Sundance 2005: Too Hot For The Post
Ever an arbiter of the widening cultural-political divide, today's New York Post has an article, by Lou Lemenick, on the sexual "shock and awe" driving many of the films that screened this year at Sundance:
Sundance screens were awash in semen, and all other kinds of bodily fluids, as audiences were treated to graphic scenes of rape, castration, dismemberment and sex acts that crossed the threshold of almost every imaginable taboo - sometimes by performers who will be too young to attend these movies when (or if) they make it into theaters.
Lemenick goes on to rail against some of the Festival's most highly praised films -
The Aristocrats,
The Squid and The Whale,
The Dying Gaul,
Mysterious Skin - and even condemns the Grand Jury Prize winner,
40 Shades of Blue, for "revel[ing] in
forbidden relationships."
What do you think? Does this year's Sundance lineup seem more overtly "dirty" than in years past? And that aside, if
one wants to argue in defense of sexual conservatism, does speaking of "screens … awash in semen" qualify as part of
the problem, or part of the solution?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-15-2005 @ 4:45AM
mittens said...
Uhhh, does anyone remember Bruce LaBruce's "Raspberry Reich" from last year? Pure gay porn. Don't get me wrong, it was some of the funniest and subversive gay porn I've seen, but it's still porn and I don't think it belonged in the festival.
I didn't see "9 Songs" this year but it was described to me as "porn, but with some artistic merit". I'm certainly no prude but i don't particularly think graphic sex against moody music is anything more than arty pornography.
But who decides what is "film" and what is "porn" and what is "something in between that we stick in the Frontiers category"? Who decides (beyond the filmmaker) how much nudity and use of bodily fluids is appropriate? While films like Raspberry Reich clearly are porn - even according to the director (during Q&A) - I certainly don't want one person's interpretation of obscenity to decide what sexually provocative films we can and can't see at an indie unrated festival. Perhaps the bigger problem is that the programming for Sundance has gotten a little sloppy and, I suspect, sychophantic. (How well do YOU know John Cooper?)
But a change could definitely bring us a good festival title next year: "Sundance 2006: Now With Less Porn". The local legistlators may stop pretending to look the other way and actually come to some screenings!
Can we talk about how awful the JibJab intros were?
Mittens in SLC, UT
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