Thursday, February 24, 2011

The Kinsey Institute

It would be hard to overestimate the impact of the Kinsey Reports, and the Kinsey Institute, on changes in American sexual morality and behavior in the past 70 years or so. However controversial some shifts of behavior and beliefs may appear to be, Kinsey's fundamental message seems to have prevailed: Sexual behavior is more diverse than is generally acknowledged, and there is some wisdom in considering what people actually do, rather than what they say think they ought to do.



Fortunately, the Kinsey Institute, which is still the target of ideological attacks, maintains a public-information website, where you can look up the specific findings of the Kinsey reports and look for opportunities to participate in ongoing research.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Private Romeo - Official Trailer



Significant--maybe. Way artsy--yeah, looks like. Unspeakably silly--'fraid so.

Happy Valentine's Day, cinema-sex fiends. Hope you found your Romeo or Juliet--in fact, why not try one of each?

Sunday, February 13, 2011

"Monkey Nipples"

From today's New York Times: the paper's great film critic Manohla Dargis comments on the disappearance of really good sex from contemporary American films. Well worth reading as context for the whole of this course.


The Closing of the American Erotic
By MANOHLA DARGIS
February 12, 2011


Lenny Bruce used to ask why it was obscene to show sex in American movies but not violence. Fifty years later, our screens remain washed in red, with severed if not necessarily naked body parts. More than half of the mostly American titles that received R ratings last year contained some kind of violence (as in strong, bloody and “grisly bloody violence and torture”) while only a third had sexual content. No NC-17 ratings were handed out, which bar youngsters, the viewers the studios most lust after.

American filmmakers shy away from sex, 
especially the hot, sweaty kind

One film did receive an NC-17 last year, if only fleetingly: “Blue Valentine,” a bruising independent drama about a marriage that goes south starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. The scarlet letters were for what was vaguely described as “explicit sexual content,” words interpreted to mean that the ratings board had freaked out at the realism or perhaps intimacy of the sex, including an instance of oral sex and another scene in which the unhappy couple make uncomfortable, crushingly sad love. The movie’s combative distributor, Harvey Weinstein, successfully appealed the NC-17, and the rating was changed, without cuts, to an R (for its “strong graphic sexual content, language and a beating.”)


When I saw the original version of “Blue Valentine” at the Sundance Film Festival last year (the film was subsequently trimmed before it was rated), I wasn’t shocked by the sex — after all, it’s about two lovely young people who can’t keep their hands off each other — but I was startled. American characters — heterosexuals! — were having sex in a movie. Even at this pre-eminent independent festival, American filmmakers shy away from sex, especially the hot, sweaty kind. The old production code might have crumbled in the 1960s and couples can now share a bed, but the demure fade to black and the prudish pan — coitus interruptus via a crackling fire and underwear strewn across the floor — endures.

“this genuinely vile and disgusting Swedish meatball is 
pseudo-pornography at its ugliest and least titillating.”

The recent deaths of the actresses Lena Nyman and Maria Schneider were poignant, useful reminders that there was a time when Americans used to troop in droves to go watch serious or serious-enough movies, domestic and imported, in which sex mattered as much if not more than violence. Ms. Nyman, a theater student turned screen siren, starred in the notorious 1969 Swedish film “I Am Curious (Yellow)” and its less popular sequel released three years later, “I Am Curious (Blue).” Ms. Schneider remains best known for holding her own, sometimes naked, against a more coy Marlon Brando in “Last Tango in Paris,” the Bernardo Bertolucci landmark (and French-Italian coproduction) that forced audiences to regard butter in a new light much as Hitchcock’s “Psycho” had forced them to reconsider the shower.


After being banned and then cleared, “I Am Curious (Yellow)” opened to long lines and blockbuster business, reaping $5 million in six months. (Adjusted for inflation, that figure translates roughly into $35 million in today’s dollars.) The critics, professional and otherwise, staked out their turf: Writing for the defense in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called it a “wise, serious, sometimes deadpannedly funny movie about the politics of life.” Opposed, Rex Reed fumed that “this genuinely vile and disgusting Swedish meatball is pseudo-pornography at its ugliest and least titillating.” Norman Mailer said it was “one of the most important pictures I have ever seen in my life.” Judith Crist just found it “pretentious.”

