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Cocksuckers, Caves, and Cartoons |
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Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him? (Plato, The Republic) I come from a continent (the upper part mind you) where sucking the president’s cock is shunned upon, yet paradoxically celebrated to the point where the cocksucker (or is that cockvictim?) has become a minor celebrity. She’s been on television shows and even written a memoir about how she came (heh heh) to suck the president’s joystick. This is apt analogy for a schizophrenic society that at once tells us that sexual expression is both naughty and private only to then use our desire, craving and longing for this apparent lack to sell us every product imaginable… but sex. And hey…don’t blame the U.S., you want to point some fingers, aim at Jesus, Mary and all those who scribbled and re-scribbled the nativity tale. In one of the most influential stories of the Western world, we are asked to believe that this gal just magically produced a child out of thin air. There was no labour, no caesarean, no water breaking, no uterus, no chord to cut, no postpartum depression. There was no sex. No reaming. No teabagging. No sucking. Not even a basic missionary ‘dead as a log’ fuck. No sweaty stinky hot sex whatsoever. Not once did Mary feel the hard thrusting throb of Joseph’s semon spurting cock? Yeah right. Ok. If you buy that, you probably think there’s a god too. Like a lot of my contemporaries, I was baptized, circumcised but never went to church. Still Christian-Victorian-Puritan values have touched my life, especially when it came (heh heh) to sex. I remember twirling ol’ willie round and round before puberty because it felt good, damn good. All was fine and dandy until my adoptive father caught me with my hands DOWN THERE and admonished me. “IT’S WRONG TO DO THAT!” Well…gee..thanks a lot not-really-my-pops. But I couldn’t stop. I had to experience that delirious eye-shuttering bolt of electricity. What was wrong with me? Was I sick? From the get go, sex became a private sanctuary. It was bad enough that I might go blind and go to hell, but worse still I might be exposed as a sicko pervert. This would have to remain my little lecherous secret. Things got weirder. One day I discovered a stack of porn magazines under my not-really-my-pop’s bed. I scoured through each magazine and saw photographs of beautiful, perfectly sculpted men and women having sex with each other. And they were naked! This wasn’t just leg, cleavage and short tongueless kisses like on TV. Nor was it barely clothed catalogue models. You could see EVERYTHING. And boy did it look good. In fact, it was perfect. Their firm and muscular bodies glistened with sweat as they sucked and fucked one another. Sometimes they even inserted cock shaped devices in each other. And the facial expressions! These people were clearly in paradise. Eyes closed, head strained back, lip pinched, muscles clenched. Was this heaven? It was time to get out, meet some people, and find out. I started fucking at 15 and it just went crazy from there. I’d fuck anyone willing. But I very quickly discovered that something was wrong. The women I slept with never seemed to match up to the women in the magazines. They had small, sagging, square, oval and veiny tits. They had flab. Their eyes closed in fear not pleasure. Their heads never tilted back. Is that lice? What’s this hairy thing down here? Ouch… watch your teeth! Greasy hair? What’s that smell? How come my dick doesn’t look like THOSE guys? How come I don’t have muscles like that? Is that back acne? Yes… the orgasm was great. It was ALWAYS great. But just as suddenly I felt shame, humility and disgust. I wanted to run and hide. This wasn’t anything like I thought it was supposed to be. I thought sex would be clean, neat and orderly, a holier-than-thou experience. Instead it was usually smelly, ugly, cold and short. Disappointing. There was no love, no intimacy, no perfectly formed bodies. But what could I do? I couldn’t’ ask anyone about this because then they’d know I was having sex. Fortunately, I could still masturbate. In that world of magazines, television and even sex movies, I could find heaven each and every time without feeling dirty, shameful and empty. It went on this way for years. Soon alcohol blurred all the dirt, at least until the next day. It wasn’t until I grew older, met less inhibited people that I was able to talk about sex. I realized pretty quickly that masturbation had made me go blind. Not only was I completely made the mistake of focussing solely on the orgasm, but I was living in a cave jerking off to a wall of unreal images. Well…shit..no wonder I felt so let down all the time. Life can’t compete. Like literature, painting and maybe even music, animation has the ability to go deeper than the photographic image. It can uncover and articulate all those unseen and unspoken layers that exist within us. It can take us beyond the shadows of the cave towards a better or clearer understanding of ourselves. