from Stewart's character that he knows Phillip has "choked the chicken" to , Hitchcock does everything possible to suggest that the two are lovers without coming out and saying it.
assimilate into the mainstream sexuality? At one point, Brandon bemoans that he could never their victim David "lived and loved as [he] never could" - is this a veiled reference to jealousy at David's heterosexual success?  Hitchcock leaves the answer conveniently ambiguous.The film also addresses social and generational differences surrounding acceptance of homosexuality.  The closest that anyone comes to an open acknowledgement of their relationship is when Janet, David's fiance, asks Brandon where the telephone is.  "In the bedroom", he replies, to which she responds "How cozy!"  However, when David's father asks the same question, Brandon slyly says that the phone is located in the "

Rope is not the only film to depict queer characters in a negative, malicious light.  Homosexuals were often representations of vanity, decadence, and poor morals in classic film noir.     The Leopold and Loeb couple's relationship was depicted in much more explicit detail in Tom Kalin's Swoon. Infamous recounts the story of Truman Capote's rumored relationship with Perry Smith, one of the two murderers responsible for the Holcomb County, Kansas killings. Michael Haneke's Funny Games also stars two impeccably dressed and well-mannered men who are on a mission to kill for the sheer aesthetic experience. Gus Van Sant's , which is based on the 1999 Columbine school shooting, draws thematic parallels between the Rope killers and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.  The archetype of the killer as a sort of sexual outcast also persists the form of Norman Bates in Hitchock's Psycho as well as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.  These are just a few of many examples.  The equation of sexualities that challenge the mainstream with murder is a Hollywood convention that originated in influential thrillers like Rope that still continues to this day, and is based in the same desire seen in the Progressive-era films covered below to depict those aspects that challenge conventional American values as threatening and dangerous.
Elpehant

Works Cited:

Dyer, Richard. “Queer Noir.” Queer Cinema: The Film Reader. Ed. Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin. New York: Routledge, 2004. 89-104.

Miller, D.A. “Anal Rope.” Representations. 32. (1990): 114-1333. Print.
Roach, Thomas J. "Murderous Friends: Homosocial Excess in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003)." Quarterly Review of Film and Video29.3 (2012): n. pag. 

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

I'll admit it: old movies can be hard to watch.  Not only are the morals often painfully dated and the acting overdone in many films before the advent of sound, but the pacing and editing is generally too slow and require an amount of attention that tests the patience of modern audiences. Sunrise is an exception.  It's a timeless classic that transcends the limitations associated with silent cinema by embracing the universal power of great acting and beautiful cinematography.

Murnau's romantic masterpiece tells a tale of lost love regained through the story of two anonymous figures, whose  relationship with each-other begins in desperation.  The two live together on a farm in the country, where the male lead (George O'Brien) feels trapped and unsatisfied.  He is lured away one night to a swamp by a woman visiting from the city (Maragaret Livingston), who passionately embraces him and tells him to leave the countryside for her by drowning his wife (Janet Gaynor).  The Man attempts to do this by taking her out in a boat and tying her to a bundle of reeds, but finds himself overcome with emotion and unable to do it.  The two rekindle their once-failing romance by walking around the city and enjoying eachother. At night, the two head back home over the lake, a violent storm rocks their boat causing his wife to vanish.  Convinced she is gone, the man chokes the Woman from the City in anger only to learn later that his wife has washed ashore and is still very much alive, leading to a passionate embrace just as the sun is beginning to rise.

Murnau's decision to leave the two unnamed was a conscious choice, meant to emphasize the symbolic power of the plot.  However, the credits list tells a different story.  O'Brien's character is credited as simply "The Man", and he does indeed go through a wide spectrum of emotion associated with the universality of that term, from desperation and pity to anger , ultimately settling at compassion and romantic ecstasy Gaynor's character is not called "The Woman" but rather "The Wife".  This is because she does not explicitly present herself as a woman, but rather defines herself as a faithful companion to her husband, who even after the attempted
drowning comes back to love him again.  It is Livingston's character, who urged the Man to kill his wife, that is described as "The Woman From The City". Dressed in all black, she is an independent flapper who embodies the emergence of the new, sexually liberated urban female that traditionalists so feared.  Not only does she lack the morals associated with the traditional American female, but she is literally murderous. Shots of her and the Man kissing underneath the moonlight fade in and out of shots of the Wife taking care of the couple's baby at home, juxtaposing the two opposing ideas of womanhood right next to each-other.

