On Fleshy Lips

In my mind, the word “flesh” immediately evokes thought of my lips.  I had planned on having a career that would center on the control of these tiny pieces of flesh, but then my lips were slightly injured, which unleashed a whole world of unexpected complications onto my ideas of myself, my future, and the world that operates around me.   I am exploring the relationship between the ego and flesh, how the ego and self-image develop themselves (because they seemingly have a lot to do with flesh), using the examination of the psychological effect of brass injury to do so.  I am looking at myself and my own injury as well as other cases that I have seen around me of different severity, and that have produced different emotional and psychological reaction.  I have already done a ton of research, including reading books and websites and making trips to see “chop doctors” to get more information, and looking credible in the essay should come easily.  A main goal of the essay is to understand where in my head I am right now in relation to my flesh and my flesh-dependent ego, and to figure out how I would like to progress from here.

On Flesh

I only now realized that I saved this as a draft and never posted it.  I am writing about nail-biting, though not precisely in the terms sketched out below.  It’s still getting its shape.

Not quite sure what I’m going to write about yet, but here’s a quick sketch of the ideas that are coming to mind:

1. BITING NAILS- I’ve always been a nail-biter, although I can’t seem to link the habit to a particular feeling or cause.  My mom hates that I bite my nails, and I kind of do, but don’t really realize when I’m doing it anymore.  No matter what course of action I’ve taken, including putting that rotten polish on my nails, I keep biting them.  Maybe there’s something in here to explore.

2. SERIAL KILLERS- More precisely, those that have fascination with the body after its dead.  I know this is really morbid, but I’m super interested in murderers who disturb or mutilate the body post-mortem.  This includes, but is not limited to, 1991′s yogurt shop murders and the recently convicted Jigsaw Murderer, Stephen Marshall.

3. DECOMPOSITION OF THE BODY- I don’t know where I would go with this, I only know that I’m very interested in finding out how bodies rot.

On Flesh, or underneath it rather…

On Flesh…

What I think of is things like Zombies and steaks and skin. Eventually my thoughts wander to blood. Now I know that connotations are probably popping up and that’s why I want to explore this. We all have blood in us,

On Flesh… What I think of is things like Zombies and steaks and skin. Eventually my thoughts wander to blood. Now I know that connotations are probably popping up and that’s why I want to explore this. Blood makes up about 7% of our body weight, and there are about 10 pints chillin in a humans veins at any time (think about how much ice cream that is). AND it is in every one of us—and animals. It is a very common thing, something that isn’t really all that unique. But it is special. It is a medical wonder. Not only does it carry oxygen, but it fights daily battles with germs. It keeps us alive. You can survive brain damage but if your heart goes you’re a goner. So we have this wondrous thing, this elixir of life, so why are people terrified of it? What makes us squeamish? I can understand it when someone is bleeding profusely, but I had an art teacher who couldn’t even bandage bleeding paper cuts. As someone who deals in the design of violence, blood is a constant conversation. Do we use it and then instantly distract the audience—because as soon is blood is on stage the audience is generally not only wondering how it go there, but are also distracted by it, mesmerized by it—or do we use symbolism and imagination? It’s a constant dialogue. The film industry doesn’t have to worry about it. It is easier to suspend disbelief when you have an entire world in front of you and thus aren’t really wondering—unless the movie is simply awful—about the effects. The line they have to tread is the discomfort they’re causing their viewers. How many mirror neurons can they fire off until people can’t handle watching it. While on stage or in real life, to an extent, I can cope pretty well with blood, but do something like cut off a finger or launch a thousand people onto the beaches of Normandy to be blown apart (as happens in Saving Private Ryan, a movie which I have started several times but have never gotten past the gore of the opening) and I cringe and look away. It’s a psychological effect that makes us feel the pain we’re watching, but is there more to it when it comes to blood? There has to be as we also use it as something representing allure and seduction. The legend of vampires thrives on both our fear and awe of blood. From Twilight to True Blood we’re caught up in the sin of what blood represents. It’s something we begin thinking about in our early childhood, though I doubt we consciously know it, as we are read stories like Little Red Riding Hood. So while blood is a pretty formulaic concoction, it holds complexity in the connotations associated with it and I am looking forward to getting to the heart of the matter.

And I know the risk I take and challenge I face in writing about this as I don’t want to cause the very reactions I am exploring, well I might but not to a point of revulsion. But I think that is what makes it even more interesting, the very evocation of reactions like that simply by thinking about it.

On Flesh

The term “flesh” brings me back to CCD, so I think I’ll write about transubstantiation – the change of the Eucharist into Jesus’ body in Catholic theology.

This was always the toughest part of church for me. It’s extremely hard to believe that those little discs, those little styrofoam-tasting wafers with the tiny crosses on them, are transformed into the flesh of Christ. I understand the biblical underpinnings – the Eucharist is meant to recall the Last Supper, when Jesus broke bread with his apostles. “Take this, and eat it. This is my body.”

And yet, why the literal interpretation? It’s a pretty clear symbol for sacrifice. What’s the purpose in pretending we’re all consuming our savior’s flesh, like some sort of cannibalistic cult?

My first goal would be to do some research into how communion wafers are actually made. Where do the ingredients come from? Who cooks them? Then I can look into the religious aspect – at what point do they become flesh? I’d include anecdotes from my experience going through CCD, from First Communion to Confirmation.

That’s about as far as I got. I don’t have a thesis here, or a state of mind I’d like to reach. I’m hoping something will come to me as I research.

“On Flesh” – Tattoos and Judaism

I’ve always known, and have never question, the Jewish prohibition of tattoos.  Although I’m sure I learned it in school (I went to conservative Jewish day-school for 12 years), when I thought about writing about “tattoos and Judaism” for my essay, I couldn’t remember the exact foundational text upon which Rabbinic scholars developed the prohibitions against tattooing.   My google-searching brought me to Leviticus 19:28 which says: “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.”

There are numerous explanations (as there always is in Judaism) for why this commandment exists in the first place.  One reasoning, and the one I most often hear, is that this commandment was meant to disassociate and distinguish Judaism from other religions, specifically paganism, since it was common practice for ancient pagan worshippers to tattoo themselves with religious iconography and names of gods.  Another explanation, which brings back vague memories of fifth grade Bible class, relates to the Jewish idea that all humans were created B’Tzelem Elohim (in the image of God).  We were created as a gift from God, and the human body is a holy vessel, so we are expected to care for our bodies and treat them preciously, which forbids certain actions including tattooing.

