4. Sex, Morality, and the Movies

LAWRENCE BECKER

ANY serious analysis of sexuality in film has to shake off two naïve dogmas: (1) the false dichotomy which insists that there are films which exploit sex, as opposed to ones in which sex is merely an ingredient; that there are mixtures of the two; but that the exploitation of sex diminishes a film’s worth; and (2) the false conflation which insists that moral and aesthetic values are somehow interconnected.

The first of these dogmas leads to a sterile line of criticism: sex should not be exploited. It should, rather, appear as a “natural” ingredient, integral to the whole. Nudity should not be forced or implausible—rather, it should be necessary— organic to the film. Any attempt to contrive a place for sex is exploitation. To build a whole film around explicit sexuality is exploitative in the extreme, for here the entire filmmaking process, from beginning to end, is a contrivance to get sex on the screen. Sex is legitimate in a film to the degree to which it is organic to the narrative. It is natural and necessary in Women in Love. But Angie Dickinson’s seduction-for-a-friend in Point Blank is exploitation.

The bankruptcy of this line of criticism is obvious : it leaves no room for the use of sex as a dispensible but powerful metaphor. And it leads to downright confusion over a whole wave of films—beginning, perhaps, with I Am Curious— Yellow, including Blow Up, Clockwork Orange, WR: Mysteries of the Organism and, most recently, Last Tango in Paris. Sexually explicit scenes are used in these films, and not merely included to be honest about something that is natural and necessary to a narrative. The conceptual trap laid by the dogma insists that these films must be exploitative, and hence somehow damaged. But that will not do. They are deeper, more important than that. What works as a way of assessing the qualitative difference between the usual run of 42nd Street skin flicks and Women in Love breaks down when applied to Last Tango. A more precise set of analytical tools is required.

Try, for example, the following definitions: films about sex are those whose dominant themes are merely about (as opposed to of) sex, and whose sexual material may serve a variety of purposes. A relatively pure example might be a Planned Parenthood documentary on contraception. Films of sex (henceforth: sex films, as in political, horror, war films) are those whose dominant themes are of (as opposed to merely about) sexual activity, and whose sexual material is not used as a device to achieve some other purpose within the film. A relatively pure example is Stan Brakhage’s Lovemaking. Films which use sex (i.e., exploit it in the nonpejorative sense of the term) are those whose dominant themes are not sexual ones, and whose sexual material is used as a device to achieve some other purpose within the film. A relatively pure but rather silly example is the use of bedroom scenes in Strategic Air Command. Most films which involve sex are, of course, mixtures of two or three of these types.

The exploitation of sex in a film should not be confused with the exploitation of the film by the inclusion of, or reference to, sexual material (as, for example, in The Outlaw). Any film can be so exploited, and sex is not the only tool for doing it. Consider violence, the presence of stars, fashionable issues. Whether a film gets this sort of exploitation or not—indeed, whether it lends itself to it or not— has no direct bearing on its aesthetic worth. One may want to criticize Marlon Brando for the exploitation of Last Tango made possible, even inevitable, by his stature in the industry. But his conduct must not be confused with the exploitation of sex within the film, and criticism of his conduct must not be taken for criticism of the film.

The use (exploitation) of sex within films is as legitimate as the use of any other form of human behavior. It should be used as a metaphor, as a dramatic device. Like any metaphor, any device, it can be well-used and ill-used. But also like other metaphors and devices, whether it is well or ill-used will be determined by its potency, originality, clarity and illuminatingness in doing what the filmmaker wants it to do. And those things have no necessary connection with naturalness or literal honesty in a narrative.

In short, sex films are as distinct and important a genre as political, horror, western, or war films. The exploitation of sex is as legitimate and important a device (aesthetically) as the exploitation of any other fundamental human interest. The best sex films, like the best films generally, are too complex to be adequately described only as sex films. Dusan Makavejev’s WR, for example, is a sex film, a political film, and a comedy, and each element is exploited as a metaphor for the others. The result is a richness of affective and intellectual response which would not have been possible had Makavejev followed the canons implicit in “sex-as-a- necessary-narrative-element.”

