Is Erotica Ethical?

Pornography has a long-winded history that extends as far back as the silent era, but one of the first major "pornographic" films to make a significant impact was the 1972 movie Deep Throat, directed by Gerard Damiano and starring an unknown actress credited by the name of Linda Lovelace. Prior to the success of Deep Throat, pornography was in large part an underground movement confined to specific experimental filmmakers like Andy Warhol. Deep Throat started as an independent low-budget film that became an astonishing box office success and not only opened the gates for the porn industry but also for more explicit films to make it into the mainstream.

Sexual themes have existed in film as long as it has been around. It was the prominence of sexual ideas that contributed to the public outcry that resulted in the Production Code. Many of these films seem odd by modern standards. When looking at a "sexual" pre-code film like The Divorcee one quickly notices that the sex is never actually seen and only implied. The same goes for the handful of films that did manage to get under the Production Code's restrictions, such as Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein or Stanley Kubrick's Lolita. In all of these cases, the sexual themes are conveyed through undertones and innuendos, far from the more explicit sexual themes of movies that would come after it, including several of Kubrick's later films as well as those of David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Deep Throat was arguably the film that helped bring sexuality to the forefront and cleared a path for more explicit films.

In addition to subverting the rules in ways unprecedented even for 1972, Deep Throat would become the subject of an extensive controversy. In the process it would launch into the public a dispute that still goes on today: the ethics of pornography and whether it should be recognized as a valid genre of filmmaking. Many viewers were amazed by Deep Throat but others demanded it be pulled from theaters. President Richard Nixon was among its detractors, and he made every possible effort to bring an end to pornography in general. He even went as far as to finance a series of experiments to determine if pornography was harmful to viewers. When he got the results scientifically proving that it was not, he withheld them and went out of his way to keep people from seeing Deep Throat.

A more curious development in the controversy comes later on, starting in the 80's and 90's. During this time, an anti-porn movement began to emerge among feminists who came to see it as a civil rights violation. Their rationale was that "pornography" was based on objectifying women, usually glorifying violence and fulfilling a male fantasy of how a woman should behave. Director Bonnie Sherr Klein attempted to demonstrate this perspective in her documentary film Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography. Her film makes a variety of claims about the porn industry, all of which are based on the assumption that simply watching it is promoting misogynistic ideals. Among other things, the film claims that pornography both depicts and promotes actual violence, that women do not do it out of choice, and that the majority of men are perverts and idiots. It then goes on to claim that pornography is detrimental to social progress and needs to be eradicated.

The thing about a movie like Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography is that it is based on misinformation and generalizations. Klein attempts to persuade the viewer that pornography is violent by showing clips of erotic films that depict torture. She and others like her go on to claim that the women are always bound and gagged, and "silenced". They also assume that the torture depicted is real, and therefore a glorification of male superiority when in fact it is usually staged. What people making these assumptions also ignore is that this is only one of many different types of pornography, and that the genre itself is not inherently violent. 

Now this is not to say that there are no issues that need to be addressed in porn, but these feminists are going about it the wrong way. Even if we are to assume that porn is male-dominated by nature, that does not mean its eradication is necessary any moreso than any other predominantly male genre such as war or action. While it is true that there are specific cases of women being mistreated on the sets of pornographic films (including Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat), what needs to happen is that working conditions need to improve. More women should become involved in the industry producing and directing films, and in fact this has happened.

A prominent misconception about pornography (as demonstrated by Not a Love Story: a Film About Pornography) is that it is something that can only be enjoyed by men. This is not in fact the case. There is also such a thing as "feminist porn" and has existed as long as there has been porn. Pornographic actress and feminist Annie Sprinkle has made a career out of her sexual experience, including one short simply titled Annie where she displays her body and invites the viewer to examine it (including a scene where the camera displays her cervix in extensive detail). Barbara Hammer got in on the act by making lesbian pornography as early as 1974.

In a way, pornography became, and still is, a scapegoat for social problems.Even considering the (admittedly few) examples cited of women being mistreated in pornography, it really means that actresses in those films need to be given better working conditions. It is worth mentioning that the alleged misogyny that these feminists claim to be present is not exclusive to porn and even appears in mainstream cinema. For instance, none of these women ever think to attack James Bond, one of the most iconic movie franchises of all time despite its misogynistic themes. The Bond most fans argue is the best, Sean Connery, is in fact the worst offender among them, and Goldfinger even had a glorified rape scene that went unnoticed by fans of the series.

