SEXUALIZATIONSHIPS via ARTERTAINMENT II

Today's mini-reviews are devoted to Fassbender porn.

Such a shame to believe in escape

SHAME (2011). Mainstreaming weighty sexual themes is by necessity trouble and Shame is the recent example that proves this judgement true. In short, the movie centers on a lone New York corporate cog (Fassbender) who would enliven the American Dream of consumptionist independence if not the psychological distress resulting from sex addiction. Inasmuch as I admire the endeavor for the minimalist beauty and the emotional tension, I can’t find the portrayal of the protagonist convincing enough to either enjoy the film or find it engaging. The problem is, of course, ideological framework which continually slips the character in the direction of potential moral catharsis and salvation. Firstly, in a failed attempt to build a relationship with his co-worker, he thoughtlessly throws away his impressive porn stash, which is sort of derisory considering the short span of the pair’s dating period and the implicit sweep of his addiction. Then, he provokes a surprisingly mild physical assault after offering sex to a non-single woman in a bar and verbally offending her boyfriend. Finally, he gets a blowjob from a gay bar regular in a scene that has been stylized emotionally as Dante’s seventh circle of hell, but you can tell from Cruising that far worse things happen in such places. All for vain, but the concluding scenes of supportive binding between brother-sister supply a glimpse of light in the dark tunnel of shameful sexaholism. Something is amiss in the psychological delineation of Brandon. On the one hand he’s charmingly honest and affirmative about his lifestyle, on the other he exhibits manic-depressive symptoms, as in the noted above moments of erratic behaviour spurted by … what exactly? The moral decline of his sister, the hypocrisy of his boss, the oppresive and deepening loneliness? The titillating availability of all forms of sexual release except through intimacy? His ambiguous past? In accordance to his sister’s exculpatory pronouncement, Brandon is not a bad person, in fact the furthest he gets to being lousy is through his egotism and solitariness, but that’s too little realism to fill a half-and-an-hour of screening time. In case one might discard the gravity of the subject matter on the basis of a shallow plot line alone, the director illuminates the narrative by heavyhearted music. Fassbender’s long, pale and pained physiognomy adopts sympathetic grandeur whilst he’s night jogging to Bach, crying to a cheesy rendition of Sinatra (another tacit attack on late capitalism!!! If porn, sex and money can’t make you happy in the city of unlimited possibilities – what can?), or exchanging telling looks with a beautiful soon-to-be slut stranger on the subway to Harry Escott’s orchestral score. All that to make the audience realise that sex addiction is unmistakably a problem of monumental proportions for the XXIst century generation of yuppies and generally for the sophisticated middle-class. Not that I’m desensitized to the extent of spurning the sublime aesthetics of the story. The subway scene is beautifully executed, the sense of loneliness is depressingly close at heart , Fassbender’s performance is flawlessly beyond axiological evaluation, and I couldn't hold sway of my dirty voyeristic little heart in the overstretched scenes of urinating and frontal nudity. Still, the movie neither shocked nor surprised me, surely not with a threesome and a homoerotic blowjob as the extrema of today’s male lecherousness.

 

Fassbender and Theron in W Magazine erotic fashion session [2]

PROMETHEUS(2012).In Prometheus Fassbender plays David, an android with a surprisingly acute sense of humor, existential reflection and a will to freedom. For all the talk that the movie is a bleak metaphor of human civilization, the outcome strikes me primarily as something of a mythologizing Freudian space opera. What’s with the biblical allusions, disavowing of children, senseless testosteronic aggression among the male humans and engineers, vagina dentata symbolism? Not that I expected a pro-feminist agenda residual of 1979 but why the lack of at least mildly non-irritating female characters and why no female enegineers? Have they all stayed on the planet of engineers in order to take care of the engineer babies whilst their engineer husbands went out boldly to explore the space? Are women a Darwinian blind spot of evolution? I’d be less offended by a sacrificial engineer virgin in the initial scenes than this implication. Then at least it'd be clear why the world is so vile and dirty. The two female protagonists in the movie are cringingly asexual – one is a barren Catholic who hypocritically performs abortion on a miraculously conceived alien baby, and the other is a masculinized corporative daughter with patricidal tendencies. Two implicit sex scenes featuring the women are preceded by unbelievably vegetative flirting iniciated respectively by alcohol intoxication and libidinal drive of the hulky black captain of Prometheus. Apparently the android is the one character in the film that is not implicated in economic or carnal desires, or possessed with the morbid drive to decypher the nexus of ontogenesis, death and immortality. His telling citation from Lawrence of Arabia resounds with a Sisyphean resolution to survive despite the all-present stupidity and unkindness of the universe. On the surface he comes across as a bit of a sissy, ostensibly emasculated by Vickers and Holloway, and disregarded by other crew members. Yet, David is as sly as he is pitiable and Scott apparently intended him to be a  postmodern Adam(/artificial serpent?), the monster of Frakensteinian biotechnological humanity which creates and destroys uncontrollably and in the end gets what it deserves. What’s David purpose when he impregnates Holloway with the back alien goo? Is he acting on Weyland’s behalf? Is this his revenge on the humans who engineered him or pure curiosity? Is he “feeeling” the same way aliens “felt” towards engineers? Does his androidal atavistic hatred towards humans activate in clear and present danger? That’d explain some of it. Somehow David seems to be amused by the idea of random ontogenesis, at least to the point when he loses his head, but maybe he wasn’t versed enough in mythology (sic!) to predict the savagery of the gods. His final questioning of Shaw’s somewhat zany request seems to emphasize his artificial hence instinctually superior nature or just a lower spectrum of conceptalization of things that don’t impede his actual being(-in-itself?). Or he just doesn't care like the rest of the audience.What's obvious is that Prometheus reduplicates in a nearly Kristeva-esque fashion horrific visions of endless propagation with the abject goo that gives birth to a virus which begets a tentacle monster and then a xenomorph – I don't quite follow this disturbed gestation story arc but undoubtedly all alien forms are meant to be born in death or pain, at best, through incubators with a human DNA. A weaker form must die so that a superior one might be born; our reign is coming to an end but we’re still venturing into the cold space in search of a benevolent maker. That’s how I’m going to pretend I’ve understood the message anyhow. No need to add that I see unlimitless possibilities in the porn version/continuation of this movie on the planet of "bald albino bodybuilders"[1].

                                      

  [1] The designation is not mine but I find its homopatriarchal simplicity disturbingly adequate in the context of the movie. See http://m15m.livejournal.com/23209.html.
 [2]  http://www.wmagazine.com/story/charlize-theron-michael-fassbender-prometheus-cover-story. You're welcome.