A semi-academic review of Nica Noelle’s “My Sister Celine” (Sweetheart Video, 2012)

For somebody who is proposing an academic analysis of porn films, this review might sound a little off-track, but there is a reason: I have just finished watching “My Sister Celine” and I wanted to register my impressions before any sort of academicism permeated my opinion on the film.

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I approached “My Sister Celine” with some caution: for the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with the topic of incest and family related issues being overly explored in the adult film industry, and I am tired of it, to be honest. But Noelle hints at the very title that this is not the usual incest fantasy movie: it is actually Liam (well-played by Richie) who is introducing the film to the audience: Celine is his sister, it is her we have to follow.

Like in all Nica Noelle’s movies, technical aspects which would normally go unnoticed by the public are impeccable. There is obvious attention being paid to features of film making in a way only Noelle is able to pull: the setting is flawless, dialogs are delivered in a spontaneous manner, and the incidental music is precise and descriptive of the scene it is covering, even though in some moments it disappears when it could go on playing – in some transitional fade outs and in Sovereign Syre and Jasmine Jem’s first scene, for example. Camera wise, Noelle is able to innovate once again by filming with cameras which are more static than normally one would find in a contemporary adult movie and, yet, her film is more dynamic than the vast majority out there.

The plot is round, and although it lacks some tying (such as the sudden disappearance of Dylan Ryan, Katie St. Ives, and Kate Kastle, for instance), it is an accurate portrait of a family which fosters a “problematic” adult, with both the mother (Veronica Hart, who delivers the most sublime interpretation in the film) and the brother coming to constantly justify any odd aspects of the “problem” child. At certain moments, the camera even seems to partake in their embarrassment, moving from one face to another as our eyes would do in such situation. Hart’s constant reassurance to Julia that Celine is a good person makes explicit her awareness that there is something extremely “wrong” with her daughter, an aspect which must be turned into mere “eccentricity” not to scare the future daughter in law away. Liam seems naïve, oblivious, “dependable”, as Celine herself poses: however, we can trust him when he points out the movie is not about his fiancée, but about his sister.

Jasmine Jem’s character is shy, fragile, distant, cold. From the very beginning of the movie we notice a certain instability in her, as if she was recovering from something. It is exactly this frailty in Julia that generates such extreme contrast to Sovereign Syre’s Celine, who seems to be solid, centered, and who dominates the camera from the first time she appears. Mystery, danger, madness, seduction: Sovereign’s gaze corner Julia without subjugating her but, rather, carrying a defiant tone which is going to appear in the garden scene (one of the most erotic scenes of the movie) and be sustained throughout the party hosted later that night.

Although at first the transition from the garden to a bedroom made me feel uncomfortable, in what I consider to be one of the boldest moments of her career, Noelle films the first sex scene in this movie in a two-dimensional setting: Dylan Ryan and Sovereign Syre have an intimate, less cinematographic, much more realistic sexual encounter on a single bed propped against a wall. The impossibility of getting the amount of different angles a centered bed would provide is made redundant by the positioning of three cameras which capture brilliant frames, perfectly balanced zooms, textures, flavors: for we are able to even forgive a less active Syre (when compared to the masterly Dylan Ryan) so dynamic is the cinematography in this scene. The only aspect I do not like is the amount of light over the performers, something which is redeemed later by an exquisite lighting throughout the rest of the movie, mainly in the scenes with Katsuni and Sinn Sage (an award-winning scene by itself, definitely solidifying them as two of the most important performers in the business nowadays) and Jasmine Jem and Sovereign Syre.

The atmosphere created during the party evokes a certain late 70s/early 80s era which goes together with the role the party plays in Julia’s storyline: to expose her to new sexual situations. Katie St. Ives and Kate Kastle appear briefly to please our eyes with one of the most delicious kisses on screen, but disappear short after, being given only brief seconds in the middle of Katsuni and Sage’s scene. I do understand that to avert the cameras from Katsuni and Sinn Sage would be outrageous, but it could have been done in a way that allowed the viewer to have as background the other participants at the party, either watching or engaged on activities themselves. At first, it seemed to me this was the intention: however, it soon was dropped, and St. Ives and Kastle simply vanish in midair, leaving me wondering why their scene did not continue.

Sovereign Syre has such intensity in her that watching her is like we have never watched her before, while always having watched her. She is dubious, dangerous, seductive, deadly gorgeous, and terrifying, when she needs to be. Her finals scenes are excruciatingly beautiful and beautifully painful, and when the camera leaves Jasmine Jem standing still in the kitchen we are all feeling as lost as she is.

“My Sister Celine” can become a classic like other films with unsimulated sex scenes – such as Baise-Moi (2000), Intimacy (2001), and 9 Songs (2004). It is groundbreaking because it does so leaving no doubt its intention revolves around pornography, whilst not relegating plot to a second position. Yes, there are flaws. Yes, there are untied knots. But it compensates by being interesting, well filmed, visually appealing. If I did not know how, I could learn lesbian sex with Nica Noelle’s “My Sister Celine”. For me, however, it is still a great lesson on film making, and on how to end a partnership on g/g features in the most superb and glorifying way.

