Transgression in Anglo-American Cinema

Gender, Sex, and the Deviant Body

Joel Gwynne

• Éditeur: WallFlower Press
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780231850988
• Sujet: Médias et arts de la scène
• Sous-sujet: Histoire et critique du cinéma

Sexuality within mainstream Hollywood cinema features primarily in comedy or rom-com genres, where lightness of tone permits audience engagement with what would otherwise be difficult affective terrain. Focusing on marginal productions in Anglo-American contexts, this collection explores the gendered dynamics of sex and the body, particularly embodied deviations from normative cultural scripts. It explores transgressions acted through and written on the body, and the ways in which corporeality inscribes gender discourse and reflects cultural and institutional power. Films analyzed include Mysterious Skin (2004), Shame (2011), Nymphomaniac (2013), and Dallas Buyers Club (2013). Navigating queer politics, taboo fantasy, body modification, fetishism, sex addiction, and underage sex, essays problematize understandings of adult agency, childhood innocence, and healthy desire, locating sex and gender as sites of oppression, liberation, and resistance.

PART I

EXTREME BODIES, EXTREME DESIRES

Chapter 1

The New Anglo-American Cinema of Sexual Addiction

ALISTAIR FOX

Film critics have recently been noticing the emergence of a cycle of indieauteur movies on sexual addiction, both in the United States and also in the United Kingdom (sometimes with financial input from European countries such as France and Germany). Indie cinema, which has become a cultural genre and cultural category in its own right, defines itself against mainstream Hollywood cinema in terms of audience expectations, textual practices and genre preferences (see Newman 2011). Being character-centered, often marked by socially engaged realism, frequently inspired by the auteur-director’s personal experience and aimed primarily at festival and art-house audiences, it has much greater freedom to explore marginal and alternative spheres than mainstream Hollywood genre films. Unsurprisingly, therefore, indie-auteur films have been a prime site for the exploration of sexual dysfunction since sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989), the success of which was instrumental in fuelling the boom of independent filmmaking in the 1990s.

The cycle of sex addiction films I wish to discuss represents a continuation of this preoccupation, updated to reflect awareness of what is being experienced or perceived as a growing personal and social problem. As Tom Shone, an American film critic who writes for The Guardian puts it: ‘For the indie-auteur sphere, the figure of the sex addict has become what the serial killer was for mainstream thrillers in the 1990s: a repeat offender, plot-driver and sensation source, drawing audiences with a mixture of curiosity, skepticism and astonishment’ (2014). Among the films that have appeared on the American circuit may be listed I Am a Sex Addict (Caveh Zahedi, 2005), Choke (Clark Gregg, 2008), Thanks for Sharing (Stuart Blumberg, 2012), Don Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 2013) and Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara, 2014). To these may be added the British-made Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011) and Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013), the two volumes of which were funded as a co-production involving the United Kingdom and a variety of European countries. Why should a rash of such films suddenly be appearing now, and why should they have become a preoccupation of indie-auteur filmmakers? To find an answer, one needs to take a look at the evolution of the post-World War II sexual revolution and its aftermath.

The Sexual Revolution, the Media and the Screening of Sex

The story of the sexual revolution is by now well known. Starting in the 1950s, and accelerating in the 1960s and 1970s, Western societies experienced a powerful reaction against traditional normative constraints in many spheres of life. In the domain of sexuality, this was manifest in a movement aimed at legitimising premarital and extramarital sex, promoting acceptance of homosexuality and alternative forms of sexuality and privileging the visceral pleasure to be derived from sex as a valid form of self-gratification and fulfillment (see, for example, Allyn 2001). In America, in particular, this liberation into relatively unconstrained sexuality was celebrated as consonant with the country’s neo-liberal commitment to ‘freedom’ in other areas of life, as manifest in the conflation of sexual gratification with the personal gratification derived from indulgence in consumer culture (see Radner 2010). In terms of behaviour, it produced a ‘hook-up culture’.

