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Destricted Film Review

In Destricted, erotica and art intersect in a beautiful and arousing way.

By Filthy StaffPublished 8 years ago 7 min read
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The short film series Destricted gathers an impressive roster of arthouse and avant-garde directors to turn over oft asked, but seldom fruitfully answered, questions about the divisions, mutilations, and commingling of art and pornography.

Erotic art is often decried as porn for its illicit content and perceived objectification of bodies, but can pornography be art? Thinking about what constitutes a piece of art, Tabatha Leggett defines it as something which "...prompts an emotional response in its viewer; gives them pleasure; grants them the satisfaction of appreciating a work well done; allows them to feel they’re communicating with the mind of the artist; and encourages them to develop an attitude towards the attitude that it asserts." A decent porno could surely tick all these boxes. Shame there aren’t enough of them around.

So how did Destricted fare in its attempts to say something profound about this well-farrowed intersection? According to the makers, the collection intends to "highlight controversial issues about the representation of sexuality in art, opening up for debate the question of whether art can be disguised as pornography or whether pornography can be disguised as art." Each short explores modern sexuality in its own way, and meets this goal more or less effectively than its counterparts.

Balkan Erotic Epic by Marina Abramović

Pioneering Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović is no stranger to testing the limits of the body as a tool for provocation and innovation. In fact, she’s made a very successful career out of it. Her short investigates "thoroughly researched" and amusingly presented Balkan fertility rituals. Abramović narrates in glasses and a pseudo-academic tone, as we see a procession of bizarre and entertaining NSFW customs. Men fuck holes in bridges to prepare for their marriage night, women run amok with their skirts up exposing themselves to the elements to… we confess, we forget the cultural connotations of that one. The eroticism of this short connects its subjects to nature, the Gods and some higher purpose… and it is funny. Sex can be hilarious, a fact not enough high-brow material on the subject acknowledges, and the light and celebratory nature of this romp of a short has a liberating and empowering feel.

House Call by Richard Prince

Richard Prince's film takes cuts from classic and commercial 70s porn on his television and re-edits them with a warped soundtrack. What was once two gaudy and uninteresting sequences—a woman oiling up her breasts to sunbathe followed by a doctor’s visit that leads to intercourse—becomes strangely beautiful. The colors, slow-motion, and repetition are all rather other-worldly and disorientating yet also tender, intimate, and very human. When they actually get down to it, everything is disturbingly close-up, increasing that feel of intimacy. The viewer is acutely aware of their own voyeurism and the voyeuristic nature of pornography in general.

Sync by Marco Brambilla

Marco Brambilla also works with found footage and re-editing but this (very short) short could not have a more different feel from Prince’s languid piece. He has spliced together split-second images (assumingly from commercial porn) of couples, clinches, positions, pleasure, and climax, against the fierce soundtrack of a frenetic drum solo. This combination creates one continuous, but deeply confusing and intense sex scene. The breakneck pace and collage of explicitness is certainly intense and there is something in it that speaks of the passion and spirit of real sexuality, a feat that normal porn seldom manages to achieve.

Hoist by Matthew Barney

Let us call a spade a spade. Matthew Barney's short is the kind of short that, unless you are formidably esoteric, you are likely to struggle to put meaning to. Obscure and baffling, it is genuinely very hard to elicit any meaning from this documentary-like footage of heavy machinery, interspersed with some madness in which a man pleasures himself against some other kind of (less heavy) machinery.

Impaled by Larry Clark

Larry Clark is a man of conflicted emotional responses. We think we love him but, after seeing Impaled, we are not entirely sure. Like Kids (his 1995 shocker about NYC teenagers, made with Harmony Korine) it is gritty, uncomfortable, and exceedingly voyeuristic. The basic premise is that Clark, after posting an ad online, invites a set of young men (he sure hasn’t lost his knack for finding goofy looking, awkward weirdos) to have sex with a hot porn star of their choice. He gets them in a suitably unsuitable office room and interviews them about their sexual fantasies, porn habits, and—of apparent fascination—how they choose to shave their nether regions. The participants undress (lumberingly), interview a set of porn stars (unimaginatively), and then all divulge that their top secret, number one fantasy is anal. We then have to sit through the excruciatingly embarrassing sight of a 40-year-old hot mama faking it somewhat unconvincingly.

