thoughts after seeing ‘shame’

The usual caveats apply: I am too tired to blog with rigor. Links and citations will be freeform at best. I take the following as givens: that gender is a social construct but we are deeply socialized into its binaries all the same; that the statistical mean is merely one way of understanding human behavior; and that the pornography industry is, by and large, very, very fucked up. 

As a denizen of a major American city, I was able to see Steve McQueen’s NC-17 film Shame on opening day. Leaving aside the oddity of the theater, which, as a sign informed us, was prone to ‘persistent shaking’ because of its proximity to a gym, the film was fine. Depressing, of course, and visually beautiful. The script is minimal; it is visual in every sense of the word.

Without spoilering, the film follows Brandon, a 30-something professional with a sex habit bordering on addiction. This extends across every medium: sex infiltrates his life through the internet, in magazines, chat rooms, and in person.

None of his behavior is truly shameful in and of itself, of course. As with all narratives of addiction there is a line beyond which it is unacceptable to cross. If looking at internet pornography is taken as a given for adult males, certain caveats apply. The porn must be viewed in private, on a personal computer, in particular circumstances. This is how we maintain the fiction, in polite society, that we do not conduct secret internet lives.

(I have often thought it would be interesting to see the pathways where we hide our files on our hard drives. There’s a story in that, I’m sure.)

The film showed me nothing that I would consider extreme or shocking, merely in such quantities that signify the copious consumption of the addict. It is not the product that is the problem but when that edges out real people, real relationships and problems, as it does with Brandon in the film, then one stands on shaky ground.

In a penultimate scene of the film, the framing lens of the camera tells us very directly that this is not porn as we are used to consuming it. Why? Because while the film shows the audience plenty of full-frontal, it never focuses on the penis in the same way. Dicks are never hard in this movie, whereas in porn they are nothing but. Modern porn is told from the point of view of the penis: it is a particular visual perspective that is so prolific it becomes rote.

(The question of who is looking at the erect penis is widely speculated on, touched on by writers as different as Dan Savage, Susan Sontag, and Ogas and Gaddam.)

I took a few days off of my own porn habit after seeing Shame, wondering what is the appropriate amount of porn to consume on a daily basis before shading into compulsion? Should we establish guidelines, like for alcohol and saturated fat? Are the unspoken rules enough?

And for chrissakes, don’t look at that shit at the office. If you must wank while on the clock, at least go to a different floor.

5 months ago  /  2 notes