What We Talk About When We Talk About Making Love
For the majority of the week, I have been without WiFi, so it has been up to my vast physical collection of media to entertain me at home. Amongst that library is a dvd copy of the first season of the Showtime period drama, Masters of Sex which I purchased because it is currently not available for streaming anywhere, not even through Showtime, without paying two dollars an episode. My interest in the series mainly sprang from the two leads, Michael Sheen1 and Lizzy Caplan2, as the real-life mid century sexologists, Doctor William Masters and Virginia Johnson. Masters tells a fictionalized version of their research into what happens to the human body during sex and how their involvement in their studies ends up affecting their personal relationships. The first three episodes were okay, but after that I began to enjoy Masters of Sex quite a bit.
Aside from the mismatched pairing of the antiseptic and venomously spiteful Masters and the cool and sex savvy Johnson, the most compelling thing about Masters of Sex is it’s varied and complete look at sex. When Masters and Johnson aren’t plugging away at the data collected from their studies, the two of them, the supporting cast, and guest stars depict a whole range of sexual relationships and repercussions of sex. One character seeks out non-committal sex while another finds emotional connection through a sexual experience. One character desperately wants children and another wants to clandestinely receive a surgery so she can’t have any more. Affairs, closeted homosexuality, love, and procreation are all there and while some individuals and society in the late 1950s may look down on a lot of it, Masters of Sex almost never judges and it isn’t always titillating.
Throughout the first season, some characters become more open and explore sex and romance and, as a result, become more true to themselves in their day-to-day lives. That seems to be part of the general thesis of the show that exploring one’s self involves exploring and understanding one’s relationship to sex and sexuality. That identity is tied to one’s sexuality. Masters, who seems emotionally and socially repressed, is in a constant state of frustration, like a balloon that’s about to pop. He’s not the only one, there are other characters who refuse to explore or accept parts of who they are and what they want. Bottling that up is only gonna cause turmoil, so why not loosen the valve? After all, sex is supposed to feel good.
Masters of Sex episodes are available for individual digital rental on most streaming services.
Living in Oblivion
Last weekend I caught David Cronenberg’s 1983 cult masterpiece Videodrome at The Film Lab in Detroit (if you’re reading this on September 11th, 2021, you can catch it there tonight!) and this time watching it I was particularly struck by the film’s sexual themes.
First off, Videodrome’s director, David Cronenberg is largely considered to be the biggest voice in the the body horror subgenre. Body horror is where the body is violated in an unnatural grotesque way. Think of something like the monstrous metamorphosis of man into monster in The Fly (1986) or District 9 (2009), the eldritch abominations in works like the alien in The Thing (1982) and the bear creature in Annihilation (2018), or inhuman violations of human flesh like in Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Additionally, body horror often appears in cyberpunk stories3 as a way to express how commodified the human body can become by integrating human bodies with commercial technology and it is not uncommon for body horror to overlap with themes of sexual perversion. With Videodrome, many of these concepts coalesce into what is largely considered to be a key work in the genre.
Spoilers for Videodrome ahead
Videodrome centers around Max Renn (James Woods), one of the owners of a television station that broadcasts sleazy pornographic television, as he looks into a mysterious broadcast known only as Videodrome. Renn, obsessed with finding something for his station that is “harder” and “tougher”, is shown Videodrome, a broadcast of what appears to be torture in a red and black leather room that culminates with murder. This not only piques his interest, but also a woman he has just begun seeing, Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry), who has a fetish for sadomasochistic sex. As he investigates, he begins lose his grip on reality to visions of sex, violence, and melding of machine and flesh. He sees Nicki’s lips on the TV and he uses his head (double entendre, eh?) to penetrate the lips on the screen4. At another point he grows a large vaginal wound on his torso which he penetrates with the classic phallic symbol, a gun. Later, his flesh becomes fused with the gun making it look even more phallus at the end of his arm. Max ends up losing himself to Videodrome and “the new flesh” in the end.
A surface level reading would be something like “violent and sexual content makes people go mad with sex and violence”, but that is so far from what Videodrome tries to say. Before their minds are corrupted by Videodrome, Nicki and Max are able to operate in society while watching pornography or being violent in the bedroom. Max suggests his tv channel gives a harmless outlet for the sexually frustrated. However, it is when the creators of the Videodrome tapes, a company that makes “inexpensive glasses for the Third World and missile guidance systems for NATO”, wants to weaponize culture, no matter how low brow, to influence the country, that’s when it drives people to hallucinogenic hysteria.
Videodrome is prescient in a lot of ways, how we all have aliases for this imaginary digital world and how our reality “is already half video hallucination”, but one thing it got wrong is that the military industrial complex hasn’t used pornography and snuff films to manipulate the masses. Instead of the post-70s sleaze that Videodrome suggests, we have mass market wide-appeal films funded by the Department of Defense that are sanitized of any sort of desire. Videodrome though, has a lot of desire.
Videodrome is available for digital rental on most streaming services.
Oscar Isaac Interlude
It is in my opinion that Oscar Isaac has had sexual chemistry with nearly every actor/object/concept that he’s shared the screen with and, last week at the Venice Film Festival, Isaac’s charm drew a lot of attention for just that.
In the clip above, you see A Most Violent Year (2014) costars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain reunited at the red carpet premiere of their HBO miniseries Scenes From A Marriage. Isaac turns to Chastain, seemingly with desire in his eyes. In slow motion, he smolders, kisses her arm, and they pull each other close. Internet users went crazy for the flagrant display of sexuality. Some broke down the sequence of events, some made edits, and many just expressed how horny the clip seemed5. Below, you can see user @KocanDaddyRico added the song "Yumeji's Theme" by Shigeru Umebayashi to the clip, drawing comparisons between the clip and the 2000 Hong Kong romantic film about love and longing, In The Mood For Love.