This cultural shift can be ascribed to the convergence of three factors: political change, leading to a ‘transformed political economy of desire’; the emergence of digital communication technology, which has transformed the consumption and production of sexual culture; and familiar economic factors, such as the profit imperative and efficiency of the market as a distribution mechanism, that has led to the ‘commercialisation’ and ‘commodification’ of sex (see McNair 2013: 4–6). The sexualised culture that has resulted has been characterised as involving

a preoccupation with sexual values, practices and identities; the proliferation of sexual texts; the emergence of new forms of sexual experience; the apparent breakdown of rules, categories and regulations designed to keep the obscene at bay; a fondness for scandals, controversies and panics around sex. (Attwood 2006: 78)

From the outset, cinema was centrally involved in what sociologist Brian McNair has described as ‘pornographication’ – ‘the colonisation of mainstream culture by texts in a variety of forms, genres, and styles which borrow from, refer to, or pastiche the styles and iconography of the pornographic’ – leading to a commensurate enlargement of ‘the pornosphere’ (the cultural space in which sexually explicit texts circulate) (2013: 36, 3). Eric Schaeffer, the editor of a recent volume on this topic, proposes that ‘a rapidly and radically sexualized media accounts for what we now think of as the sexual revolution’, owing to the fact that ‘sex was no longer a private matter that took place behind closed doors’ (2014: 3). Linda Williams has also argued that cinema, along with its extension into television, advertising and pornography, has played a crucial role in propagating the liberation of the modern individual into a desirable capacity for eroticism: when we watch sex on screen, she writes, ‘we are disciplined into new forms of socialized arousal in the company of others’ (2008: 18).

For some, including McNair and Williams, sexualisation in the media is to be welcomed. Williams, for example, asserts that ‘the very act of screening is desirable, sensual, and erotic in its own right’ (2008: 326), and therefore to be celebrated, along with pornography. For his part, McNair has argued that the sexualisation of culture through pornography, porno chic and sexually transgressive art has been instrumental not only in driving ‘the transformation of patriarchal and heteronormative structures, as well as authoritarian governance in general’, but also in giving millions of people ‘access to sexual pleasure they would not otherwise have had’, thereby increasing the ‘stock of human happiness’ (2013: 157, 158).

Others, however, are not so sure, or else are emphatically convinced of the opposite. McNair himself notes that ‘somewhere around 2003 commentators began to identify cultural sexualisation as a major social problem’ (2013: 56), citing an article in The Guardian in which Edward Marriott identified pornography, ‘like drugs and drink’, as ‘an addictive substance’ (2003). Even earlier, Patrick Carnes had introduced the idea of sex addiction into popular culture with his groundbreaking book, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction (1983). Since then, there has been a veritable explosion of self-help and clinical books on sexual addiction, especially since 2005, along with the highly publicised entry of celebrities such as Michael Douglas, David Duchovny and Russell Brand into clinics for sex addiction therapy.

Clearly, then, a backlash is in process, arising from a growing anxiety about sexual addiction as a dysfunction. This is reflected, for example, in the alarm expressed by the psychologist and social commentator Philip Zimbardo in The Demise of Guys (2012), who warns about the growing danger of cyber-porn addiction (see Zimbardo and Duncan 2012). The statistics Zimbardo presents, citing a University of Alberta study, are startling: in America, which is the top producer of pornographic web pages, ‘one in three boys is now considered a “heavy” porn user, with the average boy watching nearly two hours of porn every week’ (loc. 553). Zimbardo also draws attention to how addiction to Internet porn is beginning to damage the ability of young men to form healthy sexual relationships. Quoting Leonard Sax, another psychologist who has conducted a parallel study of a new crisis facing girls, he observes:

Given the choice between masturbating over online pornography and going out on a date with a real girl – that is to say, a girl who doesn’t look like a porn star and isn’t wearing lingerie – more and more young men tell me that they prefer online porn. ‘Girls online are way better looking’, one young man said to me, with no apology or embarrassment. (loc. 553)

Zimbardo’s anxiety over internet porn is merely one manifestation of a larger concern with sexual addiction more generally, defined as involving ‘people whose lives worsen in direct proportion to self-destructive patterns of sexual behaviors over which they appear to have little control’ (Weiss 2013: loc. 457).