In many ways, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a seduction narrative not unlike William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, transplanted to a Progressive-era setting.  Both stories warn of the dangers associated with promiscuity and falling for emotion rather than restraint and rationale.  When the Man falls for the Woman From the City's charms in the wild expanse of nature, potentially deadly results await.  It is when the two attend the traditional marriage ceremony that he has an emotional epiphany and passionately embraces his wife again.  The movie clearly idealizes conventional definitions of romance as opposed to the lasciviousness of the emerging urban lifestyle.  Its appeal to the changing morals of the times undoubtedly shaped its widespread success.  Despite being directed by a German immigrant and becoming famous across the world, Sunrise remains a quintessentially American film

Works Cited:

Fischer, Lucy. "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans." British Film Institute Film Classics, Volume 1. 1st ed. Lodnon: Routledge, 2002. 72-93. Print.
Hoberman, James. "Through a Looking Glass." The Village Voice [New York City] 31 Aug. 2004
Sperb, Jason. "Empty Spaces: Remapping the Chaotic Milieu of the Modernist City in "Sunrise"" Studies in the Literary Imagination 40.1 (2007)

The Birth of a Nation

"Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world" - Jean-Luc Goddard

No conversation about the history of cinema is complete without mentioning The Birth of a Nation.  D.W. Griffith's magnum opus expanded the language of film with new editing techniques that enabled him to tell a more complex story than anything that film had ever seen.  The list is daunting: flashbacks, parallel pioneered nighttime photography, and multi-plane deep focus are just some of the revolutionary techniques the film established.  However, despite its towering technical achievements, the film's legacy is tainted by its blatant racist content.  Griffith paints a distorted picture of the South where African-Americans are blamed for all of the problems brought forth from Reconstruction.  His prejudice is expressed by hypersexualizing black males into savage beasts, with weak white women as their powerless victims.

The Birth of a Nation's theme is spelled out in its opening title card, which reads "the bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion."  This perspective stems from the work of  Griffith's friend Thomas F. Dixon, whose books The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots were the source material for the movie's two-tiered plot.  The first half is relatively tame, and largely deals with the tragic results warfare has on domestic life while highlighting the bravery of Confederate troops.  D.W. Griffith was strongly influenced by the "Lost Cause", which sought to present the Confedracy as an embodiment of nobility and virtue in response to their defeat in the Civil War. The movie begins with the story of two families: the northern
Stonemans, and the southern Colemans.  Brothers Phil and Tod Stoneman visit the Colemans on a brief visit down south, during which Phil falls in love with the young Margaret Cameron, while Ben Stoneman is entranced by a photograph of Phil's sister, Elise.  Their romantic prospects are cut short when the Civil War beings, and what follows is a series of violent battles boasting tragic deaths for both families.  The two youngest sons of each, Tod Stoneman and Duke Coleman, die in combat clutching eachother in their arms.  Meanwhile, Ben Cameron risks his life through a series of heroic charges that leave him badly wounded.  He is sent to a hospital, where he finds that the girl of his dreams, Elise, works as a nurse.  The first half reaches its climax with a depiction of Lincoln Assassination at Ford's Theater, where Phil and Elise Stoneman are in attendance.

This first segment of The Birth of a Nation is largely focused on romantic melodrama and elaborately staged The Birth of a Nation's second sequence on the Reconstruction era that Griffith's racist ideologies are fully unleashed.  This portion takes place in a grossly exaggerated version of the South, where Reconstruction measures have led to blacks controlling all local legislatures and terrorizing white citizens as revenge for slavery.  Austin Stoneman, the head of the Stoneman family, is revealed to be a staunch abolitionist who appoints the mulatto Silas Lynch as Lieutenant Governor.  He imposes a brutal regime where whites are oppressed, children are harassed, and Klan members are executed.  Ben Cameron once again proves himself to be a hero; first by murdering Gus, a black man who attempts to seduce Flora Cameron, and at the end by saving Elsie Cameron from being forced into marriage with Silas.  The movie ends with the Klan assuming control of the town and the Cameron and Stoneman couples finally marrying, achieving the harmony that had been lost in the recklessness of the war and Reconstruction.
war scenes.