This isn’t the first time Oscar Isaac’s flirtatious micro expressions generated buzz. Countless Tumblr posts noting a not-so-innocent lip bite in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens when Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) reunites with Finn (John Boyega) led to a movement by fans for Poe to be canonically gay. Isaac even expressed disappointment6 that his natural chemistry with Boyega wasn’t explored in the film’s sequels and I don’t think this was just lip service (forgive the pun).
All this ultimately leads to a tweet by Twitter user @wykstrad the sums up my feelings on Oscar Isaac:
Oscar Isaac can currently be seen in Paul Schrader’a new film The Card Counter, in theaters this weekend, and HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage, premiering September 12th on HBO.
Stray Observations
Little bit of a theme this week: sex! Sometimes themes come out of nowhere and this week the stars aligned for this week to be about sex. A few issues back in my write-up for La Piscine I expressed my displeasure with the lack of anything resembling erotic passion in mainstream cinemas. So in honor of this week’s sort of theme, I have to share, yet again, this great article about mainstream cinema’s aversion to sex appeal by RS Benedict titled “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny”.
We’re getting another Matrix movie this winter! Director Lana Wachowski is returning to the series with The Matrix Resurrections. The trailer released this week, along with the throwback website marketing campaign on whatisthematrix.com, has The Matrix looking weird, colorful, and very different from the first three Matrix films (in a good way). One thing to consider is how (and if) this new film will tackle the transgender allegory interpretation of the original film. Both of the directors of the original The Matrix (1999) have come out as trans since and have acknowledged some of the closeted trans interpretations. There is a great piece by Emily VanDerWerff published by Vox that sums up this trans take on the film. Either way, Resurrections looks awesome and it’s exciting to have a blockbuster that I’m hyped up for.
Caught a screening of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and it was pretty entertaining. The first act had two action sequences that I’m still thinking about. One of which is heavily featured in the promos where Shang-Chi fights off various goons on a runaway San Francisco bus. Shang-Chi makes it a priority in the scene to not only survive, but make sure nobody on the bus gets hurt either. It’s bombastic, thrilling, and has lots of little fun silly moments, but ultimately culminates into a big set piece somewhat reminiscent of the opening of Jackie Chan’s Police Story (1985). The other fight scene is between Shang-Chi’s villainous father, Wenwu (played by the world class talent Tony Leung) and the guardian of the entrance to a magical forest. The fight is a total homage to Wuxia films (think heavy wire work and slow-mo like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)) where these two magical martial artists glide across the forest floor and jump incredible heights. The fight has so much grace and filmed so lovingly that it looks more like a dance and that’s kinda the point. The two fighters end up falling in love and set off the events of the story. Shang-Chi’s action choreography is probably the only evidence of Marvel franchise where the action actually says something about the characters and the scene. I really think these superhero films would benefit from more Wuxia inspired fights instead of big cgi monster/lightshow gobbledygook. Even Shang-Chi falls prey to that template in the end.
This week we saw the passing of actor Michael K. Williams who was probably best known for playing Omar in The Wire. Last year, Williams did this touching interview with Men’s Health about dealing with trauma, being active in the community, and his own struggles with addiction. One quote from the article has been shared a lot this week which I will share here:
“I spent a lot of my younger years not feeling beautiful. When I look back at my pictures now as a kid, I’m like, “Damn, you were actually beautiful.” I couldn’t see it back then. That’s a large thing that makes me go back to working with the youth in my community. I let them know that they’re beautiful.”
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Now, Michael Sheen has gotten recent popularity for his performance as the preening angel Aziraphale in the Amazon Prime series Good Omens (2019), but my favorite performance of his is in the Twilight series as Aro, the head honcho of the Vultori (essentially, the rulers of all the vampires in the world). Sheen plays him as broad and campy as he can, opting for a complete opposite style of performing as the deeply introverted and tense performances of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in the lead roles. Most everyone in the Twilight films look like they’re unhappy to be there, but not Sheen. Sheen’s having the time of his life playing this sneering mustache twirling villain.
Lizzy Caplan is so charming in the underrated Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), but two years ago I saw the underseen comedy tv show Party Down (2009-2010) where she played Casey, one of many miserable employees of a catering company. It’s a sort of dark comedy in that these people are stuck in a purgatorial existence working this shitty job for shitty people and they constantly make the wrong decisions that ensure their continued suffering. It’s funny and sweet too, but Caplan has the perfect sarcastic personality that fits that cynical attitude one gets in a job that demeans you.
One of the most illuminating texts I read that taught me about body horror is a section in Steven T. Brown’s book Tokyo Cyberpunk: Posthumanism in Japanese Visual Culture about the Japanese cyberpunk body horror classic: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Struggling to find my college essay where I wrote about Tetsuo, but I heavily cited Brown’s analysis and it greatly shaped my view on both subgenres.
Not really any additional information, but I just wanted to share this brilliant illustration depicting that famous scene by comics illustrator Erica Henderson.
Jessica Chastain even addressed it with this tweet:
Isaac: “Personally, I kind of hoped and wished that maybe that would’ve been taken further in the other films, but I don’t have control…It seemed like a natural progression, but sadly enough it’s a time when people are too afraid, I think, of…I don’t know what. But if they would’ve been boyfriends, that would have been fun.”