In Defense of Smut in Cinema

By Berk Davenport Kiziltug

Allow me to invite you to a dilemma of framing: on the one hand, we rely on established cinematic genres that are signaled by the presence of certain aspects and memorable moments within a movie; these aspects are collectively contrived and agreed upon, and they enable great ease in the analysis of, and categorical conversation surrounding any movie.

On the other hand, sometimes the most memorable aspects or moments within a movie directly reject or subvert any entrenchment within those corresponding cinematic genres. 

I’ll give a simplistic example to establish the positive associative presence as proof of concept. However, there is a second phenomenon at play—in this example—that we will get to later on.

In the 2009 film Jennifer’s Body, a high school girl named Jennifer is sacrificially transformed into a flesh-eating succubus, who goes on to post-coitally merk a bunch of horny young boys. The film was put forward under the genre of horror/comedy in 2009 when it did a double-gainer belly flop at the box office, making only five million in ticket sales against a movie budget of sixteen million. However, the societal pendulum has swung far in the last fourteen years in terms of valuing the movie, and merely scroll through any Letterboxd, Reddit, Twitter, or Tumblr message board, as well as the half a dozen online news publication sites such as these examples from Vox, Collider, IndieWire, The Guardian, that you might find by typing in “Jennifer’s Body+Genre” into google. You’ll come face to face with this example of genre defying-quality.

What do I mean by genre-defying quality? Jennifer’s Body is undeniably a horror movie, with dozens of blood-drenched scenes punctuated by moments of cheap comedy. However, unforgettable moments of queer representation, homoerotic rumination, trope subversion, as well as the presentation of many devices at the heart of feminist critical conversation (such as the female/male gaze) pop up on the screen constantly, such that the film can easily be asserted to be a ‘feminist film.’ Okay. So then, is that the genre to place Jennifer’s Body into?

We’ve established there’s a case to be made that certain films (like Jennifer’s Body) defy their genre effectively and assiduously by the presence of powerful moments or aspects (not necessarily subversive moments, but ones that undeniably belong to an epistemological box other than the genre box they’re presented in) that may come to dominate our collective memory and the categorical conversation surrounding them. 

The reader might reflect that this isn’t an inherently novel observation; films, as with countless other narratological mediums or art forms, are pluralistic—they invite multiple interpretative pathways. We can access a long and diverse collective history of intergeneric films by picking up a textbook, taking a film class, or, again, trolling funny Letterboxd posts at 2 am and finding, against all odds, some new and noteworthy hot-take.

Let’s return to the phenomenon I spoke of earlier, the societal operation we dub collective memory. So how does a work of art enter and stay in critical conversation? Well, the first hurdle is that it must be collectively remembered. That means that what works either for or against a film entering into that critical conversation is the phonetic operation of collective memory. 

Here are some simple examples of collective memory operating: you see a poster—either new or old—for a film, you see a meme taken from a recognizable snippet of a movie, you encounter an article about the film, you hear an interview with an actor or maker of the film, you somehow stumble upon the smorgasbord of other media iterations—gifs, tweets, Reddit posts, Letterboxd, Tumblr, blogs, Facebook posts for the elderly readers. If this cacophony of media formats seems overwhelming to collectively assess, yes, that is the nature of the internet. A phenomenon roughly similar to the unstoppable chaotic expansion of the universe: an outwardly moving process of entropy.

The easiest way for a production company to trounce this logistical hurdle and assert its merit into the collective consciousness is to strategically stage a wide publication campaign alongside a film’s release to best capitalize on timing and proximity. You, the reader, are already passively aware of this operation: think about how all the “best films,” or the films that assert themselves as vying for positive critical reception, seem always to be released within a few months of the academy awards— ‘Oscar season’ it’s called. This is no mistake. This phenomenon can be phrased even more succinctly: our collective memories are short, the deluge of new and novel information is overwhelming, and resultantly it’s quite challenging for a film to stick around in the ol’ brain pan.

So let’s return to our earlier example (the feminist darling Jennifer’s Body, which has certainly stuck around in collective memory) and trade its main catalog of features (the horror stuff, the comedy stuff) for those that generate the quality of ‘stick–to–itiveness’ in society. Those are the scenes wherein a half-naked Megan Fox runs around a forest carrying an ax, a half-naked Megan Fox grinds on Amanda Seyfried, and a half-naked Megan Fox gets drenched in gallons of blood. There are no two ways about it. The conversation is turning bawdy.

