A comment about explicit sex
Jun. 19th, 2004 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaSliding slowly back into posting again. I'm just under two weeks behind on my Friends List and came across the introduction Neil Gaiman wrote for one of the collected volumes of Reed Waller and Kate Worley's "Omaha," The Cat Dancer. This is the concluding paragraph:
Roger Ebert's book on movie cliches points out that 95% of the sex scenes in big-budget films show the first time that the characters involved have sex together. One of the virtues of "Omaha" which is implicit in Gaiman's assessment above is that the acts depicted therein are more likely to be between--or, occasionally, among--characters who have long-standing relationships. (As the series went along and the status quo was shaken, this was less true--a lot of scenes showed new partnerships forming. But for the central relationship of the story--Omaha and Chuck--I don't think we ever saw their first time together, even though we saw several flashbacks to early points in their love affair, including their first date.) This not-looking-away after the first time was very important to the story, because it underscored that sex is a continuing part of the lives of humans and doesn't go away after the First Encounter.
Over the NYRSF Work Weekend last week, one of the people in attendance explained to all assembled that in his experience, most of the explicit or semi-explicit sex scenes in novels are superfluous--that the same narrative effect is achieved by leaving things to the reader's imaginations. "Omaha" proved, again and again, that character, plot, mood, all the aspects of story are all as much at play in sex as in any other human activity.
Omaha The Cat Dancer is a soap opera, but it's drama, not melodrama; it is a funny animal comic, but the funny animals are real people; and it's neither erotica nor pornography -- simply a story in which the virtual cameras continue to roll while people take their clothes off and make love (just as they do in the world you and I inhabit) -- delineated with an unblinking charm which has the odd effect (for me, at least) of making one wonder where all the sex has gone in the other fictions one reads or hears or sees...
Roger Ebert's book on movie cliches points out that 95% of the sex scenes in big-budget films show the first time that the characters involved have sex together. One of the virtues of "Omaha" which is implicit in Gaiman's assessment above is that the acts depicted therein are more likely to be between--or, occasionally, among--characters who have long-standing relationships. (As the series went along and the status quo was shaken, this was less true--a lot of scenes showed new partnerships forming. But for the central relationship of the story--Omaha and Chuck--I don't think we ever saw their first time together, even though we saw several flashbacks to early points in their love affair, including their first date.) This not-looking-away after the first time was very important to the story, because it underscored that sex is a continuing part of the lives of humans and doesn't go away after the First Encounter.
Over the NYRSF Work Weekend last week, one of the people in attendance explained to all assembled that in his experience, most of the explicit or semi-explicit sex scenes in novels are superfluous--that the same narrative effect is achieved by leaving things to the reader's imaginations. "Omaha" proved, again and again, that character, plot, mood, all the aspects of story are all as much at play in sex as in any other human activity.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-19 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-19 02:18 pm (UTC)This has always been my experience. At first I found it frustrating that my current characters were so shy on the subject, but I've come to feel that this in itself reveals things about them, and if I'm going to put a sex scene in one of their stories, I had better have a damn good reason.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-19 03:05 pm (UTC)But by the same token, if it is integrated, it belongs there. I gave up on Omaha the first time a character turned out to be Not Really Dead After All. (Amazingly, I'd survived the Giant Dramatic Mountain Just Outside Minneapolis.) But the sex never scared me off.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-19 04:42 pm (UTC)I find sex scenes with no thematic purpose but titillation to be extremely irritating
Then go read some other type of book. Sheer titilation for the sake of it is OK alright
no subject
Date: 2004-06-20 04:29 am (UTC)Well sorry I spoke
Date: 2004-06-20 06:42 am (UTC)