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.