Obviously I do not believe in 100% of what the Bible says.  Not even somewhere close to 100%.  Nor do I take the Bible as literal translations and commandments to be applied to my modern day life.   Even though I’m culturally very Jewish and religiously as well, there are certain Jewish laws that I just don’t think are important to my identification as a Jew.  For example, I’ll eat pork and shellfish because I don’t think these Kashrut laws make me any more or less Jewish, and I’m not sure I necessarily believe in God.  However, for some odd reason, this “tattooing” law speaks to me, and despite the number of cheeseburgers I’ve eaten, I feel obligated not to tattoo myself.

…Even though I really want to.  In fact, I want to get a tattoo of a Jewish symbol, the hamsa (or hand), which is a Jewish good-luck symbol that isn’t necessarily associated with specifically religious connotations (although the five fingers are sometimes interpreted as the five books of the bible) but more so with Israeli, Jewish culture pride.  It is a kabbalistic amulet and an important symbol in Jewish art.  I wear a hamsa around my neck every day, one that I bought in Jerusalem, my second home, but I so badly want to get it inked into my skin, into my flesh so I will be reminded of my Judaism every day of my life.  I also like to be rebellious.  And the irony in a tattooing a Jewish symbol to my body is rich and thrilling.

But I know I won’t do it because of this law.  Call me a hypocrite, fine, since I eat shrimp and drive my car on Saturdays, but I don’t think I can go through with it.

I do think that it’s fascinating though that tattoos are unique in that the evidence of your “transgression” remains on the body after death.

Some thoughts on Flesh

The body is  cup. The cliche vessel. A soft conglomerate of fluids and spongy masses: a biological machine. In itself, its incredible, impressive, but pretty meaningless. The only thing that makes it anything but a robot is a completely in-tangible quality. Call it life? call it will? call it a soul? Minus the religious connotations if you want. Flesh, no matter how much we obsess over it, is really only a container for whatever lives inside. A container for souls.

Maybe thats the reason we obsess about it so much. Because we want our outside to look like–or at least correlate in some way to–what our soul/mind feels like. We’re upset about getting older because we still feel like we can conquer the world inside. We style our hair a certain way because it makes us feel stronger, or peppy-er, or more attractive. Closer to the way we feel inside.  But this is inevitably frustrating. Flesh can never truly map something as nebulous as a mind. The same way that a map can never completely represent the geography that you experience in real time, or that exists in a historical context. A body, by its very presence, sets us up for failure.

I saw a documentary on PBS a while back, and I’ve also heard this in basic psych classes…that evolutionarily, women unconsciously look for men with the best genes so that their children will be strong and healthy. There are a bunch of physical traits that make these biologically/genetically superior men more attractive, this embedded chip is there to make sure that the human race continues to progress and live longer each generation, and there are supposedly a bunch of studies to back up this claim, (which of course I plan to go into in more concrete terms).

It seems that this stems from the same old idea: that we equate external appearances with what they contain. We’re attracted to people physically because we believe that that glint in their eye, that smile, that dimple, that facial structure, that physique somehow represents who that person is inside the casing. And that their attractive genes will make them good DNA sources for offspring, if you’re into the evolutionary explanation of life (i know some people still haven’t jumped onto that bandwagon)…But regardless of political, scientific or religious views, flesh is deceiving.

And some people learn this and accept this, and move on, others don’t. But every day, people stay with, marry, have children with other people that have either serious illnesses in their families, or debilitating illnesses themselves, and I’m no exception to that. The guy I’m pairing myself off with comes from a family with just about every health problem in the medical books.

My question is: Is love getting in the way of evolutionary wisdom? Or does this point to an underlying knowledge that there is something more important than the propagation of a more perfect fleshy being each generation? That ultimately, maybe progress is not all that important because we’re going to go one way or another, whether it be heart-attack, cancer, organ failure—and what’s more important is the relationships we have while we’re still here.

But knowing that I’m setting up my future children for horrible illnesses due to picking a mate that has these genes (combined with the defaults I bring with me), what kind of future mother does that make me? By going with what my mind and soul tells me, am I ultimately betraying the flesh of those to come?

This is all pretty nebulous. I’m going to pare it down a bit and figure out where the heat lies, but these are just some thoughts I’ve been shooting around for the past week and a half.

Unexpected Sketchings

I have a few ideas for “On Flesh.” I’ll go in order of what, at this point, strikes me as most interesting to least.

1. Starting point: Body horror–why it works.

For those that aren’t familiar, body horror is a sometimes-sexualized form of fear inducement popularized in large part by the films of David Cronenberg (Videodrome, The Fly, and more recently A History of Violence and Eastern Promises). Typically, it involves a usually-inevitable, scarily-slow-but-far-too-fast destruction, mutilation, or mutation of the human body. (Films ranging from District 9 to Moon to Saw use such techniques. I, for one, find it extremely effective, and  I think others do, too.

Is it because of the human element, the sense of empathy involved in another’s suffering? Is that what we tell ourselves to mask our own sadism? Or is it, as I suspect, that we vicariously experience another’s sufferings because our greatest fears our for ourselves and for our bodies? It’s a question that interests me a lot, and I have a possibly related, visceral fear of amputated anythings that’s just begging to be explored.

2. What does our approach to hospitals mean for our views on the body? Typically, they are characterized by sterility, fluorescence, and a sort of inhuman detachment from the suffering that goes on within and around them–the very things doctors, at least in America, are so often accused of. But does it go broader than that? Is there a lack of empathy in, either, our healthcare system or our hospitals? Are they effectively a way to bottle up sickness into a place so unpleasant we’d hate to tread there? Or are they simply designed to ward off whatever crude, schadenfreudian fascination we may have with dissection, cadavers, disease, and others’ suffering?

Essentially, hospitals are sterilized in many, many ways. I’m curious about what that sterility means and entails. I spent a lot of time in hospitals growing up (working parent) and it might be interesting to explore.

3. I’m interested in exploring the cost of things we prize such as safety and privacy. I think that’s really about protecting our bodies, in a way. That may overlap too much with No Man’s Land, though, and I don’t want to find myself imitating too much.

