Years ago, Terry Southern (unappreciated genius that he was) wrote BLUE MOVIE in which a Kubrick-like director assembled an all-star cast and a first rate scriptwriter to make what was a XXX-rated film that was at the same time a fucking great movie.
If someone wanted to do this for serious, would it be possible to make a great movie consisting mainly of hard-core skin-on-skin sex scenes, held together with well-acted and sensitively written lines, such that it would be viewable by people not looking for sexual stimulation?
I admit, I’m a sucker for this type of question. I’ve always wanted to write a piece of fiction that would be readable by idiots waiting in checkout lines perusing magazines while they chewed their gum that would be appreciated on a whole nother level by pointed-headed academics sipping their Perrier with Bartok playing softly in the background.
Not so much if such a movie could get made (who knows?) but do you think it could be aesthetically pleasing while also satisfactorily functioning as porn? Would the things that make it watchable as a movie distract necessarily from the porn? Would the porn parts degrade the aesthetics?
I’m pretty sure there have been plenty of movies made like this already. Wasn’t Short Bus pretty pornographic but was a very artsy, well received movie?
That’s exactly the movie I was going to suggest. I usually call that movie ‘porn with a plot’. It’s actually a very good movie, but when I recommend it, I usually give people a head’s up since it’s most (all? some? it’s been a while since I’ve seen it) of the actual unsimulated sex is gay sex. Shortbus trailer SFW
As to the question asked in the title, I would argue that all pornography is inherently art. A somewhat crude and simple form of art, perhaps, but definitely art.
Plenty of porn is art; more I think in still pictures than in film or stories. Film & stories engender a rush to get to the sex and tends to result in the non-sex aspects being skimped on; with a still, there’s by nature more focus on the single scene being shown. Also it’s a cultural and economic thing I think; more people who make pornographic still pictures are trying to make them artistic, and more of them are skilled hobbyists doing it for fun and not a quick buck.
I’ve usually heard the distinction made more as a gender thing; “if men like it, it’s porn; if women like it, it’s erotica”. And the related idea that porn is evil, and erotica is good.
This reminds me of the modern art threads, where folks argue about whether some lines on a canvas is art (answer, IMHO…yes, if someone things it is). Same goes here. Is artistic porn possible? Well, depends on who is looking. IMHO, it’s not only possible, but there are plenty of examples of it. All in the eyes of the beholder.
Porn isn’t, like, an actual thing. Like treason that prospers, if something’s artistic, I think people would hesitate to call it porn, so in that sense, artistic porn is not really possible.
On the other hand, people can spank it to anything. Ask anyone who was a teenager pre-Internet who had an anatomy textbook.
In the Realm of the Senses (Ai No Corrida) is, in my opinion, "[a] great movie consisting mainly of hard-core skin-on-skin sex scenes, held together with well-acted and sensitively written lines, such that it would be viewable by people not looking for sexual stimulation? " Beautiful women. And the technology, filming, editing and that sort of thing, as perfect as you are going to see.
If it is truly art, then it’s not pornography. I have no doubt that the right director, cast, and crew could make skin on skin into a work of art “with redeeming value.” But who gets to decide what is art? Movie critics? The government?
I once saw a t-shirt on a director that said, “I am not afraid of art.” I liked his attitude.
If it is art or something helpful or informative, then it has a “redeeming value to society.” If you take a group of pornographic stills, put them in a book without comment, then whatever is pornographic to begin with remains pornogpraphy. If you put in helpful scientific commentary under each photo, then the book has redeeming value. It also has value if it is artistically photographed. Frankly, I think it has value if it is sexually arousing unless it is child pornography. I’m not the one who gets to actually pass judgment except for myself.
If someone decided that “She walks in beauty like the night…” is “pornography” because it causes arousal, generally most people would probably disagree. If the word “she” were to be declared pornographic, then so would shoes, lips, freckles, sultry voices…
BTW, DT, I find that quote about “if men like it” and “if women like it” to be terribly sexist and wrong. I don’t fault you with posting it though – since it was made up by someone else.