The cycle of films in this chapter has self-evidently been generated in response to this relatively new cultural context – one in which a hyper-sexualisation of culture has given rise to sexual addiction as a dysfunctional version of sexuality that is causing concern. It might be argued that the production of these films is simply an attempt to jump on the commercial bandwagon to participate in the commodification of sex, but the content of the films themselves would argue against this. McNair defines pornography in terms of ‘its intention to sexually arouse the user through the explicit, transgressive representation of sex’ (2013: 17). Virtually without exception, the films in the sex addiction cycle are devoid of titillation; to the contrary, the compulsive sexual behaviours of the protagonists are depicted as self-destructive and destructive of relationships, humiliating and shameful, and a cause of misery and despair. They are thus very far from the joyful pleasure, self-gratification and personal satisfaction that is extolled by the likes of McNair and Williams as an outcome of healthy sexuality.

In the rest of this chapter, I shall explore in detail what these films show about the causes, dynamics and outcomes of sex addiction as this newly foregrounded phenomenon, and where their representations may be leading.

Variations of Tone and Genre

Upon inspection, the films in this cycle display such a high degree of congruence in their representation of the manifestations of sexual addiction that they can be viewed collectively as a ‘theme and variations’, to speak in musical terms. In music, a ‘theme and variations’ begins with a motif that provides the main melody, which is then followed by one or more variations of that melody, achieved by changing the music melodically, harmonically or contrapuntally. In other words, the same material returns, but it is slightly or substantially varied through an application of the principles of repetition or contrast.

In the sex addiction movies, this theme-and-variation principle is apparent in the range of genres, tones and moods that are used variously to address the central problem – or ‘theme’ – and in the relative extent to which each film focuses on the causes relative to the effects. To generalise, one can say that whereas the films in the American cycle are predominantly comic, or, at the very least, mix elements of comedy with more serious elements, those produced in Europe tend to be unrelievedly grim and harrowing. In other words, there is a continuum along which all the films under discussion can be ranged, depending upon the relative disposition of tone, narrative perspective and story arc in each.

At one end of this continuum, one can situate I Am a Sex Addict and Don Jon, both of which are consistently light-hearted in tone, and comedic in their outcomes. In each, following a series of promiscuous encounters that provide the protagonist with no lasting satisfaction, the hero masters his sex addiction (to a greater or lesser degree) and is rewarded with the love of a woman who not only understands him, but also has a beneficial, ameliorating effect on him. As far as filmic techniques are concerned, both of these films maintain their comic tone by interposing a distance between the spectator and the action to maintain a degree of evaluative detachment. Both films use a voice-over delivered by the protagonist, and both broach the fourth wall by having the hero directly address the spectator.

Fig. 1: Caveh (Caveh Zahedi) addresses the spectator in I Am a Sex Addict (2005).

Caveh Zahedi in I Am a Sex Addict goes still further by presenting himself explicitly, and without overt fictionalisation, as the main character (he appears in the film under his own name) and by including extra-diegetic inserts (such as cartoons) and real-life footage into the depiction of past episodes – which has the effect of emphasising the constructed nature of the fictive reenactment. This ensures that it remains situated at an affective remove from the spectator, who implicitly is invited to share the more discriminating perspective of the older and wiser character in present time.

At the other end of the spectrum is Nymphomaniac, with its scenes of sadomasochism, physical violence and crime, eventuating in murder, and Shame, a film which, while stopping short of the biological destruction of its main characters, concludes with the attempted suicide of the hero’s sister and the abjection of the hero himself, who ends up in a state of extreme degradation, grief and despair. Thus, whereas the comic films are given an upwards narrative arc, the arc in the latter two films moves relentlessly in a downwards direction, making use of close-up shots rather than distancing techniques, so that the spectator is compelled to confront the full horror of what is taking place with a high degree of immersive intensity that deprives him or her of any reassurance to be gained through the interpolation of light relief.

