Douglas Keesey - Contemporary Erotic Cinema

Sex is sex, right? You know it when you see it, and you certainly know what it means. A sex scene needs no interpretation; its sense is self-evident. It is what it is.

Well, picture a couple having sex. Are they fucking or making love, and how can you tell the difference? Could it be both? If the man is on top of the woman, is he in a position of dominance or does it have nothing to do with gender hierarchy? If we call this the missionary position, does that give it religious sanction or remind us of patriarchal religions history of subjugating women?

Next we see the two engaged in anal intercourse, with him taking her from behind. Describing it this way might make it sound disturbingly forceful and animalistic, but this could be exactly what she told him she wants to play at doing. If she then puts on a strap-on dildo and pegs him, are they opening up new avenues for pleasure, or does resorting to a sex toy mean that their relationship is so tired it now needs artificial aids?

Lets say he goes down on her. Giving her head could be a special favour, bowing down before the female sex in a way that some men wont do, or it might be his preference and something she reluctantly (or readily) gives to him. If he now stands above her while receiving oral sex, is he empowered as the penetrator or is she the one who has him at her mercy, holding his vulnerable member in her mouth? If they lie side by side and engage in 69ing, does this make them equals?

Does it matter if the couple having sex are virginal or experienced, married or adulterous, in their bedroom or at a motel? What if theyre of different ages or races, or both of the same sex? What if there are three or more of them in bed together or only one self-pleasuring and being watched by someone else?

The fact is that, in any given scene, what sex means will change depending on the particular way it is represented and the particular words we use to describe it. As Linda Williams points out, sex is not a stable truth that cameras and microphones either catch or dont catch. It is a constructed, mediated, performed act, conveyed to us by the medium of film which includes, omits, emphasises and editorialises with every angle, cut, actors gesture and word of dialogue.

This book looks at the representation of sex in films over the last 40 years, Contemporary erotic cinema begins with the sexual revolution in the late 1960s. The relaxation of religious restrictions and legal bans on various kinds of sexual behaviour, combined with the widespread availability of birth control, led to a more liberal sexual climate. Feminist, gay, lesbian, transgender and queer groups moved society towards an acceptance of a wider range of sexual identities, acts and affects. Rather than heterosexual monogamy as the presumed and enforced norm (females were expected to act feminine and to pair-bond for life with a man, having sex for the purpose of procreation), other possibilities for sexual satisfaction became available. Reflecting or promoting these changes in sexual mores, films began to show a much broader spectrum of intimate acts, including many formerly taboo behaviours. In the US, what was essentially a system of censorship, the Motion Picture Production Code, was replaced in 1968 by a ratings system that theoretically allowed directors to include whatever they wanted in their films. These would then be classified based on content as a service for the viewing public, who were thereby informed of what was in the films and free to see whichever ones they chose.

Thus, one tendency in contemporary erotic cinema is towards increasing liberalisation. Some of the restraints of civilisation are lifted, and characters are freed to pursue pleasure in ways they find to be instinctually gratifying. American Pie reduces the shame of masturbation, making it hilarious and homey as apple pie. Japans The Snake of June also works through shame this time regarding female pleasure and finds that exhibitionism is one way to overcome it. Religious repression of womens sexuality is lasciviously lifted in Italys Behind Convent Walls, and a boys healthy sexual awakening occurs despite fears of damnation in Australias The Devils Playground. Y Tu Mam Tambin takes two Mexican boys on a journey from macho defensiveness to homoeroticism, while Brokeback Mountain shows America that cowboys the very archetypes of masculinity can also be gay. Englands The Attendant brings a black museum guard and a white visitor together in a sado-masochistic relationship that plays with racist domination as a way of moving past it, while The Lover presents a passionate liaison between a French girl and a Chinese man, challenging taboos on interracial and cross-generational sex. Me and You and Everyone We Know dares to represent childhood sexuality as natural, healthy and frequently humorous in its awkward stages of development. In Black Swan, masturbation and lesbian oral sex are validated as moments of sexual self-discovery for a young woman. The man in Transamerica is supported in his belief that to find himself he must become a woman, and the intersex character in XXY is encouraged in her hope that she need not mutilate herself to become male or female, but can instead remain whole as both.

Male or female, masculine or feminine, heterosexual or homosexual these either/or choices have increasingly become both/and possibilities. The limited option of married or single has been expanded to include premarital, extramarital or non-marital sex with more than one partner, serially or simultaneously. Ken Park ends with a threesome and Shortbus climaxes in an orgy, and these are represented as utopian alternatives to the sexual repression, jealousy and possessiveness typical of compulsory monogamy. Similarly, restrictions on what is and is not an erogenous zone have been opened up beyond the merely genital (the penetrative vaginal intercourse of conservative morality) to include oral, anal and potentially all other parts of the body. Fellatio figures largely in Now & Later; cunnilingus is central to