Literature & Genre

So what is the point of literature, anyway? I learned in an English class long ago that the purpose of literature is to represent the human condition, a definition that I think works well enough. The purpose of literature is to grasp the totality of human experience, condensing it into a readable microcosm. A true work of literature attempts to construct a universal narrative of all humanity as viewed through the prism of a finite number of subjects, whether a relatively small number (even 1) or a large Tolstoyan cast. So a work of literature has to contain a little bit of everything: education, aspiration, love, sex, work, failure, disillusionment, all the things people find in their lives.

Genres are born when people focus on particular aspects of the human narrative and either diminish or exclude other parts, and the focus becomes its characteristic action or setting. In its most degenerate form, a genre text completely stops the narrative in order to indulge in its characteristic action. Consider the first attempts to make video games literary: all the story happens between the missions, which exist simply as shoot-em-ups or RTS conflicts but don't make any difference to the plot, other than that you succeed (plot advances) or fail (plot does not advance). And how many musicals have song/dance numbers that basically say "I love her (him)"? From a literary standpoint, these things are a waste of time, no matter how much you may personally enjoy them.

Now, pornography. In narrative pornography, there's some plot, but it's completely broken up by sexual encounters involving every combination of characters on the screen. The sex scenes go on for a while, often emphasizing the mechanics of the act, and there's nothing at stake narratively.

In All Ladies Do It, it's completely different. The narrative never stops, and in every sex scene, the characters have something at stake. The most instructive is the very explicit scene when Diana is giving her husband Paolo a blowjob about midway through the movie. The scene shows all the parts working together, but never do they become mechanical, and the scene shows us how this couple's emotional and sexual lives mesh, how they were under different understandings of what their relationship was. The fact that narrative is more important than titillation is shown when the blowjob breaks off because of the emotional tension between Paolo and Diana.

Tinto Brass knows how to film asses. He brings the camera in low and focuses on them, bare or clothed, making them extremely enticing and arousing. That notwithstanding, he is not a pornographer, but someone who tells stories about sex that do not shy away from sex. I'm not saying All Ladies Do It is a great movie and that everyone should run out to see it, but it's an important counterpoint to movies like Belle de Jour, in which the erotic is dealt with without any explicit sex or nudity at all.

Tinto Brass: Pronounced br-ASS

Sometimes I wonder whether I'm a pervert. It bothers me a little, because I really don't want to be thought of as this totally depraved guy. Fortunately, there are men like Tinto Brass, whose "art" shows that even if I am perverted, I'm not alone.

I had seen CALIGULA a few years ago and thought it was pretty sexy, but not all that interesting otherwise. I recently saw COSI FAN TUTTE, and was actually struck by it. Not only is it very sexy, but it's an interesting movie about love, marriage, and sex, and how hard it is to balance the three. Like all Italian movies that I've seen, it lags about three quarters of the way through, but there are a number of really touching scenes where the characters have to confront, and overcome, the tension between their perversions and their love.

The basic story rotates around a wife, played by the extremely cute Claudia Koll, who begins to desire anal sex after this guy almost gives it to her in the bathroom at a party. Her husband, on the other hand, has a fetish for the stories she tells him about her having sex with other men. He thinks they're all made up, but many of them are true. He won't give his wife anal sex because he doesn't like the thought of it. When she meets the man from the party in Venice and he gives her what she wants, she tells her husband about it, and at first he's turned on, but then he realizes it's not a story, but the truth, and he gets mad.

I've read descriptions where people want to call this movie porn, but it's not at all. It is explicit, and it does have a lot of sex, but it's not pornographic. The reason why it's not is, I think, essential to the way genre works, and I'll address the functionality of genre in an upcoming post.

Jack Vettriano: Romance and Erotica

Jack Vettriano is an artist who's been making quite a name for himself in the art world these days, either as an object of admiration or of scorn. He does narrative pictures that appeal the way that genre fiction appeals. The paintings feature people living a life grander and better than our own, but that we can allow ourselves to enter. I mentioned how Klimt allows his male audience to enter the painting. Notice how Vettriano creates a similar effect for both men and women in this painting. He has placed these ambiguous figures on an endless plain of misty dreamscape. This is typical of his day scenes, which have a quality of nostalgia.

Vettriano's night scenes are entirely different animals, however. I largely think they speak for themselves, but if you'd like I can tease out some of the more luscious features of this work.

