Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983)
Part of Variety’s surprise is that, despite taking place in and around a Times Square Porn Theater, it disturbs the visual’s centrality to the pornographic. Rather than challenging the utility and fun of porn, it challenges the dominance of a dominating gaze by emphasizing the invisible parts of fantasy. In a parked car, sitting next to a pinball machine, our hero narrates pornographic stories to her visibly distressed boyfriend. Is it the shift in power that freaks him out? His girlfriend’s affectless recitation? She doesn’t care, she continues her tale.
Last Week (Kanye West, 2022)
Depending on where you are and who you’re with, turning on porn can be an extreme confrontation. Meeting with Adidas execs, Kanye West extends his arm to get his iPhone as close as possible to one’s face. “Is this a porn movie?” the man asks. “Yes,” Kanye answers, not turning it off. Kanye is forcing an encounter with discomfort and control, with the problems of language vacated of meaning through the damaging intervention of wealth. He tells the exec he wants him to hear that he has the same voice as the porn star. “You are not going to hurt my feelings again,” the porn star says.
Double-Blind / No Sex Last Night (Sophie Calle, 1996)
Double-Blind / No Sex Last Night is in one sense unpornographic, in that it is largely about the absence of sex and the deleterious effect of that lack on an ill-conceived cross-country road trip. But if we agree that part of porn’s appeal is its attempt to represent something unrepresentable—the experience of anyone else’s body during orgasm—then we see that Double-Blind / No Sex Last Night shares in that project by attempting to uncover the lover’s interior, but drives us to the edge of claustrophobia. In Sophie and Greg’s constant, sometimes cacophonous voiceovers, the question is answered again and again: “What is going through their mind?”
8mm (Joel Schumacher, 1999)
It’s no Frisk, but 8mm too has questions about power and violence, desire and abjection. Conceptually, the snuff film attains a kind of perfect terror—the saturated nightmare collision of sex, death, and movies, animated by the question, “Is this real?” An urban legend that gained popularity in the 1970s, snuff films hinge on questions of poverty and wealth. Who can afford to kill someone for pleasure? Who would record it, and who would go to what lengths to watch? And, most importantly, who can be killed for another’s sexual satisfaction? (The 1976 film Snuff that popularized the urban legend had as its tagline: “The film that could only be made in South America… where Life is CHEAP!”)
Kamikaze Hearts (Juliet Bashore, 1986)
What is real and what is performance? Who are you and who is your character? Juliet Bashore’s Kamikaze Hearts anarchically shifts between documentary and narrative improvisation, allowing for a nuanced exploration of love and exploitation. The dazzling chaos of Bashore and her girlfriend Tigr’s humor and charm add emotional weight to the film’s jarring conclusion. “I love to have sex in front of the camera,” Bashore explains, “That moment. That moment.” Does she mean the moment when the reality and the performance become indistinguishable? Or the moment when the difference doesn’t matter anymore?
Lovely Andrea (Hito Steyerl, 2007)
“Are you a feminist?” someone asks. “Definitely,” Hito Steyerl answers, at the end of her 2007 Lovely Andrea. And while neoliberals love to argue that there are many ways to be a feminist, I don’t tend to think that’s true, and I certainly don’t think it’s possible to claim the label of feminist without having the basic moral courage or political analysis necessary to condemn genocide. Stereyl, having long disingenuously and recklessly equated pro-Palestinian speech and action with antisemitism, has responded to the ongoing genocide in Gaza with the kind of violent both-sideism that highlights how petty and degraded the “art world” is as tool of a global war machine. Watching this film again, the way that Steyerl weaves together images of shibari and Abu Ghraib feels even more salacious, irresponsible, and devoid of any meaningful analysis of gender, desire, and state power than it did when I first saw it. You can’t reserve your condemnations of torture for times when it doesn’t threaten your career.
