Yay porn! Part II

While halfheartedly trying to formulate something like a convincing opposition to unsimulated sex in narrative film, a certain barrier kept appearing. Part of what lead me to oppose unsimulated sex in film was how deeply repulsed I was by 9 Songs, and the barrier that prevents my developing any reasonable opposition to real sex in cinema is my absolute adoration for the movie Shortbus. The sex in Shortbus is exponentially kinkier and more explicit (and not any more simulated) than the sex in 9 Songs. First, the trailer for Shortbus:



Shortbus' tagline: "You've got to get on to get off." I proffer the tears I shed during my first viewing of Shortbus as evidence that the film is the following: endearing, inspiring, and funny as fuck. (Of course I'm kidding when I pretend my emotional reaction to fiction serves as a basis for evaluation. Actually, I'm not kidding, and critical theorists can laugh, but their laughing won't make them right.) Shortbus - in its direct presentations of violent sex, group sex, auto-fellatio (with consummation, for real!), gay sex, accessorized sex - is wholesome in a way I can't really convey ... but I'll try: Shortbus is as wholesome as the fictions of Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember, The Notebook) are emotionally dishonest and depraved, and if you agree with the latter evaluation, just trust me on the former (and also, I love you!).

So if Shortbus strikes me as so wholesome, what's wrong with 9 Songs? The entire movie is a man's fantasy. During the sex scenes, the female lead, Lisa, tells the male lead that she's "so wet" and then begs, "Fuck me, Matt", which Matt, after having Lisa beg a few more times, does. It's so porno-rrific. At least Lisa's boobs aren't huge, I guess … but that makes her even less of a presence.

So whether 9 Songs and Shortbus are "art" obviously depends on what art is, which sounds (and probably is) really pretentious. If I were to claim that unsimuatled sex in a movie is not art, I'd need to know what I was refuting, but because I'm not that ambitious and don't feel like looking up really flummoxing quotes by Picasso and Michelangelo and Bergman on the subject, my feelings on the films will have to suffice. It's all about the margins: They're so much more exciting. Shortbus, a movie about "the gifted and challenged" is poly-vocal and, for that reason, ends up being more of a challenge and a gift than the simple, unsimuated vanilla kink (belts, blindfolds - B.F.D.) of the two lovers of 9 Songs who, in between fucks, listen to live London rock.

Or maybe it's all about the auto-fellatio.