Porn Studies, Kink Studies, and the Politics of the Erotic Imaginary, Part I: From Linda Williams to Kink.com

Reblogged from Networkologies:

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Let’s face it. Most of us look at porn at some point or other. And most of us know very little about where it comes from, how it is made, who makes it, the lives of the people involved, the labor conditions, the safety issues involved, the political economy and power dynamics, etc.

What can be done about this? And what’s the stakes?

Read more… 1,487 more words

Human Installation I “Gender Obsolescence” Performance art by Kyrahm + Julius Kaiser from KYRAHM on Vimeo.

“Persephone Eats” – a feast for the mind

For the past couple of days I have been non-stop working on an article about pornography in the academic world – a broad view on where scholars stand in relation to the discussion of pornography as a valid format of erotica representation, and not as an example to be quoted by any kind of politics fuelled minority studies, be it gender, women, race, or whatever.  The way the academic world discusses pornography has enraged me, bothered me, and bored me. As a result, often I found myself digressing, but not so far out.  This is something I started scribbling on the back of a copy of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, in a Starbucks café downtown Rio this week, after a jinx.

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I have written verse in the way one dances,
my gestures have drenched the air with heroism,
and in breathing I have gleaned the great treasure of
the world, all that floats and all that is
sacred, divine, voluptuous.
I am your end and you [are] my beginning.
I am your renewal.

–  Anna de Noailles

I often revisit books I love as if they were old friends. My afternoons of literature and coffee have many times substituted any contact with real civilization – or, at least, a living one. But in some cases, and more often than not, literary characters are, to me, more real than real people, and this is the case with Edna Pontellier, from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899).  So, as it was raining and it was a lazy Friday, I curled up with Edna, Kate, and Swiss Miss to spend some girl time.  In the midst of my reading, however, I remembered Sandra Gilbert’s critique on Chopin’s work, most specifically her analysis of the final dining scene and its significant similarity to the Last Supper. The scene revolves around Edna Pontellier’s diner party, and Chopin’s obvious choice to portrait Edna resembling Aphrodite raises debate over a possible recovery of the image of “Aphrodite/Venus as an alternative to the patriarchal western myth of Jesus” (GILBERT  &  GUBAR  1989: 96).

It is not Edna Pontellier or Aphrodite that I want to talk about, though: it is about  another pair of goddesses which have been recently put together by the delicate and perceptive camera of Joshua Darling: Sovereign Syre and Persephone.

It was this video entitled “Persephone Eats”, posted online on November 17, 2011, that caught my eye.

Persephone Eats from The Darlings on Vimeo.

It has been a somewhat impossible task for me to write about Sovereign Syre – and have I tried! – because everywhere I look there seems to be another rich façade to be explored. In a handful of videos I watch over and over in a mixture of delight and obsession, Sovereign presents herself as an infinite universe impossible to be even partially grasped. She quotes Shakespeare, follows Samuel Pepys, and seduces an imaginary Lord Byron behind the camera. She vandalizes her own photographs and claims to like Rihanna, after talking about the Timucua and a book written in 1568. She states her clear intention of creating a kind of porn that answers to her expectations since she could not find the porn she wanted out there. She scorns at any criticism she might face due to the comparison she has just made between her intentions and those of a Nobel Prize winner. She calls herself a writer. A performer. A model.  A poet. She is able – together with Joshua Darling and Bob Lopez – to really ignite a discussion about pornography and parody by pouring honey over her face, and she is also unafraid to declare herself “totally arrogant” and innocuous.

Like with Persephone and the underworld, it was narcissistic love that led Sovereign Syre into doing porn art, and being taken to the “dark” side by her explicit belief in her ability to create something new is Sovereign’s least innocuous streak: it was not a kidnapping, but an act of voluntary servitude. Persephone knew full well that anyone who had eaten while in the underworld would not be allowed to return; yet, she went ahead and ate the pomegranate seeds.  Her choice prevented her from being fully restored to Demeter, but also came to establish her as Queen of the Underworld, whose hostess duties included guiding Odysseus through the gallery of notable women.

Any female passivity found in the Greek mythology is nowhere to be found in Darling House’s version of the myth. Persephone exposes herself to Hades, luring him into seducing and ravishing her. But we are not Hades: Sovereign is Hades. And it is too late we realize we have been captured into her (under)world. She is beastly, wild, primal, instinctive: her raw hands get covered with juices that comes not from the pomegranate, but resemble her own blood: she bleeds sexuality and erotism. She is violent, carnal, devilish. It is her own core she is licking, not a pomegranate half. And it is the same pomegranate that turns into a heart – my heart – my womb – her womb.