So much for the first naive dogma. Any remaining reluctance to see its misleadingness comes, I think, from tacit acceptance of the second: that moral and aesthetic values are somehow interconnected. It will be worthwhile spending a little space demolishing that assumption, for it represents a deep confusion and unfortunately pervades a great deal of the discussion of films like Last Tango.

People who are morally outraged at sexual explicitness feel compelled to speak of it as artistically degenerate as well. People who merely have moral qualms about it, also try hard to have aesthetic qualms—and talk about how dull it all is, or how “gratuitous" (Just as an aside, it should be remarked that qualms have not received enough attention as an important moral category. I once had a student who claimed she had no moral principles—just a lot of qualms.) In any case, defenders, as well as critics, of sexual freedom in film argue for this sort of valuecorrespondence. Catharsis (almost always involved with sex in one way or another anyway) is said to be good for the soul. Sensuality is beautiful and beauty is ennobling—reinforcing our sense of the dignity and sanctity of the individual. Depravity (e.g., sadism) is not illuminating . . . And so on.

All such talk is muddled. The truth is that while there may be, in special cases like documentary film, a parallelism between certain moral values and analogous aesthetic ones, in general, nothing could be clearer than that moral and aesthetic values in film are radically independent of each other. Everyone will agree that just because a film is bad aesthetically (sloppily made, unintentionally dull or whatever) nothing necessarily follows about its being bad morally, whatever one may mean by that. Sex education films, often pathetically unaesthetic, are a case in point. But there is a curious reticence to see the converse—to see that just because a film is bad morally (subtly racist, perhaps) nothing necessarily follows about its being bad aesthetically.

We resist this latter conclusion because we don’t like to be caught admiring, in any way, something we seriously disapprove of. (I say “seriously disapprove of” to eliminate the case of “fashionable evils” like witchcraft.) Yet doesn’t this completely obfuscate the fact that some fascists, as well as some sex educators, are a lot better at making films than others? And that the way we know they are better is by how hard it is, when viewing their films, to experience them only through our moral sensibilities? We are dismayed to find subtle racism in a film, and we infer from the fact that the film was spoiled as an aesthetic experience for us, that it was flawed aesthetically (i.e., as a work of art).

This is nonsense. Of course art cannot properly be isolated from morality. Of course our experience of art can never be isolated from our moral point of view. Nor should it be. But it is no use pretending that moral and aesthetic values are interlocked. Reflect, again, on aesthetically trite and cinematically clichéd educational films.

Ah, but you say, think how much better they would be “for the cause” if they were well made. Surely this indicates an interrelation of moral and aesthetic values.

Not at all. It indicates a relation, perhaps, between a film’s aesthetic value and its effectiveness as a piece of propaganda, but that is a different matter. A film is not moral merely because it is convincing. If its content is of moral worth (good or bad), then its aesthetic excellence may increase that goodness or badness by making it effective in moral education. But it is important to notice that even this is not necessarily so. A slick documentary on the need for abortion reform may be unconvincing just because of its aesthetic value. I, for one, get suspicious of message films made with adequate money and a lot of talent; I wonder if I’m being manipulated too thoroughly. I wonder if I’m being lied to. A sloppily cut, badly printed film whose point of view sticks out tastelessly is infinitely more reassuring.

Now of course there are some moral values (e.g., honesty, directness, integrity) which have their analogs in the aesthetic or particular sorts of film. Documentaries are better, both morally and aesthetically, by virtue of being honest and direct. But I think this is a very special case, and at any rate it is hard to find such parallels for cinematic sex of the frankly erotic sort.

Take honesty. We all know what that does to the intense (though ultimately claustrophobic) aesthetic values of a hard-core skin flick. Pornography depends on dishonesty; women must be perpetually willing, always available, aroused, and insatiable; men must be perpetually interested and indefatigable. Above all, the action must not have any nonsexual consequences: there may be pain, but there must not be an incapacitating injury. All of which is thoroughly dishonest. Yet the eroticism of pornography—around which all its aesthetic values are built— fails totally without it.

