The Body is a Place of Joy

by Thomas Burchfield

EMOTICON RATING: ;-)

I intended to see "MM" last weekend, but when the reviews poured in like buckets of cold chunky slime ("The ‘Reefer Madness' of Porn Films"-- John Powers on Terry Gross' "Fresh Air") and a fine San Francisco actor, Brian Russell, found his bit role dropped on the cutting room floor, I thought, screw it. I hate Joel Schumacher movies anyway and I like something where sex is not some sleazy fundamentalist's nightmare, but one of the great joys that humankind, to paraphrase Mark Twain, has left out of its vision of heaven.

That film would be "Erotica" a stylish, yet passionate, new documentary by Maya Gullas, who interviewed eleven women who bravely share with the world how their sexual sensibilities weave throughout their lives and work. By now this film is no longer playing at San Francisco's Roxie, but if you, male or female, gay, bi, straight or polymorphous, see sex as one of God's great gifts and are curious to see it from these people's side of the bed, you owe yourself to catch it, sometime, somewhere.

I claim no expertise on female sexuality, but I count myself a willing pupil and "Erotica" taught this student a couple of good lessons. As Annie Sprinkle says, we will all have to deal with our sexuality sometime in our lives. Certainly the film doesn't represent every woman's sexuality (certainly not the anti-porn tag team of Dworkin and MacKinnon), but for the many whom it does (not to mention their lovers) it should prove a valuable experience.

The documentary has many moments that are humorous, poignant and, at one point, bitterly depressing. And, of course, most importantly, arousing.

Both Ms. Sprinkle and film director Candida Royalle passionately relate how they struggled against, worked around and finally broke through the misogynist old boys' network that still rules the sex industry so they present sexuality on their terms. It's Ms. Sprinkle, still girlishly charming and very funny, who gives us the most scary and depressing moment as, during a clip of her popular live stage show, she plays back a tape of an Australian Rush Limbaugh ranting against her stage tour Down Under. It sounds at first like typical Bad Sex conservatism, until the ranter plays back a tape of one of Hitler's speeches and then asks, "Where's Adolf when you need him?"

Equally fascinating but quite a bit more tender is the interview with "The Story of O" author Pauline Reage, now ninety, who poignantly tells how she wrote her S/M classic as an act of love for a homely sixty-five year old academic.

Catherine Robbe-Grillet, wife of the French author Alain-Robbe Grillet, cheerfully describes her alter-persona as Jeanne De Berg, professional dominatrix, a role she still proudly plays at sixty with a coy Gallic smile hidden behind a lacy veil. She also relates her sometimes sad marriage to the screenwriter of "Last Year at Marienbad." Both she and Ms. Reage serve as reminders that physical passion still smoulders within no matter how far along time's path we've come.

Closer to home, San Francisco butch drag queen "Fairy Butch" describes a strip act she does at a local lesbian bar as a parody of mainstream views of women's sexuality. The clips of her show are fairly funny and amazing.

New York amateur erotic writer Ronnilyn Pustil gets big laughs describing her delight in reading porn on a crowded subway, while her fellow passengers look on in bewildered mortification.

Between clips of her thunderously explicit songs, rapper "Lique" laments what lousy lovers so many men are, while German erotic photographer Bettina Rheims cheerfully snorts at distinctions between "erotica" and "pornography" and wistfully laments she's at the age where the men don't whistle at her like they used to (though I sure wouldn't pass on the chance. She still looks great and her photographs are explicitly fabulous).

Transgressors all and each one of them never fails to remind us of the price they (and the rest of us) pay as they live out their wildest dreams in a civilization that has yet to come to terms with this powerful and turbulent drive.

"Erotica" is rather diffuse with a perhaps overly heavy emphasis on S&M, a realm that admittedly leaves me cold. Also author Alina Reyes reading from her erotic novel "The Butcher" along with scenes of close-up work at a butcher shop was a bit much even for my irreverently jaded tastes.

But "Erotica" remains a worthwhile and invaluable document that injects a strong antidote to that stubborn (and dangerous) stereotype of women as delicate creatures who are "above all that" (an image promoted mostly by men). These are eleven women who took the reins of their most intimate and dynamic passion and then bravely sent them out into a world that would do better if took heed. Women can undoubtedly gain from seeing it. Perhaps men will gain even more. This one did.

[Thomas Burchfield can be reached at TBDeluxe@aol.com and appears regularly in Swing Time magazine.]

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