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ADULT DVD REVIEW INDEX
SEX LIFE OF THE PROPHET (2002)
DVD (region 4)
d. Anonymous (John Coil?); cast. anonymous (110 mins)
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WARNING: THIS DVD REVIEW IS OF A FILM OFFENSIVE TO THE ISLAMIC RELIGION - DISCRETION ADVISED
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Obscenity in Contemporary American Prosecutions
John Coil has become synonymous with “obscenity” in contemporary America.
The Texan owned and operated a number of adult businesses in several states until he was charged with racketeering, conspiracy to defraud the IRS and five counts of the importation of obscene material. Oddly, Coil pled guilty to an importation charge, hence becoming the first person successfully federally prosecuted for obscenity in a decade. Coil had been involved in adult film (particularly distribution) since the late 1980s and was considered a primary figure in the dissemination of pornographic material, accused of transporting depictions of “incest, sado-masochism and child exploitation”. Church and family groups thus viewed his conviction and imprisonment as a great victory for American family morality in the battle against its presumed greatest enemy – pornography. Considering Coil’s background and the fact that the DVD of Sex Life of the Prophet is copyrighted to him but contains no actual credits or cast list, it is tempting to see in it something possibly close to Coil’s personal philosophies. In that, it is an indication of the belief sometimes inherent in those who have personal investment in such material that there is indeed a visionary revelation to be found in pornography. Whilst this belief in the pornographer as prophetic visionary saturates the movie, the film itself is unable to validate it and flounders in incoherent pretence.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Like so many adult features, Sex Life of the Prophet offers only the barest semblance of a plot.
It begins with a brief narration by an older man in silhouette (Coil or a representative?) who claims to be Muhammad, reveals a brief tale (which borders on gibberish) of an eternal deity taking many forms and implores the audience to enjoy his film, being about him and his mother, the temptress. Ostensibly it covers the prophet’s final sexual union, his death and entry into the afterlife where he resumes his sexual congresses as a divine functionary of the sexual deity. After a threesome, Muhammad enters heaven where he is greeted by an older woman and in succession has sex with two women who seem to be heavenly incarnations of his wives. Soon, the older woman, something of a supreme Goddess, needs him to service her to ensure the fertility of the Earth and of humanity. He does so. Finally, the two other women join in and a prolonged foursome, involving a sex toy, begins. On conclusion of this mini-orgy, the film dissolves to stock shots of sand dunes over which an interminable dramatic would-be epic poem is (badly) recited by Muhammad, the older woman and a third person (the narrator?). Concerning their relationships and divine purpose, this final poem is again incoherent. Furthermore, as there is nothing visually on screen for some 10 minutes bar the sand dunes, it seems tacked on.
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Mohammad has Sex in the Afterlife
Pornography & Spirituality in Transgressive Blasphemy
Pornography has accommodated meditations on the relationship between human sexuality and spirituality.
Some films thus seek a mediation between sex as divine, sex as original sin and sex as an infernal agency, hence the profluence of angel and demon figures in religious-themed pornography. However, the mere combination of explicit sex in a religious context has been seen as inherently blasphemous. Thus, there emerges in such films a tendency to re-invent and re-configure religious mythology (primarily Christian) so as to accommodate sex as a kind of divination. The utopian search for an alternate based spirituality which does not consider sex as inherently sinful is thus held in constant balance with the Church view of a fallen humanity. The need to accommodate sexual desire, and thus pornography as a genre, within such spirituality is ostensibly what the minimal context of Sex Life of the Prophet seeks to do. However, it does so with such a lack of thematic deliberation that its basic religiosity emerges as a token, but oddly earnest, pretence. Given its charged imagery and some of its implications, however, it is nevertheless this context that makes the film a blasphemy founded on the premise of the dissolution of all religious deities into sexual functionaries. Confusingly expressed, it is as if Muhammad here, as the opening narration implies, is one incarnation of an eternal sexual force who takes many forms and genders.
Sadly, the idea of an eternal sexual deity is incoherently and almost mockingly put forward in the film’s opening narration: nevertheless, the idea of a hierarchy of divinities and their sexual functionaries underlies the premise.
In this spiritual hodge-podge, the most important symbolic, blasphemous sex scene is that between Muhammad and an older woman strongly implied in the opening narration to be the prophet’s own mother. That their union is needed to guarantee the fertility of the earth and the progress of the seasons, suggests the filmmaker is offering the displacement of the assumed Koranic mythology into a quasi-incestuous sexual fantasy. Though offensive to Islam, the film does attempt nevertheless to depict and explore the nature of sex in the afterlife and such myths as the virginal houri in paradise are perhaps unintentionally inferred: where it emerges, divine purpose is essentially sexual. The prophet is hence construed as a messenger and the message is essentially that of a heterosexual utopia – the sexual pulse of existence. The film thus proposes sex as the means of achieving immortality (as the entry into and interaction within an eternal sexual realm – paradise), with humanity’s power of regeneration through sex as evidence of its divinity. Sadly, although these intriguing themes emerge in the course of the movie, the film is unable to explore these as more than a vague, intended discourse.
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Racial Profiling & Theme of Incestuous Religiosity
The fullscreen transfer is always clear and concise. However, the film has no pace and is only minimally edited; its long takes often shot from random angles.
The cast have the racial-profiling look expected of the Middle-East, although place and period are invoked through a desert location and brightly coloured costuming. Set decoration is minimal, paradise being enclosed and claustrophobic, with childlike, minimalist drawings of genitalia stuck onto black walls. A casting is limited, the lack of variety further makes the film seem dull and repetitious. There is some camera movement, mostly panning, although this seems arbitrary and often obscures what should be of visual interest. Furthermore, the camera seems oblivious even to the rather lacklustre sensuality its performers display, making dispassionately little of bodies in sexual motion. Aside from a facial cumshot, others are mostly limited to the aftermath of ejaculation – vaginas dripping semen.
Whatever dialogue exchanges there are between scenes to offer a connecting plot thread are dealt with quickly, only the older woman / mother figure called upon to give any real performance, the implied incestuous nature of her scenes giving the film its only sustained note of blasphemy. Interestingly, the film makes a point of implying the unnaturalness of homosexuality, extending this so far as to avoid any depiction of (inherently blasphemous) heterosexual anal sex.
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Middle Eastern Pop Score & Lacklustre Poetry
The sound transfer is functional, favoring mono although perhaps an imbalanced stereo as one speaker side is more pronounced than the other.
Having some hiss, it is muted and is initiated by the narrator’s monotonous and clumsy sense of poetic speech. Dialogue is also minimal and the only sustained interaction is in the final reading of the dramatic poem wherein the performers repeatedly stumble over their lines in the effort to get it done. This delivery and awkward wording (not to mention the sound of the pages turning and corresponding pauses between lines) take away from what is the attempt in this poem (to expand the sexual actions) to mythologize the “Koran of Sex” promised by the cover blurb. However, it is difficult to imagine many viewers lasting through this tedious recital, especially with only sand dunes to look at. Sadly, it is again beyond the filmmakers’ means to integrate the “drama” into the sex and the result seems routinely episodic. The score has a suitable Middle-Eastern feel and at times has a hypnotic quality, nicely picking up in tempo although sadly this is never matched by the film’s editing and visual rhythms. The moans of the performers during the sex scenes have little beyond functional impact as there is little to distract from the sense of paid people going through the motions. The overall dispassion to this enterprise makes the sexual afterlife of paradise seem dank and dreary.
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Sex Life of the Prophet
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