Category Archives: sexual revolution

Happy 80th birthday Oswalt Kolle

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pE6FA2UwKs]

German documentary on the occasion of his birthday.

Germany’s sexual liberator and educator Oswalt Kolle turns 80 today. He was an equivalent of Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen in the U. S. and Torgny Wickman in Scandinavia. He was pivotal in the 1960s sexual revolution. I wouldn’t known who his other European counterparts were. The cinematic genre he spawned is known by cult film aficionados as white coaters, or in its home country as Aufklärungsfilme. The genre is related to the sex report films.

Kolle’s detractors came from the catholic corner (see sexual repression and Christianity and sexuality) and called him “Schweinehund” in the documentary above.

Kolle broke another taboo in 2000, when he assisted his wife’s euthanasia.

Visuals?

Check these:




Introducing Keith Schofield

1970s porn

Last month, I discovered “Toe Jam,”[1] a song by David Byrne, Dizzee Rascal and Norman Cook, a dance tune with soca and Balkan influences. Its video, directed by Keith Schofield is a humorous take on 1970s porn, using censor bars as devices to produce images and sounds.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wR22jTyyY]

“Toe Jam”

Three days ago, Schofield released a promotional clip for Diesel, Diesel SFW XXX[2], yet another send-up of film censorship, this time using models to enact “sexual acts,” superimposed by animation bits that hide the action and seemlingly give it an innocent appearance. SFW is an acronym denoting “safe for work,” i.e not NSFW.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vna0HojUUqA&]

“Diesel SFW XXX”

Another use of the censor rectangles

Perversion for Profit (1965)

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95O5P4DTOEE]

RIP Henri Pachard and World Cinema Classic #64

Henri Pachard died. Henri who? Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of him either. He was a porn film director, but judging by way of this clip of the 1984 Great Sexpectations[1], one with a sense of humor and an understanding of the film medium, which is rare in the genre,  but successfully displayed in John Byrum‘s Inserts, which to tell you the truth, wasn’t a sex film at all.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0m42FFeyDY&]

I am quite surprised by this clip of Great Sexpectations. I thought that scripted pornography was a thing of the past after the home video revolution, making way for boring wall to wall sex and killing the softcore and porno chic film industry.

Common wisdom has it that:

“by 1982, most pornographic films were being shot on the cheaper and more convenient medium of video tape. Many film directors resisted this shift at first because of the different image quality that video tape produced, however those who did change soon were collecting most of the industry’s profits since consumers overwhelmingly preferred the new format. The technology change happened quickly and completely when directors realised that continuing to shoot on film was no longer a profitable option. This change moved the films out of the theatres and into people’s private homes. This was the end of the age of big budget productions and the mainstreaming of pornography. It soon went back to its earthy roots and expanded to cover every fetish possible since filming was now so inexpensive. Instead of hundreds of pornographic films being made each year, thousands now were, including compilations of just the sex scenes from various videos.”

I haven’t been able whether Sexpectations was made for a theatrical release or was shot for video. Thanks to Joplinfantasy for uploading this.

Inserts (1975) – John Byrum

Inserts is World Cinema Classic #64. Moon in the Gutter did an article[2] on it.

Bra burning: the event was not televised, as it did not happen

I’ve praised the non-event before[1].

Bra burning by you.

Welcome to Miss America cattle auction.

Today’s non-event is of a different nature. It’s been exactly 40 years since the New York Radical Women did not burn their bras[2] at the 1968 Miss America contest in Atlantic City. A non-event (Someone suggested lighting a fire, but a permit could not be obtained, and so there was no burning, nor did anyone take off her bra) which went into history as a milestone of female protest against male oppression. I can’t help but wonder if the protesters had been male, would they have stopped their plan to burn the contents of their “Freedom Trash Can” for lack of a permit?

Also, in general, male oppressors would have been glad if beautiful women had stopped wearing bras; most women on the other hand thought and still think that not wearing bras is impractical.

The event was not televised, as it did not happen.

Bras bring memories.

Bras – short for brassieres – remind us of John Currin‘s 1997 painting The Bra Shop[3] and Cymande‘s song “Bra,”[4] from their 1973 debut album.

Cymande’s “Bra” (WMC#77) is not their signature song, they are better-known for tracks such as “Brother on the Slide“[5], which is WMC #78; and the “The Message“[6], WMC #79.

John Currin‘s 1997 painting The Bra Shop is IoEA #34.

Tony Duvert (1945 – 2008)

Tony Duvert, the most infamous French gay writer (similar enfant terrible Pierre Guyotat was hetero) since Jean Genet is dead, says the The Paper Man.


[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

Tony Duvert (1945 – 2008) was a French writer. He was the winner of the Prix Médicis, author of When Jonathan Died and contributor to French gay journal Gai pied.

In 2007 an English translation by Bruce Benderson Good Sex Illustrated (Le bon sexe illustré) was released by Semiotext(e).

Dennis Cooper described him as “A writer criminally undertranslated and consequently barely known in the primarily English-speaking areas of the world…. Duvert is one of the more significant and idiosyncratic contemporary French fiction writers. He’s also one of the most mysterious.”