In short, Connery's Bond films, which make up a series of mainstream blockbusters, do precisely the very things porn is being singled out for allegedly depicting. In these films, women really are objectified and used to convey visions of male dominance. They are basically nothing more than disposable sex toys whose only function is in giving pleasure to Bond before being discarded. Unlike pornography, the Bond franchise is also not meant to be about sex. It is meant to be a thrilling adventure of which sex is only one of many parts, and yet the series insists on treating women in a certain way.

Nobody tries to demand the eradication of the entire James Bond franchise. The solution to the problem is simple: as awareness of these issues grew the films subsequently had to make an effort to change the way they treated women. Compare the character of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger to Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale and there is a very clear difference. Pussy is basically the last in a long line of disposable sex objects for Bond to enjoy, to the point where a rape scene is played as charming. By the time Casino Royale was made, this was no longer an acceptable way to treat women, so instead Bond's habit of discarding women is reworked into a character flaw and Vesper is actually given a personality.

The same could arguably be said for a lot of action movies. The action genre is indeed predominantly male and even today it is sometimes guilty of objectifying women (these same feminists never seem to consider protesting against any of Michael Bay's films). The solution is simply to encourage more female protagonists like Sarah Connor, the Bride, and Lara Croft. While there are cases of actresses being mistreated during the production of pornographic films, this is no call for the eradication of the genre. What needs to happen instead is that porn needs to stop being recognized as a genre exclusively for men and that there should be an effort to encourage more women to make porn films and to promote better treatment of actresses in the business.

Action movies are not usually based around sex, but a lot of mainstream productions are. Several critically acclaimed directors such as David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, have explored their share of sexually-driven material. Lynch's Blue Velvet explores erotic themes and depicts the same kind of violence against women that porn has been accused of, as is especially evident with the introduction of Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth who proceeds to violently and disturbingly abuse Isabella Rossellini's character Dorothy Vallens.

However, unlike the "violent" pornographic films most audiences can recognize that Hopper and Rossellini are simply actors performing for a camera, and that Lynch is not filming an actual rape as it happens. Kyle MacLachlan's character of Jeffrey Beaumont also goes through similar abuse. When Jeffrey and Dorothy first meet, she immediately pulls a knife on him and forces him to remove his clothes. If not for Frank's arrival at that moment, Jeffrey could very well have been raped by Dorothy. Frank also inflicts similar sexual abuse on Jeffrey, even going so far as to basically rape him in the middle of an open road. This is far more explicit than the average pornographic film.

This controversy that surrounds the pornographic industry is a complicated situation. Say what you will about the quality of porn. Personally, I prefer to watch movies with an actual plot, but I see nothing about the genre that makes it wrong for a person of either gender to enjoy watching. It has a reputation as being a sort of "lower film" but that is in large part because it is constantly being used as a scapegoat for broader social issues. Better representations of women in film does not mean the eradication of a genre, it means making an effort to better represent women within all kinds of filmmaking.

What Makes a Cosmic Horror Story?

I like a good horror movie as much as the next blogger, but horror comes in all different forms. That's the funny thing about genre, that it always branches off into various subgenres which themselves have subgenres all characterized by specific iconography and patterns.  Horror is one of the best examples of such branching.

One of the most well-known branches would be the slasher film, which is characterized by its formula. The typical plot of a slasher film is a group of teens get stalked by an unnecessarily invincible killer and get picked off one by one. Usually most of the teens are a bit stupid and get killed while having sex, but the virgin manages to survive. The slasher is just the best-known. There are plenty of other subgenres of horror, such as psychological horror, paranormal horror, body horror, macabre or gothic horror (such as the stories of Edgar Allen Poe) and monster movies.

Those in turn often have many divides of their own. For instance the monster movie encompasses a whole other genre in zombie films, along with the likes of vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster and so forth. That's not even getting into the numerous ways those subgenres can overlap and be combined with other genres (Event Horizon, for instance, is essentially a haunted house movie with the "house" replaced by a futuristic spaceship).

What I'm interested in is a particular kind of horror, one which I feel is a bit underrated. It's not normally listed alongside the other types of horror, even though it is one of the most fascinating and has been explored by some of the most iconic names in horror (including H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and John Carpenter). It's even become something of a popular area for video games (Dead Space and Mass Effect). This is a type of horror known as Cosmic Horror.

Cosmic horror works a bit differently from other forms of horror in that it is based on a very bleak philosophy. There are many different places to draw fear from, but this particular one might be one of the greatest sources you can find. While cosmic horror stories can (and often do) have big scary monsters, body horror, psychological horror, paranormal activity, and just good old fashioned fear of the unknown, those are not the primary sources of terror in themselves.