The black characters in The Birth of a Nation are, as expected, portrayed in a highly buffoonish manner. One of the earliest depictions of African-Americans happens when the Colemans walk past a group of black men singing and dancing in the street.  The group is poorly dressed and behaving in typical minstrelsy fashion, while the titular white family are outfitted in formal attire and are watching the spectacle with amusement.
Likewise, in the legislature scene, the black politicians are smoking cigars, drinking beer, and clowning about cartoonishly. Their sexuality is similarly reckless. One of the institutions that the black Reconstructionists seek to disrupt is marriage, a deeply symbolic concept in American literature that stands for the for the integrity of the unified republic.  When Gus, a black Union solidier, targets the young Flora Coleman in the wild expanse of the southern forests, he tries to force her to be his wife.  Similar tactics are employed by Silas Lynch when he kidnaps Elsie Coleman for the purpose of marriage. This is paralleled by the relationships of the Coleman and Stoneman couples, who take their time forming relationships and are never shown desiring to engage in direct physical contact.  Although Gus is shown as a strong and dominating figure, he is easily taken down and killed by Ben Coleman and the KKK, an assertion of white male dominance and propaganda for the Klan's necessity. Interestingly, all of the antagonists are mixed race characters.  The fact the sexual union of white and black produces the movie's villains is a symbol of the disruption of the union Griffith saw as stemming from blacks being introduced to America in the first place.  It is not just men who are who are treated this way, either. Austin Stoneman keeps a mulatto housemaid named Lydia Brown, who is a typical Black Jezebel caricature: a highly promiscuous black woman who easily seduces Stoneman simply by exposing her bale shoulder.

White women are also depicted as objects for males to sexualize, but they are idealized rather than mocked and their sexual conduct is chaste and restrained.  Just as the black characters are simplified into a stereotypes, women are valued in the film solely for their beauty and innocence.  Young girls are chosen as the subject of the black man's desire because they were culturally expected to be submissive and powerless.  The objectification of women begins when Ben Cameron sees the photo of Elsie Stoneman and immediately falls in love in love.  It is not her character, her personality, her intelligence or any quality other than her attractive looks that draws him to her. Throughout the film she is nothing more than a stock character capable of two emotions: love for her male partner and fear of the wicked Negro. Flora Coleman, the youngest Coleman daughter, is completely unable to defend herself when Gus chases after her in the forest.  Rather then be forever shamed by sexual association with Gus, she throws herself off her cliff and dies with the innocence that was so admired in young women preserved.  Women are also associated with domestic life, as is explicitly shown when Silas Lynch literally intrudes into the Stoneman household and chases Elsie around, who glows with a white radiance in marked contrast to the ugly, black-cloaked Lynch.

Griffith's intention with The Birth of a Nation was to recast the South in a positive light while heralding the KKK as virtuous heroes against the threat of freed black men tearing apart the American values upheld by the Confederacy. His usage of innovative cinematic techniques allowed for more advanced and natural shots and cinematography, giving the highly fictionalized second segment an air of documentary realism.  It was the first feature length film that represented the Civil War, thus becoming the main representation for a new generation who did not experience it themselves.  The promotional poster on the right highlights the purported accuracy of its Civil War depictions, while ignoring the racist content as if it is not problematic or a focal point of the film.  However, the public reaction was quite the opposite. Riots and protests occurred at screenings of the film throughout the country. This massive controversy contributed to the film's popularity, providing it with an importance that extended beyond the world of cinema. Not only did it internalize the beliefs of many disenchanted southerns at the turn of the century, but it also spread its sexualized racism throughout the country for further influence. Its representation of empowerment in the KKK helped to rejuvenate the Klan in America and added to its comeback in the 1920's. On the other side of the spectrum, the film actually helped the NAACP as well by lending them an iconic representation of  what white prejudice and racism was.  They obtained greater visibility by organizing massive boycotts in major cities.  By using provacative sexual representation as its primary discourse, The Birth of a Nation was raised to levels of fame and success that Griffith may not have been able to achieve with a more streamlined message.