Why this curious and debased love?

Waloli detail by you.

From Waloli, our reporter in Tokyo

Waloli: Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first American over-the-counter publication of Russian-born author Nabokov‘s Lolita. When Nabokov’s “dirty book” hit the streets of the USA, it sold 100,000 copies in three weeks, an immediate success that would allow the 60-year-old scholar and novelist the freedom to resign from teaching.

Pretty much everything about that book has been said, but I think many of you have not seen this interview conducted by Pierre Berton and Lionel Trilling for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation now at YouTube[1][2].

The interview was filmed on November 26, 1958 at The Rockefeller Center studios in New York City. It was Nabokov’s first television interview. The subject was Lolita, covering some of the questions addressed in Nabokov’s 1958 afterword. Most answers were read from index cards.

Pierre Berton:

“Let´s get out the more specific point: Why did you choose this rather odd, and, something that has never been done before, this curious and debased love?”

Nabokov:

“Well, on the whole, it flooded me all kinds of interesting possibilities I am not so much interested in the philosophy of the book, as I am in weaving the thing in a certain way, in those intergradation and interweavings of certain themes and subthemes, for instance the systematic line of Mr. Quilty, whom Humbert will kill, does kill …”

The Lolita or nymphet trope has since entered popular consciousness and never left it, especially in Japan, where it evolved into the Gothic Lolita. Most recently British art critic James Putnam curated “Viva Lolita” which featured work from Turkish artist Nazif Topçuoğlu [3]. Here[4] are three of Topçuoğlu’s photos at Wurzelstock[5].

The Lolita trope, in all its manifestations, from Balthus to Trevor Brown, is IoEA #32.

Thank you Waloli, back to the studio.

Will you talk about yourself?

This post is part of the cult fiction series, this issue #5

The Swimmer (1968) Frank Perry

The famed John Cheever short story appeared in the New Yorker and people talked. Now there will be talk again. When you sense this man’s vibrations and share his colossal hang-up . . . will you see someone you know, or love? When you feel the body-blow power of his broken dreams, will it reach you deep inside, where it hurts? When you talk about “The Swimmer” will you talk about yourself?“

Nobrow manifestos, #2

The Pornographic Imagination is is my second entry in this series, the first was Leslie Fiedler’s Cross the Border — Close the Gap (1969).

The Pornographic Imagination is a nobrow essay by Susan Sontag first published in book form in Styles of Radical Will. It had been originally published two years earlier in the Partisan Review of spring 1967.

The subject is erotic literature and Sontag contends that five French literary works are not ‘just’ pornography but literary fiction and thus genuine literature. Although the term paraliterature had not been coined at the time of its writing (we have to wait 17 years for Fredric Jameson to do that), the connection between science fiction and erotic fiction makes this essay one of the first defenses of the nobrow or paraliterary category.

Her ‘case’ is based on these five novels:

On Georges Bataille she writes:

“One reason that Histoire de l’oeil and Madame Edwarda make such a strong and unsettling impression is that Bataille understood more clearly than any other writer I know of that what pornography is really about, ultimately, isn’t sex but death. I am not suggesting that every pornographic work speaks, either overtly or covertly, of death. Only works dealing with that specific and sharpest inflection of the themes of lust, “the obscene,” do. It’s toward the gratifications of death, succeeding and surpassing those of eros, that every truly obscene quest tends.”

Breton’s homophobia

I’ve mentioned surrealist leader André Breton’s homophobia before, so I decided to investigate.

Apparently most of what is known of Breton’s dislike of homosexuality stems from round table discussions that were held in the years 1928 – 1932, long before Kinsey or Masters and Johnson began their clinical surveys. Participants included many of surrealism’s best known figures: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Antonin Artaud, Benjamin Peret, Jacques Prevert, Marcel Duhamel, Yves Tanguy, Pierre Unik, etc…. Their findings were partly published in the surrealist magazine La Révolution surréaliste. For those of us without access to those magazines (and that is 99.999% of us) there is an English translation available from Verso books with the title Investigating Sex: Surrealist Discussions 1928-1932, which publishes verbatim accounts of all of these round table discussions.

 

Surrealist Discussions 1928-1932, page 5, an illustration of many Surrealists', and especially Breton's apparent homophobia. This excerpt from the first session on January 27, 1928.

Quoting from both sides (pro and contra):

André Breton said:

“I accuse homosexuals of confronting human tolerance with a mental and moral deficiency which tends to turn itself into a system and to paralyse every enterprise I respect.”

Pierre Unik states:

“From a physical point of view, I find homosexuality as disgusting as excrement …”

André Breton concludes:

“I am absolutely opposed to continuing the discussion of this subject. If this promotion of homosexuality carries on, I will leave this meeting forthwith.”

Some surrealists came to the defense of homosexuals, most notably Raymond Queneau who states:

“It is evident to me that there is an extraordinary prejudice against homosexuality among the surrealists.

I’d like to investigate further who was pro and who contra, but I am running out of time here.