DVD Talk Forum - Destricted (Gaspar Noé, Larry Clark et al)

Here is the Destricted chapter of my dissertation:

"Another landmark in film making history also began in 2004. Destricted invited seven artists to make short films representing their views on sex and pornography. These films, which were all produced between 2004 and 2005, were then edited into one full-length feature film, which was released in 2006, distributed in an ominously sealed silver plastic package labelled with only the rating certificate and the word Destricted. Whilst not a word in common usage before the birth of the film, according to their website the word ‘Destricted’ has three meanings: “To unlimit restriction, to bring objectivity by putting out of restriction, to deconstruct within bounds, or to unconfine” (Destricted website). This choice of film title therefore directly points to the aims of the filmmakers. Destricted was passed, uncut and received an 18 rating in from the BBFC who categorised it as adult, art house drama. They ruled that the film should carry a warning on the cover that stated “Rated 18, Contains strong ‘REAL SEX’ and strobing effects”.

As a result of the fractured nature of this film, each of the segments of the film will need to be considered individually as well as collectively. Although Destricted was originally screened as a single film, the DVD version allows the viewer to select each short film individually and so pick and choose the order in which they are viewed, for the purpose of analysis; I will look at the films in the order in which they were first shown.

Marina Abramovic, a Yugoslavian visual artist whose career began in the 1970’s, directed the first short; she also has the honour of being one of only two female filmmakers in the Destricted team. Abramovic’s short is entitled Balkan Erotic Epic and is a mini documentary on the use of eroticism within Balkan folk law. Integrating actual footage of the fertility rights common to the Balkan people, Abramovic also employs the use of animation to show some of the more explicit acts, for instance the Mother who extracts a fish from her vagina, and uses it to bless and protect her Son from the evil eye.

“Abramovic's interest lies in what can be learned from these ancient traditions viewed now in a contemporary context” (RevolverGroup website)

The second film in the Destricted series is Hoist, which was created by Matthew Barney. Barney shot all of Hoist in Bahia, Salvador and the film also features as part of a longer film entitled De Lama Lmina. Hoist begins with a close up shot of an almost unrecognisable flaccid penis which is covered with moss and lichen, as the film continues we see the penis becoming erect and the camera pans out to show that the phallus belongs to a ‘green man’ figure who is strapped to the underside of the drive shaft of a large industrial mining machine. With this film, Barney is making a comment on the interconnectedness of man and machine and nature and “the imperfect consummation of the human and the mechanistic” (RevolverGroup website).

Marco Brambilla’s Sync is the shortest film in the collection at only one minute and fifty seconds long. Set to a soundtrack of an impressive drum solo, Sync is made up so short clips from both mainstream and pornographic sex scenes, which when watched together create a interesting taster of the way in which sex is shown in films “Sync uses samples as short as single frames edited together to create the impression of motion. The original continuity and narrative in the source material is eliminated, and a new visual choreography emerges” (RevolverGroup website)

At thirty-eight minutes long, Larry Clark’s Impaled is the longest film and broke one of the original rules for the films, which was that they all be under twenty minutes. Perhaps Clark can be forgiven though as his film deal with perhaps one of the most current issues, that of the effect of pornography upon young people. Set in the style of a porn industry casting-couch, Clark interviews young men who were all born in the 1980’s, and asks them about their sexual expectations, desires and habits. It is clear from the interviews that these men have ideals surrounding sex which are driven by the porn films which they watched in their early teens although as one of them finds out, even in the porn industry, there is still cleaning up to be done once the cameras have stopped rolling.

A thumping bass soundtrack and constant strobing created a heightened reality for Gaspar Noé’s film We Fuck Alone which is a “dark odyssey into violent masturbatory fantasy” (RevolverGroup website). Giving the viewer the ultimate in voyeuristic highs, we glimpse a young girl masturbating with a teddy bear and a young man with an inflatable sex toy. The film makes a comment on our private pleasures and the fine line between sex and violence.

Houuse Call is Richard Prince’s contribution to the collection, a twelve minute recording of a classic 70’s porn film which due to constant watching and re-recording has deteriorated so that the audience is distanced from the sexual act itself. “The narrative shares an obsession that first appeared in the nurse paintings, describing as it does an illicit encounter between strangers whose professional intimacy is based on knowledge of bodily function and fluid” (RevolverGroup website)

Sam Taylor-Wood is the only other female on the Destricted team. Her movie, Death Valley, set in the place of the same name, follows a man exploring himself through masturbation and has been liken to “the story of ‘Onan’, the brother-in-law who spilled his seed” (RevolverGroup website).

As the last film on the DVD it is interesting to note that this makes a comment about our possible shame at the act of self-pleasure

The collective result of Destricted is not of a string of short porn films, or of sex for the sake of it, rather it is a springboard for discussion, provoking many different emotion during a single viewing. Whilst at times it could be viewed as something that was arousing, for the most part, it was funny, provocative and sometimes disturbing. Together, the collection has been marketed as “The most controversial and sexually explicit film ever to receive an 18 certificate from the BBFC” (Destricted DVD sleeve). Destricted aims to reveal the diverse sexual attitudes that are apparent within modern western society as well as drawing on sexual folk law from around the world. What makes Destricted different from any other Art House film is that it was, at the time of its release, one of the most explicit films to go on show at a cinema, which graphically depicted actual penetrative sex. It includes the work of some lesser-known directors as well as the work of more prominent directors such as Gaspar Noé, who had already pushed the sexual boundaries of cinema with his shocking 9 minute long (simulated) portrayal of a rape in his film Irreversible.

Overall, I would have to agree with the statement on the Shooting People website and say that, “...the Destricted collection has redefined the permissible”. In creating Destricted, they aimed to pose the question: Can art be pornographic? Moreover, can pornography masquerade as art? Whilst they never intended to answer these questions directly, choosing instead to simple promote discussion amongst the viewers, they may in fact have come close to answering their own question inadvertently when they premiered the film in September 2006, at the Tate Modern Gallery, and followed it with a discussion of the contested issues surrounding art and pornography. Present at this talk were critics and curators Bruce Hainley and Neville Wakefield, Catherine Millet the author of The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2002), and Destricted artist and filmmaker Larry Clark.

During the talk both Larry Clark and Neville Wakefield were very clear about their intentions with this project. They stated that they were interested in the response to sexual imagery; the motivation for Wakefield in particular was that many people came to him and said that art was boring, so part of it was to marry the subject of universal appeal. Much bigger budget available now so we can make something that is more than just another art film. Many art films have in the past, been shown in adult cinemas, as they were not considered worthy to be shown in mainstream cinemas, this is interesting to note as the two subjects were often crossing over and as Wakefield put it “dancing together”. Clarke proudly states that the project was done not to be erotic but to show life, and they go on to explain that they felt that porn was just so easily available nowadays, but porn cheats, with the shorts used within Destricted they felt that they were, in contrast, being true to life.

Catherine Millet spoke about pornography’s primary goal, that of sexual excitation, but she says that the aim of Destricted was to change the way people think about sexual imagery in films, to spark debate, especially as this is a new thing to be done."

My dissertation also looked at Shortbus and 9 Songs, of the 3 films Shortbus is my fave