Category Archives: sexual revolution

The end of the sexual revolution

In the Cut (Unrated and Uncut Director’s Edition) (2003) – Jane Campion [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

In the Cut, of course, continues Campion’s career-long examination of female masochism.

In the Cut (1995) – Susanna Moore
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

I’m halfway through Susanna Moore’s 1995 novel In the Cut, the story of a thirty-something literature teacher in New York City with an interest in street slang who falls in love with a cop of whom she suspects he may also be a serial killer/psychopath. There are lots of similarities here with Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, which I read last year. Can both be categorized as chick lit? If yes, this kind of chick lit takes it upon itself to study men’s (sexual) behavior in an almost anthropological way. Moore describes how a post-coital man, Erica Jong described one of her lover’s post-toilet behavior.

So far I liked Jane Campion’s film adaption of In the Cut better, Moore’s prose is kind of trite and Moore lacks the philosophical breadth I liked in Fear of Flying.

What In the Cut and Fear of Flying also share is the concept of women’s sexuality after the sexual revolution, a topic I’ve first mentioned in my profile of Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977).

Speaking of the end of the sexual revolution which oficially arrived in 1984 (cfr. TIME cover) and which coincides with the arrival of AIDS (see Benetton AIDS ad) and of postmodernism: many writers of the pre- and sexual revolution era such as Gershon Legman, Wayland Young (Eros Denied), Gordon Rattray Taylor and Amos Vogel (Film as a Subversive Art) foreshadowed utopia as soon as we would get rid of our sexual inhibitions.

I quote from Jim Haynes’s website[1]:

 

“Murder is a crime; describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is. Why?” –Gershon Legman.

“If we were sexually liberated there’d be no president, no police force, no night sticks, no governments.” –Germaine Greer.

The utopia did not happen because of the aforementioned AIDS epidemic and what I suspect a whole range of reasons. Personally I like the concept of inhibitions, the concept of taboos, the concept of shame and guilt; not only are these inhibitions what makes sex exciting in the first place but I suspect that they are necessary to regulate a society. If these inhibitions would not be there life would be an eternal recurrence of the orgy in Perfume. Maybe I should read this?

The only writer that comes to mind who has dealt with this subject is Camille Paglia.

Well, um, what I’m saying is that I’m part of the sexual revolution, um, and I feel that the…in one of my most controversial sentences is “Everybody who preached free love in the 60’s is responsible for AIDS.” I mean by that the Mama’s and the Papa’s and all of us, so, the price of that revolution has been paid by gay men, primarily. I think that what we’re understanding is the enormous power of nature. Even Larry Kramer is starting to talk like this now: that nature apparently did not want us to be promiscuous and that it puts a thousand obstacles in our paths such as these diseases. OK. I feel that procreation is nature’s law, and that’s why I defy nature, I resist it, I oppose it. OK. I think that women certainly are in the..um, you know we were the first generation to have the birth control pill, OK, which frustrates nature. […] –Camille Paglia interviewed by Jack Nichols, 1997

But of course there must be other literature out there, and if you know of any, I’m looking forward to your recommendations.


The publishing houses of Western counterculture

Last August I asked whether anyone knew of the German and British equivalents of Eric Losfeld’s Éditions Le Terrain Vague, an editing house I admire for its readiness to publish works of ‘high art’, works of political subversion and the works of erotic avant-garde which accompanied the post-war European sexual revolution. Thanks to the comments by Andrej Maltar I have been able to fill in these gaps. If anyone else knows of other publishing houses that played this role in the rest of Europe (Spain, Italy, the former Eastern Bloc or the Scandinavian countries), please let me know. Below is a little write-up on Jörg Schröder:

Typical cover of März-Verlag with their distinctive look – yellow with thick black and red types. März-Verlag is the German equivalent of similar Western publishing houses such as Eric Losfeld’s Éditions Le Terrain Vague, American Grove Press and Great Britain’s John Calder’s various publishing houses. März-Verlag was run by Jörg Schröder, who published Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Castaneda, Leonard Cohen, Robert Crumb, Fassbinder, John Giorno, Gerhard Malanga, Kenneth Patchen and J. G. Ballard. Jörg Schröder was also the german publisher of Histoire d’O and he ran the German branch of Girodias’s Olympia Press.

More publishers of interest:
Dalkey Archive Press – Atlas Press – Sylvia Beach – Creation Books – Edmund Curll – Lawrence Ferlinghetti – Maurice Girodias – Glittering Images – Grove Press – Eric Losfeld – Headpress – New Directions – Obelisk Press – Olympia Press – Jean-Jacques Pauvert – RE/Search publications (V.Vale and A. Juno) – Barney Rosset – Taschen

Carnal Knowledge (1971) – Mike Nichols

Carnal Knowledge (1971) – Mike Nichols [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

G___ lent me a VHS copy of Carnal Knowledge (1971). It’s a depressing look at the effects of the sexual revolution and free love, one of the first films to depict its negative influences, as such it predates Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). While the film deals with themes related to eroticism, it is unerotic in its depiction thereof, and can best be classified as a kitchen-sink realist drama and a celebration of the modernist cult of ugliness. The film is also reminiscent of Coming Apart (1969) and was a feature in David Schwartz’s retrospective on the sexual revolution in American cinema.