Surely though, you say, it is possible for a film to be erotic without being dishonest. And precisely what relegates pornography to the status of a low—if not non—art form is its failure to reflect anything approaching the real complexity of human erotic experience. Here, then, is how a single value (honesty) can be determinative of both moral and aesthetic worth (assuming we can brush aside those who don’t want art to be honest about sex).

On examination, however, this rather attractive argument fails. For eroticism in films ultimately fails or succeeds in just the way all art does: not by its possession of moral virtues, but by the novelty and clarity of its vision, its inventiveness, and the excellence of its execution. A film doesn’t fall short of being the highest sort of aesthetic experience merely by being a sexual fantasy as opposed to an “honest” account of how things really are. There is beauty in honesty, but not all beauty is there.

Moral values can interfere with or alter aesthetic experience, of course. And indeed they should. It would be odd and more than a little disquieting if men now could watch the obligatory male dominance bits of business from the good old days without flinching a little (was that really me?). And how do you feel these days watching the Candice Bergen orgasm—her lover being unbelievably in control and nicely self-possessed? (This is neatly mocked in Alan Pakula’s Klute.)

But moral and aesthetic values are interconnected simply because (for most of us, at least) moral values are overriding. They control, to some extent, what we can experience as beautiful or otherwise aesthetically valuable—or if not precisely what we can so experience, then the way in which we experience it. Ken Russell’s The Devils draws this line nicely. Some people get nothing but nausea followed by dumb shock. Not very high on the index of aesthetic experience, whatever rationalizations viewers may add about what they learned about themselves and human nature. For others, the experience provided by the film is more complex.

Such conflict in aesthetic experience provides a fertile field for confused arguments: my lack of ability to appreciate something you find compelling may be seen (by me) as a consequence of my superior moral sensibilities. You may see it as a pathetic limitation imposed by stupid moral attitudes, and proceed to argue that it is important to be open to the sort of aesthetic experience I reject—important for moral reasons.

Now this is a straightforward moral argument and is one link in the necessarily long and convoluted chain of arguments about censorship. But it is just the point at which people are most tempted to ring in the film’s aesthetic values to help decide the moral/political/legal question. And, of course, aesthetic values are largely irrelevant to such questions. You cannot decide the “redeeming social value” issue by proving that the film was well made—indeed, that it is a work of art. Those pure souls who reckon that anything which has high aesthetic value can do naught but good (in the long run?), or is, merely by virtue of being aesthetically good, morally good as well, have not, I fear, thought far enough. Or else they have covertly imported their ideological convictions and moral standards into their definition of aesthetic worth—a hopelessly confusing thing to do.

Better to keep the question of moral worth where it belongs—quite distinct from notions of aesthetic value. Human value experience is very complex, and it does no good to disguise its complexity by papering over important distinctions. I can, after all, find myself horribly fascinated in a medieval torture chamber (Fantastic workmanship on that iron maiden, eh Maud?). But that doesn’t mean that I would recommend to anyone that he open himself to the experience it offers.

Similarly for film which glorifies violence. I see no reason to lie about the common aesthetic response to such things (which, though admittedly born of the sort of pre-adolescent fantasies we all went through, can nonetheless be very intense and curiously pure). To lie about them is to obscure something very important: that nothing in the usual moral arguments about art in general, and about sex films in particular, hinges on whether or not the thing is strong aesthetically. Its moral worth (good or bad) is independent of that issue. So I cannot win the moral argument by showing you that the film is poorly made, and you cannot win it by showing me that the film is brilliant. I can’t win by arguing that leather-and-whips stag films full of fellatio are vicious extensions of the male supremacy sex game. And you can’t win by getting me to admire the close camera work.

To understand this much is an essential preliminary to sorting out the nonsense written and spoken about art and sex. Nothing is artistically degenerate merely by virtue of its immorality; nothing is moral merely by virtue of its aesthetic excellence. It is part of the poignancy of human experience—one of its irreducible ironies and most productive tensions—that the beautiful and the good are not always to be found in the same place.