If we accept that images of the obscene—nudity, the sexual act, genitalia—leave deep impressions on us as we make our way through a movie, then we open the door to a more complicated moral quagmire. One that revolves around collective conceptions of the taboo, the crass, the offensive; in one word: smut.

Smut—at least partially according to the Cambridge and Oxford English Dictionaries— can be defined in cinema as visual depictions of the indecent or the offensive, usually in relation to sex (whether the sexual act or sexual features). The astute reader might raise a hand here—when is a thing considered indecent or offensive? After all, what is offensive to some might be milquetoast to another, lest we should all forget the famous epitaph, “I know it when I see it,” uttered by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 during his defense of Louis Malle’s film Lovers—a film that was itself considered obscene and referred to as “hardcore-porn” for its unabashed (yet in standard Malleian fashion quite tasteful) depiction of female orgasm (collective gasp).

Although we’ve finally arrived at the titular section, let’s vault away briefly for some much-needed historical context. Hollywood pre-1940s was a markedly different landscape of visual offerings. In Hollywood surrounding the decadence of the roaring 1920s and early 1930s, practically everywhere you looked, you would find amoral images such as Mae West’s seductive and racy appearance in Wesley Ruggles’ 1933 film I’m No Angel, such as the sexual escapades of Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Alfred E. Green’s 1933 film Baby Face, or Cecil B. DeMille’s religious blasphemy in his 1932 epic, Sign of the Cross. In response to this smorgasbord of visual obscenity and the surrounding public outcry, Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (now known as the MPA), came up with a set of industry guidelines for moral censorship called “The Motion Picture Production Code,” and known to the annals of history as the Hays Code. Written into this code are several Orwellian gems like, “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it,” and “Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented,” and even if you can believe it, “Law-divine, natural or human-shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.” Hollywood, according to the President of the biggest association of professional filmmakers at that time, was a swamp of moral quagmire that needed to be drained.

The Hays Code would last from 1934 until 1968. It should come as no surprise that many salacious filmmakers were waiting (salaciously) in the wings for just that barrier-busting moment. The American 1960s and 1970s became entrenched in the rise of the exploitative “B movie.” The B-ranked movie, or low-budget feature film, usually independently made, typically with a sub-80-minute runtime and ample shocking or vulgar images, established itself as a genre on the back of its powerful cultural impact, breaking down many long-standing taboos against erotic content in the national media atmosphere. Would we collectively have been able to witness and register the watershed moment of Miley Cyrus twerking across the 2013 MTV VMA awards if we hadn’t already collectively witnessed the Russ Meyer 1965 film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or H. Haile Chace’s 1961 film Damaged Goods (in which a young girl’s sexual promiscuity [well, really her boyfriend’s infidelity and general shoddy character] leads to venereal disease and many grotesque closeup shots of venereal disease hard at work)? I think not. The complex dialectical game that plays out between images that shock and the collective rumination of society are mitigated by recall.

Witnessing and registering, these are words that we may not generally use to describe the evocative experience of being presented with sexual and graphic imagery (smut)—instead, the words we use are emotion-laden, i.e., they are a reflection of how the experience made you feel when your opinions and values come into surprise contact with the obscene—but they certainly are words germane to the process of how we go about collectively recalling those moments of obscenity. Recall for a second, dear reader, a moment when you came across a shocking, grotesque, or otherwise haunting image while watching a movie (or perhaps a tv show). Were you possibly watching that night in 2013 when Miley Cyrus chose Robin Thicke as the spot to be for her derrière? Have you been able to forget it? Has what you said about that moment changed in recent years? Please note that neither a tone of negative castigation nor a positive moral accusation is present in my question. I am solely interested in the connection between the graphic, the sexual, and our collective act of memory and recall.

Now we have finally come full circle back to the opening gambit of this article, questioning how we frame our collective conception of films and how our collective effort is undeniably a process of recall. Consider other moments of national ‘witnessing’ or ‘registering’ of the sexual or the profane—the box office sensation that was Magic Mike and its somehow grungier follow-up, Magic Mike XXL. Or the multiple medium shocker Fifty Shades of Grey and its repetitive follow-ups. These films undeniably place, as their most prominent feature, what we defined smut as earlier: visual depictions of the indecent or the offensive, usually in relation to sex (whether the sexual act or sexual features). Yet, despite these films’ commercial appeal, the question remains: is anyone still talking about either of those films? Aside from in an illusionary capacity, the answer is a resounding ‘no.’ These films have fallen away from any semblance of collective consciousness, and the critical discussion surrounding them—if ever there was one—is flatlined. Perhaps a better follow-up question is whether either of those films broke down any long-standing societal taboos, overcame any moral or ethical hurdles, or offered anything of merit (thematically speaking) to the American zeitgeist.