Instead, what happens is that those are used as an agent of sorts by which to convey the greater fear. A cosmic horror story doesn't just try to scare you with blood and gore and scary monsters. Instead it is aims to depress you by forcing you to realize just how meaningless existence really is. The fear in a cosmic horror story comes from the knowledge that mankind is little more than a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things.

As the name implies this means that the horrors are often on a cosmic scale, not actively hostile towards us so much as indifferent. There are things out there that could wipe us out in a second with no effort, and they don't really care what happens. A common analogy is that these... things would see us the same way we would see bugs on the sidewalk.

You know how sometimes when you're walking down the street you might see an anthill and while you don't actively try to destroy it, you don't really bother yourself with the possibility of something happening to it, even though there are plenty of things that could easily end its existence? Imagine that on a cosmic scale, except now with Earth in place of the anthill, and you will get a sense of what cosmic horror truly entails. It is an intriguing philosophy, one that is not always easy to explore.

So obviously if you want to give a sense of mankind's insignificance in the universe you're going to want some means by which to convey that fear. This is where the the other horrors come into play. Often times you will see scary monsters of some sort, or at the very least you will feel their presence. That alone is another aspect of the cosmic horror story: fear of the unknown. Mankind is such a tiny, barely noticeable part of the universe that these horrors are usually things we cannot begin to understand.

Take one of the most famous cosmic horror monsters, for instance: Cthulhu. Part of what makes him such an effective character is how truly alien he is.We never really get into his head, we just know (based on unreliable information) that one day "when the stars are right" he will rise from the ocean, and apparently we will become something like him (the Lovecraft story alludes to massive violence and chaos that would happen when that time comes). His reign of terror is averted when he is struck by a boat, but the story makes it clear that this is little more than an inconvenience that will delay him. The worst part of it all? Cthulhu is actually one of the weaker beings in the overall mythos. If you think he's bad, let's not even get started on Azathoth or Yog-Sothoth.

Even the city of R'lyeh in which Cthulhu lives is beyond our range of understanding, said to be filled to the brim with "non-euclidean geometry". I can't even begin to describe what that word means or how it applies to the city. That's another thing that is common in cosmic horror. A lot of these stories have the monsters as things that are better left unseen. Sometimes they are so mind-bogglingly alien that simply looking at them is guaranteed to drive you to madness... and that's a best case scenario. Images like the one above depicting these beings are little more than approximations because their true appearance is literally indescribable.

There is one creature in Lovecraft's mythology, Ghatanothoa, who is said to be so frightening that anyone who sees it is is transformed into living mummy. I mean that literally, if this being enters your line of sight, you will be paralyzed. Your skin will develop a consistency resembling leather, essentially mummifying you all while your internal organs are preserved for an indefinite period of time. You remain locked in this state, alive and fully conscious, completely aware of everything around you.

That said, sanity-shattering monsters are not essential to a compelling cosmic horror story. The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and At the Mountains of Madness are all stories by Lovecraft himself that feature creatures described in a bit more depth. At the Mountains of Madness despite being very much a cosmic horror story, features some of the few beings that are actually cast in a sympathetic light (not that you'd want to meet them, but their story does leave you to wonder what could eventually happen to humanity).

Prometheus is a movie that has been occasionally labeled as a cosmic horror story, and it lacks any of the sanity-shattering abominations. However, it does still touch on the theme of humanity's insignificance in that we were just some experiment of an ancient race of aliens. Essentially, the universe is just one big construction site to them, and we were one small project. Much like how we might take a wrecking ball to an old building to make way for something new, these "Engineers" believed they needed to "demolish" our species so they could create something else.

Even 2001 borders on cosmic horror at times. While it has a fairly optimistic outlook on humanity's place in the universe, it still emphasizes that we have a long way to go. Those monoliths are also built by aliens so mind-bogglingly complex they couldn't be shown, not to mention we never even get a solid answer to the question of just what the heck those things are. They seem to be in some way designed to inspire humanity to keep going, but how they work or what their purpose was is beyond anyone's capability to understand.

So in the long run, the key to a good cosmic horror story is to look at the fact that the universe is so complex that we still are unable to understand everything. Earth is one of eight planets orbiting one of a hundred billion stars in one of billions upon billions of galaxies. Ultimately we are a very tiny part and while we have not (yet) faced any of the Great Old Ones, there are things that could in theory wipe out our planet under the right circumstances (although none are inevitable). The true terror comes not from the monsters, but from the understanding of that simple idea.