Fascination (Jean Rollin, 1979)
Expensive movies are often hard to watch, because it’s hard to escape into fantasy’s relief when confronted by waste’s vicious and stupid excess. Jean Rollin’s cheap and hastily produced movies do not have this problem, and their disinterest in hiding their material and economic conditions, combined with their erotic and sort of silly surrealism, makes them even more beautiful. Rollin made porn movies for money and horror films for pleasure, but his work is not so limited by genres, and his movies remind us that everything is everything. Brigitte Lahaie’s performance is so wild and consistent with that spirit of unrestrained campy abundance—it is genuinely sad to watch her and think about her later decline into conservatism.
Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002)
Another movie that dares to ask: Is porn evil? I wonder when was the first time someone looked at a young person and fretted about the fate of a “desensitized” world. I am quite sure it predated the ubiquitous presence of online porn. An undeniably stylish movie, Demonlover has great music, and Chloë Sevigny’s performance is, as per usual, impeccable, as hilarious and sexy as I wish the whole movie were, but the film’s attempt to critique sadomasochistic porn while also relying on its eroticism renders impotent any deeper questions the film might have about fantasy and greed.
Amateur (Hal Hartley, 1994)
What I like most about this movie is that Isabelle Huppert plays a porn-obsessed former nun, and I’m down for anything that explores the complex and many connections between intense religious devotion and sexual proclivity. Both are animated by heavenly visions of being “where total freedom” is, as Bob Glück explains in Margery Kempe. Both understand that a preliminary requirement of total freedom is the escape from the burden of having a self.
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, 2005)
So much appears effortful in Tsai Ming-liang’s movies—carrying heavy things, bathing, climbing stairs. The complexity of The Wayward Cloud’s exploration of longing, alienation, precarity, and fantasy makes me think it would be a mistake to understand the film’s long and brutal conclusion as another condemnation of pornography. To me, the film doesn’t center porn as a primary barrier to intimacy and connection—rather, our connections are severed by the constant degradation of globalized capitalism. Still, Tsai offers us many romantic escapes from such toil. The one I think of the most often is when, lying beneath his neighbor Shiang-chyi’s table, Hsiao-kang smokes a cigarette held between her toes.
Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983)
Part of Variety’s surprise is that, despite taking place in and around a Times Square Porn Theater, it disturbs the visual’s centrality to the pornographic. Rather than challenging the utility and fun of porn, it challenges the dominance of a dominating gaze by emphasizing the invisible parts of fantasy. In a parked car, sitting next to a pinball machine, our hero narrates pornographic stories to her visibly distressed boyfriend. Is it the shift in power that freaks him out? His girlfriend’s affectless recitation? She doesn’t care, she continues her tale.
Last Week (Kanye West, 2022)
Depending on where you are and who you’re with, turning on porn can be an extreme confrontation. Meeting with Adidas execs, Kanye West extends his arm to get his iPhone as close as possible to one’s face. “Is this a porn movie?” the man asks. “Yes,” Kanye answers, not turning it off. Kanye is forcing an encounter with discomfort and control, with the problems of language vacated of meaning through the damaging intervention of wealth. He tells the exec he wants him to hear that he has the same voice as the porn star. “You are not going to hurt my feelings again,” the porn star says.
Double-Blind / No Sex Last Night (Sophie Calle, 1996)
Double-Blind / No Sex Last Night is in one sense unpornographic, in that it is largely about the absence of sex and the deleterious effect of that lack on an ill-conceived cross-country road trip. But if we agree that part of porn’s appeal is its attempt to represent something unrepresentable—the experience of anyone else’s body during orgasm—then we see that Double-Blind / No Sex Last Night shares in that project by attempting to uncover the lover’s interior, but drives us to the edge of claustrophobia. In Sophie and Greg’s constant, sometimes cacophonous voiceovers, the question is answered again and again: “What is going through their mind?”
8mm (Joel Schumacher, 1999)
It’s no Frisk, but 8mm too has questions about power and violence, desire and abjection. Conceptually, the snuff film attains a kind of perfect terror—the saturated nightmare collision of sex, death, and movies, animated by the question, “Is this real?” An urban legend that gained popularity in the 1970s, snuff films hinge on questions of poverty and wealth. Who can afford to kill someone for pleasure? Who would record it, and who would go to what lengths to watch? And, most importantly, who can be killed for another’s sexual satisfaction? (The 1976 film Snuff that popularized the urban legend had as its tagline: “The film that could only be made in South America… where Life is CHEAP!”)