In between these two extreme poles, the other three films occupy a middle ground that is best described as that of ‘comedy-drama’ – although the relative proportions in each individual film differ, along with the effects of the combination. In Choke, even though Clark Gregg, like Zahedi and Gordon-Levitt, uses an ironic, facetious voice-over as a device to establish some degree of comic detachment, in between the scenes in which this comic perspective is uppermost, he interposes flashbacks that recreate episodes in the traumatic childhood of Victor (Sam Rock-well), the film’s protagonist, exploiting a mode of high seriousness in order to show that there are disturbing psychological reasons for Victor’s sexual addiction that have their roots in his past. Furthermore, Gregg depicts, in present time, the distressing dementia of Victor’s mother, Ida (Angelica Huston), who is now effectually incarcerated in a hospital for the mentally ill.

Similarly, in Thanks for Sharing, Stuart Blumberg, while he includes a character, Neil (Josh Gad), a backsliding trickster who functions like a comic clown, he also incorporates other plot lines – especially that involving Mike (Tim Robbins), an older addict – that exemplify how destructive the effects of addiction can be on other members of the family, even in the case of those who believe that they have recovered.

Yet another variation in the relative deployment of comic, as against dramatic, elements can be seen in Welcome to New York, which, as Peter Labuza observes, is sometimes as ‘absurdly funny’ as it is ‘horrifying’ (2014). Welcome to New York differs from the other mixed-genre films, however, in that the audience laughs at Devereaux (Gérard Depardieu), the arrogant, self-entitling protagonist (based on the real-life Dominique Kahn-Strauss), rather than with him, as is the case with Victor and Neil. Abel Ferrara, the director, ensures that the spectator maintains a satiric distance from the fiction by commencing the film with a non-diegetic prologue consisting of an interview with Gérard Depardieu in which the actor describes his own personal inability to feel close to the character he is about to assume. Then, when the film successively undergoes a series of generic transformations, as it moves from being a softcore fiction at the beginning (in scenes showing Devereaux’s sex parties and exploitation of prostitutes) into a crime procedural (once Devereaux is arrested on a charge of rape) and finally into a chamber drama (once his wife Simone [Jacqueline Bisset] enters the scene) (see Furtado 2014), the humour disappears completely. In Ferrara’s grim film, the broaching of the fourth wall, the two occasions when Devereaux addresses the camera directly, serves not to humanise him in the eyes of the spectator, but to induce revulsion: as when this brute, defiant in his lack of remorse, directly says to the audience, ‘Fuck you all!’ – thus intensifying the spectator’s sense of alienation.

Undoubtedly, one reason for the adoption of a comic mode in the majority of American sex addiction films is a concern to create a movie with potential crossover appeal – on the model of films like Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Joel Zwick, 2002) that ended up being very successful at the box office. In general, serious films on this topic have not done well, in contrast to those which have tapped into popular comedic genres. Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac garnered a mere $785,896 in the USA for Volume I, and even less ($327,167) for Volume II, whereas Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon achieved $24,477,704 – partly because it poured its representation of sex addiction elements into a conventional rom-com mold, enhanced by the pulling power of Scarlett Johansson in the lead female role, and partly because the director changed the film’s title, which had originally been Don Jon’s Addiction when screened at the Sundance Festival, simply to Don Jon, which had the effect of appearing to align it with the popular ‘slacker-striver’ genre represented by such hits as Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007), which accrued a domestic box office take of $148,768,917.¹

There is a further reason for the choice of comedy, however, which is summed up in comments made by Clark Gregg, the director of Choke. It was precisely the comic treatment that drew him to Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, upon which the film is based, in the first place:

If you kind of describe what goes on for the people [in the film], it makes you want to put a bullet in your head, yet when you read it, it’s screamingly funny, and there’s a reason why it’s funny – that there’s something very cathartic about going in to those places and finding the humour in it, that you’re able to look at these things in a way that doesn’t make you give up hope, but which allows you to absorb something in a way that perhaps is digestible a...