“This must be the most powerfully erotic movie ever made.” 

“I Am Curious (Yellow),” about a young woman (Ms. Nyman) investigating Swedish social and political mores, sometimes by pushing boundaries and making love al fresco, wasn’t the first sexually explicit movie to shake up American screens. In the 1950s and into the 1960s foreign-language stars like Brigitte Bardot, Hollywood directors like Otto Preminger and avant-garde filmmakers like Jack Smith did their part to ready the audience for the imminent sex-screen revolution. By the time “Last Tango in Paris” first played in New York in 1972, naked breasts and butts if not always penises had jiggled across screens and “porno chic” had turned Linda Lovelace into a household name. Forbidden topics, deeds and blue words had entered the mainstream: “Monkey nipples,” Richard Burton had announced in 1966 in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”


Seen now, “Last Tango in Paris” — which centers on strangers who become something else after having sex every which way in an empty apartment — scarcely seems the landmark it was heralded as, including by a breathless Pauline Kael: “This must be the most powerfully erotic movie ever made.” What’s striking about the film, beyond that it was an American (X-rated and then R) hit, beyond Brando’s beauty and Ms. Schneider’s too-tender youth, is its blissfully unselfconscious sexism, its celebration of maudlin masculinity and warmed-over crazy chick clichés. If Ms. Schneider holds her own against Brando it’s largely because she’s at times full-frontal naked. This cinematic revolution was, like so much of art, built on the bared backs — among other fetishized body parts — of women.


At last, a film with sex and romance, pretty boys
and no Jennifer Aniston. 

The movies still exploit female bodies, though today American actresses working in the commercial mainstream rarely strip down past their undies. If they tend not to bare it all it isn’t because of feminist progress. Neo-Puritanism and the mainstreaming of pornography have played a role, as have corporate blockbusters aimed at teenage boys, with their sexless superheroes and disposable pretty women smiling on the sidelines. Mind you, there isn’t much for women to smile about when it comes to American film, where for the past few decades, the biggest hits have starred men in stories about and for men. Though every so often there is something for us too; after all, women helped make a success of “Brokeback Mountain” a few years ago. At last, a film with sex and romance, pretty boys and no Jennifer Aniston.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

The Sheik (1921) - with Rudolph Valentino



The plot of The Sheik is very different from that of Our Modern Maidens, but the mixed message about women and sexuality is the same.
Lady Diana Mayo (Agnes Ayres) is admired for her independence, high spirit and modern ideas, but when she is kidnapped by an Arab sheik, Ahmed Ben Hassan (Rudolph Valentino), she finds herself falling under the spell of his exotic masculinity. In the popular novel on which the film is based, Lady Diana learns to appreciate the sheik only after he takes her by force; in the film, he restrains himself and wins her with his consideration and respect for her. (When the film was re-released during the Code years, a scene of attempted rape had to be cut.)

Even so, the character of the sheik is recast for the film as the child of European parents, adopted by an Arab sheik; anti-miscegenation laws of the time would have precluded scenes suggesting romance and kisses between a European lady and an Arab man. The film was banned in Kansas City all the same.

The Sheik was crucial to Valentino's career as the greatest male sex symbol of the time--and created a huge backlash among American men, who boycotted the film and railed against the "effeminacy" of his screen image. He died at 31 in 1926, setting off a mass outpouring of grief among American women that was a significant moment in the history of Hollywood's power over the public imagination.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Our Modern Maidens - After the wedding



Right after the wedding, Billie discovers Kentucky in tears, and puts it all together: Kentucky is pregnant by Gil! She resolves to free Gil by pretending that she herself is a fallen woman.
Note the gay friend who comes forward, offering to stand by Billie when everyone else spurns her (at the end of this clip). As Vito Russo shows in The Celluloid Closet, such clearly gay characters--especially sympathetically portrayed, as here--virtually disappeared from Hollywood movies under the Code. Now, of course, they're a recognized convention.

