fucking art

I've started watching the IFC series Indie Sex on DVD. The first installment is about censorship and covers many of the same issues discussed in Kirby Dick's hilarious and disturbing documentary about the MPAA, The Film Has Not Yet Been Rated (the one I wrote about here) . I must note, however, that Indie Sex is, perhaps, a little kinder to the Jack Valenti and his band of suburban Los Angeleno hausfrau harpies than Dick is. A few big deal directors and actors confess that they're willing to sacrifice their artistic freedoms for "the protection of the children" (as though kids aren't all playing grab-ass every time we turn our backs anyway)-- and they insist that the MPAA serves a purpose and isn't expressly evil. But nonetheless, the show is worth watching.

The first episode opens with a quotation from Picasso: "Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art."

I had not heard this quotation before, and yet, I think it addresses a very relevant crux. On my last post, my dutiful Republican heckler said, "A bound-Asian chick hanging with her ta-tas exposed ... that's art?!" ... to which I thought, well... yeah!

I don't think Picasso was using the word "chaste" with the strictly sexual connotation it implies when used vernacularly, but rather to point out that art that risks nothing isn't really doing the job that art is supposed to do-- that being, challenging the public consciousness-- a decidedly unchaste act. And as a result of the inherently risk-taking nature of art, and the social anxiety surrounding all that relates to human bodily pleasure, art and fucking tend to make pretty compelling ... uh... forgive me... bedfellows. Right?

My heckler also mentioned Monet and Manet (in a tired, lazy-ass Seinfeld reference, I must point out) and called them artistes important, especially in comparison to photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Now, I have an Araki poster on my wall at home (It's a close-up of a mouth, turned sideways. However, it's so abstracted and decontextualized that my mother asked me if it was somebody's asshole (giggle)) and would probably sooner gag myself to the point of daily puking (even being as vomit-phobic as I am) before I stuck some pleasant impressionistic water lilies on my wall. But that's simply a matter of taste. It's not because I deny that artists like Monet and Manet were breaking myriad rules (and thereby making, yes, IMPORTANT contributions to their field) by the standards of their day. Monet was laughed out of galleries for his mushy, blurry flowers and glowing hourly renditions of Notre Dame. The Manet painting below, with its naked woman staring obliquely (defiantly?) at the viewer, was rejected from the Paris Salon as much for its rough and sketchy rendering as it was for its immodest depiction of the female form.


Art is, by definition, rule-breaking. If my posting a picture of a Japanese girl strung up by her tits breaks one of your rules, Joe, well then... good! It's doing its job.

I'd also like to offer up a second quotation from Frederico Fellini, also by way of the Indie Sex show: "Censorship is advertising paid by the government."

It is one of the great ironies of human nature that the more we try to police our appetites, the curiouser and curiouser we get about the excessive varieties of methods through which we can sate those appetites. As much as I'd like to say that censorship is a conservative impulse in the proactive parlance of our government today, I know that's not actually true. Misguided "feminists" seek to ban pornography. Radio and television personalities are culturally hushed on a regular basis for their "hate speech" (sentiments with which I most often find uproarious, but for which I would NEVER seek legislation that might deny these folks their rights to voice their offensive and bullshitty opinions in the first place). But nonetheless, when it comes to regulating sexual imagery in art, in film, in text, it's usually a Republican (Scalia, anyone?) behind the initiative. And that'll keep me voting for the other guys every time.

Fortunately, in spite of conservative, fearful-of-sex attitudes, Fellini's quip tends to hold true. Government-fueled outrage is an excellent vehicle by which the masses are carried into arthouse theaters. And that's a fantastic boon for underfunded art-smut (my favorite kind of art-- and my favorite kind of smut).

On that note, allow me to direct my fair reader(s) to FGT (F/thyGorgeousTh/ings), a soon-to-be site full of prurient things with an eye to the aesthetic. The two women (my oft-quoted debauchette and another sex-worker-blogger, Kasia) behind the site alternately call its contents "postmodern porn" (a designation that strikes me as a little dated... wasn't postmodernism replaced with... what? the post-ironic age? in the mid-90s? Or, at least, most certainly, when everyone lost their senses of humor when NYC was attacked in 2001?) or "art porn". Regardless of what they call it, I find it notable that the erotic and the artistically sublime are ascending to such blended, interspersed prominence, in these, our internet fora.

With sloppy, ugly porn so available, where's the creative risk in making fucking pretty again, I might ask? As this website develops, we shall see, I have no doubt.

Dick sticks it to the MPAA

The documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated has been out on DVD for some time. It's really quite remiss of me to have waited for so long to see it. And so, please consider this post to be an unapologetic plug for this film. Add it to your NetFlix queue IMMEDIATELY. And, it has to be NetFlix because Blockbuster doesn't carry it. Why? Because Blockbuster doesn't carry NC-17 films. Yes, this is an NC-17 documentary!!! And it was, undoubtedly, granted such a rating because it's a scathing indictment of the very organization that hands down those ratings-- the Motion Picture Association of America, or, as I like to think of them, The Uptight Soulless Suburban Los Angeleno Housewifely Sellout Association of America. The USSLAHSAA--- that's not a difficult-to-remember acronym at all, is it?

In any case, this documentary tackles a number of topics near and dear to this blog-- everything from why sex is perceived as scarier than senseless violence out there in the wilds of America to why the fact that those with lots of money are in a position to silence voices saying important things is actually a whole lot scarier than any sex act could ever be.

Also, I highly recommend watching all the bonus materials on the DVD. In the deleted scenes section, there's an extended interview with Baltimore's own, John Waters. I've said it before and I'll say it now: thank god for John Waters. In his discussion of how most movie ratings are predicated on the fears and anxieties of the nameless, faceless, Republican scaredy cats on the ratings boards of the MPAA, he says (I wrote it down, so I think this is a pretty accurate quotation) "Hollywood would show spread eagle pink if they could. We all would!" and then, extending the thought a minute later, "One of the main reasons people go to the movies is to see people naked!" And I don't know about you guys but that's sure why I go to the movies! Well, that and to understand the psychology and sociology behind why people like getting naked, of course...

And then there's a little short with director Kirby Dick taking Qs and making As in a Q&A session that's also well worth watching. At the end of it, he discusses how there are studies that show how depictions of graphic yet consequenceless violence are proving to be detrimental to our psyches and yet there hasn't been a single study that shows how depictions of graphic, pleasurable sex have similar effects. He speculates that maybe teenagers could perhaps stand learn about humanity through the viewing of sex. The last thing he says in the Q&A is, "You know, more sex, I think is... (and here, he kinda shrugs and smirks (and he's cute and articulate and has nice dimples)) ...better!"

From his mouth to the gods' ears.