Prurient Versions

As I said, at work I’m doing a series on “beautiful at any size,” starting with the thin ones and going up to the zaftigs. I have another series of entries I want to do for Pleasure Domes, but in between, I’m going to produce special versions of my work saying what I really think but can’t say for commercial and/or just general decency reasons.
Gustav Klimt is one of these artists that I learned about in college, not because of my art appreciation class, although he was there, but because I had a girlfriend who was super into him. The only thing is, I can’t remember which it was, because the things I remember being said about him are connect with looking at the art, not at her. I can’t even remember whether it was a serious girlfriend or just a casual short-time thing, but I remember that my feelings about Klimt come from this girl.
The secret to Klimt's enduring popularity is his ability to take the internal life of his figures and project it into an external image. Klimt works with bright colors and abstract shapes to create a visual image of the emotional state felt by the people he represents. His most popular image is also his most extreme in this regard. In The Kiss, Klimt reduces his human figures to their absolute minimum, in terms of realistic representation. We see their hands, their faces, a shoulder, some feet, mostly focusing on the areas of intense awareness during the moment of kissing. Oddly, Klimt actually does something similar to porn, which is, I guess, a fundamental characteristic of the male gaze, he almost erases the male figure. The man’s face is hidden, while the woman looks out at us. Oddly, too, although the emotions in the picture are of a passionate, lip-to-lip kiss, the man is actually kissing her on the cheek. Why? Because this frees her lips to be puckered at us, so that we as male viewers can place ourselves in the picture as kissing her, feeling her hands, her shoulder, the warmth of her flesh on our flesh as the two bodies dissolve into warmth that almost interdiffuses.
When Klimt does portray a more complete human figure, as in this detail from Sea Serpents, it is most likely a waify, almost emaciated woman, the sort of person we might mistake for the anorexic actress, and it shows how women with a bad body image can imagine they are overweight even when they are deathly thin. In a body of this size, any amount of fat can look out of proportion, such as the woman's thigh. But Klimt shows us this woman is comfortable, so secure that the strength of her eyes challenges us to enter the roiling sea of her emotion. Her expression really is what makes this picture, it’s a don’t-you-dare expression that also says, dare, dare, dare.
Klimt also shows us in this Portrait of Emile Floge that proportion can be easily maintained with the proper clothing, clothes that give volume and femininity to a slender frame. I love the scarf that gives volume to the neck, the puffy sleeves that make the arms appear more fleshy. Good stuff.

Whoring on the Cheap

I've been riding the 15 and 15L east Colfax buses in Denver pretty much every day for almost three months now, and I've seen a lot of things. In the back of the bus, it's not unusual for people to pass around bottles of beer or whiskey. One sad SoB gets on the bus every day with a big can of Milwaukee's Best in a brown paper bag. He drinks the beer over about the first half of the ride, then passes out from the alcohol. Kissing, fondling, fighting, it's all pretty standard fare, and almost none of it gets you kicked off.

Nor, apparently, does picking up a prostitute. Actually, the guy had picked her up before they got on the bus together to ride to the motel or whatever. How do I know she was a working girl? Well, I don't know, but she wore the uniform: short, stretchy, red skirt (slightly worn), big hoop earrings, heavy face makeup, runny black tights, and very high heels. I've seen her around before, and this seems to be her normal outfit. She also hangs around a lot outside of Kitty's East.

But this is the first time I've seen her with a john. He was a big guy, call him John Candy. The two of them got on the bus, and John sits down in the last available seat, letting this little girl, who looked like she was barely legal at best and lived on a diet of meth and menthols, stand. Then a gentleman offered her a seat next to John, which she took. The two of them rode together in absolute silence, not making eye contact, like a weird parallel dimension version of The Graduate, for about 15 minutes. Then she stood, told him the next stop was theirs, and they got off.

Weird.

It happened yesterday

It was a windy day in downtown Denver. I saw a woman walking in a dark outfit. Black, double-breasted wool coat, short wool skirt, mid-thigh length, in a large plaid pattern of black and brown, some tassels. A wraparound. Her hair was up, tight, in a bun. Her step was prim, measured but quick on her long, slender black heels. Black tights, black hair, she was a fine black line against the grey faux marble of the post office.

Then the wind kicked up and played in her skirt as the wind will do with any wraparound. Panicked, she fought to keep it down, but the wind blew fiercely, its fingers loosening the strands of her hair from the bun, and I could see her slowly giving in to the raw power of nature, something in her rising to its primal call. It enrapt and unwrapped her with its passion, and she succumbed, lifting her hands, smiling, tossing her head to let her hair trail free behind her.

And I, sitting in my car, a simple machine, pure prosthesis of my body, saw that the light had changed. I pushed the clutch in deep, thrust the knob forward and felt the barely-lubricated gears enmesh with rough strife. The gas pedal goes down, reaching back into the engine to pull the throttle lever. The mouth of the carburetor opens, gasping, gasping. The engine surges faster and faster, four flat cylinders bucking wet with oil thin from heat and friction. RPMs go up, the valves roar, roar, roar as I race through the intersection. Then the clutch goes deep again, the engine sighs, and she is gone. I do not look in the rear view mirror.