4. Why is meditation so rare here? Why is drug use (apart, mostly, from drinking) to achieve different states so frowned upon? In countless other cultures and many other places, such things are common. Simple, transcendental meditation can be accomplished without the tacit approval of the masses, as in church. There’s a form of individualized, personal expression and examination that goes on with it/them that I think is often underrated in our culture. Relatedly, why is there one specific “time for experimentation,” that being college? Does acquisition of new responsibility actually end that trial period for risktaking or is that just an excuse we tell ourselves? How does it factor in with general repression?

5. I’d be really interested in examining what people’s voices do for them. Aside from obvious instances like opera, I want to look at how voices work and what they do in people’s day-to-day lives. How consistently do they reflect people’s internal states? How are they weaponized? Are they often barriers to self-expression? To love or sex? Do they define us?

(Last one, I promise. A lot of these are coming to mind).

6. “Pleasures of the flesh:” Despite frequent claims that we are oversexed, the vestiges of puritanical culture seem to be alive and well in our culture. There’s an aversion and condemnation of numerous immediate pleasures and risktaking behaviors, which are treated, typically, with distance, timid fascination, or even revulsion. 127 Hours is a key example, as Franco’s character appears almost to be on another planet, an eerie martian landscape, separate from the rest of us.

Overall, we have a frequent immersion to what is immediately pleasurable, to cathartic behavior, and, ultimately, to many of the behaviors that seem unnatural to us. With my disturbing “I hate fun” complex and a frequent, irrational sense of guilt that I think is shared by many people, this is probably a topic that I, personally, most need to explore. That being said, I may need more space and more time to adequately do it.

Having what I might call an unusual voice, I’d say I have some stake in the matter.

The post I never posted…The Internet is for porn?

The Internet is for porn?

Nope. It’s not, well not exclusively. I am a living testament to that fact as I use the internet daily and have yet to troll the realm of XXX ratings. But I have had my share of interactions with Omegle creepers and Chat Roulette flashers. So while the internet isn’t designer for explicit content, it certainly does harbor safe space for the “dirty” to flourish.

Maybe we make the opportunities. I am sure the creators of Chat Roulette didn’t originally intend for their site to become the haunting ground for horny teenagers wanting to see “BOOBS!”, though the site probably did die for that reason. It is so linked to expectation that it couldn’t survive in the mainstream internet when one began to associate it with borderline sexual harassment. It’s almost sad that something that had potential to be more was tainted so easily by the dirt that accumulates around supposed perversion. My friend swears that she found someone who could very well be her soul mate on Omegle, but the chances of ever finding him in the ether of the internet is infinitesimally small. Besides he might not have been who he said he was.

That’s the luxury the internet affords, ambiguity. Truth is a fluctuating concept as our identities are quickly compiled by a group of photographs, some favorite quotes and interests, where you go to school and some wall posts and statuses.  You can be whoever you want on the internet. You can be who you really are. That’s what seems so appealing, the ability to unabashedly enjoy something others might typically question or scorn. The privacy of it, or even the community created within that privacy.

Adult chat rooms seem like a sort of haven. I visited once out of curiosity, and it was what I expected. People looking for what they want in an interaction they don’t have to actually have. There is no commitment as escape is only a click away. What I find interesting about these rooms is how they really are a refuge for the abashed, a place where the shamed can come and commiserate. Through those condolences a community has been formed that allows them to meet the needs that society doesn’t fulfill, doesn’t allow them to fulfill. It’s a place for the broken hearted, the confused, the embarrassed, the lonely, the bored, the curious minds. Its lack of judgment I think, is a major factor in what has allowed sex’s presence on the internet to thrive. We need only use it how we please.

A fighter, a Stunt-man, a Cutler OH MY!

Greg Poljacik is a man from Virgina who traveled to the Midwest to pursue his love of theatre. He works in Chicago as a fight director and sword cutler at Rogue Steel. He is also the founder of Fight Jam Chicago. I’ve known him for a few months, but have never really gotten to know him. That’s one of the biggest problems being so young in a field where most people are in their late twenties, breaking the age barrier from early twenties to later years seems hard that any other age like from 12-15 or 30-34. The difference between 20 and 24 feels huge. Greg is 28. I am 20. So we’ve never talked, but he is someone who has facinated me since I went to my first fight jam in september. He was wearing toe shoes and had the biggest smile on his face. It wasn’t a creepy smile, but one of someone who is truly doing something that he loves. And he does do what he loves. With one hell of a work ethic, a pinch of talent and a whole lot of passion he is successful and happy in the theatre arts and I can’t wait to see what’s behind the smile.

Final Essay

So I was thinking about the essays we read in class, and how the authors wrote about what they knew–the eye, the atmosphere in Roger’s Park. And the title “On Flesh” makes me think about the failures of my body, which are many (or so I believe). Prof Bresland suggested that we write about something on which we consider ourselves to be “experts.” Taking all this together, I thought I would write about singing.

It’s related to the prompt because your ability to sing is very much genetically predetermined. All those fights in choir class and the competitions with your friends or even drunken karaoke–how well you do is (somewhat) determined by your personality and determination. But even more of your success (or lack thereof) can be attributed to a few codes of RNA that caused you to develop either synchronized or fucked up vocal cords.

I don’t sing now, but I did for a long time, and often I’ve had to cover it up. Yet even though many would say that my voice is “good,” it has on many occasions failed me.

There’s a lot of emotional drama wrapped up in my voice, so maybe it’ll make for a good essay? Idk, I suppose we’ll see. I’m listening to the new JLO song right now, and I wish they would just let me sing for her backstage while she dances and thrusts her hips.

On Flesh

So I have these bumps on my arm, a skin condition called Keratosis Pilaris. (I didn’t know the technical name until I just Googled it.) Anyways, I inherited them from my mom who also has bumps on her arms. I am indifferent about them; it’s just my skin – my flesh, if you will. And then I got to thinking, what other body parts do I associate with my parents? I have my mother’s eyebrows, my father’s face, my mother’s nose, my father’s feet… nearly every physical piece of me I can attribute to one parent without any dilemma.  

Fine. 

