Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Body Worlds2: Where's the Clit?

This is a review of a bizarre exhibition that I published on EdgeBoston.com.

Body Worlds2, the new “controversial” exhibition at the Museum of Science, is part science, part art, part self-promotion and just a tad creepy. Gunther von Hagens is the inventor of a new process of body preservation he calls Plastination. After removing all the fats and liquids from a corpse, von Hagens replaces them through “forced impregnation” with plastics. The bodies become very pliable and Hagens poses them, often in stressed athletic positions, dissects them almost from inside out and then cures them to fully harden the specimens.

The result is disconcerting, if uniquely revealing. Imagine a hatchet slicing in half a woman about to dive into the water, starting from her head on down, dividing her out-flung arms in half, but leaving her internal organs intact. The two sides of “The Head Diver” are folded back and the organs are strangely prominent. We stand with a group of first-year medical students, all of us bent in between the two halves of the cadaver as they point out the uterus, Fallopian tubes, intestines, diaphragm, stomach, heart, liver and esophagus.

We see everything! We see organs we never heard of. As Peter, one of our future physicians says, “Amazing to see what is really inside of us.” And outside of us too. Most of the exhibits are male bodies, so there are a plethora of plastinated male organs on display – all of them strangely similar in their pasty whiteness and intact 5-inch flaccid length. Artistic liberty is taken, though, with the scrotal sacs. For example, the “Flying Skier” has the cock and one ball on one side of the split body, and the second testicle on the other.

But where’s the god-damned clit? There’s no clit, no mention, no sighting, although we do see the pussy lips of “The Yoga Lady” doing her backward bridge, nicely reflected in the mirror shelf underneath. In fact, in the first Body World there were few female bodies. In his FAQ, von Hagens explains this as the result of “carrying on the tradition of Renaissance anatomists” (we all recall Renaissance plastic, of course). Even worse, he says that between the sexes “all but the reproductive systems are essentially the same” – making one wonder if he’s been stuck in his lab since the 50s. But it turns out that 60% of his donors (forms available at the exhibit) now are women, so he is using them and pitching to them for donations.

von Hagens aims to educate: the show’s subtitle is “The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies.” Besides the physical systems, there’s also the promotion of health. The visual comparison of real lungs – one healthy, one of a smoker and one of a coal miner – is a lesson in increasing blackness. But to the viewer, it is his personal creative expression that seems to dominate von Hagens’ project. He prominently signs each “work” – the transformation of a human corpse into slices (both lengthwise or sagittal and horizontal) or the peeling back of the entire head like “the pages of a book” down to the tongue and the disturbing blue eyes of “The X-Lady.”

We never understand about those eyes – are they plastinated or glass additions? What about the bright red and blue blood vessels? We know these are real dead humans, but we’re not sure if and how far they are accessorized. We have a similar query of the Imax® film that serves as a companion to this show at the Museum of Science. “The Human Body” was produced as a collaboration between the Discovery Channel and BBC and takes us for a whirlwind tour inside the lungs, arteries and brain. We see a wily little sperm penetrate a big, rotund egg. It’s all a good deal of fun, but we’re never sure where biological microscopy ends and animation begins.

The central narrative of “The Human Body” concerns a lovely white 30-year old pregnant woman who spends nine months musing with yuppie metaphors over her pregnancy, which we follow fetal step by step. Hubby is out working. Fair enough, he does hold her hand during labor. She swims in the pool so that she is in the same environment as her spawn and we are left to wonder about the message given to all the children and women in the Museum’s audience. Is this how most pregnancies are actually experienced? What about the struggling poor, flipping burgers over their big stomachs? What about the women who can’t stop vomiting? What about the confused pregnant teenager? Must we idealize reproduction beyond all reality?

After the film, we return to the exhibit to finish our tour. Like everyone else, we spend hours looking at such riveting creations as “The Muscle Man” whose walking musculature is shadowed by his now-separated skeletal self. And at “The Skateboarder,” balancing on one hand so that “a rather unusual insight is given into the anatomy of the buttock region.” No argument there. There are even a few animals, not the least the astounding camel whose head and long neck are sliced and placed in three different positions – looking up, staring ahead and grazing – giving the distinct impression of movement. “The Angel’s” back is opened up into two wings and the famous “Drawer Man” has geometric chunks pulled out – like drawers – hunks of his face, thigh, chest, back and ass.

