Friday, February 17, 2023

Notes on Film: Get Horny!

 by Anthony King

Yeah, you heard me!

Got your attention, didn't I? The neverending sex-in-movies debate rages on as fresh, idiotic takes finally caught my attention. I'll get to that shortly. But first, a few things I've watched in the past week.
I watched not one but two Lone Wolf and Cub entries last week, leaving just one film remaining. Baby Cart in Peril (1972) is the fourth film in the series and one of two not directed by Kenji Misumi. The opening shot is of a topless woman with a gorgeous tattoo on one of her breasts battling men with her short blade. Ogami is hired to kill her and we're treated to the most subdued of the LW&C films where we spend most of the time investigating this woman's past while searching for her. I do love the uber-violence in this series, but this was a nice breather where Tomisaburo Wakayama is tasked with “acting” a little more than he has in the previous three films. The added difference of a new director gives Peril a slightly different flavor, making it seem it was released at a much later date when in fact it came out in 1972, the same year as the first three films. A few days later my wife and I sat down for the fifth entry in the series, Baby Cart in the Land of Demons, marking the return of original director Misumi, and released in 1973. Here Ogami is sent through a puzzling gauntlet of five assassins, each paying him to kill them and pick up bits of information for his final task. Meanwhile, Daigoro is separated from his father during the second act and is caught up in the web of a female pickpocket. The child is accused of stealing from people and punished by flogging. Later, Ogami arrives at his final destination to kill an old man, his wife, and their daughter in order to release their young son who has been imprisoned. Misumi brings back the gallons upon gallons of bright red blood in a pleasing return to form. (Admittedly they're starting to blend together for me. I had to rely on heavily detailed plot synopses to remember what the hell happened specifically in these movies.)
Since my son has started playing hockey we're quickly becoming a hockey family, and I'm totally fine with that. (I got my first pair of hockey skates last week and are now my new prized possession.) With that in mind, I realized I'd never seen a hockey movie besides the first two Mighty Ducks. Enter Michael Dowse's Goon (2011) starring Seann William Scott, Alison Pill, Jay Baruchel, and Liev Schreiber. Written by Baruchel and Evan Goldberg, this is a true love letter to the sport. It follows Scott as Doug Glatt, the black sheep in his family of doctors and a bouncer at a local dive. Doug isn't the smartest guy in the world, but he has the biggest heart and hardest punch, so when he's recruited as the enforcer, or “goon,” for the local minor league team, we're treated to one of the most authentic movies I've seen of late. One thing I've noticed about the hockey world and those involved is that it's extremely inclusive and everyone, no matter your team, looks out for one another. Off the ice they're one giant family, and when the skates go on “It's not personal, it's just business” really means something. I find myself thinking of this movie multiple times a day since I've watched it. It's full of belly laughs, touching dramatic moments, and some of the bloodiest fight sequences I've ever seen. And the best thing about the movie is that Seann William Scott is allowed to act, making us realize that he can actually act.
I got a message the other day from Mike Scott that said, “I see you watched Bleak: The Movie.” John Woo's Bullet in the Head (1990) is exactly that, and not what I was expecting at all. Following three friends from Hong Kong and their criminal exploits in Saigon during the Vietnam War, the film has few trademarks of stereotypical John Woo fare. Yes, the violence is plentiful, but the drama far outweighs anything else going on in the film. There is a scene in a POW camp where our three friends (Tony Leung, Jacky Cheung, and Waise Lee) are forced to kill other POWs and it was one of the hardest things to watch. This was then followed by the aftermath and the lives these three friends now lived, and once again I was tormented with shattering heartbreak. Don't get me wrong, I love a heavy drama (hello, Sadvember), and Bullet in the Head is a remarkable movie, but I maybe have one or two more viewings of this thing, obviously spread apart by a decade in between.
A new release I'd like to recommend comes from Shudder. Gabriel Bier Gislason's Attachment (2022) is a darkly funny, romantically tortured, and downright scary queer love story about two women who quickly fall in love and move in together in a shared flat with one of their moms. The lovers, played by Josephine Park and Ellie Kendrick, make for a cute and convincing couple. The mother is overbearing and haunting, played by Sofie Grabol, who gives a powerful performance. As I found myself laughing I had to look on Letterboxd to see if this was classified as a comedy, and to my relief it was. The comedic bits, while seemingly out of place, are actually perfectly timed and delivered. This is a love story first, a horror movie second, and a comedy third, yet all three weave in and out of each other and blend together exquisitely.