But then I got to thinking, what about abstract elements? My laugh, my thought process, my temperament, my personality, my passions… Obviously, the natures of these elements are more difficult to pinpoint exactly. To even attribute them to solely one parent is preposterous and to do so would not only trivialize the other parent but also the environment and surroundings. But all that aside, I seem to have a moral opposition to attributing any of these abstract elements to my parents, even the slightest. I can easily point to my teeth and say “These are from my father’s side,” but anything past physical parts I want to claim ownership. I want to believe that I am responsible for myself and simply just built with the parts of my parents. I know this is untrue. To really believe that would significantly undersell my parents and all the work they put in to raising me right. Even though I can acknowledge that, this desire to claim responsibility for who I am today does not subside

So in my essay, I am planning on figuring this out or maybe confusing myself even more; we’ll have to see how it goes. But basically, what I’m after is why I am able to easily accept my parents influence on my physical body but not necessarily on my physical self.

Final Essay: On Flesh-related things

My initial thought vis-à-vis the “on flesh” prompt was to write about cannibalism, but I realized that was mostly just me being fresh and I have obviously (hopefully) no personal experience on the matter outside from having seen Silence of the Lambs and an unhealthy obsession with things like vampire bats, necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating bacteria) and that disease that people can only get from eating other humans’ brains. I believe it’s called kuru. So I guess that’ll be a backup plan if everybody thinks this next idea is no good. (It’s definitely less unique, but I at least have some sort of personal stories to add)

What I’m thinking of doing now is writing about physical imperfection. And before you groan, I don’t mean like “boo-hoo I have acne and my nose is weird,” I mean like actual deformities or debilitating problems, both in a cosmetic sense and the limitations they place on a body. So I guess I want to write about the limitations of flesh. Sort of. Allow me to give you some examples of what might be covered, to better explain.

1. My legs are fucked up. Like royally so. They are straight to the knee, then the shin go out at an angle, which causes me to be able to turn my feet back behind my legs at an alarming degree. So it’s not cute, for one, and I walked with my feet at a 110-degree angle or so when I was young (my natural gait) and received great mockery for it. I’ve trained myself to walk with them pointing forward now, but it causes me to walk on the edges of my feet, which subsequently (albeit likely indirectly) caused me to break my right foot doing muay thai twice in three months this year. So themes: bodies preventing you from doing what you want to do, not obstacles you can overcome just by trying hard enough because they are a part of you, can also look at people who actually did overcome things like sharks biting off their arms and stuff so maybe I’m just lazy.

2. My two best friends, the summer after senior year, were in a terrible car accident. Sarah walked away with just some bruises, but Cortney was in the hospital for months. Her face and hip were shattered, so now she has metal in her hip and can’t run, and she had facial reconstruction which left her looking good, and normal, but slightly different than she did before the accident. Relate this to things like that study that showed people stare at people with facial deformities because our brains don’t comprehend the unusual pattern before our eyes, and how limitations/weakness make us see people differently.

3. Something about how we push ourselves in our society to give 110%, how we say we can do anything if we just try, tell our kids that, etc, but there are some things we just can’t do because our bodies just can’t do it.

So there’s what I have, such as it is, any help would be appreciated.

Post #11: Final essay, “On Flesh”

I really like this essay title.  I think I will keep this as my title, or at least base my title off this prompt.

There’s a lot of wiggle room here, and even within the different meanings of “flesh,” there are varying degrees of the type or amount of flesh to discuss.  Fascinating.

So, I plan to use “On Flesh” as a jump-off point to thinking about skin exposure, clothing/fashion, and how this relates to sexuality.  I want to examine the relationship among sexual expression and skin exposure and how these can be affected by climate.  Ultimately, I want this to be a consideration of environment based on trends that I see here versus the climate that I grew up with in Houston, Texas.

Post #10: In Consideration of Adult Film Choreography

Clearly, I’ve taken my time regarding this post.  Perhaps less clear is that I simply didn’t(/still don’t) know what to write.

I’m no stranger to porn: I’ve watched online videos at least once a week for the past…eight years.  The problem for me lies in the technicalities of language.  This blog is supposed to be about the “choreography of adult cinema.”  I don’t consider what I watch to be cinema (that’s not just the film major in me talking), and I don’t consider it to have choreography.  It is blocked, and it’s not an egregious foul on the art of language to say that it is “choreographed,” but I’m not going to simply cede that it is “choreography.”  I don’t see it as art.  Considering Matt’s question in class, I see porn as a tool.  It’s a means to an end.  I do find the subculture of pornography very fascinating personally, but I don’t see free online pornography to be very artistic.  It’s very repetitive.  If something–a location, a position, an object, a racial demographic–has been done once, it has been done thousands of times.  Porn is running out of creativity.  That’s why David Foster Wallace said porn is running itself into a paradox where it needs to juggle its rise to acceptance while still maintaining its edginess and marginality.

Notes on the “choreography of adult cinema”

How a(n) (online) porn starts: A guy (and usually his cameraman) are always somewhere.  Depending on the style of the porn, it will be a scene within a type of story, or it will be a location embedded in real life; the cameraman and the actor will usually talk amongst one another.

How a(n) (online, traditional, heterosexual) porn goes from there: A woman will be introduced.  Sometimes she is explicitly looking for sex, sometimes she’s a character, so that motivation will arise later.  If it’s a story, the woman and the man will interact over some silly, inane activity where sexuality can be explored (whether it’s obvious or not), i.e. cooking in the kitchen, fixing pipes for the plumbing, exercising in the gym.  After a while, one of the players will make a move on the other.  The other will accept.

How the “pornography” really starts: The woman will remove enough pants to her suiting to where she can initiate a blow job.  Sweet.  She will probably suck his dick (probably on her knees) for anywhere from one to five minutes.  The woman’s clothes will come off by her or his doing.  The guy will often position the woman on a counter or a piece of furniture so he can reciprocate.  He will go down on her for almost as long as she did, but usually never as long.

How the penetration commences: After the first six to fifteen minutes, the fucking will start.  I don’t often find cues between the actors.  Maybe the cameraman/director of photography will cue them?  Maybe the director?  Maybe they decide their own movie magic?  Regardless, the guy will raise from eating her out and get started with vaginal (sometimes anal–never was a fan of that, personally) penetration.  From here, they usually operate on a similar three to six minute cycle where they will rotate positions that work well for the camera and exposing different views of the sex the actors are having.  This is where some moments become truly absurd.  A close-up of testicles under a partially hidden shaft entering the vulva from behind is a surreal image.  Our genitalia is not very attractive.  Sometimes it is tolerable, but, for the most part, these are not visually appealing organs.  Another odd consideration: some online videos list their run time as over an hour, but the total run time is always still done in minutes and seconds only, so it will read something like 73:41.  Sure, a viewer can always search and isolate different scenes he/she would like to see, but anything longer than an hour always seemed like an excessive amount of time devoted to just watching two people fucking.