In the process we learn a great deal about anatomy and biology and ourselves. Dr. von Hagens is a showman and a strong self-promoter – his name is simply everywhere, often coupled with breathless adjectives. But he has produced an startling concept from which we cannot help but learn. The facts and numbers pour out from the explanatory panels, when we can take our eyes off the colorful dissections long enough to look. But beyond the dazzle, there are questions seeking answers, not the least: Where is the clit?

Notes of a Scandal

I submitted this review to the New York Times website after I saw that their review was so positive. I saw the movie with a number of friends from my senior fitness classes and, except for one woman, everyone thought that this was a rather nasty movie.

This is a mean-spirited film full of predatory characters. Barbara (Judi Dench) has a history of being such a foul stalker of young women that the last one resorted to a restraining order against her. She is dishonest, manipulative and cares nothing about the consent of her objects of longing.

Sheba (Cate Blanchett), in her search for diversion from an older husband and demanding children, is happy for the old (Barbara) and the young (Steven, played by Andrew Simpson) to entertain her. She is vapid and incompetent, blind to the mud she stirs up among the other bottom feeders.

Sheba's husband Richard (Bill Nighy) is the last to know that she is getting it on with the 15 year old Steven and in the ensuing hysteria we distinguish a throw-away line referring to the start of her relationship when she was his 20 year-old student and he was married, presumably to someone his own age, with children.

We cannot fault the young Steven's brooding eyebrows, but clearly once the free nooky with a pretty teacher becomes a scandal, his ardor for Sheba evaporates into cold petulance.

Unfortunately even the composer Phillip Glass's score is rather predatory, imposing itself on the viewer’s emotions. What happened to Glass's reputation for innovation?

With no one to love or even vaguely like, one despairs that such stunning acting talents all around are wasted on a script that would have been considered homophobic and unpleasant back in the 50s.

The Heart & Soul of Sex

Gina Ogden is a friend who has been extremely supportive of my writing. This is a review of her latest book. Visit her website to learn more about her and her wonderful work: www.ginaogden.com.

THE HEART & SOUL OF SEX: MAKING THE ISIS CONNECTIONS
What thousands of women say about their sex lives – and what it can mean for you.
by Gina Ogden, PhD

Dr. Gina Ogden moves the discussion of sex from a quantitative ordeal (how big, how many, since when?) to a qualitative discourse (how deeply felt, how connected, how passionate?) Or let’s say that she uses quantity – 3,800 people, mostly women, answered her survey – to get to the quality of their experience as sexual creatures. There have been very few American sex surveys this large and few that concentrate on what Ogden coins the ISIS: the integration of sexuality and spirituality. In fact, the scope and focus of this in-depth enquiry into what women feel about sex challenges the very nature of classic American sex research, which prefers information it can simply count. Ogden demonstrates that girls want to talk about sex not in terms of how many pulses there are in an orgasm or the length of our clit hoods, but in terms of where sex takes us and what that journey feels like. Ogden’s survey has given thousands (33% more than the Hite Report) of women that opportunity.

“The Heart & Soul of Sex” addresses the need of women to take control of their own sexuality through the sex-positive message that all of us have the right to intimacy and pleasure. The book then provides tools and self-help material to use in connecting spiritual and sexual sensibilities.

WHAT DOES THE SURVEY COVER AND WHAT ARE THE RESULTS?
Ogden explores the connection between spirituality and sexuality and finds that 69% always or sometimes feel that really satisfying sex needs to have a spiritual element. The vast majority connect that spiritual sense to being in love or feeling committed. This would come as no surprise to lesbians, perhaps, who as two women often have a double-dose of the love-huggies. The survey shows a good deal of overlap between the respondents who felt sexuality involves “excitement” (97%) and “oneness with partner” (94%) and the 91% and 85% respectively who felt the same thing about spirituality. I was surprised that a full 15% (the largest number) said drinking or drugs contributed least to spiritual sex. So much for the 1960s!