I have divulged the secrets of cosmic terror, but I fear that I may know too much. The cult still lives, and so does Cthulhu. One day they will return. The Great Old Ones shall rule the Earth once more. All will bow down before their might. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Beware the wrath of the Crawling Chaos that is Nyarlathotep.

They're coming. We're doomed. We're all doomed. Ia Shub-Niggurath. Cthulhu Ftagn. The end is near. Something is coming, I can hear it. OH GOD! THAT HAND! IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE! IT'S COMING FOR ME! THE WINDOW! THE WINDOW! I CANNOT DESCRIBE IT! THOSE EYES! THAT THREE-LOBED EYE! THE MONSTROUS TENTACLES! I SHALL NOT LET IT GET TO ME! I WILL NOT LET IT FIND ME! THE WINDOW! THE WINDOW!

What Makes a B-Movie?

I've been going through a collection of "sci-fi classics" during the summer, which is actually made up largely of cheesy b-movies, but it's not exclusively b-movies in the strictest sense. Some of them (First Spaceship to Venus, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, and Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women) were foreign movies deliberately re-edited to cover up any sign that they were originally mainstream productions originating from the Soviet Union. Others are just really bad (Horrors of Spider Island), some are hilariously bad (Santa Claus Conquers the Martians), and others are somewhere in the middle.

The funny thing about older b-movies is that it seems to be very rare to see one that actually delivers what the title promises. Teenagers From Outer Space is a good example, which has several men from outer space but all of them are clearly over the age of 20. Attack of the Monsters had some monsters who spend most of their screen time fighting each other and not really attacking much. Queen of the Amazons had a grand total of one "Amazonian" woman. Horrors of Spider Island had very few spiders and most of the danger came from one character getting bit and somehow mutating into an invincible monster. She-Gods of Shark Reef had a tribe of women and a reef with sharks that was never named, but definitely no obvious "She-Gods".

When one brings up the subject of b-movies, there are a few images that usually tend to come up. Often they're associated with the 1950's. Common elements associated with them include black and white photography and cheesy special effects. There are plenty of those, like the normal-sized lobster that threatens the protagonists of Teenagers From Outer Space or the pie pan flying saucers in Plan 9 From Outer Space, but the basic definition is a bit more complicated than that.

B-movies are so called because they are usually made with b-list actors. These are lesser known actors that are able to work for less, as opposed to the much better-known a-list stars you see in big budget Hollywood productions. Such films are usually cheap (hence the cheesy effects) and not released as widely as other productions. Though they are often associated with science fiction, a b-movie can really fit into any genre. With the collection of "Sci-fi Classics" I've been going through, there have been several (i.e. Queen of the Amazons, She-Gods of Shark Reef, Horrors of Spider Island) where I have been left wondering what exactly the science fiction aspect of the story was.

There are patterns that seem to emerge in storylines as well as with films of this period. One idea that seemed to be ludicrously common was for a group of (usually all male) characters to encounter a fictional world populated entirely by scantily clad women. Naturally, nobody ever questions this and the subject of how a society in which men do not exist is able to reproduce and thus keep themselves going is never addressed. Aliens often appear in either really unconvincing outfits or as humanoid, and if the latter is picked expect that they will have a language that is by total coincidence identical to English so they will have no trouble communicating with humans.

While the term often implies mediocre quality, not all b-movies are terrible. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness could technically be considered a b-movie. It was made on a low budget with a cast made entirely of b-list actors and was even shot in familiar black and white. Despite all this, it still managed to be a chilling rendition of a great story that may have even been more Lovecraftian than Lovecraft's original vision.

While hearing the term "b-movie" often brings up images of those from the 1950's, it's hardly confined to that point in history. The concept of the b-movie originated near the end of the silent era and it still continues today. They may have changed over time, but they do still exist. The Whisperer In Darkness was released in 2011 and could be considered a b-movie, but there are still plenty that are as bad as those of the 1950's, if for different reasons.

Modern b-movies work a bit different from the 1950's variety. A lot of them seem to be a bit more fast-paced, usually bringing in large amounts of painfully unconvincing CGI. The plots I have found often involve various monsters that the protagonists (who are often super-attractive but have no real personality) have to survive against while the supporting cast gets killed off with varying degrees of gore. Right now, The Asylum appears to be one of the major producers of modern b-movies, with films like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, but the one that is probably best known at the moment would be the cult hit Sharknado.

