Everybody loves sex
While it may be that Everybody Loves Raymond, does everyone actually love sex, as film director Gaspar Noe said at the Cannes Film Festival the other day?:
“I have friends who love money, some who love coke, some who love cinema, but the common point is that everyone loves having sex,” the Paris-based director said at a press conference.
“So why is it so poorly represented in cinema? It’s to do with commercial and legal pressures,” he added.
Noe’s latest film was the hot ticket on the French Riviera, with hundreds trying to squeeze their way into the midnight screening on Wednesday night.
“Love” leaves nothing to the imagination as it tells the story of a young couple’s tempestuous love affair, featuring over a dozen extremely graphic unsimulated sex scenes, including close-up ejaculations, swingers’ clubs, a threesome and a transvestite prostitute.
Asked why he felt the need to show such explicit scenes, the Argentine-born Noe said, “I was making a film about love, not about Swiss banks or Scientology.”
Pornography has always been with us. But few people have ever thought pornography was about love. There is indeed an audience—a vast one—for explicit sex. But it didn’t used to be in the regular film industry. Now that everything goes, I suppose films such as Noe’s were inevitable.
Love and sex may go together like a horse and carriage, but not necessarily and not always. People sometimes love and yet aren’t that keen for sex. And it’s an indisputable fact that people sometimes engage in sex without love—it’s not for nothing that prostitution is called “the oldest profession.” What’s more, some people find sex, even with someone they love, either difficult, distasteful, painful, uninspiring, dull, or frightening. And some have little or no sex drive at all.
But that’s not really the issue. Even for those who do love sex, does that mean they necessarily love watching actors engage in it on the big screen? The answer is a resounding “no” (not “Noe”). Noe’s film probably will get many viewers because of its novelty and excitement factor, as well as curiosity, but if it’s anything like HBO’s “Tell Me You Love Me,” it will be a big snooze when it’s not busy being an embarrassment.
I watched “Tell Me You Live Me” out of curiosity and also because it was supposedly about the lives and relationships of several couples who were in sex therapy. I believe the sex was somewhat simulated, but the viewer certainly was treated to a lot of nudity, including male organs and what certainly appeared to be sex. I found myself fast forwarding through the sex scenes in order to get to the dialogue, which for the most part was equally boring and embarrassing. I ended up feeling sorry for the actors, although perhaps they were rather proud of themselves.
In answer to Noe’s question as to why sex is so poorly represented in cinema, I would answer that it’s because most of those who want to watch pornography want to watch pornography, not an art film. And most of those (particularly the female portion of the viewing public) who want to watch a film about a love affair don’t really want to watch a lot of actual sex up on the big screen mixed with that love affair dialogue. There’s something called privacy, and something called the power of the imagination.
There also used to be something called community standards of modesty and decency, but we won’t even talk about that anymore.
[NOTE: I would add that it’s interesting to see the other things Noe lists as being what his friends love besides sex: money, coke, and cinema.]
One of the sexist moments in a movie: Patricia O’Neal taking her shoes off after asking John Wayne in “In Harms Way” if they have the room alone for the night. “Well then…” she says after slipping her shoe off. Wayne replies, “Well then…” Fade to black. The smile on her face says it all…and I’ve been in love with her every since. 🙂
The imagination is a powerful thing. Modern Hollywood has lost its ability to tease that out of us.
So why is it (having sex) so poorly represented in cinema?”
There is a big porn industry that does nothing but photograph people having sex. Years ago I was helping clean out a store that had gone out of business and found a big box of porn videos. I took a few of them home to see what they were like. They become boring very quickly. It’s difficult to tell an interesting story when the whole thing is about having sex.
Maybe some of the excitement is over seeing known actors having sex (tapping into the celebrity obsession culture)?
My problem with watching the more explicit scenes is I am thinking “Gee, must be weird for the actress to be having that dude [put his mouth there, stick his hand there].”