(Sometimes episodes of more oral sex–either the girl or guy can receive–will punctuate the different positions of penetration.  I’ve often been curious if this was up to the discretion of the director or the actors.)

How it ends: There is nearly always a concluding blow job for the man.  This is to get easy access for the money-shot, naturally.  These final minutes (sometimes just seconds, though) are as follows: courtesy blow job, money-shot, follow-through for the actors.  Usually they will comment on how amazing/hot/crazy the session was.  Sometimes it will just be the woman smiling and waving at the camera with semen spilled across her face.  (Breaking the fourth wall!)  Sometimes the guy and the cameraman share a joke.  Sometimes the woman and the cameraman do.  For videos that don’t establish a fictive world for the space of the porn, this concluding scene serves as a type of blooper/outtake reel.  For them, the end isn’t a sequence of different shots (excuse…) of actual outtakes, but usually the stiffness (…both of these puns) of the scene breaks down here.  The day’s work has been done, so these final seconds of the video mark a transition back into their daily lives they live off camera.  Or at least that’s how I like to think of it.  Sometimes they’re still acting, but at least they’re not acting out sex.

At least they’re not acting out sex.

Something interesting…

Somewhat linked to our discussion on Thursday:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13416598?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

“Adult Cinema” or Porn

Well, I guess I’m the only girl in the class who has watched porn. (Except maybe Candace, who mentioned feminist porn and how females often enjoy that more—but I don’t want to make any accusations here.)

One of my friends on Facebook had a photo where he was posing with Sasha Grey, a porn star. I didn’t believe the picture was legit, so I looked her up (turns out it was). Sasha’s well-known in the porn industry for being unconventionally beautiful—ie, she doesn’t have bleached hair or huge boobs.  After watching a couple innocent (read: non-porn) interviews with Sasha, I stumbled upon some porn critics’ list of Sasha Grey’s best performances, and decided, on a whim, to try to watch one. (Ok, so maybe it wasn’t completely on a whim—I tend to enjoy doing things that are “bad” just for the sake of being able to say that I’ve done them.)  I was really surprised to see that “Sasha Grey’s Anatomy” was the second hit on Google, on an apparently safe site, and was free.

There wasn’t much to the movie. Sasha Grey is a “doctor” who wanders into the morgue with one of her co-workers and they sort of just start going at it. There’s an extensive blow-job scene, and my major reaction to that was, Wow, she must be exhausted. Then they continue on to the usual. The guy wasn’t as big a star as Sasha, I don’t think, and even though he was doing the fucking, Sasha was pretty clearly in charge. The guy would try to grab at various body parts and Sasha would just tell him no. She also told him when to change positions, when to switch to another orifice, etc. (I don’t think this qualifies “Sasha Grey’s Anatomy” as a feminist piece, but I definitely didn’t think she was just being degraded the entire time).

I think the video was only about 20 minutes long, but I mostly found it very boring. A little bit shocking, I guess, but that was several months ago and I haven’t attempted to watch porn since. And I think I know why—Sasha Grey looks dead, no matter what the venue. I mean, in photos she looks dead, throughout “Sasha Grey’s Anatomy” she maintains the same facial expression, and even on Oprah she didn’t reveal a sliver of emotion. It’s pretty scary to see someone do all of those things in front of a camera and have zero reaction. It’s robotic. It’s not appealing—and definitely not what I want my sexual experiences to be like. Still, it was an experience.

Porn Post

I’m not really sure what it means to write about the “choreography” of adult cinema.  After all, Big Red Son was only one journalist’s take on attending the AVN Awards from a more or less outsider’s, honest view, and not really related to his particular experience in the adult cinema world.  There’s no doubt that the format in which this two day award ceremony takes place – the over-dolled inflatable breasted starlets, the greasy, unattractive directors and producers, the old techy-guys at the Electronics show nearby –  is a grand work of choreography in itself, in the way that it sums up to be a vulgar, uncomfortable, dirty, carefree, and irresistible atmosphere all at the same time.

But what is most interesting to me in regards to Adult Cinema is the real audience.  Not the journalists or middle aged, nervous men who attend the AVN Awards, or the performers who dedicate their lives to having sex on camera, but the relatively normal guys and girls who sit in class with me or grade my papers, who are consumers of this product.  The appeal of porn is a strange one.  Like many have alluded to, and as Wallace himself mentions, it is a form of fantasy and desire, and is largely unrealistic.  It is an escape into a sexual world that probably does not exist, and that, for many, creates excitement and pleasure more stimulating than well, masturbating to a still picture of a pretty girl.

The danger in porn, that Wallace briefly presents, is the addiction and delusion it may cause because “at the essence of pornography is the image of flesh used as a drug, a way of numbing psychic pain.”  I do think there is danger in porn, but I would have to disagree with this particular argument, presented by David Mura in his book, “A Male Grief.”  I think the appeal of porn is more in that it is something secretly dirty, something we are not “supposed” to be watching.  And why aren’t we supposed to be watching other people have sex?  Because in American society, and most modern world societies, sex is considered private.  Or at least we are told that.  We are told that starting at age 7 or 8 that sex is private.  So, porn let’s us into someone else’s private world.  Someone else’s erotic world.

The problem with porn, to me, isn’t that we shouldn’t be watching other people have sex.  Porn is staged, anyway, and for the most part isn’t a realistic portrayal of two people making passionate love. But the problem lies in exactly this – the unrealistic expectations porn can instill in men and women when going back to their real sex lives.  Not that we don’t encounter that every day – women on covers of magazines are airbrushed from a size 6 to a size 2, and romance movies almost always end with everything working out just fine and dandy.  Porn is no exception then.  It may be unrealistic, but as long as we know that, then it’s fine.  Right?

