Ever since I decided to venture into this porn film critique deal – which just so happened last month – I have dwelled over reviewing just any film, for I fear I would be too harsh with words if the film failed to seduce me. I just might. And, in advance, I want to apologize to whoever might feel hurt or attacked – I am honestly just testing ground, baby’s first steps in this area. Please feel free to criticize any of my writing – I don’t aim to please, I just aim to give out my opinion which is based not only on how I sexually perceive the film, but on academic studies as well.
An unofficial critique of “Tanya Tate’s The MILF Masseuse” (2011)
Directed by Tanya Tate – By Filly Films (www.fillyfilms.com)
This was my first time seeing Tanya Tate on screen – and behind the cameras! While I tend not to enjoy porn with a very specific plot unless it fits my own fantasies – ha! - this plot seems round enough for me, and is actually quite enjoyable. Tanya Tate is gorgeous and really bold to venture on a first time directing / being in all scenes at the same time. You have to respect a woman for that!
However, something does not feel right from the beginning. At first I thought the setting had something to do with it – obviously someone’s office, but hardly a woman’s office, regardless of how much football she likes to watch. Some attention could have been paid to this aspect. But what was inexcusable for me was the glass panel with a parking lot overview, which also allowed me to observe the traffic on the street and even some people walking around the lot. There were shutters – which later are better positioned to interrupt the over stacking of images, I want to believe – but I spent a good portion of this film worried that someone might just stop on their way to their car and come take a closer look at what was going on in that office.
I particularly like the voice-over dialog with the external shots in the first scene, although Stevie Reyes’ comments inside the car should have been left out, since Tanya had just delivered that speech indirectly, a couple of seconds before (in a very, very sexy accent, I might add). The whole old-young teaching theme – best visually exemplified in this scene by the way the oil is poured over India’s body, then later over Stevie’s– is obvious. And it works. The sexual tension is palpable and it builds mostly from India and Tanya, as Stevie progressively joins them into the “action”. Of course, India Summers orchestrates the whole scene – and what a delight! Not only is she absurdly beautiful, but also she manages to rescue what could have been a ruined attempt at a G/G/G scene by taking charge and working as a link between the other two performers, one of which starring her first G/G scene ever. Kudos to her!
With Jelena Jensen the scene looks pro. She is exquisite - sexy, serious, and distant. She knows what she is doing and she enjoys doing it. As a result, Tanya Tate’s orgasms seem to be more intense and whole in this scene. It made me want to call India back in so she could partake on the fun.
The whole scene with Stormie White seems more like a theatrical sketch, like a "what it should look like" or "what pleases the viewer" rather than "what pleases the women on camera". No one will ever convince me Stormie White orgasmed in that scene. And it made me feel bad for her, that her orgasm was rushed: "Are you going to cum for me?" translated more like "NOW!" than a real sexy request. Learning later that this was her first scene ever and her first time with a woman made me want to hold her and tell her it is not always like that. Or send her over to India Summers.
Or to Dani Daniels, who, once again, is flawless. Without a doubt Dani has got one of the most beautiful bodies I have ever seen, and she just emanates such intensity it makes my head spin. I honestly believe we are before one of the most perfect modern personifications of female sexuality: Dani is able to arrive looking all coy and cute, take over, conduct the whole thing, and when she does it, it works. Simple like that.
Overall, although the instable camera generates some quite interesting angles, in an attempt to be intimate the camera, at times, is invasive. While that a still camera refuses to emphasize or comment, an intrusive one makes sure the audience hears what it has to say – something which ignores completely that the audience, too, is supposed to contribute to the whole of the scene by filling in gaps with their own imagination. There tends to be an overuse of close ups which, in my opinion, gives the film a somewhat amateur aspect, or at least an authoritarian voice, as if the camera was trying to direct me instead of the performers. Cinematography should “create a gaze, a world, and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire.” (MULVEY, 1975: 988) A camera which directs my eyes so imperiously hardly allows room for my imagination/desire to produce anything.
The vignettes in-between scenes, with the whole exhibitionism looking into the camera pre-rehearsed posing, are too much “for the male eyes only” for my taste. I like the idea and the music that was used, but had it been done less explicitly it would have been nicer. The way the 3 minutes are presented are just disconnected from the whole of any scene – as if it should work as a preview of what is to come, but made in such explicit way that it actually unveils rather than hints to the scenes. Again, the over explicity that kills for the female gaze while appeals to the masculine eye.
The looks straight into the camera is something which disturbs me a lot, and it took me some time to understand why: the camera should be me, and I am not supposed to be there! There is a very thin – yet noticeable – line between scopophiliac pleasure and narcissism: a line that should keep a camera at bay at all times, precisely because it defines the level of voyeurism needed for the total appreciation of porn. In non-academic terms, my pleasure as audience derives from observing an act which should not be performed in front of me – at least not according to current sociocultural rules. Yet, my presence is exactly what makes it exciting and sexually arousing: the thrill of the forbidden, which we have all experienced as we grew up and discovered the world and our bodies, and the distance that should be kept between those two.
Now, when a performer looks straight into the camera they are, basically, acknowledging my present/absence, this way undoing the mythical agreement that had been established beforehand, which is that I will watch without being watched, for I am not supposed to be here: the basic principle of voyeurism. The key factor in voyeurism is that the voyeur does not interact personally with the person being observed, and that look into the camera betrays me like a sharp knife to the heart. I want to hold to the notion that “we've become a race of peeping toms": your eyes on me deny me that fantasy. And here I would have to strongly disagree with Galan (1986), who supports the idea that a subjective camera treatment, that is, when the viewer is treated as a participant, can help the viewer feel more involved in the situation depicted. Maybe this works in narrative cinema, maybe it works for others. It does not for me.
Lacan claims that sexual desire is a social and cultural construct rather than a biological need, and here is where a phenomenological intervention in porn should be catered. Although I understand that Laura Mulvey’s simplification of a binary, opposite, male vs. female gaze has been outdated by Doane’s alternative, suggesting that females can also derive narcissistic pleasures by direct identification with women on screen, or even Jackie Stacey's female spectator, we must keep in mind the cinematic apparatus is not gender neutral. And, in Tanya Tate's The MILF Masseuse, it is definitely male.
I give Tanya Tate's The MILF Masseuse six fingers down… there. I’ll cross the other four in hope she is able to put more of herself – and less of what she thinks is expected from her – in her next film.
- Published December 29, 2011