When I saw this, it only confirmed my opprobrium for all things “Hollywood”. Years ago when I read Anna Karenina, I was amazed at how the subject of passion and adultery could be so penetratingly presented without any smut. This kind of debauchery seems to fit well with the present cultural/political circumstances we live in. The Weimar Republic as depicted in Cabaret.
I agree with Neo that based on the description this film is nothing but porn. Not that porn is all bad, but porn has been around for many years – so why all the hype? I’d say the mainstream film makers are getting desperate if porn is all they have left to draw an audience. The left love to push the boundaries, but there are few boundaries left to push. Where will they go next to push the boundaries – perhaps they will follow the lead by ISIS and will produce snuff movies?
Sexuality has become politics. What good is ever achieved by making private matters public? When sexuality morphs into porn, society suffers. In so many ways we are on the eve of self – destruction.
… perhaps they will follow the lead by ISIS and will produce snuff movies?…
Sniff movies for the moment. Here, Allison Williams Got Her Ass Eaten and then rammed while Daddy was watchin’ …
Bread and circuses ….
1) Hypocrisy when wisely used is a good thing for society, especially when it comes to sex.
2) Sex is different for men and women.
3) Without suggesting any deeper implications, sex is a ridiculous physical act, appearing more ridiculous with age.
4) The sex saturation of the West is a bad thing, it has assumed too central a role.
5) Modesty in general and sexual modesty in particular is gone, and that is a bad thing.
6) In truth, the pleasure derived from sex is so ephemeral, and so basic a bodily function, its celebration is absurd, beyond the knowing recognition of its undeniable power, its mysterious role in love, and its necessity for procreation.
7) In truth, much of sex nowadays is sheer exploitation of another human being.
for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden….
Anni Ultimi
The Emperor he served … Nero.
Yes, character does matter when it comes to sex, as well as old age and everything else in life.
Categorical thinking is the enemy of character, the disprover of character.
The categorical approach to sex speaks for itself.
This is cinematic and thematic navel-gazing. Like making a 7 course meal from nothing but desserts.
I find myself fast forwarding through many of the gratuitous sex scenes in books. Really is explicit sex ever pertinent to the real issue of the book, unless the issue is the sex? I don’t think so. I feel the character interaction emotionally told in words and description of feelings is so much better than a play by play sex act.
I have not seen many movies, or any for that matter, lately, so I cannot comment on any recent ones.
Tonawanda, thanks for that excerpt with Socrates and Cephalus. Nice touch to this otherwise somewhat sordid subject. (the movie, not sex) The old gents conversation reminds me of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in their old age conversing through pre-pony-express correspondence.
Bravo, Tonawanda, for the philosophical musings of Socrates and Cephalus as well as your personal observations. Old age ain’t for sissies, but losing lust and learning what love is really all about is certainly one of its blessings.
I guess “everybody loves sex” means something
quite different to emotionally balanced people & Gaspar Noe !
It does seem to me that these people (Noe et al.) are ever more frantically stimulating themselves, while they lose sight of the transcendence in life. They think this is the way to have peak experiences, I guess.
Most of them have no idea of true eroticism, which is the whole orchestra playing together, not just the bull fiddles….
Not long ago, I said to my dad (85 years old) that I thought it was terribly sad that the kids don’t date any more, they just “hook up,” and added that it was especially bad for the girls.
“It’s bad for the boys, too,” he said seriously; “bad for their character, bad for their hearts.”
Our mother, who died in 2009, said that it’s up to us women to lift men to our moral level when it comes to sex — never to sink to theirs (ahem!).
There’s something to that: women traditionally have been the boundary- and standards-setters. It was tough to do even when our culture supported it, especially when you were in love; but now that the Left has turned the public square into a nonstop bacchanal, it’s almost impossible for a teenage girl to hold any lines.
This is what the Left wants,
all the sexual *choices* you can possibly fill your life up with.
