THE UNCANNY VALLEY OF GETTIN' IT ON

For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality. - Michel Foucault, "The History of Sexuality, Volume 1"

I'm afraid the idea of egregious sex will do as much good as it will harm in attracting an audience for Nymphomaniac. One campaign features the major players naked and in the throes of or contorted by pleasure--just in case you hadn't already heard that there are scenes of unabashed "doing it" in Lars von Trier's new two-parter. The first report resembling press that I saw a few years back was a snide piece about how Shia LeBeouf's piece would be featured in the movie, and that the use of it for prurient purposes would be "unsimulated." Since then, the former-child star's anti-star shenanigans have rivaled the rumors of rampant sex in the public's impression of this film. With everything we're being given and everything we're gathering for ourselves, it's sort of impossible to suss out what Nymphomaniac actually is.
 

A horny hullabaloo was similarly made over Blue is the Warmest Colour, and it's a shame that something which took up only a few minutes of a very long, lovely, and excruciatingly emotional film dominated people's thoughts of it. Indeed, what sex there was in that film was more graphic than what you find in some Shannon Tweed movie that comes on the TV at 12:35am. However, most boinking you see in most movies is meaningless, contributes nothing more than some boobies between shooting and explosions. The sex in Blue plays an important part--as it does in von Trier's film. The graphic pleasure of two people in love mirrors the graphic pain of two people disengaging for love. Being witness to Adèle's sloppy pain over losing Emma felt just as intimate and awkward as watching the two of them being young in bed together. In fact, Adèle Exarchopoulos' snot-covered expression of grief and desperation ranks among the most graphic, difficult-to-watch things I've seen in a film. In both cases, the awkwardness comes from some actual creation of a real person in film, to the point where you feel you're observing stuff that is none of your business.

How we respond to sex in film tells us a lot about what movies really are, I think--or what we want them to be. If the film fits generically, we expect and laud its representation and highteneing of some true emotional and situational reality. But what happens when elements in a film get too close to real life? With 3D animation, there's something called the Uncanny Valley, a concept that describes the discomfort and sometimes revulsion experienced when an artificial creation gets close to representing reality, but misses slightly. I wonder if this holds true for elements of realistic cinema.

Of course we're all reasonable grown ups, and understand that even though a film may skim the surface of what we consider real life to be, there is always a frame, an intention, some intellectual mechanics keeping it distinctly separate from reality. However, when we see naked people up there on the screen, slapping their bodies against one another--as maybe we've done from time to time--we get uncomfortable, are reluctant to include that active nudity as something that's like real life, but isn't exactly. It's an Uncanny Valley of Gettin' It On.

I wonder if audiences are more comfortable with meaningless, interstitial sex in films. In some ways, I imagine we're inured to it like a refrigerator's hum. That toss away sex is more often than not a pantomime, something that we know isn't real, and so can either enjoy or ignore. And, unless it's needlessly egregious, little fuss gets made.

There is some sex in Nymphomaniac, there is some sex in Blue is the Warmest Colour, but to define these films based on the inclusion of some dirty flesh stuff feels like a severe disservice to the ideas and the emotions that the sex is there in support of.

The fact is, you're much more likely to have sex in your life then you are to fire a gun, or have one fired at you, yet guns are all over films. I've never held a gun or seen one in real life, but I have some working knowledge of how to use the thing. I've seen them loaded and fired since I was a kid; I'm not sure if I'd know how to do sex based on what I've seen in mainstream films. But, for the most part, audiences have few problems with watching people getting shot, people dying. We don't bat an eye at a bloody chest, but screw up our faces and titter at a sweaty, naked one.

I can't help but wonder what action movies would be like if every time someone was being killed, a breeze caught the curtain, pushing it into the frame, obscuring the violence just as it was getting good.

--Andrew