I was taken back by a simple, basic question a friend asked me over the phone recently, upon reading my last two reviews: “What is the difference between reviewing porn films and mainstream movies?” The phone call lasted an eternity for him, probably: I just went on and on about it, words actually trying to find a right path while ideas just flowed through my mind. Here is a summary of how it went.
Porn films X Mainstream movies: ways to (re)view it
Fundamentally, the role of a film critic is to observe and experience a film and, later, organize their impressions and perceptions in any sort of media that will reach an audience which, normally voluntarily, looks for that opinion. A reviewer somewhat acts like a filter through which a specific audience will receive a movie and, more often than not, reviewers position themselves as spokespeople for specific groups: something socially validates them to be the official observant of a film and, publicly, rank it in a scale expressed in a plurality of ways: thumbs up and down, spoiled vegetables, yellow shiny stars.
But what validates a film reviewer’s opinion as one that should be made official and “important” enough to be received as a (final) sentencing of a film? Is their position in a given social, economic, and cultural panorama enough to grant them this status? What are the tools used in the process of building a movie reviewer that are fundamental, and which are only for shows? Clearly, formal education has nothing to do with it: cinematography critics has only recently been included in the official curriculum of universities and yet, film critics have always existed, even if informally inside specific groups like families, and now even “posing” as cinema authorities in internet blogs (the shoe fits, perfectly). But what qualifies someone’s opinion as more important and pertaining than others? To which extent those same characteristics would form a “real” movie critic in a different location, and how similar would they have to be – if at all – between a mainstream movie critic and a porn film reviewer?
I based my entire thesis on the discussion of a single movie: Pretty Woman, directed by Gary Marshall. While trying to understand how the process of film reviewing worked, this was the movie that came to my mind because it contains some specific elements which would help me along my thinking process. When released, in 1990, it drew legions of my schoolmates to the cinema, soon becoming a number 1 as the favorite of all teenage girls in my school. The story – a blurred modern version of Cinderella – had been exhaustively exploited by the industry before and, yet, managed to captivate all sorts of spectators. A film critic would only have to sit and to watch, receiving the film as it had been built with solid, familiar elements to the majority of the western audience: girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, boy falls for girl. This way, and precisely because it played around “normal” elements known by many, the work of the critic was made easier, for they were able to focus on more technical aspects of the film: light, camera positioning, soundtrack, acting. And because they were part of the community to which they were producing the review to, the critic would possess the same social, economic, and politic characteristics of the readers, therefore forming a bond which would, by itself, work as validation for their opinion.
At that age, however, I already stood out from the majority of the people at school, being (by my own wish, I admit) often segregated in film discussions. And I cannot blame them: although I, too, was munching on popcorn pretty much every afternoon, it was not Julia Robert nor Richard Gere who drove me to the theather, but Laura San Giacomo, whom I had watched and come to love the year before in Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Yet, I shared with the other kids some basic elements or characteristics that were consequences of the locus in which we lived: the western contemporary notions of femininity, masculinity, romantic love –and, why not say it, the first indicators of a Lacanian sexual desire. All those same elements that acted like the glue which bonded us together were ground on which opinions about the movie were born: even in our total obliteration over cinematography, and even though we had different objectives and motives, we were able to collectively perceive Pretty Woman as a good film because we shared the same perspective, and the film fulfilled its most primary function: to entertain. And here I found a turning point in my whole line of thought: function. If a film fulfills its primary function, it already has a 50% chance of being considered a good film.
Now, what happens when we talk about porn movies? I cannot (yet) enter the real of discussing the function of pornography, but more pertaining to this debate would actually be: how can a porn movie be perceived collectively if sexual (p)references vary on an individual level, somewhat disconnected from the locus of the spectators involved? And, to this discussion, how is the role of the porn film critic different than that of a mainstream movie reviewer?
For the first time I could no longer use Kant’s binary opposition, and just differentiate spectator from object. Sexuality is too fluid to be constrained into smaller compartments, and it most definitely does not present itself the same way to any pair of individuals; rather, it makes sure it is never fully reproduced, not even between members of a same family – a twin sister would perceive pornography different from me, although we shared the same womb, family, locus and social-economic positions - basic influences - throughout our entire life, for example. I would have to resort to Lacan’s theory on objectification, association, representation, and identification to be able to explain this better – something I do not intend nor assume I can ever do.
Besides, to believe a porn film’s function is to sexually arouse the spectator – a blunt, ridiculous simplification, but it works for the purpose of this discussion – and to expect the film to fulfill such function in order to start evaluating it would be impossible, since basically people are sexually drawn to different things. Therefore, the elements that should serve as springboard for evaluation on a porn film can only be associated with form and never function! The unification of opinions would happen fostered not by content per se, but by technical elements (plot, lighting, camera, performances, etc) which should please the spectator’s eye without taking the leading role in the perception and experiencing of the film.
Hard task? Impossible task! Who on earth is able to watch porn and worry more about technical aspects than the steamy passion we all hope to witness on screen?
And here is where I think the function of a porn film reviewer truly lies: to be able to watch a porn movie and not be carried away by the physiologic responses which, I assure you, are bound to come. Regardless of whether a scene is able to make my knees weak, if the task in hand is to critically analyze it, I MUST leave aside my own sexual preferences in order to deliver a clear, direct, and impartial opinion to an audience who, most likely, will then see the film through my “technical” eyes, therefore attributing value to aspects of the porn industry which otherwise would continue to be ignored. To be unable to put myself in parenthesis when observing an object – that is the true essence of phenomenology, I believe. A contradiction is generated. Something to be explored tomorrow: after all, it will be a new year!
- Published December 31, 2011