The Confessing Animal in Sex, Lies, and Videotape
1998; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1934-6018
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis
ResumoMichel Foucault's statement that Western man has become confessing animal (59) could have provided compelling epigraph for Steven Soderbergh's 1989 film sex, lies, and videotape. In fact, Foucault's discussion of confession in The History of Sexuality helps explain in aesthetic terms how Soderbergh managed to create film that subtly exploits pleasures of erotic fascination at same time that it seriously explores ethics of human relationships. Since its release, reviewers have consistently commented on both aesthetic competence and unsettling effect of this relatively lowbudget comedy. The film has been called stunningly polished (Brown) but also unnerving (Jaehne), arresting (Benson), and even creepy (Benson; Denby; Edelstein). Although their final evaluations differ, most commentators locate artistic newness of film in its witty but intense blending of themes of pornographic voyeurism and messages of moral responsibility; it is highly erotic, yet also rather sternly ethical (Denby). Although codes and possibilities of pornography hover constantly at its edges, whether as components of film itself or as expectations instilled in audience by title alone, sex, lies, and videotape is not pornographic. Ultimately, its sexual themes are subordinated to its moral meanings. As reviewers continually point out, Graham, returning exile who exposes lies in other characters' lives. is a distressingly spiritual sort of pornographer (Grant): he is the unlikeliest moral hero in recent movies . . . voyeur who brings enlightenment (Denby). Graham is Soderbergh's gentle but disquieting New Age version of American male exile, wanderer bringing home his peculiar blend of prurience and Puritanism, acutely afflicted by impotence and sincerely driven to find redemption in postmodem, video age practice of confession. As central mode of discourse in film, confession is act by which characters express, enjoy, and anguish over inextricable mingling of moral and erotic. Sex, lies, and videotape effects this discomforting mix of eroticism and ethics by vexing culturally disposed moral empathies and antipathies that audience members bring to their viewing of film. Soderbergh's accomplishment lies in his ability to elicit these contradictory extra-filmic contexts: eroticism is given free play even as film treats sexuality more as discursive subject than as visual motif, and viewer's moral judgment of Graham is suspended even as film makes him representative case in its moral commentary. Soderbergh turns erotic and moral tables in this unnerving, arresting, creepy, and very funny film by depending on audience members to bring to their viewing not only certain expectations of pornography (which Soderbergh both exploits and satisfies in surprising ways) but also certain moral and erotic responses to two different aesthetic and philosophical paradigms that film places in comically disturbing tension: confessional mode and heroic narrative mode. Comedy, Confession, and Heroic Narrative Like most comedy, sex, lies, and videotape progresses toward final re-pairing of couples and revelation of secrets that have held characters in destructive stasis. Also like most comedy, film is structurally overdetermined. The center around which characters, discourse, and action revolve is sex. Each of four central characters negotiates sexuality differently: Ann (Andie MacDowell) is initially unawakened, compliant housewife; her husband, John (Peter Gallagher), is an adulterous, opportunistic lawyer; Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo) is Ann's loud, promiscuous sister and John's lover; and Graham (James Spader) is returning exile who brings to town his crusade against lying, his problem with impotence, and his personal project of videotaping women's sexual confessions. …
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