I myself have actually been involved with the production of a b-movie. Back in one of my high school film classes, we were given the assignment to create a b-movie of sorts. It was certainly a difficult experience, I can tell you that, largely because I was the only one who actually took the project seriously and wanted to make a real horror film.

I remember several times trying to make the case that our best bet was to refrain from showing the monster but nobody ever listened. My contributions were mostly behind the scenes, doing the camera work and editing that clip from Angel Heart to look like it was being played on an old TV. Unfortunately in keeping with the b-movie spirit somewhere along the line my initial concept for how to handle that scene got lost. I wanted to include the part where Robert De Niro actually bites into the egg as foreshadowing for what was to come later on in the main narrative, but the guy responsible for editing the project didn't end up doing that.

It certainly has the spirit of an old b-movie, however, with the wooden acting and cheesy effects. The bizarre plot  fits in more or less with the kinds of things you might see in a b-movie. Basically, the story amounts to a group of junkies dragging their friends into school on a weekend to reclaim confiscated drugs only to get chased by a "soul sucker", and this one girl just happens to have found an old book that somehow explains everything. The "soul sucker" is of course basically just a creepy old man (played by a fairly young man in a wig), with plenty of contrived death scenes for the leads.

In most respects, it is a pretty cheesy movie, but it does have the feeling of an old-fashioned b-movie. Given that was what we were assigned to do, it did succeed in that regard as silly as the final product was.  As you can see, b-movies are very much an important part of film culture, as bad and painful as some of them might get. They have been with us since the silent era, and as long as the medium of film exists, b-movies will likely continue to exist in some form or another, even if they change with time.

Buddy Cop Movies and Why they are So Popular

This is a genre that has been around for a long time. I can't even begin to go into its full history, but the basic formula is one that has endured at least since the 1980's: A police officer is assigned to his (it's almost always a guy) latest case, during which time he is also given a new partner (often but not always another cop or other law enforcement). Said partner is completely the opposite to him in terms of personality; usually one is more uptight and by the book while the other is more reckless and wild. Naturally the two can't stand each other but they're forced to work together anyway and by the time they've solved the case they are best friends.

It is a simple enough formula, and one that can be taken in plenty of directions storywise (exactly what the case is for example, varies widely between films). There are still patterns that are typically common. For instance, the two "buddy cops" are almost always men. Aside from a one or two exceptions, any female characters present in the story are usually a supporting role such as a love interest for one of them. I have yet to find a buddy cop film where the pairing is between a man and a woman.

That said, the combinations vary widely. Usually you have the dynamic of the uptight professional cop and the reckless wild one, but for a while it became popular with films such as Lethal Weapon to pair up a white guy and a black guy. With Hot Fuzz you have the cop who is so good at his job that he embarrasses everyone around him and the cop who at first has no idea what he's doing. The Canadian film Bon Cop, Bad Cop takes the basic formula but instead pairs together an English-speaking cop from Toronto with a French-speaking Quebecois officer. In a subversion of my earlier comment about how the "buddy cops" are usually men, we recently got The Heat, where the same formula is replicated but this time with both partners being women.

Then we get into weirder combinations. The infamous movie Cop and ½ sees poor Burt Reynolds forced to team up with a kid to track down the bad guys. Osmosis Jones does this kind of story but instead uses the setting of the human body, with a the "buddy cops" being a white blood cell and a cold pill who team up to track down a lethal virus. What I said earlier about having yet to find a pairing between a man and a woman might not be entirely true if you count Theodore Rex, which has the odd pairing of Whoopi Goldberg and a talking dinosaur. Yes, that actually happened.

So what is it that makes this genre so popular? Part of it might be just the creative combinations that different writers can come up (even if at times they get really weird or outright stupid), but a major part of the buddy cop film is in how the two main characters play off of each other. Naturally there's usually lots of action but it may just be that there is something emotional to be found about two conflicting characters who otherwise might have had nothing to do with each other bonding together over a crime, to the point where they often end with both partners getting together to solve another crime.  

In this case, unlike perhaps a regular police-based narrative, such as the old TV series Columbo, the conflict and tension becomes more in how the two "buddy cops" have to figure out how to put aside their differences and work together to solve the crime moreso than the crime itself (although the crooks involved certainly don't help matters). After ;all while the investigation plays a major role in the story, the plots of both Hot Fuzz and The Heat were driven largely by the relationship between the two leads and how they gradually warm up to each other so they can finally take on the bad guys during the climax. The genre is a bit of a cliché now, but really the key to making a good "Buddy Cop" film is simply to have two leads who can really play off of each other.