CANNES, FR – “It’s interesting that pornography is inherently considered an accusation,” says American filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell. “I actually like pornography.”Mitchell is the director of 2006 Cannes entry Shortbus, a film that Mitchell describes as one that “wouldn’t necessarily attempt to be erotic, but which would rather try to use the language of sexuality as a metaphor for the other aspects of the characters.”
Shortbus is one of several entries at Cannes this year that employ explicit scenes containing actual sex acts but that are not considered by the filmmakers to be “pornographic;” in fact, some of the directors involved consider their films to be “anti-pornographic” or as an “answer” to the depictions of sex within typical pornographic films.
“I don’t consider this film pornographic,” says Mitchell, “because I usually define pornography void of artistic intent. The purpose of pornography is to arouse and I don’t think anyone got a hard-on watching this film. The erotic element is certainly not the priority.”
At a press conference held at the Cannes festival, Mitchell talked about the influences on his approach to the topics of sex and eroticism.
“I was inspired by a lot of European directors who have certainly been using sex lately as a metaphoric language,” Mitchell said. “In the States, there’s more of a puritan environment. We are certainly being controlled by a puritan government in the States, a theocracy so to speak that a lot of people in the States don’t agree with.”
Saying that he “wanted to use sex for a metaphor for things that were perhaps more universal,” Mitchell said that his film is intended to examine non-erotic aspects of sex.
“We weren’t planning on exploring the erotic side of sex,” said Mitchell, “that’s certainly been done to death, and we wanted to look at other aspects of sex in our film. Most people have said that by the end of the film, the sex was the last thing they think about, which is in a way our goal too, to remind people that it is just another brush stroke in the painting of life.”
Other Cannes directors have submitted work suggesting a far less measured and accepting attitude towards pornography.
Danish director Anders Morgenthaler said he “decided to make a film about porn influence in society” because he saw “porn seeking its way into everything, into clothes or toys.”
“There is a ‘porn way’ of selling things because it sells very well,” asserts Morgenthaler. “I got very angry at the role of porn.”
Morgenthaler’s animated film, Princess, portrays child abuse and other sexual violence, and tells the story of a priest who sets out to destroy every film made by his sister – a dead porn star – and to take care of his sister’s traumatized young daughter.
“I chose animation for the obvious reason that if I had made it a live action piece you would have probably left the theater.” Morgenthaler told Reuters “It would have been too terrifying to see a girl go through that.”
Regardless of what people might think of pornography, Mitchell says, or depictions of sex and sexuality generally, it’s important that the issues be discussed openly, and examined by artists like him.
“(T)o avoid looking at it, to sweep it under the carpet, to discuss AIDS programs only in terms of abstinence, to clamp down, you get trouble like the trouble you might find in the Catholic church,” says Mitchell. “You see things being twisted, things being crushed, you see it coming out in negative ways.”