Dr. Ogden points out that this has been a self-selecting survey: women who identify as spiritual are likely to have been receptive. Still, it is interesting that 84% of those surveyed said they had “experienced sexual ecstasy” and a bit surprising to my cynical mind that a full 70% felt the same about “spiritual ecstasy.” But the final (44th) question of the survey is revealing indeed. How important are these three things to your present life, it asks: Sexuality (84%), Spirituality (91%) and Religion (34%). Clearly Ogden is on to something: women want it, but they want it heart and soul.

TALKING TO THE AUTHOR
Dr Gina Ogden (www.ginaogden.com), a long-time family and sex therapist, received her PhD in sexology from the respected Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, after her earlier degrees from Smith and Goddard. She is a consulting editor for a range of professional sexuality publications, from Our Bodies, Ourselves to Contemporary Sexuality. Her own books (including the brilliantly titled “Women Who Love Sex”), however, are not mired in academic-speak; rather she’s on a mission of to talk the truth of sex. I recently spoke to her about “The Heart & Soul of Sex.”

Question: How does your book address people into alternative sexualities?
Ogden: “A major focus of this book is to abandon a narrow notion of performance, and embrace something much more encompassing and multi-dimensional, including body, mind and heart, as well as this indefinable thing called spirit. And this clearly speaks to lesbians because this is how women experience sex.”

Question: What about those women who prefer to tom-cat than to settle down?
Ogden: “Even in our phases of tom-catting, there’s huge emotional investment and mental involvement in going against the “good girl” messages of the institutions. You’re reaching for freedom, pleasures, bursting through your own boundaries and through the cultural boundaries.”

Question: How does your concept of “spiritual” intersect with “queer?”
Ogden: “If you look at sexual orientation, anyone who isn’t 100% heterosexual is being counter-cultural. In my definition and those which have come from the 3,800 people who answered my survey, when you reach beyond the boundaries, this is a spiritual path. The spiritual component is freedom to express ourselves as outrageously as we wish. Whenever we take sexual definitions into our own hands/hearts/minds, we are no longer agreeing to be “good girls.”

Trumpeter Books, an imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Boston, 2006
$22.95, 223 pages

Interview with the director of "Mr Leather"

This is a piece I wrote for EdgeBoston.com.

Who are the kinky gay men who vie for the chance to be the public face of leather? We meet nine of them in “Mr. Leather,” a documentary about the contest for the Mr. Los Angeles Leather title. We follow the competitors – all of them local title holders – as they primp and pose on their way to victory. There is Rob Roberts (Mr. Sister Leather), title holder for the wonderful trans and drag group whose symbol is the black leather motorcycle cap adorned with a rhinestone tiara. There is Terry Denby (Mr. Ashram West Leather) who as an African American wants to change the “homogeneity of the contests.” And there is Stephen Blackwell (Mr. Gauntlett) who sees a similarity in his two key identities: as a bottom “boy” and as a minister. Both, he tells us, are “service roles.”

The film gives all those who are not leathermen an exceptional inside view of this popular event. Since the contestants have already decided to be public about their queer kinkiness, viewers from outside their community are privy to divulgences we would otherwise never enjoy.

The daddy of all such contests, International Mr. Leather, began in 1979 (Ms. Leather in 1987) and over time these roles have had a strong educational and community component. While they must compete in varied fetching couture – from barwear to formal leather gear, the emphasis is on contributions they have made in the kinky community and their plan to use their title to represent the best in the gay male kink and fetish scene.

One of the key commentators is Guy Baldwin, himself Mr. International Leather 1989 and author of “The Leather Contest Guide: A Handbook.” He admires the way the contest culture allows those who have been “marginalized by society to get validation for being completely authentic.” He is unapologetic, pointing out that “Sadomasochism was the first extreme sport.”

SK sat down with Director Jason Garrett to talk about “Mr. Leather,” his first film.