An earlier thematic autopsy of Jennifer’s Body was bashfully submitted to the reader as simplistic. Let’s substitute that example for the 2008 film Sorry to Bother You, directed by Boots Riley. In the movie, a telemarketer, Cassius “Cash” Green (played by Lakeith Stanfield), ascends the ladder of success at his corporate employer, RegalView, by playing off his laryngological ability to manipulate his voice to sound like a white person on the phone and pacify his potential customers—this is just one of many notes, or aspects, at play in this film in which director Riley communicates with great efficacy a complex conversation on race relations in contemporary America. Cash is eventually promoted high enough up the corporate ladder that he lands a face-to-face meeting with the CEO of RegalView’s parent company, WorryFree, the discordant Steve Lift (played by Armie Hammer). Lift explains how Cash can help WorryFree, an exploitative company that offers financially hobbled people free room and board in exchange for grueling work, conditions tantamount to indentured servitude (another note, or aspect, given by Riley). In addition, WorryFree has pioneered a scientific formula that can transform its workers (those indentured servants) into ‘equi-sapiens’ or horse people—thus more capable of keeping up with the backbreaking work demanded by the company. Here’s the kicker, ushered in by a line that Hammer’s character Lift (a white man) delivers with disturbing zeal to Cash (a black man) as he pitches Cash on potentially entering into a contract with WorryFree and thus taking the equi-sapien formula himself: “You’re gonna have a horse cock.” (yet another note in the symphony of Riley’s critical thematic conversation). To pummel home the impact of this kicker, Riley directs the following scene as Cash escaping to a bathroom (turns out the wrong one) to find the jarring sight of a giant, naked horseman writhing in pain on the ground, the uncensored image of the aforementioned horse cock soars.

Whether it was the eery look of childish delight found on Hammer’s character’s face as he makes (what he views as desirable) the offer of engendering horse genitalia into Cash’s character’s genome or the distressing image of suffering found on the face of the naked horseman with the large phallus, or one of many other images depicting smut found within Sorry To Bother You, one thing is certain; they are hard to forget, and quite easy to recall. Furthermore, the movie has undeniably proliferated the landscape of cultural analysis, with examples here from The Verge, Vox, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, TIME magazine, and countless more I humbly suggest perusing. Evidence continues of the film invading academic arenas, with papers by the British Film Institute, University of Texas, Worcester State University, Illinois State University, Fordham University’s Journal of Record, and more. Jennifer’s Body, too, excited a few academic journals and scholarly papers. Diablo Cody, the screenwriter who wrote the script behind Jennifer’s Body, said this in partial response to the outcry surrounding the obscene and graphic imagery in the film, “In those [marketing] conversations, I was like, oh, OK, either we made a movie that they see completely differently, or what’s in front of them is something they don’t want to see… And at the time, it was painful, but now I realize this is evident in the world at large.”  

The interplay between our exposure to smut—the graphic image, the obscene content— and our later rumination on the themes and ideas underlying those images is ruled by recall. Suppose we accept first that certain films and their makers place smut centerstage under the tacit implication that it has very little ability to communicate a complex theme or idea, such as the all but gratuitous depictions of sex in the Fifty Shades franchise, or the ornamental sexual titillation adorning the Magic Mike franchise. In that case, we can move secondarily to the understanding that although it is the same definition of smut at work in films such as Jennifer’s Body. Sorry To Bother You, but it is being used for a vastly different purpose. Writers such as Diablo Cody and Boots Riley are taking the calculated gamble that after the shock, moral outrage, and possible alienation of viewing audiences, comes the supremely useful logistical quality of quick recall engendering better collective rumination and discussion. Like a fish flopping around on the hook, we are as eager to pounce on and react to the obscene images in Jennifer’s Body and Sorry to Bother You as we are to trot out our hot take on why those images mattered. The ability of smut’s presence to force our collective memory, discourse, and judgment towards addressing dilemmas of a moral and ethical nature in society, is perhaps one of the most crucial edifying capacities cinema has to offer.