Sex in American films, on film or digitally, is in a state of chaos. It has been for so long that cyclically, precise as a metronome, the online debate restarts and ends in the due costume article in the newspapers. The observations are always the same: there is less and less sex in the cinema (the TV, with the prestige series, is in little better shape) and yet a problem remains. Action and superhero movies treat the body as a fetish, even as they go to great lengths to desexualize it. We continue to cite a 2021 essay with the perfect title, “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny”, which explains how the human body has become a strange contradiction at the heart of the modern blockbuster. Some actors, such as Penn Badgley (You), no longer want to act in sex scenes because they are happily married in real life. Gen Z shun sex or complain about explicit scenes shown without the consent of the viewer, in a surreal version of the old respectability reinterpreted in current jargon. In podcasts the latest series by journalist Karina Longworth dedicated to the Erotic ’90s is depopulating, where she tells the behind-the-scenes of great classics such as Pretty Woman and Basic Instinct and reminds us how sex, in its various forms, was present in all films successful at the box office. Not without the consequences: Sharon Stone in an interview a few weeks ago told how the part of her in basic instinct – and that depiction of sex – contributed in part to the loss of custody of the child. In short, we see less and less of it, yet all we do is talk about this artificial sex and the difficulties of the actresses who have to simulate it.
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Two documentaries released in 2022, both directed by women, tackle the same subject and come to complement each other. Both use a variety of clips from films and TV shows from the early years of cinema to modern blockbusters to illustrate their ideas and for this reason they should be seen: it is one of the cases where the annotated images are more convincing than the arguments made only words. In Body Parts Kristy Guevara-Flanagan traces the long history of female representation and sexuality in the media, tells how in the 20s and 30s pre-Hays Code (the moral guidelines that limited Hollywood productions), women actually had much more control both in front of and behind the camera, with the likes of Greta Garbo and Mae West mastering their sexuality on set and living freely. Censorship then led to a period of romance-without-sex in film before the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s brought about the flip side, sex-without-romance. The documentary then insists on the differences between nudity and sexuality between European and Hollywood films, on the use and lack of respect for stunt doubles on sets and on how directors resort to special effects to erase the physical imperfections of the actors or to replace individual parts of the body in order to create perfect and, clearly, unreal beings. Among those interviewed are familiar faces Jane Fonda and Rosanna Arquette, who confess their stories of exploitation and frustration after spending their entire lives in a system that has no qualms about asking vulnerable young women to show up for auditions in bikinis, strip in the blink of an eye and accept scenes with nudity and sex without warning, as if it were any day at work.
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The same actresses reappear in Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, a feminist essay in documentary form by independent filmmaker Nina Menkes (Queen of Diamonds, Phantom Love). Compared to the previous one, this film is more interested in capturing the zeitgeist of today’s activist movements like #MeToo and Time’s Up in its narrative, becoming something of a master class in film theory, feminism and gender roles. Menkes methodically breaks down into five sections the ways in which popular camera techniques – which filmmakers still teach in film schools, perpetuating the cycle – dehumanize women, from making them objects of the male gaze to using framing, lighting and of camera movement to transform their bodies into things to be desired and mastered, rather than three-dimensional people with free will and individuality. Clip after clip, from Hitchcock classics to Hustlers starring Jennifer Lopez, demonstrates how the cameras linger on curves but not faces, forcing the male perspective on the viewer and focusing on flattery rather than realism. Ideally, the directors should approach the images seriously and delicately, because they have the responsibility to stimulate the fantasies and the psyche of the viewers or, in the most incisive words of Iyabo Kwayana, “if the camera is predatory, the culture is predatory as well” . Even though female filmmakers are finally making their way into cinema, the pattern established by men in which women are objects defined by their sexuality continues to predominate, and the same pattern is also found in some films made by women. Whether it’s the camera angles that objectify her, the focus on a single body part that dehumanizes, or the lighting that flattens, these images are insidious and still ubiquitous. For Nina Menkes the visual grammar problem of cinema has come to create an environment that encourages discrimination, pay inequality and sexual harassment, both within and outside the film industry.
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In England in September will start the first degree course in Intimacy Practice, designed for those who want to become, in two years of studies, a certified intimacy coordinator under the guidance of Ita O’Brien, considered the pioneer in this still little explored field. From 2014 to today O’Brien has worked on high-profile projects, both for the small and the big screen, which include particularly natural or effective sex or nudity scenes: many remember the sometimes gentle, sometimes moist eroticismthe Normal Peoplethe Lenny Abrahamson series debuting the now highly sought-after Paul Mescal or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the long rape scene in The Last Duel by Ridley Scott, which is shown twice during the narration, with small variations in the movements and a different, barely perceptible modulation of the guttural sounds of the assailant (Adam Driver) and the victim (Jodie Comer), to underline the different points of view of a traumatic experience and to comment covertly on the interpretation of the “consent of the woman” in medieval France. It’s frustrating but also ironic to remember how, upon the film’s release, most middle-aged film critics complained about the needless “nearly identical” repetition of the scene, as if it were a technically wrong choice by Scott and not a moment crucial, refined by O’Brien’s advice, to understanding the conclusion of the story. Hopefully, in two years time this intimacy coordinator course will equip the entertainment world with new professionals with the right skills to ask questions about best working practices when it comes to intimate content and to create safe and open spaces for the actors involved. especially women. For us viewers, there is hope that sexuality will return to film as an integral part of the story, and with it real films about adult relationships.
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