SK: How did you decide to do this particular film?.
JS: My driving principle was simply to make a film. I work in television in post-production and editing. And I had never actually finished making a film. A friend suggested the Mr. Leather contest and I was intrigued. I had never spent much time in leather bars, so it seemed like the perfect way to explore that community.

SK And how did they receive you as a non-leather person?
JS: Frankly, up until the moment the main contestants actually saw the film in front of an audience, they were very wary of me. The very fact that they’re putting themselves out there to begin with, they were prepared to let a filmmaker into their lives. This is more than most people in the leather community can do.

SK: There’s nothing very explicit in the film, even though it’s about a sexual community.
JS: There’s not much graphic material in the film, but it comes across as focused on kink. I didn’t want a film that looked like something vanilla.

SK: How long a process has it been to make this film?
JS:  I started filming in 2003 and it was finished in 2005, when it started to be shown in festivals. Then I was approached by the lovely people at Here! Films which is showing it on TV in December. They’re releasing the DVD in late January, to coincide with next year’s contest season.

SK: How mainstream will the distribution be?
JS: This film has a far wider appeal that you might think. If I lived in England, I assume this film would play on regular television. Gay people tend to quickly ghettoize leather. But straight people are more open because they see it as something to learn about.

SK: How has making the film affected you?
JS: Mundanely, it has been a great experience to make and finish something. Seeing other people standing on stage demanding the right to be who they are is enormously encouraging on a human level. It has encouraged me to demand acceptance from the world as an individual – not as a leather person, because I’m not – but for publicly standing up for who I am.

The Notorious Bettie Page (DVD)

In the name of full disclosure, I should say that on my living room wall I have a framed postcard of Bettie Page sitting astride a blond woman who is lying on her back, Bettie’s crotch just inches from this happy victim’s face. Bettie is stretching up her arms taking in a deep breath, her eyes closed; her white 50s lingerie contrasts with her gartered black stockings. So it was with no small measure of anticipation that I sat down to watch the DVD “The Notorious Bettie Page.”

A working class girl in Nashville, Bettie (then spelled Betty) suffers childhood abuse by her father and later a gang rape by other teenagers. She decides to take off for NYC where she meets a photographer on Long Island. While studying to be an actress, she becomes first a glamour model and then a private poser for customized kinky shoots. With her dark banged wig, the actress Gretchen Mol ("The Shape of Things," "Rounders") is a very passable Page, but she is not asked for much of an emotional range.

By not seriously exploring the tension between Bettie’s closely-held Christianity and the liberation she clearly finds in the nude and kinky work, the director loses her chance to uncover the focus and passion that made Bettie Page the most popular 50s pin-up girl, if not the most beloved kinky model of all times. Unfortunately, Page’s versatile ability to capture the sensibility of the submissive as well as the intensity of the dominant is not treated in this movie.

Her air of innocence, often connected to her religiosity by those writing about Bettie, comes off in this film as stupidity. She does not seem to learn from her repeated bad experiences with nasty men and she never seems to get a handle on the pornography business for which she is making so much money.

Even the brother-sister business partners – Paula and Irving Klaw – who control most of her career as the most prominent providers of kinky images, seem absurdly naïve when the poo-poo hits the fan. They are all hauled in to testify in pornography hearings by Sen. Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn who the same year played Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck) and it is as if none of them had an inkling that whips and chains and gags might ruffle a single feather.

We can’t criticize the 50s atmosphere of the film, all black and white, tweed skirt-suits over well-built white undergarments. But where’s the substance? Where’s the source of Bettie’s heat, that sense of good fun in the midst of edgy bondage? One gets the sense that the people making this film are paler than vanilla and completely unsophisticated when it comes to porn and kink. The director Mary Harron has all the credits one would want, from films like “I Shot Andy Warhol” to television shows including “The L Word,” “Six Feet Under” and “Big Love.” Obviously an HBO regular, in this case Harron has gone the easy route.

This HBO DVD has minimal special features, including the requisite audio commentary with the actress Gretchen Mol, the director Mary Harron and the writer Guinevere Turner. There’s a couple of trailers and little else. An icon of enormous proportions who has never lost her underground cred, Bettie Page deserves better treatment. But then that was, it seems, the story of her life.