I’m not a porn-viewer, but if I were, I suspect I would enjoy feminist porn much more than mainstream porn (um, cum shots on women with fake DDD breasts.  Like, WTF?)  As I mentioned in my comment on Julie’s post, for the most part what we call “mainstream porn” doesn’t take women’s interests in mind.  It isn’t targeted for a female audience. But just an FYI, that has been rapidly changing, most prominently in the feminist porn industry.  I think the main reason as to why women don’t like “mainstream porn” is because they don’t want to watch barbie-doll looking women, with their fake boobs and fake orgasms, degraded by men in ways that are explicit and domineering, sometimes violent, and generally unappealing to the average female. This somehow appeals to many men, delusional to how women actually look/perform/feel in bed.

But I don’t think that it’s “porn” overall that women aren’t attracted to… because that puts women into the dangerously stereotypical category of “sexually repressive” beings, or not responsive to visual stimulation, which of course isn’t true and way overgeneralized. This new subcategory called “feminist porn” aims to be more realistic and strays away from the female sexually submissive role that mainstream porn seems to adhere to. (I went to that documentary during sex week that was about the feminist porn industry, so I’m largely basing my statements off of that movie.)

Anyway, the point is many women enjoy feminist porn, so it has to be something about the tendencies of mainstream porn that women don’t particularly like.

comments on adult cinema

There may be close to 25 million websites dedicated to pornography, but it’s a whole lot of the same stuff.  Sure, there’s some variety– in the sense that your particular kink or fetish is available to you no matter how despicable others may find it.  But the actual progression of the typical porn video, the rules of that world, are basically unchanged no matter where you’re finding your material.  There’s typically a little bit of everything: oral sex, penetration, several positions, whatever.

One of the main arguments against the skeleton of these performances is that, surprise surprise, women aren’t exactly being treated like goddesses.  It’s all about the man’s pleasure, not mutual satisfaction.  These people aren’t lovers, just a man who wants to fuck and a woman who wants to be fucked.  The feminist critique certainly resonates with me because a) I am a woman and because b) the expectations set by the limber and pubic-hairless women are not only setting a bizarre example for women to emulate, but also a strange one for men to expect.  It is within that expectation that my personal critique lies.

Porn is changing, if not slaughtering, intimacy.  We now live in a world where the average age that one first views porn is eleven, in which there are 68 million pornography-related search-engine requests daily, in which 28,258 people watching porn online every second.  This is creating a pattern of expectation.  You can watch thousands of people having sex before having it yourself, and what else do you have to go on but what you’ve seen?  It’s the equivalent to the naive expectations for true love based on movies, except in this scenario, there is not necessarily a let down.  We are moving towards a society where people are fucking just as they saw online, or as close as they can get to it.

The tradition of intimacy has already shifted in respect to verbal communication during sex; surveys show that the only communication had during sex is what they have seen in porn (cooing, begging, ooh-baby-ing past any point of realism).  Women are getting surgeries to make their genitals look more like what they see online.  So what now?  It’s not that I’m yearning for a world of tender pornography or for some retraction of what is already out there.  I recognize that this has snowballed to the point that our culture has changed.  I only ask this: with the vast porn industry holding so many people in the palm of its hand, what is its next move?  They can dictate any reality they want.  What will it be?

Sexy

Last night, my roommate’s buddy was over and came into my room and when he saw a banana peel on my desk he asked me if I watched porn at this desk.  Weird logic, but it happened.

And I was embarrassed to tell him that…no, I don’t.  It almost made me less of a man, but I told him that I must just be a more softcore dude, or something.  I don’t know exactly what it is, but porn grosses me out.  Maybe it’s the all-access without having to work for it, or seeing body parts that really only feel good and are actually terrifying depths unknown when they are actually seen, or just feeling pathetic because I should be out there making it happen in reality, or maybe it’s just other guys’ dicks. 

I’ve tried to get into it a few times because I thought that I was weird, but each time it was just vulgar, in the bad sense of the word.  The room smelled bad, from a video on my computer.  That is some powerfully gross shit.  I’m not at all asexual, there’s just something about the way this porn is staged that really turns me off.

I’m thinking that a huge part of what turns me off is that it is unapologetically fake, as is mentioned by DFW.  With the awkward willingness of girls to satisfy your every desire and give you access to any part of their bodies, the obvious acting, and the consistency of the expected sex faces and sounds, it becomes clear that you are engaging in fantasy by watching this video.  This makes it a guilty pleasure, because you can feel great for the next 5 hot minutes, but afterwards, you still aren’t getting any, and not just that, but by being able to trick yourself into feeling that you are, you lose more and more touch with the reality of your sexual pursuits.  Just like getting highs from drugs instead of real-world satisfaction I guess.

Part of the reason it can become fantasy is because it is a one-way relationship, and the actors cannot see you watching them.  You can completely eliminate yourself from the equation and abandon your self-awareness.  This is why guys just begin to tremble when they are hugged by their favorite porn stars at events (like on p.17 of “Big Red Son”).  He now exists in the relationship between him and porn star.  It’s also fantasy because although you are getting the visual of everything you could ever ask for on screen, you can never actually access her body, and the lack of this satisfaction is probably huge in maintaining the desire in porn that is so essential to its attractiveness.  This is probably why feeling a porn star’s embrace would be catastrophically awkward–she can be a real-life pursuit!  you can actually feel her body, and there is more to be felt, but you most work for it!  you actually exist!

A Cockwork Orange

Porn is boring. If I wanted to see two people awkwardly meet up and then pretend to enjoy themselves, I’d go have sex myself.

It is, however, convenient, at least in its most basic sense. Porn is like the microwavable dinner of sexual gratification — cheap, easy to get and ready in just a few minutes. The Internet makes this even easier, easier to find, easier to pay for (or not pay for), easier to hide.

In other fields, the Internet has altered the media landscape. We see the democratization of news, the democratization of music, the democratization of commentary, the democratization of everything. In theory, I can take a video of myself painting, upload it to YouTube, and get enough to hits to make a career out of it. If you’re talented or marketed well or both, you have an avenue for success that just wasn’t there before.

So, is there a democratization of porn? Could I break into the field by setting up a Handycam in my bedroom and uploading the results? (Probably not in my case, unless there’s a fetish community out there who likes watching people sleep alone.)

This is especially important for those whose tastes might stray outside the ordinary. A company producing porn for profit is going to want a generally stimulating product that can appeal to as broad a range as possible (think your summer popcorn flicks at the movies) or, beyond that, a product that will do extremely well within a specified audience range (think those cult movies marketed toward comic book fans or foreign film buffs or what have you). If you’re into zookeepers and bloodletting, you better hope Wild Thingz 4: Vampire Zoo is focus grouping well enough to get released.