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, animation rarely lives up to its potential. Case in point, sex related animations. Almost every animation festival has programmed a ‘sex’, ‘erotic’ or ‘spicy’ animation screening. Like a circus sideshow, these usually half-assed curated screenings play off their audience’s schizophrenic symptoms of desire and repression by giving them a glimpse of the supposedly lurid and forbidden. Every programmer knows that sex related screenings attract crowds, and that means money. Invariably, these screenings (notable exceptions being contributions by Phil Mulloy, Signe Baumane, Francis Lea, Susan Pitt, Marcy Page) are little more than late night wank fests dominated by juvenile fantasy films. Films like Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery), I Miss You (John Kricfalusi), any pre-code Betty Boop, Jessica Rabbit (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) or any number of Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted Animation films show a lotta leg, cleavage, ‘sexy’ looks, and if we’re lucky a couple of nipples and a big purple cock (These last two always get big laughs). You could imagine the creators giggling aloud as they came up with these images. Of course, most of them probably wouldn’t know what to do with a handful of REAL pudenda, tittie or cock. I’m not sure what’s more depressing: the fact that the creators have obviously suffered through the same repressive shit that we all went through or that they think they are creating some personal and unique. Is this what Preston Blair or John Kricfalusi REALLY wanted to see? Are they just re-creating a fantasy constructed by advertising, television and cinema? Using images that are projected onto them as if they were their own to begin with. Maybe they think this is what the audience wants? And maybe this is what the audience THINKS it wants? Hell…most of these screenings are well attended even at 1am in the morning. And why wouldn’t the audience want this simulacrum? Within the shadows we can have the impossible. What’s not to like? The programmers fill the seats. The filmmakers have an audience. The audience enjoys the show. What’s ironic is that these programmes are conventional and really quite tame. And festivals fail to properly contextualize these programmes or offer a forum for discussion. In the end, we get the same old routine. Everyone wants to watch it, no wants to talk about it. And after the screening everyone can hurry back to their rooms and jerk off. Maybe to encourage some discussion, programmers should consider showing excerpts from Hollywood family animation features like Shrek, Snow White, Toy Story 2, Spirit and Osmosis Jones or better still how about hardcore fuck fest. films like Fucks Pause, Faux Pause, Cockadoodletoons, Buggery on the High Sea, What’s Up Her Doc?, and Woody Woodpecker? By virtue of what they don’t say, the so-called ‘harmless’ family films say a lot about contemporary sexual morality. Sex in this world is almost non-existent except for the sudden coupling of male and female by the end, a coupling that often appears out of nowhere. The irony is that most of these films are same sex buddy films. In Shrek, Spirit, Toy Story, Osmosis Jones etc… the stories involve two guys who start out with differences only to become really good pals by the end. They get to know, like, understand and respect one another. Now..umm..if that ain’t love…then I give up. But then…just in case we get the ‘wrong’ message (wink wink), there is always a loving female waiting for one of our ‘heroes’. What this transmits to viewers is that there are boundaries within male relationships (at the same time suggesting that ONLY men can have these bonding adventures) and that intimacy can only be found between a man and a woman (even if they are computer generated toys!). Apparently intimacy and love between a man and a woman can just materialize out of thin fucking air too. In Osmosis Jones and Toy Story, the hetero couplings are completely unwarranted. This not only feeds that whole idiotic notion of ‘love out of thin air’ or ‘love at first sight’, but also teaches viewers that they are incomplete without another person AND that that person MUST be of the opposite sex. It’s a catch 22 because the executives think that this is what the audiences want (romance, love) BUT the audience only wants it because they’ve been conditioned through years and years of exposure to think that they want this. And of course…their parents and grandparents confirm this because they bought the system decades earlier when they went to see releases and re-releases of Snow White, a film that values power, wealth and appearance over friendship and loyalty. The bitch ditches the dwarves for a guy she doesn’t even know! Hey…that’s a great message for the kids. Is it any wonder that the family unit is a fucked up forum of violence, adultery and addiction? And when we get one extreme (neutered films), we inevitably get an opposing extreme, in this case, animation pornography. I’m talking unadulterated hardcore fucking of every variety. These are films without boundaries (although boundaries created these films in the first place). We get films like that old black and white Buried Treasure, which has long been rumoured to be have been made by Hollywood studio animators likely looking to let off a little steam and do to something that was more naughty and fun. Or there’s the notorious German randy take on Snow White featuring the dwarves filling every hole they find in Snow White with their little but determined dicks. Isn’t this the real Snow White? Isnt that what those lonely little buggers really wanted? And what’s sorta weird about these films is that for all their loud, throbbing uninhibited sex scenes, these films are (at least for me) completely un-erotic. I don’t recall getting hard once watching these films. They are fast, loud and just so outlandish that I can’t imagine anyone getting turned out by this stuff. And yet they were made for people to watch. There was (is?) a need for these films. It’s almost as if the power or message of these films rests solely in their existence. It’s as if the filmmakers are ejaculating all over the screen, fed up with sex between treated so politely and quietly. As if they’re screaming PEOPLE FUCK and hey…it’s ok, it’s cool, it’s swell, IT’S NORMAL. One screams, the other stays quiet, but each reveals the same fundamental problems of sexual identity and expression. Art can improve life, but it should never be better. Otherwise you’re just wanking silently in the shadows to no one but yourself. © Christopher J. Robinson |