A Love To Hide

It is no surprise that “A Love to Hide” (2005) has won eight film festival awards: it is a powerfully compelling film about life under German occupation in Vichy Paris, 1942. Jean (Jérémie Rénier) hides his Jewish childhood sweetheart Sarah (Louise Monot) at the home of his lover of four years, Philippe (Bruno Todeschini). Sarah’s whole family has been murdered while trying to flee to safety. Jean’s no-good-nik brother Jacques (Nicolas Gob) gets out of jail, bitter at being cast as the failing bad sheep of the family by their fascistic father. His betrayal of Jean, after discovering his brother kissing Philippe, starts a spiral of disaster that turns this beautiful romance into a tragic drama.

It’s worth having a box of Kleenex and a very good friend at hand when viewing the treatment of Jews and of homosexuals by the French collaborators and their Nazi allies. While the impressive acting and the sophistication of the love quadrangle provide emotional intensity, the political context is also a revelation.

Queers – mostly gay men – began to be deported in 1933 in Germany. As it spread to occupied and annexed countries, the numbers reached 100,000 according the US Holocaust Memorial. Up to 15,000 gays died in the camps. And to add insult to murder, the 1942 laws criminalizing homosexuals were maintained after the end of the war. In fact, shamefully, they weren’t repealed until 1981.

Beautifully shot and impeccably directed by Christian Faure, this film generated uncommon excitement at festivals – mostly gay and independent – and is now available on DVD. The acting is flawless, the settings feel quite authentic and the subject matter is more than challenging. The exploration of betrayal – minor and major, private and public – reveals how a foul regime can undermine and corrupt a civilian population. The secrets and lies plaguing families will come as no surprise to most gay people. And the WWII criminalization and degradation of people because of who they love is a reminder of LGBT people live today in many parts of the world.

This is a moving film about how fascism affected the lives of handsome, loving young people that neither preaches nor lectures. Instead of telling us, it shows us history through characters we admire and care about. The script is impeccable and after the first few slow minutes, the viewer is pulled so deeply into their world that one forgets there are subtitles.

The Beauty Academy of Kabul

“It was only halfway through the course,” the director Liz Mermin told me, “that they thought up the name Beauty without Borders.” Such a name adds gravitas and context to the decision of a group of American beauticians to open a school in Kabul a year after the fall of the Taliban. The context is crucial in understanding how Afghani history has brutalized women through the coups of the 70s, the Soviet occupation of the 80s and the Taliban of the 90s. The shocking views of a desiccated urban landscape and the glimpses of the real lives of women make this a film that should be widely viewed.

While everyone involved in the project – funded by the beauty industry – should be congratulated for volunteering their time and even covering many of their own expenses, the Americans had some excruciating notions of entitlement. As Mermin told me, “It’s such a metaphor for American foreign policy: as long as you do things our way, it’ll be fine.”

Funded mainly by the BBC, Mermin’s film follows the Americans through the rubble of Kabul as they create an oasis for these beauty students. Applicants cram their doors, happy for any form of education, any escape from closely-watched lives at home, any chance to gain some financial independence. Most had opened modest home salons during the brutal Taliban reign as a way of bringing in some pennies, after women were forbidden to continue their jobs and college studies. But the desire to primp was never obliterated by the Taliban’s imposition on women of draconian coverings. In fact, the beauticians tell of the terrifying experience of having Talibs turning up at their door, only to sneak in their wives for a permanent or hair-coloring.

The cast of characters was the locus of interest for Mermin. The group’s Executive Director Patrician O’Connor seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she tries to navigate the remnants of Kabul; she tells the camera that she has “aged 20 years” in her first two weeks in Afghanistan. The three American teachers of various degrees of kooky disconnect try to impose their own notions of “progressive” style (full daily make-up). One recommends a moment of meditation to a student worried about entering a home with a violent husband and children hostile to her studying.