Without profit as a motive, though, we’re left with that odd yet all-encompassing thirst for anonymous fame that leads people to put their stupid videos and inane ramblings online. Here it is — democratization of porn. Let’s say there’s a site — FetishTube.com, perhaps — where users could submit themes and activities, and other users could make the movies and put them online. Maybe there’s a limit to account to freeriding (users must submit one video for every three requests they make), along with a star system for ranking users. Sustainable online communities have been built on less.

The point is that there’s a lot of potential for porn (porntential?). We must not be afraid to think long and hard about how big it could get.

Side note: Is FetishTube.com an actual site? I’m too scared to check.

choreography…

I decided to watch porn, objectively. “Sexy girl fucks her boyfriend’s bro instead of studying.” No aesthetic bullshit, just setting the scene plain and simple.

I carefully explained to my roommate what I was doing, since he was stuck right next to me dealing with a problem set. He laughed and said “Sure John.” To legitimize the event even more I grabbed a pop tart and ripped open the wrapper as the scene faded in.

Spanish speakers. A loud-mouthed guy and a beautiful woman—a couple—across from a younger, good-looking man. Loud-mouthed guy leaves. Light conversation. Intimate conversation. The guy pursues a kiss. Girl denies. Girl gives in. Clothes seem to unravel.

Choreography becomes a rather funny word once you realize a scene only has one camera, and once you realize that everything happens in real time, and thus there isn’t a single cut in the entire film. The camera guy shifts 45 degrees, new angle. Nope, I was wrong—inserted close-up of girl’s face. Quality cinema.

Time lapse, close-up on blowjob. She unapologetically stares right into the camera. Well, I’m glad she knows it’s a movie too.

Sex.

Climax.

Resolution. The boyfriend comes back and yells at them both. It’s in Spanish but I assume he’s telling them how wrong it is – my morality lesson for the day.

–

I guess I can say I respect adult cinema for the reason that it knows what it is, and doesn’t try and be anything more. They suck at acting, and sometimes they don’t even try. They break the fourth wall because Hollywood conventions are just conventions, after all. Adult cinema knows its industry for what it is – money-making entertainment. Hollywood knows it too…it just tries harder to hide it.

Choreography of sexual expectation

The idea of America as a country being sexually repressed seems somewhat antiquated to me. At least since the sixties, (with the re-birth of freudian scholarship, and the free-love hippy movement) both popular and intellectual populations have been free to express all kinds of sexuality and sexual scholarship. There are sex shops in most big and medium sized cities across the country, and sex is all over television and music, even on public access networks. Maybe because I grew up in urban Chicago in a particularly well integrated area, sexual practices have never been a particularly taboo subject. I realize that this is not true for all of the United States, and that there are still many very conservative, middle to upper class areas where the abstinence movements still thrive and homosexuality is punishable, but I simply haven’t had that experience, so I can’t really speak to it.  If anything, the over saturation with sex seems to be a bigger issue than sexual repression.

That being said, my problem with pornography isn’t a moral one. For people who are not in relationships, who are lonely, but still have sexual needs, pornography can fill a void, and provide some mode of satisfaction. For people in relationships, pornography can re-ignite a spirit of adventurousness, or otherwise get things going.  However, the problem with the pervasiveness of pornography is that it instills unrealistic expectations about sex and sexuality. It instills unrealistic expectations of women’s bodies, and how they are “supposed” to react to sexual stimulation (namely, over theatricality) it gives unrealistic expectations of male performance and the way that women enjoy being penetrated (usually violently or machinelike). It gives unrealistic expectations of the size and appearance of genitalia, (particularly when it comes to penis size, but also the vaginal area– the way they should be shaped, the way they should be groomed, etc) But most of all, it instils a sense of the need for performance in an act that should be the most intimate of human connections.

In many ways, pornography makes the communication process between consenting sexual partners more difficult because it broadcasts a mostly unanimous experience to something that in reality is highly personal and differentiated. And because of this instilled vision of expected behavior, much of the give and take (no pun intended) of sexual relations is reduced to filling expected roles, rather than really connecting with a partner on an intimate level.

Sex Fantasies

The key critique of pornography, aside from the more obvious sexism/exploitation angles, is that it is fantasy. The same goes for masturbation, really–the assertion that because it is unreal, and because you are not actually having sex with whatever girls (most likely) are onscreen, there’s something wrong with pretending.

And it doesn’t really ever feel real, I think. The shallow depth of field in the shots, the poor-quality cameras; the stagey quality of the acting–in all respects, porn broadcasts itself as fantasy. With no pretense, no falsehood, apart from its fundamental ones. It’s something I wonder if all cinema could model, ideally with better results than mumblecore. It does and doesn’t put on a show, ultimately pretending nothing but attraction between its performers.

Of course, the implicit understanding is that viewers of pornography revel and participate in the fantasy offered. With that understanding in mind, something true of not only all film but possibly even of all sex, should its viewership be regarded as fundamentally unhealthy?

My inclination is that it’s not. Every sexual encounter involves some element of fantasy and of self-fulfillment. While the idea of reciprocity is important and crucial in actual relationships (though often constituting a fantasy of its own), porn acknowledges the obvious masturbatory elements of sex. As much as we’d like to believe we’re perfectly giving, that we’re getting off on our partner getting off, what we feel, at least physically, is ultimately self-serving. You only feel your own orgasm, and as intimate an act as sex is, it can only get so close. And porn serves that mentality and that truth.

So as far as elements of the fantastic go, I think the bigger lie might be viewing sex as more innocent, or as somehow sacrificial compared to masturbation. The myth of “giving it up” or “losing it,” if you’re a first-timer, as being a grievous personal loss. “Virginity” is an abstract concept, the virtue of which is debatable at best, and sex, when done correctly isn’t exactly crucifixion. I’m not going to surprise anyone by claiming that it’s pleasureable for everyone involved, when done well.  But ultimately, it’s an act of self-loving, or at least of self-pleasing, and anyone who says otherwise verges on delusion and self-loathing.

What the “virgin/non-virgin” dichotomy centers around is the assumption that we don’t deserve pleasure. That the things that feel best, or are most enjoyable, are fundamentally wrong. I’m not sure where that comes from, but that seems awfully puritanical–enjoyment of pornography is only so different from enjoyment of sex, and though you can critique its modes of production, I hardly see a reason to attack its viewers and participants. Most of them lead active, fulfilling lives and sex lives, at least as much as anyone else.