Kamikaze Hearts (Juliet Bashore, 1986)
What is real and what is performance? Who are you and who is your character? Juliet Bashore’s Kamikaze Hearts anarchically shifts between documentary and narrative improvisation, allowing for a nuanced exploration of love and exploitation. The dazzling chaos of Bashore and her girlfriend Tigr’s humor and charm add emotional weight to the film’s jarring conclusion. “I love to have sex in front of the camera,” Bashore explains, “That moment. That moment.” Does she mean the moment when the reality and the performance become indistinguishable? Or the moment when the difference doesn’t matter anymore?
Lovely Andrea (Hito Steyerl, 2007)
“Are you a feminist?” someone asks. “Definitely,” Hito Steyerl answers, at the end of her 2007 Lovely Andrea. And while neoliberals love to argue that there are many ways to be a feminist, I don’t tend to think that’s true, and I certainly don’t think it’s possible to claim the label of feminist without having the basic moral courage or political analysis necessary to condemn genocide. Stereyl, having long disingenuously and recklessly equated pro-Palestinian speech and action with antisemitism, has responded to the ongoing genocide in Gaza with the kind of violent both-sideism that highlights how petty and degraded the “art world” is as tool of a global war machine. Watching this film again, the way that Steyerl weaves together images of shibari and Abu Ghraib feels even more salacious, irresponsible, and devoid of any meaningful analysis of gender, desire, and state power than it did when I first saw it. You can’t reserve your condemnations of torture for times when it doesn’t threaten your career.
Fascination (Jean Rollin, 1979)
Expensive movies are often hard to watch, because it’s hard to escape into fantasy’s relief when confronted by waste’s vicious and stupid excess. Jean Rollin’s cheap and hastily produced movies do not have this problem, and their disinterest in hiding their material and economic conditions, combined with their erotic and sort of silly surrealism, makes them even more beautiful. Rollin made porn movies for money and horror films for pleasure, but his work is not so limited by genres, and his movies remind us that everything is everything. Brigitte Lahaie’s performance is so wild and consistent with that spirit of unrestrained campy abundance—it is genuinely sad to watch her and think about her later decline into conservatism.
Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002)
Another movie that dares to ask: Is porn evil? I wonder when was the first time someone looked at a young person and fretted about the fate of a “desensitized” world. I am quite sure it predated the ubiquitous presence of online porn. An undeniably stylish movie, Demonlover has great music, and Chloë Sevigny’s performance is, as per usual, impeccable, as hilarious and sexy as I wish the whole movie were, but the film’s attempt to critique sadomasochistic porn while also relying on its eroticism renders impotent any deeper questions the film might have about fantasy and greed.
Amateur (Hal Hartley, 1994)
What I like most about this movie is that Isabelle Huppert plays a porn-obsessed former nun, and I’m down for anything that explores the complex and many connections between intense religious devotion and sexual proclivity. Both are animated by heavenly visions of being “where total freedom” is, as Bob Glück explains in Margery Kempe. Both understand that a preliminary requirement of total freedom is the escape from the burden of having a self.
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, 2005)
So much appears effortful in Tsai Ming-liang’s movies—carrying heavy things, bathing, climbing stairs. The complexity of The Wayward Cloud’s exploration of longing, alienation, precarity, and fantasy makes me think it would be a mistake to understand the film’s long and brutal conclusion as another condemnation of pornography. To me, the film doesn’t center porn as a primary barrier to intimacy and connection—rather, our connections are severed by the constant degradation of globalized capitalism. Still, Tsai offers us many romantic escapes from such toil. The one I think of the most often is when, lying beneath his neighbor Shiang-chyi’s table, Hsiao-kang smokes a cigarette held between her toes.