Followed by US Gov supplied weed, so you will always *vote* for your *needs*.
The fall of Rome revisited.
coke or Coke(TM) ?
Frog:
Small “c” for “coke.”
I think Pagalina said that lesbian / feminist porn was awful because it attempted to be arty, and the usual male porn that was strait up sex was better.
If I’m gonna watch a movie with a story I want an interesting story and don’t need explicit sex. If I’m gonna watch porn I want porn.
snuff movies
Documentaries about the abortion industry?
Can you imagine the Democrats, progressive liberals/libertines, popular human and civil rights groups, generational feminists, and others with a sincerely held belief in sacrificial rites in the dock at the ICC? The privacy veil will never be drawn back while people’s integrity and conscience are suppressed by secular opiates.
Beverly – your Mom was a great lady, I’ll bet. That’s sound advice for a young lady and true today as well, albeit the “nonstop bacchanal” doth make it more difficult.
Apropos this topic, “Fifty Shades of Grey” recently appeared as a film and now is out in video.
While I ignored the novels, I did see the film – two years too late, methinks.
In it’s broadest sense, the well-worn subject of D/s in literary porn is done creditably. I expected worse than the viewer got, I believe.
It was a helpful ‘teaser’ for why some significant segment in BDSM are somehow damaged or different than most of us. The viewer can thus grow in empathy, even as erotic horizons or range is expanded.
I expect the worse in the film because now self-made billionaire has so muc time “to play” at so young an age….well, until the Facebook age and Mark Zuckerburg came along. (Oh, and he’s much too good-looking. But this is Hollywood…MOVE along!)
“Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult…” – if I remember my Rilke correctly.
What was true a century ago, remains true today. If life and the pursuit of happiness was simple, we’d all be as glib as game-show hosts and self-fulfillment would be trite. We aren’t, and it isn’t.
Thank you, neo (Jean), for changing the subject from those dispiriting matters that absorb us too much, and too much away from the finer and finest experiences in life, like love and sex.
For further reading: “The Closing of the American Mind” by Alan Bloom.
Capn Rusty:
For further reading, this.
Wow! A number of years ago my niece was looking through a box of stuff I had held onto and she came upon a colleged handbook we were given in our freshman year which was 1961-1962. She was astonished at all of the rules and regs and couldn’t believe that life was so restrictive. I said to her that back then, in order to be rebellious, all we had to do was smoke in our room or wear bermudas on campus on a week day. Her generation had to rob a bank. I think that this generation has no options that do not include porn or suicide bombing. God help us.
For the sake of completeness of a sort, and the doubling back, Prof. Bloom’s teacher Leo Strauss’ course on the Republic (1957) is recently available at U. Chicago Leo Strauss Center for free download. Bloom’s own translation of the Republic is very good too.
It’s funny about Strauss’ course that he begins with the relation of Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae to the Republic, where, if we look, we’ll see the protagonist Praxagora looking quite a bit like little miss Lena Dunham of Girls fame. But see for yourselves.
Further along our doubling back to eros, Strauss’ course on Plato’s Symposium is also available to us, thanks to the efforts of another of Strauss’ students, Seth Bernardete.
In Europe it’s always about 1975.
Like music, the performance can be highly repetitive and this is far more stimulating for the performers than for the audience.
You know, given the success of Fifty Shades of Gray — the book, at least — and the wild success of “mommy porn” now that it can be obtained on a Kindle without the cover showing, I’m not sure I buy the notion that women don’t want explicit sex.
I also remember seeing an art film in Germany long ago — 30 years, I guess — that was pretty explicit and replaced actual human sex with definitely unsimulated horse sex.
I’m suspicious the European audience may not quite be as you think them to be.
This is why we are reading Trollope now.
Sooo….come here often??
Pathetic, when an entire civilization thinks their propaganda used to control them is entertainment. They get what they deserve and they will never aspire to anything better when they are satisfied with what they got now.