Adult Cinema and Sexuality and Whatnot

In all honesty, I am not familiar enough with adult cinema to speak in any way authoritatively on the topic of its choreography. I was actually wondering if I should try to watch some just so I would have something to write about in this blog post, but I was worried about getting a computer virus so I opted to just do the best I can with what I have. As I recall from class, our options were either that or, if we were uncomfortable writing about porn, to write about the repression of sexuality in our society.

Those options actually did make me a little uncomfy, though not for the reason you might think. As Bresland was talking about people pretending they don’t have erotic lives and how we ignore sexuality, it almost seemed like the second option was given as a sort of “throwing a bone” to people who didn’t want to own up in print to watching porn, who were therefore fueling the fire of the very societal repression they would be writing about. So I felt like I should then do the first option, so as to be cool and unrepressed. But it’s late, and no one else has done their blog post yet so I have no precedent to mold my answer around, and while I’m really interested to hear what else people have to say, I guess I don’t have much to add to the discussion. Outside of a couple social gatherings that weirdly degenerate over the course of a night (someone always thinks it’s a great idea) I don’t really watch porn. Sorry I’m not sorry.

And I don’t really associate the non-watching of porn with sexual repression either. It’s just not something I’ve ever found appealing or even particularly erotic (and it can’t be just me, because DFW talks about how watching all those adult videos made the journalists perpetually unaroused). But from what I know, porn, on the whole, is not for women. I have to imagine most women are not going to find watching other women get verbally and physically degraded sexually appealing. Maybe some do, I don’t know. But it is clearly not a product that is made for me. Which is, you know, whatever.

Porn or no porn, I don’t deny that our society simultaneously demonizes and fetishizes sexuality, which is probably reflected in the way that I think about adult cinema. Sex is taboo and gross and that’s part of why we want it, a viewpoint which DFW tells us the porn industry is exploiting rampantly. The way we talk about it is often a matter of black or white – conversations about sexuality are either totally graphic and sensationalized, or totally sterilized and academic, to show how evolved we are, that we can talk dispassionately about sex. So I found it interesting that the assignment for this post was a dichotomy – we either talk about porn, or repression. Because in an ideal world, the reality would end up somewhere in between.

Essay #2 Pitch: Kyle the comedian

I love Kafein open mic night, and go as much as I can.  There are always a few great acts, a slew of interesting acts, and a few terrible terrible ones, but are completely interesting because they are so terrible.  And, these terrible terrible ones are given by a few regulars, who perform the same exact set every single week, getting no laughs or not much of a response at all.  

There is a man who dresses up in a nice suit and vest each week and performs a comedy set of what is more towards the buffoonery end of the comedy spectrum, where he runs around the stage and works up a sweat and does impressions and smacks the mic into his forehead.  Sometimes people laugh at him, and sometimes they feel awkward and turn away.

I interviewed him after the open mic ended last night, and didn’t have to do much talking at all.  He quickly got into why he does comedy–to feel the love in the form of laughs.  At the age of 37, his dream is to make money getting laughs.  We circled around a bunch of stuff that didn’t seem so important to the interview, but great for creating the conversation atmosphere, such as the details of the weird job he had after college and some details of other situations that didn’t seem essential to who he is and what he wants and what he fears.  He made a quick jump to dark details, which shocked me.  I barely did any talking, and he began to tell me that his father didn’t tell him that he loved him, that his father used to spank him and that when Kyle looked back on his childhood, he neglected to acknowledge the times that his father “touched him with love,” like wrestling in the living room.  I don’t think there is any sexual abuse involved, but his father was just not a verbal person, so Kyle was always evaluating his relationship with his father based on their relationship through touch.  He told me that he became a self-mutilator, because he wanted to punish himself for not doing the things that he wished he had, like learn guitar and start a band, as music was his greatest love.  He then told me the details of how he quit this addiction.  He wants desperately to find a way to get his past of cutting and burning into a comedy bit (which I think is totally impossible, pity won’t go with humor), because it is clearly important to him and he wants to use it in some form of creation.  This is probably why he spoke to me, a perfect stranger, until 1AM when he had to get up at 6 the next morning to get to his laundry job at the YMCA.  Kyle says that he was shy and unadventurous in high school, and he says that life is just an extension of high school; people continue to make fun of you behind your backs.  There’s no changing your nature.

I find myself rooting for Kyle.  He’s an outdated comedian, but he’s a thoughtful guy that has burning regret and a completely underprivileged past.  I’ve got to find a way to expose some of his dark secrets (which he did not keep so secret from me) without making him seem pathetic, and in a way that portrays his optimism, his love for, well, love, and his desire for the life that he feels he hasn’t lived yet.  He’s working hard to make something with what he’s got, and it is completely admirable.

#9: I took the hint that I was livin’, and I bumped again.

I have chosen the owner of Bookman’s Alley for my interview.  I went in last Thursday, and he was not there.  I didn’t necessarily think this was strange.  No, what would be strange is if he was the only worker who ever oversaw the store.  Nonetheless, I struck up a conversation with the store’s overseer at the time.  It turned out to be the owner’s son, Greg.

Greg was helpful, seemed interested and willing to facilitate the project.  His dad was (and probably still is) out with a broken leg.  He took my contact information, said he would call his dad and get back to me.  That was Thursday (right?).  I still haven’t heard back.  I will go in today to follow up on this lead, but I kind of got the feel that this would be one of those subjects that wouldn’t pan out, as J-Bres said.

I talked to Christine this past Sunday.  She is willing to do the project but has a busy week this week.  She’s going to be in a friend’s wedding.  I think she said a friend.  That bit lends itself to that whole fraternity of maternity thing we speculated about in class.  Who knows.  I told her it would work better as a completely extracurricular/personal project for the summer.  She also said that “we could meet…” which I found quite amusing, because she seemed entirely unaware of the fact that I’m in Chicago.  I wonder if she even knows I go to school in Chicago.

So my actual second option after the bookstore owner is Fatheree, my junior year English teacher.  This will be a great interview, and I anticipate very few interferences.  What do middle-aged male English teachers have better to do?

That last comment definitely merits an emoticon.