Another American gushes, “It doesn’t feel any different from being in Indiana,” despite her students’ attempts to convey that they can’t go out alone, can’t choose their life-mates, can’t dress as they please or pursue many professions. In fact, only 14% of Afghani women are literate and 60% are widows, many with children. One woman, despite dreams of being a doctor, was married off at 14.

But there are also Afghani teachers who have been living in exile in the States for over 20 years. Their involvement is poignant and their personal journeys transformative – for themselves, the students and the film’s viewers alike.

Using a classic observational style, Mermin too found herself on a journey. “I tried to reproduce my own relationship to the school. I started out skeptical of the whole absurd quest of the Americans doing something crazy. I didn’t anticipate the depth of the relationships developed over there and the joy and satisfaction that the women got out of the course.”

Interviews with the students, often done in their own homes – or what is left of them – are revealing. One woman, her husband and father-in-law sitting like sentinels next to her, tells of how she was forced to marry her husband by her family. A strong-willed individualist, she dressed in suits and ties despite, the director told me, being ceaselessly teased by the other students.

If there’s one thing the Afghani students know how to do, it is to make the best out of a life-time of war and destruction by squeezing out every sliver of humor and each chance to learn and grow. The Beauty Academy of Kabul is not only a worthy documentary; it is a moving and funny embrace of the lives of women.

The Royal Ballet: Manon

The Royal Ballet
Manon with full symphony orchestra

75TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!

And why, the viewer laments, must the girl always die at the end? In this case, Manon is being punished for her naive attempts to navigate through the men who buy and sell her, as she realizes over time that love does not conquer all. “Manon” is a dramatic, even at times melodramatic, ballet enjoying the big-canvas luxury of opulent sets by Nicholas Georgiadis (designer for many years to the great Nureyev), a score from Jules Massanet based on the opera of the same name and the innovative choreography of the Scottish genius Kenneth MacMillan. Add to this the talent, discipline and graceful arms of Britain’s Royal Ballet dancers – one of the companies who set the standards in the world of dance – and you have an emotional, epic performance.

Danced by Tamara Rojo with exquisite delicacy and high-strung feelings, Manon stops in Paris on her way from her convent school to see her rather heartless brother Lescaut. Astonished by her maturing charms, Lescaut shows her around the Inn where she attracts the attention of the wealthy Monsieur G.M. While the Old Gentleman who had been wetting his lips over her in the coach vies with Monsieur G.M. for the brother’s permission to possess her as a courtesan, Manon falls in love with the handsome, poor student Des Grieux.

Carlos Acosta plays Des Grieux with a large, puppy-like approach, riding the tragic plot-line with controlled exuberance and despair. His dances of seduction combine passion with movements so slow that he seems suspended in the air during his jumps. His faithful desire for the tiny Rojo is a weak counter to the entreaties of the other men, with their presents of jewels and furs.

In each pas de deux for the lovers that MacMillan has choreographed, there is an originality of movement that is filled out with both the chemistry and competence of the two dancers. Rojo makes the journey from blushing schoolgirl to sought-after courtesan and down into the hell of abuse and death, as she suffers the revenge of the coldly elegant Monsieur G.M. when she runs away with Des Grieux.

Passed like an amusing parcel among the men – not the least her greedy brother Lescaut – it is literally her physical pliability which allows her to occasionally squirm out of their grasp. An animated and energetic performer, Jose Martin brings a comic element to his Lescaut, not the least in an amazing drunken dance with his vivacious Mistress, danced by Sarah Lamb, a hometown girl who was thrilled to be presented with a bouquet in honor of her return during the ovations. Combining lifts with falls, this duet of inebriation kept the audience gasping and laughing as the two challenge the boundaries of balance.

There was a sense of occasion at the Wang – as there must be for a company like the Royal Ballet and a choreographer like MacMillan. Although it was may not have been an historic epiphany, it was certainly memorable, and the Celebrity Series is to be congratulated once again. The production emphasizes erotic flirtation, but does not avoid raw sex – both exploitative and consensual. The corps of dancers maintain the sense of action in every corner of the stage. The standing ovation lasted through a long set of well-deserved bows.