Works Cited:

Cripps, Thomas. "Slow Fade to Black." New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Fisher, Philip. The New American Studies: Essays from Representations. Berkeley: University of California, 1991
Mullen, Haryette.  "Optic White: Blackness and the Production of Whiteness."  Diacritics 24.3 (1994): 71 -89
Olund, Eric. "Geography Written in Lightning: Race, Sexuality, and Regulatory Aesthetics in The Birth of a Nation." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103.4 (2013): 925-43.
Rogin, Michael. " 'The Sword Became a Flashing Vision': D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation." Representations 9 (1985): 150-95

Traffic in Souls

The beginning of the twentieth century in America is referred to as the Progressive era for the numerous

cultural changes that occurred.  City life was rapidly growing as a result of both rapid industrialization and a significant influx in the immigrant population.  Accompanying this expansion was an increasing amount of corruption at both the political level and in the emergence of organized crime.  Amidst these social developments was a newfound prominence of educated, conscientious women moving upward in society and working to obtain the rights once reserved for men.

It was against this backdrop of social reform that "white slave" narratives became a sensation.  These stories generally followed a formulaic outline: young girls in big cities who are kidnapped by prostitution rings and forced into sexual servitude.  The tales drew their inspiration from a expose funded by the John D. Rockefeller Foundation called Commercialized Prostitution In New York City.  In most cases, the claims made by such reports were greatly exaggerated and largely fictitious.  This mattered little to the public, however.  The white slavery narratives appealed to audiences because they capitalized on common fears about the shifting morals associated with urban development.  By emphasizing that the women living a life of prostitution are being held against their will, these stories upheld expectations about female sexuality as submissive and non-imposing.  They also segregate sexual behavior to red-light district where brothels were housed, further connecting a change in sexual norms with urban development.  Under the guise of progressive reform, traditionalists used white slave narratives to uphold the old guard of sexual behavior and perpetuate a fear of city environments. University of Illinois professor Brian Donovan estimates that at least fifteen white slavery related plays and six  movies were produced in the early twentieth century at the height of their popularity.

The first of these movies was George Loane Tucker's Traffic in Souls, released in 1913 by Universal Studios.  The film tells the story of Mary and Lorna Burton (played by Jane Gail and Ethel Grandin, respectively).  The two sisters are Swedish immigrants in New York City, who work together in their father's candy shop.  Tragedy strikes when Lorna is drugged and abducted by Bill Bradshaw (William Cavanaugh), a member of a powerful prostitution ring that preys on vulnerable young immigrants.  Mary teams up with her cop boyfriend Officer Burke (Matt Moore) to find her sister and bring her captors to justice. Through
secretly recording phone conversations using wax cylinders, Lorna reveals the operation to the police and has ring leader William Trubus (William Welsh) arrested.  The film ends with Trubus returning home after getting out on bail, only to find that his daughter is distraught and his wife has killed herself.

Traffic in Souls is different from typical white slavery narratives in that it is not the immigrants who are the perpetrators of evil, but rather the victims whom the film sympathizes with.  Rather, it is the institutions central to cities that Traffic in Souls takes ire against. The villains are not shady alley-dwellers but prominent businessmen: Turbus is a wealthy business owner of significant wealth who himself works for social reform.  He and his associates stalk their prey near the immigration offices in Ellis Island, dashing new immigrants dreams of success and exposing them to the darkside of urban life immediately upon their arrival.  Even the Burton sister's boss at the candy store is unnecessarily harsh to the two simply in regards to their occasional tardiness, and unjustly fires Mary once her sister goes missing.  In addition, the fact that Laura is unable to do anything about her enslaved situation is another feature common to white slavery narrative.  She is powerless without the aid of a man.  It is only with Burke's fighting in the film's action sequences that she is able to be set free of enslavement.  This reinforces the idea that male authority figures are the source of salvation for women who are victims of prostitution rings. Indeed, white slavery narratives were entirely written by men for a female audience.  This speaks to their fear of the emerging 'new Woman' as confident and in control of her sexuality.  Traffic in Souls enforces a regulatory agenda where sex is a crippling force that a woman must fear, and from which she must be rescued by the males who hold power.