Short films I've seen recently of note:
Caterpillarplasty (David Barlow-Krelina | 2018 | 5 min.)
For the Birds (Ralph Eggleston | 2000 | 3 min.)
The Idle Class (Charlie Chaplin | 1921 | 32 min.)
The Kinematograph (Tomek Baginski | 2009 | 12 min.)
Pussy (Renata Gasiorowska | 2016 | 9 min.)
Their Fall Our All (Terence Nance | 2014 | 8 min.)
There is always some sort of discourse happening on Twitter, and usually I'm not privy to any of it because of my acutely curated timeline. But apparently some people – a loud minority, I assume – don't want to see sex in TV and film. One person went as far to say this: “I've always felt it weird that as an audience, we're exposed to intimate moments the characters haven't consented to sharing. Making the viewer an accidental voyeur at best, leaving us guilty of some form of sexual crime (I'm not sure which exactly) at worst.” Another person tweeted, “I hate nudity in TV shows,” to which someone replied, “It used to be disallowed. I wouldn't mind us bringing such a rule back,” and attaching one of the most dangerously misguided and brainlessly written Substack posts I've ever read. I will do you the favor of not sharing the link. You're welcome. The only reason I was made aware of such idiocy is because Cobwebs host and newly-minted father Daniel Epler QT'd a response that said, “I do suspect that many from younger generations have only experienced sexuality by watching porn alone, and associate it with shame and fear of getting caught. Seeing sex in movies brings these feelings out, which is uncomfortable. The problem isn’t porn or sex in movies, it’s that we’ve demonized sexuality to the point that they can only experience it unhealthily.” Daniel is right on the money here. We live in an age where we can see anything and everything on the internet. For better or worse. That's not what this is about, though. Shame has been attached to sexuality since I was a wee lad. My penis was never to be talked about or shown. Ever. And vaginas? Please. It was like the Declaration of Independence. Seeing a vagina would be “The greatest adventure history has ever revealed” and I would need Nicolas Cage's help. It was forbidden. Penises and vaginas equaled punishment from teachers, parents, and any other adults. Thus making it a young person's quest to see and touch such things. Thus carrying with it shame.

As a parent, it's very difficult to find that balance of talking to my boys about a healthy sexuality with safe sexuality. We're trying to teach them that people and their anatomy are not objects. They are real things that everyone has, and this is why we have them. Believe me, it's tough. And I don't necessarily blame my parents for not teaching me about healthy sexuality and everything involved with that because how the fuck do you do that? But we're trying. So when Daniel said many people have only experienced their own sexuality through a computer screen, and the shame that follows, it's because our parents weren't given the tools of how to talk to us to about such things. Ergo, when someone (and I'm not blaming one specific generation because I think everybody and anybody can or does feel this way) sees an intimate moment on screen they're immediately rocketed back to that room of shame where they feel like they just saw something they weren't allowed to see.
The difficult task, then, is confronting that fact. And if we don't confront that then we're liable to tweet dumb shit like we're in favor of reinstating the Hays Code without actually knowing the damage it caused. Shame has always been, and unfortunately will always be, tied to sexuality. Too many believe sex should be between a man and a woman and should only take place in the sanctity of the bedroom. These people haven't felt the rush of having sex in the back of a Jeep Patriot with the hatch popped open in the middle of a cornfield after day drinking three bottles of wine at a vineyard in Union, Nebraska. These people stood behind Tipper Gore in her quest to dismantle the music industry. But mostly, these are still just human beings that, I believe, have a chance to be educated properly on human sexuality. You know what, if you don't like sex scenes in movies, that's totally fine and I really don't care. But, while many of these people claim to be liberally minded, they're sitting on the fencepost between the free world and fascism, and they don't even know it. It's too much work to research the history of censorship in art, and it's too much work for self examination. If that's the case, I'd like to introduce these people to a little place called Common Sense Media where they will be directed only to watch Hallmark movies. For God’s sake, people, get horny!

That's it, next week I'm writing about porn and my love for the Golden Age.

1 comment:

  1. Speaking of hockey, you've got to watch Youngblood. Featuring an early (very small) role from Keanu Reeves

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