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Actual Mainstream Movies | Actual Sex
(updated: January 1, 2012 21:46 )

Once it was unthinkable - sexually explicit imagery ("actual sex" as it is referred to in the Australian film classification system) in mainstream movies. Now, it is increasingly common in European and American arthouse cinema to feature limited scenes of penetration, fellatio, anal sex and other sexual practices, including explicit ejaculation ("the cum shot" or "money shot" as it is known in adult film). Is this the beginning of the acceptance of sexual explicitness in mainstream cinema? Certainly its a movement with a long and interesting history, albeit a transgressive one.

The trend began with Japanese director Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, which scandalized audiences with an explicit fellatio and ejaculation shot, such as was commonly considered the domain only of hardcore XXX porn features. Soon thereafter, Penthouse editor Bob Guccione hired Italian director Tinto Brass to make a sexually explicit vision of decadent, pagan Rome - Caligula. With a budget of some $17 million, this was the biggest budget in hardcore porn - unmatched to this date. When the film faced unanimous hostility from shocked and offended critics, however, hopes that sexually explicit scenes would be fully integrated into mainstream cinema vanished - at least for the moment.

In 2000, things changed. Feminist director Catherine Breillat featured sexually explicit scenes in both Romance and Anatomy of Hell. In the UK and Australia the films faced a censorial reception and Romance was originally banned in Australia. After a national outcry, the decision was reversed and Romance was allowed in Australia uncut, as it was in the USA, UK and Europe. The floodgates were open: soon, explicit sex scenes became increasingly prominent - Lars Von Trier (who had used penetration shots in The Idiots) made AntiChrist and the likes of Baise Moi, The Brown Bunny, Shortbus and 9 Songs soon galvanized audiences in America and the international community.

The message was clear: sexually explicit material was acceptable in mainstream movies. There remained limits, however, and simulated sex scenes inferencing child abuse led to bans and censorship of A Serbian Film in 2010. However, this was not before depictions previously considered "obscene" (usually by Christian moralizers demanding strict censorship) were now no longer shocking, if not exactly commonplace, on mainstream screens intersecting the domain of the "art-house" and independent filmmaking scene. Sexually explicit mainstream cinema soon emerged as worthy of consideration as a genre in its own right.

Thus, beginning here, Wider Screenings TM presents a review retrospective of sexually explicit mainstream cinema: those films that play at cinemas and are for sale/rental in local stores and online in the best e-retailers. With video extracts, in-depth analysis, historical contextualization and stylistic analysis, this is the web's guide to the transgressive aesthetics now affecting some of the best, most controversial and provocative movies made in recent years.

Definitely for mature, discerning adults, this retrospective is a celebration of the depiction of human sexuality in cinema and extends the review database of XXX cinema concurrently in development (SEE BELOW)

ACTUAL MAINSTREAM MOVIES | ACTUAL SEX - LATEST TITLE ADDITIONS

   

Adult X-Rated Cinema: an Ongoing Retrospective
(updated: January 1, 2012 21:46 )

Strictly for adults only: an illustrated, scholarly archive of reviews and analysis concerning adult, sexually explicit films; erotica uncut and uncompromising - from the pioneering sex lifestyle documentaries of the 1970s to the best in contemporary adult cinema by such as Jane Hamilton, Michael Ninn, Candida Royalle and Andrew Blake.

Deep Throat: Linda Lovelace's oral sex
act was censored in the Australian DVD
release, except in a documentary in the
special features package. READ MORE

Since mainstream movies increasingly began incorporating sexually explicit imagery, borrowing aesthetics previously thought the domain of pornographers only, the reality of postmodernism after 2010 effectively makes the hardcore film another narrative genre. Indeed, the pioneering analysis of Prof. Linda Williams in the book Hardcore: Power and Pleasure in the Frenzy of the Visible showed exactly that - the narrative adult feature film was a genre (not unlike the musical under Williams' assessment) with its own codes, conventions, aesthetics and character types.

Given that this was demonstrably true to anyone who saw through the facade of taboo surrounding the watchig of adult films, there was no reason why adult XXX feature films should not be subject to the same critical scrutiny as mainstream film genres - as indeed they were through the 1970s when Variety magazine reviewed both heterosexual and homosexual films. However, moral prejudice against "pornography" continually failed to address the truly transgressive aesthetics at play in inteliigently made sexually explicit cinema, beginning in 1970 with the works of the sadly neglected Eduardo Cemano in Millie's Homecoming and The Weirdos and the Oddballs (READ MORE).

In the West it is purely hypocritical Christian moral objection to sexually explicit imagery as condoning non-Christian sexual practices (i.e. anything except monogamous heterosexual marriage) and mocking God's laws that sees sexually explicit cinema stigmatized and, in countries like Australia (despite its pretensions at being a democracy), denied free speech protection as a transgressive discourse comprised of aesthetics offensive to the Christian status quo but nonetheless entitled to dissemination in the marketplace of ideas.

Typical of the repugnant religious morality condemning explicit erotic cinema is the Australian prohibition against sexually explicit material meant to arouse but the acceptance of the same imagery in a non-sexually stimulating context. For example, when the classic Deep Throat was released in Australia, all footage of Linda Lovelace performing the oral sex act of the title was censored - except for a scene in a making-of documentary. the prejudice against being sexually stimulated while watching films indeed makes hypocrites and moral charlatans of the Australian film censors, whose prohibitions against the depictions of sexual fetish in X-rated cinema in that country effectively mean that acts legal to perform are illegal to watch on film, to penalties that can include imprisonment (for selling such imagery, not for doing the acts depicted).

Extending Christopher Hitchen's principle - in God is Not Great - that in a New Enlightenment the discourse of sexuality be severed from a religious critical and moral prism through which to assess it, Wider Screenings TM begins an ongoing retrospective of adult cinema, its films and its makers, complemented by an exclusive series of multimedia and traditional e-books. For the first time, classics like The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, Dog Walker and Dark Garden are subjected to scholarly analysis alongside career-wide profiles of the adult industry's finest directors in the PORNOTEUR range of e-books, beginning with Eduardo Cemano | Ed Seeman. Interested readers cab keep up to date through regular updates and releases in this section of the website, expanding weekly to include new material.

LATEST ADULT REVIEW TITLE ADDITIONS

 

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LAST UPDATED: January 1, 2012 21:46

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