The Central Characters in These Films are Everyday People

July 20, 2023 2:09 AM

In these films, sexuality pervades, not as a troublesome interloper, but as an all-consuming directive; like hunger, it is dangerous only when thwarted. It refuses to be relegated to the shadows. Like buried trauma, sex demands an audience. The perennial discourse of the plot-relevant sex scene—does it or does it not exist, and should it?—can find no footing here: sex is the plot, and it does so much more than titillate. It communicates. There is not just the soft-focus romantic lovemaking we’ve come to expect on-screen; there is also fucking for anger, shame, sorrow, and all the ugliness of which we fear to speak in the light of day. There is transgression and discomfort. There are real taboos hard at work between the sheets. What there aren’t, though, are thrills. These sex tragedies are downbeat, enervating to the last frame. Call this genre the “erotic bummer.” from In the Mouth of Sadness: On the Erotic Bummer [LARB; ungated]
posted by chavenet (16 comments total)

Well, that's my watchlist sorted for awhile.
posted by gible at 2:41 AM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's fun reading this next to this recent edition of Post45, on 'heteropessimism'--the idea of, oh no, we're stuck with this awful sexuality and its pains and limitations (see especially the essay on Sally Rooney). (Although now I'm also thinking of that last part of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and how tragic it feels.)

I was going to say there's something very religious about the idea of the erotic bummer--everyone gets their punishment in the end--and so I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion of this piece, "Nobody gets their comeuppance or their salvation because punishment is what they all most desire." Just because you dive headlong into the punishment doesn't mean it's not there, right? Maybe it's not as stark as Justine being struck by lightning, but the idea of You Mustn't does hang over everything, doesn't it? You would've been happy if you'd just...y'know, behaved. The impossibility of imagining a happy ending to this kind of story is the most surprising thing.
posted by mittens at 5:00 AM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

"crysturbate" is a good word
posted by taquito sunrise at 5:53 AM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

The article reads differently when thinking of the British slang “bummer.”
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:26 AM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

It’s interesting how many of these are literary adaptations, and at least one of them (Wings of the Dove) is an adaptation of one of my all-time favorite novels ( fyi: the book is significantly less, uh, “erotic”). I think the various authors of the original works in question would all respond pretty well to being called erotic bummers, although for different reasons. Greene’s(End of the Affair) zealous Catholic convert energy generally dooms all pleasure (note: I also love Graham Greene). And Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient) writes a lot of apocalyptically doomed sex too, like it shows up as a motif in his novels, especially sex in and around bombing campaigns (which is in itself maybe/probably a Greene nod, but he also writes a lot of people getting over it as well). Ian McEwan is also a giant erotic bummer because Ian McEwan’s whole deal is a kind of a overconfident undergrad level “I’m going to blow your mind by telling you that when anyone has to make a hard choice they will always make the self-interested one, dig?” bummer (though I genuinely enjoyed the Wright Atonement adaptation). Proulx’s kind of a weird one. Everyone quietly suffers in Proulx fiction whether or not they’re having sex. It does feel weird and sort of troll-y to put Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” (and Wings od the Dove etc) in the same category as “Antichrist” or “The Piano Teacher.” I don’t think they’re trying to do the same thing. I think there's a difference between “love can destroy you, especially when conditions prevent love from being expressed” and “sex is self-destruction." I mean, where would this author put "Romeo and Juliet" do you figure? Depends on the adaptation, I guess.

Forget AIDS, NC-17, the Parents Music Resource Center: the erotic bummer posits that anyone, at any time, can fuck themselves to death.

Though he notes a couple of films from the 70s, the vast majority of these films were made in a during and post-AIDS universe. I don't think you can write about movies equating sex and death in the 90s, in particular, without addressing that. As a person who came of age during an era in which trips to the health department for HIV tests were a thing that just happened because someone we'd hooked up with had maybe hooked up with someone who came back positive, I cannot stress this enough. The filmmakers that came of age (literally or professionally) during this era certainly responded to that artistically. Sometimes I worry that this is being pushed aside/forgotten/downplayed when people talk about art and art about sex during this period. People younger than I am: it was absolutely a big deal.

Also, and speaking of, you know what's an erotic bummer on every possible level? "Kids"
posted by thivaia at 6:46 AM on July 20, 2023 [17 favorites]

Big shout out there for You Must Remember This and their Erotic 80s/90s series which I’d also super recommend.
posted by Artw at 7:23 AM on July 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

The article reads differently when thinking of the British slang “bummer.”

Bummer is used pretty much the exact same way in the UK, FWIW. “Bummed” is the one that might cause confusion.
posted by Artw at 7:25 AM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I don't get it. How does Atonement fit the thesis? Some people have sex and there's a sad ending, I guess. But the mortal sin to be atoned for is not at all sex, it's story-telling; a writer's obsession with power, to shape the narrative, dole out poetic justice, turn everything into a story you control. It's clearly not mutual lust that dooms the central couple, but Briony's overly active imagination, need for attention, need for control - in combination with a World War, which also plays a non-negligible part.

I do think sex and death is just a combo that works, intuitively, not necessarily in service of any moralistic agenda - wouldn't be all consuming if anything survived, wouldn't it? But some of these examples seem like a bit of a reach.
posted by sohalt at 7:47 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

"crysturbate" is a good word

I believe "crywank" is more traditional.
posted by Dysk at 8:15 AM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thank you critics covering American Horror Story Season 1 for popularizing that one.
posted by Artw at 8:28 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

"crysturbate" is a good word

I immediately thought of a certain scene from Mulholland Drive, which is cited in this piece.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:18 AM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

I don’t think they’re trying to do the same thing. I think there's a difference between “love can destroy you, especially when conditions prevent love from being expressed” and “sex is self-destruction."

Agree. I also think original-recipe Dead Ringers is a weird inclusion here because the actual sex is not the point at all. It's just the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Strange omission is La piscine/The Swimming Pool.
posted by praemunire at 9:27 AM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

It’s also a LOT of streaming TV versus movies - which I guess is an indication of where you are going to see sex in media these days outside of oscar season.
posted by Artw at 9:45 AM on July 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Other movies TFA made me think of at various turns:

The Piano (Campion has said that she would not have had the 'happy' ending, in retrospect)
The Crying Game
Sex Lies and Videotape
Catchfire
Lost Highway and Inland Empire
Crash
The Pillow Book
Kids
My Own Private Idaho
Midnight Cowboy
The Ice Storm
Nowhere, and The Doom Generation
The Hot Spot (great soundtrack)
American Gigolo
The Rapture

maybe not all quite on the mark but they all trade in eros and thanatos. But, so does most film noir and a lot of body horror. Much of De Palma and Verhoeven and etc seems like it would fit to me; but TFA seemed to suggest those were too fast paced—while still allowing for the typical noir endings of squalor, ignominy, somebody having to die for their erotic transgressions, etc so I dunno.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:40 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

Where does Society fit in?
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:20 PM on July 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

1. eponysterical?
2. Pretty much anywhere and everywhere
posted by Artw at 4:32 PM on July 20, 2023 [3 favorites]