Lasse Braun, the sexual revolution came from the cold

Yesterday evening on Arte TV (along with the BBC, one of the best television stations in Europe) there were two documentaries about the sexual revolution in Europe. The first documentary was on Lasse Braun and it was followed by a documentary on the sexual revolution as it happened in Denmark, what I have called the ‘Danish experiment’ before. I fell asleep during this second part, so some notes about the Braun feature:

Worth remembering about Lasse Braun (born 1936) is that he spent some time in Breda, The Netherlands, which was his most fruitful time; that he was/is somewhat of an intellectual/guru type of person (equalling pornography to anarchism (a practice which started in 18th century Europe)) and that he is a sexually dominant who works with women who were/are in love with him.

Sensations (1976) – Lasse Braun

There was an interesting interview with Tuppy Owens (Britain’s leading “pro-sex” (a radical group within the post-feminist camp) writer and activist, comparable to the likes of Annie Sprinkle, Susie Bright etc in America). Tuppy Owens appeared in the 1976 film Sensations, Braun’s first feature film and a good illustration of the shift of pre-1970s pornographic film (usually filmed on 8mm and 16mm formats and distributed in brothels and peep show booths) to porn chic films (filmed on professional stock and shown in ‘mainstream’ theatres.)

The end of the documentary saw Lasse Braun in Susan Block’s TV show, a very sad affair indeed.

See also: European pornography– sexual revolution in the cinema


Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) – Richard Brooks

 


Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) – Richard Brooks

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a 1975 novel by Judith Rossner, and a 1977 film by Richard Brooks starring Diane Keaton and Richard Gere, based on the true story of a woman who has an affair with her sadistic and misogynistic professor as the beginning of a long downward spiral that culminates in her brutal murder.

In recent years the film has been compared to Jane Campion’s 2003 In the Cut. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post called the latter an “erotic thriller that amounts to an implausible update on Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”

Notes:

  • Looking for Mr. Goodbar foreshadows the end of the sexual revolution.
  • Looking for Mr. Goodbar wasn’t the first foray of Richard Brooks into true crime, there had been a film adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in 1967.

Porn symposium

Update: Aug 24: pornography – symposium

Via girish again comes:

Terrific post by Owen Hatherley, part of the Porn Symposium (hey, there’s an idea for a future blog-a-thon): Russ Meyer, Vilgot Sjöman, etc, but mostly Dušan Makavejev.

Sexpol and Sexploitation in the cinema of the New Left

Part of a Porn Symposium with K-Punk, Infinite Thought, Poetix, Effay, Bacteriagrl and Different Maps. —Owen Hatherley

There is a story of the permeation of pornography into mainstream cinema and into everyday life, and it goes much like this; a combination of American exploitation directors and French arthouse in the early 1970s, through a conjunction of fake orgasms and truck drivers on the one hand and soft focus and cod-philosophy on the other takes what was previously suppressed and places it in the heart of the multiplex. In this narrative the heroes are the hucksters behind Deep Throat or the faux-sophisticates of Emmanuelle, with even dissenting semi-mainstream directors like Russ Meyer considered too original to be relevant. These are two films from which one can trace a line to the frat film, the overlit horrors of most American porn and the ‘another round of whispering on a bed’ (Foucault) that is, the French sex drama, always aiming to reveal some essential truth or other. The confirmation seemingly of the Foucauldian admonition that ‘sex is boring’. —Owen Hatherley

P.S.

[This post forms part of a symposium with bacteriagrl, k-punk, sit down man you’re a bloody tragedy (I still dream of orgonon), infinite thought (the money shot and vintage porn), effay, poetix.] —Different Maps

My two cents:

 

Related: 1971 – European cinema – Freudo-Marxism – Dušan Makavejev – Wilhelm Reich – the sexual revolution in the cinema

The ravishing sex reformer and radical in a provocative pose; composing sex and politics, it also reveals Makavejev’s “aestheticism”; the unexpected rabbit, the strong, two-colored vertical stripes and particularly the inexplicable empty frame. SC via Film As a Subversive Art (1974) – Amos Vogel

Update Aug 23 2006:

As you’ll recall, Ariel Levy snarled about porn studies in the confessional section of Female Chauvinist Pigs. If you are unfamiliar with the evil that is porn studies, you should check out the Porn Symposium going on now! You can see why Ariel Levy felt that this kind of feminism contributed to raunch culture and the gyrations and tough talk of female chauvinist pigs. –via blog.pulpculture.org