In his amazing essay, Bog Venus VS. Nazi Cock Ring, written for the late great Arthur magazine, genius/wizard/comic book writer Alan Moore carefully explains the difference between erotica and pornography. Erotica is art and like most of the art that humanity considers worthwhile, it tries to connect its viewer with a larger shared human experience. The essence of art is that moment when you watch a movie, or read a book, or look at a painting, and the light flicks on in your head that makes you say, “Oh my God, I’ve felt that way too. I didn’t know anyone else thought like that.” That illuminating connection brings the audience closer together and is a profoundly positive thing. Truly great erotica contains that spark and makes you feel okay about being a human animal with peculiar sexual appetites.
Pornography is the opposite. It’s all flash and pounding flesh but without any of the soul found in erotica. The pornographic experience is almost always one of shame and isolation. Thanks to the Internet and adult video stores, pornography can be obtained and consumed with extremely minimal human interaction. The lonely loser can search for his particular fetish, feast his eyes upon the images, and then feel shame and disconnection after he is finished. There is no story, no plot, no art, no spark that connects with the user and makes them feel human. Aside from the living rooms of certain frat houses, porn use and preference is rarely discussed socially. Unlike art or movies, which are often a primary topic of conversation, it’s rare that even sexually enlightened individuals (or those that regard themselves as such) will sit around and say, “You know, I really enjoy the website submityourflicks.com. I find its tube format and amateur content to be very arousing. What porn have you been masturbating to lately?”
Part of this blame can be laid on the porn industry, but the majority really rests on our own appetites. We want to see money shots, close up penetration, and hard fucking, and we want to see it NOW! Watching an erotic scene with a plot that toys with your expectations and slowly builds up to the sex is frustrating, often maddening, but it’s worth it. That frustration is one of the most erotic things around. But the average consumer prefers their products, and porn, to be cheap, quick, and dirty so the art of titillation is quickly vanishing.
Similarly, without being able to openly discuss why we like certain porn or how it makes us feel, we lose our powers of critique and our taste becomes less discerning. The fact that most porn is consumed alone contributes greatly to its decline in quality. Imagine if all alcohol was consumed in private with the only goal being getting drunk as quickly as possible. No one went to bars or shared beers on their back porch, they just crept downstairs when their family was asleep and did shots until they were drunk. Would we be mixing cocktails and debating our favorite brands of vodka? No. We would be buying cheap swill from the convenience store in the middle of the night, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the clerk.
Enter SMUT CITY. F*Bomb believes that pornography (plotless fucking films) is problematic and that erotica (movies with sex and a story) needs to be rescued before it becomes a truly lost art. We believe that while sometimes it’s nice to watch porn all by your lonesome and do the deed, it’s also important to watch sexually explicit films in a public setting and have a dialogue with your peers about quality, aesthetic, taste, and meaning. We think that if it’s socially acceptable to sit in a theater and watch horny twenty-somethings get tortured and killed by some masked maniac, than it should be okay to sit in a theater and watch a film where they show peni and vaginae in all their uncensored glory. If hiding booze and drinking alone are signs of alcoholism, than we say that millions of people hiding porn and masturbating in the middle of the night to things they would never discuss with another living soul are signs of a sexually dysfunctional society. That’s why we’re asking you to put down the cheap malt liquor and join us at the bar for a classy cocktail. That’s why we’re inviting you to SMUT CITY.
For our debut film, we will be showing the Rinse Dream classic CAFE FLESH. For the uninitiated, CAFE FLESH is a one of a kind cinematic experience, a film that features pornographic sex in scenes too artfully twisted and surreal to be very erotic to anyone not suffering frontal lobe damage. That’s not to say the sex is gross or repulsive, it’s just out there to an extent that makes it clear that the filmmakers primary concern wasn’t creating masturbation material. The plot is perfectly suited to SMUT CITY‘s mission statement. After the bomb has dropped, the surviving mutants and low lifes are left to eke out a meager existence in the ruins of civilization. 99.9% of the population are Sex Negatives, sexual cripples who become physically ill at the slightest erotic touch. Unable to quench their unchecked libidos, these perma-voyeurs gather in cabarets like CAFE FLESH each night to watch the few remaining Sex Positives perform for their pleasure.
Here are two screen shots from the film, just to wet your appetite and give you some idea of what to expect.
This is CAFE FLESH’s interpretation of domestic bliss.
And here is what they think it’s like to take a memo.
CAFE FLESH is not a film to be missed. Come see it tonight at SMUT CITY and be an erotica embracing sex positive rather than a lonely, shameful sex negative. Admission is $5 and the New Movement theater is BYOB!
