sex and storytelling: Shortbus
Apr. 14th, 2007 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slinklingI’ve spent much of my day working on new SV fic. I’m actually going back to a thing that I’d started a few months ago – remember when I posted with the Plot Bunny That Ate My Brain, about Lana wearing a red kryptonite necklace instead of a green one? I’m starting to think that what I have here is not so much a story as an entire alternate universe, in which many stories could be set. I could run with this idea for a long, long time. But I’m trying to work on something finite, so that I can post the first installment in the not-too-distant future.
Meanwhile, though, I’d wanted to talk to you guys about Shortbus, and about sex and storytelling.
To describe the movie first, for those who haven’t seen it (and without spoiling anything) – John Cameron Mitchell, the writer/director/star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, decided that he wanted to make a movie about sex. Real sex, being had by real people. He was frustrated that sex on film, especially in American film, tends to be either Hollywood cliches (soft-focus, montages, everything clean and perfect), or else sleazy and/or exploitative (most porn). He recruited real people, worked with them on developing characters and a story, and wound up with an ensemble film that tells a few inter-connected stories. There are real, three-dimensional characters, and a real, complex plot. And boy howdy is there a lot of sex. Graphic, explicit sex. Sex of every possible permutation. Gay sex, straight sex, group sex, solo sex, happy sex, sad sex, everything in between. I don’t tend to watch porn (have tried a couple times, and it just doesn’t do much for me), so this was way, way more sex than I’m used to seeing in a story on film.
And if I’d watched it before getting involved with fandom, it would have been way, way more sex than I’m used to seeing in a story, full stop. The whole time I was watching Shortbus, I could not stop thinking about how my experience with fandom was affecting how I saw the movie.
For example: Shortbus doesn't just contain sex, it's *about* sex. Which raises a question that tends to come up in fannish contexts: can sex be the central focus of a satisfying plotty story? I think people reading this LJ are likely to answer yes – we’ve all seen some excellent examples of exactly that, though generally with characters and a situation that were already familiar to us. The story itself doesn’t have to establish those characters or their situation; it could concern itself instead with the fucking, and let that carry the plot. The movie doesn't have that advantage, and I sometimes found myself wondering, is this too much sex for one story? Or was that just my knee-jerk response to the shock of seeing that much sex onscreen? (I'd also have to ask, too much for whom? But that's a different issue.) The tone of the sex in Shortbus was also surprising; in fandom we’re writing for an audience that’s pretty invested in sex-as-fantasy. We're working from source material, after all, in which we never see our main characters naked, much less getting it on the ways we tend to write them. To speak only for myself, when I’m writing a Clark/Lex story and I get to the sex scene, I want it to be hot and exciting for the reader, and -- given that I am not a man, and have no first-hand experience of gay male sex -- I'm working from my fantasies, as well as from things I've read that have turned me on. It doesn’t have all that much to do with real people and real bodies.
Some of the sex scenes in Shortbus are hot and exciting, and some of them aren’t. I don’t think they’re all intended to be hot. They all, without exception, continue to develop the plot and the characters, which I found incredibly impressive. The characters don’t become fantasy objects once they start having sex; they’re still real people, with insecurities and emotional baggage and weird senses of humor. In a way, this was the most revelatory, as well as the most honest, thing about the film for me, that not all the sex scenes were intended to be sexy. Because I’m someone who really enjoys sex, and I’ve had quite a lot of it, and the truth is, sometimes a person has sex and it just isn’t that sexy. For emotional reasons or logistical reasons or whatever else. It was the incorporation of this truth into the film that somehow took the onscreen sex completely out of the realm of fantasy (goodbye, Hollywood; goodbye, pornography) and rolled it in with the rest of the spectrum of human behavior. Sex is not a fantasy. Sex is not perfect. Sex is not a time when the story stops. Sex is just one of many, many things that people do with their bodies, so why do we treat it like some whole separate phenomenon?
I’d really like to have you folks see this movie, so I can hear what you have to say about it and the issues it raises. For that matter, I’d really like to see it again, so I can watch it without being quite so surprised by it, and digest it a little more. I feel like, having written all this, I ought to come to some conclusion, but it’s really not the kind of movie that offers conclusions. Instead it offers conversation topics, and food for thought. I’m still figuring out how I feel about it as a work of art – I don’t know if I loved it, but I’m incredibly glad that I saw it, and that it exists.
Meanwhile, though, I’d wanted to talk to you guys about Shortbus, and about sex and storytelling.
To describe the movie first, for those who haven’t seen it (and without spoiling anything) – John Cameron Mitchell, the writer/director/star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, decided that he wanted to make a movie about sex. Real sex, being had by real people. He was frustrated that sex on film, especially in American film, tends to be either Hollywood cliches (soft-focus, montages, everything clean and perfect), or else sleazy and/or exploitative (most porn). He recruited real people, worked with them on developing characters and a story, and wound up with an ensemble film that tells a few inter-connected stories. There are real, three-dimensional characters, and a real, complex plot. And boy howdy is there a lot of sex. Graphic, explicit sex. Sex of every possible permutation. Gay sex, straight sex, group sex, solo sex, happy sex, sad sex, everything in between. I don’t tend to watch porn (have tried a couple times, and it just doesn’t do much for me), so this was way, way more sex than I’m used to seeing in a story on film.
