Touch Me Not

While watching Jism2,with a real-life porn star playing,ostensibly,herself,I was thinking of a time when,forget about all the gyrations underway on the screen,just the word jism would be uttered with a vague sense of hesitation or even shame. Only doctors and poets had lien to it: both are healers,in a sense,and both have access to it in a way we never will,so anyone asking us to take our clothes off,while making us feel better,was fine. Rooh and jism soul and body were conjoined at the hip,if you like,and there we left it,waiting for successive layers of artists to worry away at the barriers we had set up for the body,worry away,and nudge,and push.

We are now at a stage where nothing is sacrosanct. Everything is up for a glib line,or a joke. Everything can be turned into a laugh. The flash of flesh that could,at one point,drive up the erotic quotient of a movie,is now just cold-pressed skin. The use of the words,laaj and sharam are no longer in vogue in our movie vocabulary,reminding us of worrying mothers,heavy-handed fathers,zaalim zamana,and other societal pressures which forced women into being creatures to protect and proscribe,sometimes only the latter in the guise of the former.

Why does Sunny Leone,the leading lady of Jism 2,do nothing that shocks? Look at what she is. A woman who has built herself a terrific body,and who uses it,both on-screen and off,in a manner which is not exactly part of respectable professions: her character in Jism 2 takes men into her bed,without an iota of justification other than gratification. Which,in and of itself,is not something to be damned,because whats sauce for gander,is certainly that for the goose too. But why,I asked myself,despite all the steamed-up sex,does the film come off as so-not-erotic? You watch all that action without any stirring in parts that are called private in civil society. What,exactly,is going on? Has sex stopped selling?

Or is it that porn has ceased to have shock value? Back in 1972,a film called Deep Throat,starring Linda Boreman,better known as Linda Lovelace,as the woman who used her mouth in ways no one had filmed before,became a huge sensation. It was essentially a home movie,made by her exploitative husband,on a shoe-string budget: it made so much money,and gained so much notoriety that for years after,people referred to the film as a shorthand for porn flicks. It was banned in much of the USA,the country of its origin,and rapidly gained cult status amongst devotees of pornography,being shown at adult only theatres run by the Mafia: the only way you could claim to have seen the film and not be reviled was for you to be a Hollywood celebrity. In which case,it was all in the line of work,see?

That was another day. And another age. From that nascent stage,when both the engagement in and exhibition of pornography was a decidedly covert activity,we have arrived at a time when it is all around us,blatantly,unapologetically. Anyone with access to the internet and a credit card can watch content that would have been unimaginable even a decade back. Its the one industry which remains unaffected by the worlds economic graph: a recession may be a recession for all other needs,but when you gotta go,you gotta go.

Scratching the itch has become something we now talk about,and indulge in,casually and incessantly,without thinking too much about it. Pop culture icons and talk show hosts tell us that having sex is a good thing. Magazine surveys ask us about our favourite time and positions. There are creams to tighten and whiten womens nether regions,in the interests of  wellness and feeling like a virgin. But in all this,what weve lost out is the sense of excitement,the frisson,the essential connection that runs through us when we see something that affects us. Watching two people in the throes of passion,if theres something to the couple,something that you cleave to,can be a profoundly moving experience. Do you want to see those two after they are done with their tumbling? Are you curious about what they say to each other? Post coitus,do they make you care?

If not,its just a dreary tangle of limbs.

shubhra.guptaexpressindia.com