We will never forgive Larry Clark for putting us through this. This discussion about male fantasy and sexuality and its corruption through cheap and deadening pornography becomes difficult to view. We have to wonder whether it would have been more effective if he had made it easier to watch.

Death Valley by Sam Taylor-Wood

A man walks into the desert and has a rather strenuous wank for 8 minutes and 25 seconds. That. Is. It. The film is said to challenge "our cultural stigmatism attached to self-stimulation, and the condition of guilt weighed against the clear erotic value, relief, and need." Sure it does. Many viewers were not convinced, considering Death Valley neither good art nor good pornography. One of the most notable comments came from an unimpressed Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) has to say about this segment—"Sam Taylor Wood deserves some sort of Asbo for her film of a bloke choking the chicken alone in the desert, while making unattractive gurning faces."

We Fuck Alone by Gaspar Noé

Bad boy provocateur of French cinema Gaspar Noé is no stranger to explicit themes and adult content. His staggering violent rape scene in Irreversible (2002) is still written about as one of the nastiest and most shocking depictions of sexual violence in cinema history. We Fuck Alone is full of the empty motifs of shock but lacks some of the punch of some of Noé’s earlier work. The throbbing bass line and strobe lighting add a level of menace, but the gender role stereotypes of the finale detract from the overall work. The predictable cliche of the girl going for her teddy bear and slamming it into her crotch whilst the bloke shoves a gun in the mouth of a sex doll may be more artfully produced, but is no less predictable and gender-assumptive than mainstream porn.

Four Letter Heaven by Cecily Brown

There are many different ways of getting to heaven. Brown likes to explore the different sexual ways of achieving this entrance to Nirvana. Through subliminal messages and Rorschach like images, the viewer is taken through a sexual experience like no other. Images of love, foreplay, anal and good old fashioned intercourse, Four Letter Heaven is quirky and entertaining. Artistically produced and masterfully edited, it is more than just x-rated entertainment. The background music makes you want to get up and do the cha-cha as well as the horizontal cha-cha.

Scratch This by Sante D'Orazio

An exhibition and a film, Scratch This refers to being censored. The artist takes aim at those that wish to censor pornography and what others might consider offensive. In reality, many view these images as art. In mocking conforming to society, Sante D'Orazio has scratched out the "offensive" images and allows the viewer to see through the eyes of the artist being reprimanded by societal "norms."

Green Pink Caviar by Marilyn Minter

Who knew that eating caviar could be an erotic art form? Marilyn Minter, who is a fan of "Blurring the boundaries between fine and commercial art," takes the art of eating and turns it into a slow motion, sensual experience. It is almost as though a stalker is watching his prey through a blurred lens. You want to look away, but you are just mesmerized. The colors are vivid and engaging and add to the experience.

Cooking by Tunga

Fancying himself a scientist, the artist known as Tunga enjoys experimenting with different mediums. Cooking is the embodiment of this interest. You are inititally greeted by phallic shaped crystals. Various test tubes and metal structures filled with a variety of what appears to be excrement allow the viewer to get into the mind of this mad scientist.

Decide for Yourself

So, as you see, the results of Destricted vary wildly from director to director. We still feel it is worth watching, if only to raise these questions around the adult content we all consume and if art and artfulness have any place in depicting explicit sexuality on screen. The film itself has sparked a large amount of controversy, with critics of the concept as a whole and of the individual shorts within the series. Is it art, or is it pornography? Or can pornography be art, and this is an example? Each viewer has their own opinion.

Destricted is the first short film collection of its kind, bringing together sex and art in a series of films created by some of the world's most visual and provocative artists and directors. The films in the series reveal the diverse attitudes by which we represent ourselves sexually.

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About the Creator

Filthy Staff

A group of inappropriate, unconventional & disruptive professionals. Some are women, some are men, some are straight, some are gay. All are Filthy.

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