Tale Sex: Terms and Kisses

‘Erotica’ and ‘Pornography’ and the kiss in movies

Terms

Here I give my own definition of two terms dealing with sex in tales. These are just how I would see them.

Erotica is a tale whose main effect is to arouse the audience sexually.

Pornography is a tale whose main intent is to arouse the audience sexually.

Usually, where I see distinctions offered between these terms, erotica is considered ‘soft,’ less graphic, and dealing more with the emotional relations of its characters, while pornography is considered ‘hard,’ more graphic, and more concerned with physical relations. Erotica is said to appeal more to women, and pornography is said to appeal more to men. The term ‘pornography’ has also been broadened to include tales and art that has nothing to do with sex, such as ‘pornography of violence’ or ‘pornography of hate.’ Those phrases use the word ‘pornography’ more as a simple pejorative indicating a more graphic, extreme, or ‘hardcore’ expression of whatever fellow word is used. This seems sloppy to me, and assumes that ‘pornography’ must needs be evil; this assumes further that sexual arousal must needs be evil, and finally that sex is evil. If we deny that sex is evil, then sexual arousal need not be evil, and tales that intend or do arouse their audience sexually need not be evil. If we hold this attitude, then ‘pornography of violence’ comes simply to mean ‘extremely graphic violence’ — which is not what has been said. That’s why I think those who use such terms as ‘pornography of violence’ seek to condemn violence as equivalent to sex, with the hidden assumption that sex is itself evil.

Note that in the way I define these terms, ‘erotica’ is what the audience says it is, while ‘pornography’ is determined by the talesman. In this way a tale can be one and not the other, or it can be both, or it can be neither. A talesman might tell a tale that deals mainly with sexual affairs, and do so in a way that seems ‘objectively’ to seek to arouse his audience — but he can fail to arouse them; his intent may fail; the result might not be sexually arousing at all. At the same time it is possible that a talesman tell a tale that he intends to be mainly about something else; if his audience finds that tale to be mainly sexually arousing, they call it erotica. Also, one audience may find a tale arousing, but another audience is left cold; the same tale may be ‘erotica’ to some and not to others. Finally, both ‘erotica’ and ‘pornography’ are ways of sorting tales according to their sexual content, and nothing else; men can like erotica, women can like pornography; sex is sex is sex, and ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ I ignore because I don’t see where anyone can draw the line (though many boards of censors have been forced to by their laws).

One other note: both these terms involve the tale’s main or primary effect or intention, and not lesser ones it might employ along the way. There may be a scene in a larger work that is meant to be erotic, or may be erotic in effect, and yet the primary intention and effect of the tale as a whole lies somewhere else.

The Kiss in Movies

I take the kiss to be the ultimate in sex acts in emotional relationships in film. That is to say: where a filmmaker does not intend a scene to be erotic, he does not need to go beyond the kiss between lovers.

This rule is an aesthetic that seems to me to hold true, but it is my own, and has grown out of the corruption of sex relations between film characters over the last 30 plus years. In that time filmmakers have been more and more influenced by explicit pornographic films (these are films in which the actors do indeed have all forms of sex with one another, and the filmmakers depict it honestly with an unblinking eye). The result is ‘fake and phony porn-lite’ scenes that mimic explicit films while discarding their honesty. It contrasts with how filmmakers approached such ‘softcore’ scenes in the times when censorship still made explicit sexual relations on film illegal, and so the filmmakers dealt with symbols and a higher level of art.

The kiss, on the other hand, when offered and accepted freely and with abandon, embodies everything that the lovers desire of each other, which is that ‘yes’ that we the audience can then take to include every other romantic act.

If we take my own stricture then and confine ourselves to the kiss, then several smaller rules apply:

First, the lovers shall kiss only once in a film, or twice, or thrice. A fourth kiss is one too many and should be used only rarely, when the story demands it — when there is no way three kisses will be enough.

Second, when the kisses are so limited in number, they should only come at key turns in the plot. When there is only one kiss, it will come at the tale’s end (or the end of the romantic story-line in a larger tale). The kiss then brings the romantic tale to its close. Two kisses might come at the first curtain and then at the close. Three kisses might come at the end of each of the three acts.

Third, when the kisses are so limited, and separated, the filmmakers (writer, director, actors, cameraman, costume and all the departments) can seek to differentiate the kisses in every way they can. This means, for example, that when there are more than one kiss, the first likely should not be so passionate as the last. The last kiss will usually be the most passionate, and given and accepted with the most abandon. (Though this may not always be the case: in the class of tales such as Love Story where one lover is dying, the last kiss will more likely be more tender or spiritual, and the first kiss may well be the most passionate: the tale will then show how physical attraction blossoms into a more emotional and spiritual love.) The kisses become important milestones in the course of the tale.

Fourth, each kiss, because they are few in number, embodies the state of the relationship at that point in the tale, wordlessly and dramatically. A kiss even between lovers (and lovers-to-be and lovers-that-were) can mean many things. The first kiss can be tentative, almost a question as yet unresolved; the ‘yes’ is not yet absolute, and the heart is not yet given with abandon. A kiss when breaking up can be given with such abandon — and scorn — that it amounts not to ‘I love you’ but to ‘Fuck you, asshole.’ A kiss can seal a bargain, a kiss can say good-bye, or welcome back, or many other things. This is done without words, dramatically, and therefore it can be done with great power for the audience; because of this I think mainly of films and tales told dramatically, and not tales told in words alone.

(Composed on keyboard Friday, April 11, 2008)