TFT 101 / MP3 30.2mb / 1hr 3min / DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
2012: IMDB / on TFT: Oh 2012, What Is It About You That Makes Me Love You So? – 2012 – Raising Arizona Mashup
ANTICHRIST: IMDB / on TFT: Antichrist Poster Mashup / at The Belcourt
GAIA: IMDB / OFFICIAL SITE / on TFT: Film & Spirit: An Invitation
THE COOLER: The Demonizing (of) Armond White
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You know, we like to be friendly round here, but if you’ve been in the The Film Talk neighbourhood for any length of time, you’ll also know that we often grieve the lack of imagination in most films. Robots kill some people/people kill more robots; abs-ridden guy meets cute girl/conflict/unification; bloke changes, you know the deal. So it’s a pleasant surprise to see ‘Turning Green’, your none-too-typical American boy grows up in a small West of Ireland village/competes with the local gangster by selling porn magazines (illegal in the eyes of the State and shameful in the eyes of the Church)/and makes witty comments about what’s wrong with the land of my birth while Timothy Hutton, an actor I like a great deal, snarls at him from under a pork pie hat.
Just finished watching Gregg Helvey’s 2006 USC student documentary, ‘Overexposed’, about the arguably corrosive effect pornography has on men’s sexuality and it got me to thinking: what responsibility do we image makers have when it comes to portraying the erotic in our mediums?
In this Pinewood Dialogues interview Werner Herzog says something to the effect that “unless you know the heart’s of men you have no right to make a film” – is the same true for erotica?
When I was eleven or twelve I spent a lot of time on my own in the TV capital of Holland: Hilversum, (never mind why I was there – the fact was I was alone and spent much time living in an artist’s studio). Being at that age I was sexually curious and my only pictorial companion in those matters was a book on ‘Renaissance Masters Drawings of the Female Nude’. This of course was very exciting and perhaps explains my fascination, extending into my teen years, with very curvy women. I felt at the time that the images in this book had immense power over me, (as mentioned in ‘Overexposed’ men’s response to sexual imagery includes ‘drive’, something apparently not found in most women). As an adult now planning to have children I can’t help but be concerned by the infinite amount of pornographic content available on the web for free.
So I ask: how is pornography affecting both men and women’s sexuality in the ‘post rise of the internet’ generation? And what responsibilities do the makers of erotic images have?
Overexposed touches on these matters only slightly, but it is a short film, and a student one to boot, so it can be forgiven for not giving a deep analysis.
It does offer one way forward though for film makers: at the end of the doc we have a non-sexual scene of intimacy between a couple – will this type of thing – intimacy presented in a postive, and glamorous way, be a possible way forward away from the current crass, limiting and destructive portrayal of sex in our society?
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