To determine whether I could separate art from pornography on film, I had to rent Shortbus. This film was recommended to me by a girlfriend who swore it was the movie that made her hot. In the opening scene, a heterosexual couple goes at it from every angle using positions I personally had never even considered. This is followed by a scene featuring a dominatrix taking her submissive for his first ride (in a Manhattan Holiday Inn). But the most explicit moments are still to follow as we watch a home filmmaker documenting his own naked bow yogic pose—and breaking into a sweat in his attempts to suck himself off. I won’t be a spoiler and reveal whether or not all three sexual scenarios resulted in happy endings—for all parties involved—but I will say that the scene with the naked filmmaker made me blush and turn to my girlfriend, saying, “Oh, my. I never thought about that one.” By the way, I was also moved by the filmmaker’s character (as he moved himself … to tears).
I’ll admit that I initially tried to write off the film as some pornographer’s attempt to use porn content (adding a plotline) to hook a mainstream audience. However, after I’d watched the entire piece, I found that I regarded the film as art. Shortbus managed to shift some of my opinions, as I found myself reflecting upon the same issues that the film’s characters encountered while exploring their sexual boundaries.
After I’d viewed the film, I watched the DVD’s behind-the-scenes add-on, to find out more about the director’s purpose in making the movie. Most of his actors were amateurs (arguably, if undirected, their filmed activities would have constituted merely porn); but he had worked hard to develop the film and write the script, using improvisational workshops with the actors to do so (and thus creating art). As I viewed the process the director and actors had gone through in order to make this movie, I came to believe their stated intention: that the film—at first glance merely a depiction of sexuality—was meant to depict the unfolding of the self through the expansion of belief systems. In my opinion, proper viewing of the film asked of me the same qualities that I ask of film, and isn’t that what we want every time we watch, read, or experience art?
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