Picture on right is one promotional poster used to promote the film.  It is a blatant exaggeration of a scene that occurs toward the end of the movie.  Rather than a large group of women, Trubus is only about to beat Lorna - and even then, the whipping itself is never shown itself on screen.  By relying on this kind of sensationalist imagery for promotion, Traffic in Souls caters to a latent obsession with sexuality and male dominance.  Taken on its own, the image resembles those of plantation owners disciplining slaves. Just as blacks were relegated to the status of property in slave-holding states, this poster similarly turns women into objects, whose very sexual agency is under the control of their male superior. The transfer of these symbols normally associated with African-Americans was particularly shocking to the white audiences the film was intended for, as femininity had been equated with the freedom that defined America ever since the term "Lady Liberty" was invented.  Note that the figures are exclusively white: white slavery narratives  ignored other races entirely, as if the capture of white women was the only kind of prostitution that proposed a threat to society.

Traffic in Souls was a smash hit, grossing $450,000 in its first few weeks and putting Universal on the map.  It is also notable for being the first movie with an original screenplay to open on Broadway. The film's use of parallel editing techniques to cut between multiple narratives was also an innovation that can still be seen today in pictures about social reform such as Crash.  Many viewers who had been misled into believing the film contained sex scenes were disappointed to find an elaborate police drama instead.  Regardless, the picture was still controversial, and was banned in many cities, including Chicago.  Its release and successive popularity was largely responsible for 'white slavery' being added to the list of unacceptable film content in Hollywood's Hays Code.  These restrictions led to the white slavery phenomenon gradually fading out of the public consciousness, only to be replaced by other methods of female objectification.

Works Cited:
Brownlow, Kevin. "Traffic in Souls." Griffithiana 32 (1988): 227-36
Donovan, Brian. White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-vice Activism, 1887-1917. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2006.
Hiroyuki, Matsubara. "The 1910s Anti-Prostitution Movement and the Transformation of American Political Culture." The Japanese Journal of American Studies 17 (2006): 53-69.
Olund, Eric. "Traffic in Souls: The New Woman, 'whiteness' and Mobile Self-possession." Cultural Geographies 16.4 (2009): 485-504. 

Hi!

Hello and welcome to SCREEN SEXUALITY.  This blog is my final project for Alicia Williamson's Representation & Sexuality course at the University of Pittsburgh.  In the following posts, I will be taking an in-depth look at how American films have depicted the intersectionality of race, sex, and politics in a way that reflects the time and place they were produced.  Movies covered will range from mainstream blockbusters to low-budget art films.  The focus of the content will generally pertain to the themes covered in class, but I also hope to touch upon important movements in the expression of sexuality in film, such as pornography, New Queer Cinema, and feminist film theory. Throughout these analyses, I will show that sexuality has played an instrumental role in the development of cinema as an art form in the United States.   As Foucault points out in his definitive work The History of Sexuality, the establishment of regulations on sexual expression developed in the Seventeenth century have not diminished but strengthened the amount of sexual content in artistry by proliferating the amount of content relating to sexual discourse. Societal perceptions on gender and racial expectations inevitably influence film through the action depicted on screen and the camera's gaze.  If we agree with Freud's view in his Three Essays of Sexuality that the act of looking itself is "a derivative of touching, and therefore, able to arouse desire by contiguity," then the cinema may be seen as a voyeuristic stage where desires and ideals of sexual construction are depicted.  This blog will highlight how dominant sexual discourses are constructed in both the explicit narrative and the mise en scene of the film's world.