I’ll admit it: as the screening of The Bi Apple at the Anthology Film Archives on last Tuesday approached, I became increasingly apprehensive.
This was partly because the screening was to occur on my first night back in NYC, on which I really wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole with delivered eats, pajamas, my boyfriend and some teevee. But more than that, it was because I was having a lot of doubt about the validity of showing The Bi Apple in the context of the Anthology Film Archives, and as part of their New Filmmakers series. This movie house, although avant garde, is not a porno palace. And I, though technically a writer, producer, and director of a feature (most of the footage may be fucking, but it has a discernable plot), am a pornographer, not a lofty Filmmaker.
Feature or no, me as auteur or no, The Bi Apple was made to inspire masturbation – and instant gratification whenever possible. Say what you want about porno and its place in the sociological gender and sexuality experiment of society, but I want people to have orgasms to my movie. Porno is a valid form of film, but watched out of context (meaning: without your hands down your pants) it is pretty goddamn boring, and I mean that of pretty much any porno.
Like a total loser and jaded person who has seen this movie a trillion times, I cut out of the screening after listening to the star, Simone Valentino, read a dirty story and doing a bit of an introduction myself, so I didn’t get to experience the feel in the room while the movie was screening. The scant reports I’ve gotten from the screening have been positive – some viewers were even very naughty, bucking social conventions like don’t touch your friend’s genitals in a respectable movie theater. However, I’m still not convinced that its a grand idea to watch porno in a context not meant for masturbating, and though its a novelty to watch porn all civilized-like in an arthouse movie theater, I’m not sure that it’s liberating or important. I’m beginning to see more and more of the valuable differences between public and private spaces, and while I definitely enjoy fucking with them, I do kind of think its pretending to put porno in the same category as theater-worthy narrative or experimental film.
12:08 pm
Congrats on your screening Dacia!
I think the idea of sex on film seems to be caught up in the notion that either: A) You can show sex, so long as it’s not about arousing the audience, or B) If you hope that the audience will get aroused, then your film has failed if the audience doesn’t drop everything and start wanking or fucking immediately.
In either case, a film must be either type A to every single person who watches it, or it must be type B to every single person who watches it.
This, it seems to me, is a rather limited and limiting understanding of how people respond to film, and how people respond sexually.
A film with sex in it doesn’t have to be arousal free (No one got a hardon!) to be theater-worthy narrative. Conversely, a film that might be watched with wanky gusto in private might also offer a worthwhile, wank-free viewing experience when screened for a public audience.
Beyond that, a film might be all of these things or none of them, depending on who is watching it, and where they’re watching.
I’m sure there are people who enjoyed the screening of “Bi Apple” in the wank-free theatrical context, and will go buy the DVD and enjoy watching it at home where the viewing will be more, shall we say, motivational.
4:18 pm
I have not gone to an adult theatre where the expectation is to get off, but I have been tempted. The knowledge that I’d have cum hitting me left and right is a bit much for me. But I would like to see what the energy is like at such a public and communal sex movie going experience and compare it to seeing sex scenes in mainstream movies at a regular theatre. Those ones often make me uncomfortable. Kind of weird since I am used to being sexual in public. I haven’t quite figured it all out.
3:09 am
[...] Aug 25th, 2007 by Miss Jane However surprising it is, I do have my own antiporn issues. And I wouldn’t even think about them if Audacia haven’t posted an entry titled How to watch porn. As usually, when it comes to my very random brain, my actual thoughts had nothing to do with the blog. Instead I thought that while I do enjoy watching porn (especially well done porn), I realized that at the same time I really hate it. [...]