And if I’d watched it before getting involved with fandom, it would have been way, way more sex than I’m used to seeing in a story, full stop. The whole time I was watching Shortbus, I could not stop thinking about how my experience with fandom was affecting how I saw the movie.
For example: Shortbus doesn't just contain sex, it's *about* sex. Which raises a question that tends to come up in fannish contexts: can sex be the central focus of a satisfying plotty story? I think people reading this LJ are likely to answer yes – we’ve all seen some excellent examples of exactly that, though generally with characters and a situation that were already familiar to us. The story itself doesn’t have to establish those characters or their situation; it could concern itself instead with the fucking, and let that carry the plot. The movie doesn't have that advantage, and I sometimes found myself wondering, is this too much sex for one story? Or was that just my knee-jerk response to the shock of seeing that much sex onscreen? (I'd also have to ask, too much for whom? But that's a different issue.) The tone of the sex in Shortbus was also surprising; in fandom we’re writing for an audience that’s pretty invested in sex-as-fantasy. We're working from source material, after all, in which we never see our main characters naked, much less getting it on the ways we tend to write them. To speak only for myself, when I’m writing a Clark/Lex story and I get to the sex scene, I want it to be hot and exciting for the reader, and -- given that I am not a man, and have no first-hand experience of gay male sex -- I'm working from my fantasies, as well as from things I've read that have turned me on. It doesn’t have all that much to do with real people and real bodies.
Some of the sex scenes in Shortbus are hot and exciting, and some of them aren’t. I don’t think they’re all intended to be hot. They all, without exception, continue to develop the plot and the characters, which I found incredibly impressive. The characters don’t become fantasy objects once they start having sex; they’re still real people, with insecurities and emotional baggage and weird senses of humor. In a way, this was the most revelatory, as well as the most honest, thing about the film for me, that not all the sex scenes were intended to be sexy. Because I’m someone who really enjoys sex, and I’ve had quite a lot of it, and the truth is, sometimes a person has sex and it just isn’t that sexy. For emotional reasons or logistical reasons or whatever else. It was the incorporation of this truth into the film that somehow took the onscreen sex completely out of the realm of fantasy (goodbye, Hollywood; goodbye, pornography) and rolled it in with the rest of the spectrum of human behavior. Sex is not a fantasy. Sex is not perfect. Sex is not a time when the story stops. Sex is just one of many, many things that people do with their bodies, so why do we treat it like some whole separate phenomenon?
I’d really like to have you folks see this movie, so I can hear what you have to say about it and the issues it raises. For that matter, I’d really like to see it again, so I can watch it without being quite so surprised by it, and digest it a little more. I feel like, having written all this, I ought to come to some conclusion, but it’s really not the kind of movie that offers conclusions. Instead it offers conversation topics, and food for thought. I’m still figuring out how I feel about it as a work of art – I don’t know if I loved it, but I’m incredibly glad that I saw it, and that it exists.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-15 01:21 pm (UTC)I agree, in fandom sex only story can work very well, but only because most of the characters are already known by us and we have a vested interest in them. I can't imagine it works as well with all unknown characters - well it wouldn't for me anyway. I need to have a reason for wanting to see them in a sexual situation, not just the sex itself. Sex scenes for me are very much about wanting to see this deepest most intimate part of a character I already like/have an emotional interest in. This is also the reason pure porn (visual) never will be as satisfying to me. While from time to time I dig having the visual, it is lacking because I have little interest in the people doing it - well, unless it's Titof :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 03:40 pm (UTC)This is generally true for me too, and part of what I admired about Shortbus is how it got around this issue. All the conflicts in the plot had to do with the characters' problems with intimacy, or their lack of comfort with their own bodies and/or sexuality, so every sex scene actually helped to develop those issues, letting us know the characters better and moving the plot forward. It wasn't like, let's put everything on hold now while these people have sex; instead, their problems and progress were all tied up with the sex they were having. Each sex scene increased my understanding of the people involved, and my empathy for them.
It was still an odd thing to see so much sex on screen, and I'm still not sure if I loved it, but from a narrative perspective, I was definitely impressed.
Re crappy dubbing -- now you've made me very curious how they're going to handle one scene in particular, which involves the singing of a national anthem during sex. I kind of want you (or somebody else who lives in a country where the film will be dubbed) to go see it if only to tell me whether they still sing an American anthem, or change it -- which I think would really change the meaning of that scene. Hmm...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 03:47 pm (UTC)I usually hold out until the original English version of the movie is playing somewhere or I get it on dvd.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-17 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-09 04:07 am (UTC)It was very real to me and I know some people who have a lot of issues like the characters in the movie. I don't think that the sex was too much or anything like that. I think that the movie was like a documentary showing was a peek into the character's lives, warts and all.
It's a movie that I can see myself watching more than once.Hope my comment helped.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-14 03:37 pm (UTC)"Organic" is a great way to describe it -- it definitely had the feeling of real life, with all the sticky realities.