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.