Heiress Billie Brown, (Crawford), is engaged to marry her long-time sweetheart, budding diplomat, Gil Jordan, (Fairbanks). When Billie goes to see senior diplomat, Glenn Abbott, (La Rocque), about ensuring that Gil get a favorable assignment, Billie and Glenn are undeniably attracted to one another. Gil is likewise attracted to Kentucky Strafford, (Page), Billie's houseguest, who becomes pregnant by Gil. Gil finds that he loves Kentucky, but marries Billie instead. Once Gil finds that Billie really loves Glenn and Billie finds that Gil loves Kentucky, their marriage is annulled and both are paired up with the people they truly love.
-Wikipedia synopsis.

Our Modern Maidens - Billie and Glenn



When Glenn realizes Billie has been using him, he takes his revenge by pretending to believe she is as "modern" as she says, and then rejecting her. The scene exemplifies the great paradox of sexual innocence and seduction in Hollywood cinema: A woman is insulted if a man attempts to seduce her, and just as insulted if he doesn't want to.

Heiress Billie Brown, (Crawford), is engaged to marry her long-time sweetheart, budding diplomat, Gil Jordan, (Fairbanks). When Billie goes to see senior diplomat, Glenn Abbott, (La Rocque), about ensuring that Gil get a favorable assignment, Billie and Glenn are undeniably attracted to one another. Gil is likewise attracted to Kentucky Strafford, (Page), Billie's houseguest, who becomes pregnant by Gil. Gil finds that he loves Kentucky, but marries Billie instead. Once Gil finds that Billie really loves Glenn and Billie finds that Gil loves Kentucky, their marriage is annulled and both are paired up with the people they truly love.
-Wikipedia synopsis

Our Modern Maidens - The Seven 'Leven



The world depicted in Our Modern Maidens (1929) was collapsing even as the film was completing production--the Depression ended the era of flappers and college hijinks. Audiences soon lost their taste for stories of the carefree rich. And within a year of the introduction of sound in 1927, they would no longer go to silent pictures. (Our Modern Maidens was filmed without sound, music and sound effects being added later.)
The film's treatment of sexuality is typical of the period: The audience is teased with the image of a woman who is daring and "modern," and refuses to be bound by conventional morality. But of course it's a pose. The female lead can't be allowed to be a truly "bad" girl. Still, there are several elements that would never have gotten past the Code a few years later.

Heiress Billie Brown, (Joan Crawford), is engaged to marry her long-time sweetheart, budding diplomat, Gil Jordan, (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). When Billie goes to see senior diplomat, Glenn Abbott, (Rod La Rocque), about ensuring that Gil get a favorable assignment, Billie and Glenn are undeniably attracted to one another. Gil is likewise attracted to Kentucky Strafford, (Anita Page), Billie's houseguest, who becomes pregnant by Gil. Gil finds that he loves Kentucky, but marries Billie instead. Once Gil finds that Billie really loves Glenn and Billie finds that Gil loves Kentucky, their marriage is annulled and both are paired up with the people they truly love.
-Wikipedia synopsis

In this early scene, Billie sets out to fascinate Glenn because she believes he can advance her fiance Gil's diplomatic career.

Old Wives for New - Cecil B. DeMille, 1918



DeMille became famous making slightly provocative films about beautiful women and "modern" love affairs. In Old Wives for New, Charles Murdock feels trapped in an unhappy marriage. His wife Sophy has "let herself go" and takes no interest in the world beyond her home. On a camping trip he meets the fascinating Juliet Raeburn, a beautiful young self-made woman he feels is his true soulmate. When rumors circulate that Charles has found a lover, he throws suspicion upon a less reputable woman who has pursued him in order to spare Juliet from social disgrace.

A Kiss in the Tunnel - G. A. Smith, 1899



A Kiss in the Tunnel was made in Britain, not the US, but films circulated very widely internationally before the introduction of sound, and especially in the very early years, when French, British, Danish and Italian film-making practices strongly influence Americans. What's notable about this film is that it appears to be the first instance of using edits to give the viewer the sense of seeing into a private, hidden space--a technique that conveys obvious sexual metaphors.

Sandow - Edison Studio, 1894



Another early film displays the male form. Eugen Sandow is said to have been the first body-builder.

The Kiss - Edison Studio, 1896



One of the first short films to create a sensation. "The Kiss" allowed viewers across the country to view the climactic moment that had electrified audiences on the New York stage.