Joshua Darling’s photophobic camera watches from a distant place – an amniotic sac environment, fluid and warm – images still unborn and unfocused like remembrances. He revisits our pre-natal knowledge, glimpsing over a somewhat familiar scenery, evoking a mnemonic quality that throws us back onto a dream-like stage.

In the Darling House’s version of the Persephone myth, Persephone EATS. She is not offered food; hers is not a passive role.  She EATS. It is Persephone herself who offers the pomegranate to the avid, hungry eyes of the spectator. She entices; she seduces; she bounds you to the underworld she promises to create. And, you know, she delivers it. Or Darling (House) does. It is just impossible to tell them apart now.

Porn That Women Like: Why Does It Make Men So Uncomfortable?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/11/17/porn_that_women_like_why_does_it_make_men_so_uncomfortable_.html

The female gaze, Zoey Holloway style

I am in the middle of writing an article on pornography and the sexualization of the gaze, and for that I have watched around 20 or more scenes. Suddenly, the direction of the article changed dramatically: I was no longer writing about the gaze, but about one specific performer, and the way she uses her eyes on camera. It was too biased. Although I intend to mention her in the article, here is a little introduction, and what I had to leave out.

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Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.

[Berger, John. (1972): Ways of Seeing, p. 42]

I want to talk about the gaze, this underestimated, underrated tool which can be the most powerful sexual lure between two people. More specifically, I want to talk about the feminine gaze, which hides behind the veil in eastern civilizations, was directed to the ground in Victorian times, and still thrives to find a space into today’s society. Lacan’s appropriation of the term; the dichotomization of the gaze into male and female, perpetrated by Laura Mulvey in 1975; Teresa de Lauretis’ discussion on the adoption of the gaze by male and female spectators (1984);  Jackie Stacey’s question: ‘Do women necessarily take up a feminine and men a masculine spectator position?’ (Stacey 1992, 245); Bracha Ettinger’s Matrixial Gaze (1995): none of these theories approach a topic I am interested in, which relates not to the spectator, but rather the gazer themselves. What gender is the gaze that comes from female XXX performers? To what extent are they participants in the scene in which they perform, and to what extent are they mere spectators? How much objectification really takes place in girl/girl porn scenes, and how much of that is a response to a feminine gaze being masculinized by the demands and expectations of the industry itself?

Those are questions that are currently guiding me throughout my studies, and it is not easy answering them. Very little literature is produced academically from the perspective of porn performers by scholars who are not performers themselves, and the positioning of the eye/I which might change the outcome of a research is quite powerful here. Virtually next to nothing is written about the porn industry that does not come with latent categorization and, therefore, judgment: it is depreciative, belittling, vicious, gynophobic, phallic centered, plastic, fake.

I like porn. As a bisexual woman, I like porn. As a sexually active woman, I like porn. And I love the academic world. I have taken it in my hands to introduce both my loves, hoping they will mate. And procreate.

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In “Teach Me” (Elegant Angel, 2011), erotic performer Zoey Holloway answers the pre-scene interview the following way:

“What do I feel like I can teach a younger girl?

Maybe that whole sensuality part if they don’t already have that within them, maybe teach them to slow it down a little bit, and, and just, you know, just some little basic things sometimes can feel so good, just like kissing right under here or on the back of the knee, just places that you wouldn’t think of.

Or just a lingering look into each other’s eyes can say a lot as well.” [my emphasis]

It is Halloway herself who brings in the discussion of the gaze, whether intentionally or not. It is with no surprise, then, that Holloway stands out exactly by the use of her own gaze over her partner in a girl/girl porn scene.  Moreover, she actually verbalizes the scopic function by punctuating her actions with verbal comments that demark the territory of the gaze in her performances:

“Let me see that again. Let me see your eyes.” / “Let me see your tongue.” / “Let me see.” / “Let me see it right there.” / “Let me see your teeth.” / “Let me see you.” / “Let me look at you.” / “Look how wet you are.” / “It was either that or go blind.”

Holloway derives pleasure from watching: she is part of the scene and spectator at the same time, and this allows us to experience the scene with her eyes, in her eyes, and through her eyes. She enjoys looking at the other, looking at herself touching the other, looking at the reactions the other has, and experiencing them on a physical level: first through her eyes, then through her body. The intensity of her gaze is self-gratifying; she thrives on how much pleasure she is giving her partner by closely observing them rather than reading more “visual” clues that could easily be simulated. She is the kind of woman who understands goose bumps to be more revealing then a moan, and who notices the after sex glow as if it was a Hollywood sign (with Veronica Avluv: PMMAL2, and with Missy Martinez: WSW76).  She teases her partners, inviting them to look at themselves and at her, to share with her (or learn from her) the pleasure of looking. She lingers with her mouth open over cunts and nipples, allowing them time to feel pleasure by imagining her next move before she moves an inch. When she finally reaches for them with her tongue, they are ready.

And so are we.

Twitter is down…

Twitter is down. Someone is plotting against me.  I just know it.