Page 8

Perhaps the most want-garde event presented the Fall quarter 1975 at the Cleveland State University The Nietzsche symposium a close 2nd?) was The Now York Erotic Filmy Festival organized by those stout chaps from the Interfraternity Council.

crap

were

Of the several flicks shown in the NYEFF a few were excelient artistic-aesthetic statements on human sexuality. some The twa films homosexuality were opinion, the zenith of the Festival. as they showed homosexuality in its true colors, that Is as the Director interpreted the spectrum.

These two. shall I say. Symbolist films utilized the timehonored effects of mood, color (techni). and place to imply a broad range of thought on Western society's prejudices on homosexuality.

Watching a penis enter a male arse can be a nauseating affair for some unLiberal people. One woman was so bothered by this that she left the theatre Antithetically, watching a female mouth lick another female vagina can be a Future Shock updated for some people. However, no one exited during this film, perhaps because the female film on homosexuality was done with much truth and beauty. The two obviously lesbian actresses were SO sincere in their involvement, and the techniques used to portray this lofty mood of guiltless female-to-female empathy. that ones moral upbringing was soothingly altered, as the two passionate females were obviously enjoying their lovemaking. reveling in the truth of their convictions, which for them was beauty, and beauty is near the ideal, so conventional guilt Is superfluous in their case Not So in the male treatment, where stark bleakness symbolized a sort of pure despair and agonia for the two males who must live up to the Breadwinner Fallacy. But let's face facts: homose lity has been around since the fart. Some Greek men had a special affinity for pederasty The Greek poetess Sappho had her island Lesbos reputedly staffed with women. To belabour; a good handful or so of mankind's greatest artists were of the persuasion. But to

HIGH GEAR

THOUGHTS ON THE NEW YORK

the films...

To say the two NYEFF treatments of homosexuality were prejudiced is vast understatement. But this celluloid prejudice merely mirrored a manifestly manmade Great Silent Majority (circa Agnew) attitude toward "perverted homosexuality.

Granted, the Great Silent Majority (GSM: pronounced jizm) wouldn't consciously condone female homosexuality as joyful and spontaneous (as the film depicted). yet surely our culture is more tolerant of two women showing intimate public affection.

Women go to Johns in pairs or trios; men must be macho and brio. Women have pajama parties: men ain't got that (real men, that is). Women comb each other's hair; men keep it to themselves. Ad infinitum.

Can we compare the use of color in the two films and say

All new

EROTIC FILM

FESTIVAL

that color is a statement of mood, influencing the viewer to see black & white films as potentially symbolic of a pallid. insipid, and death like trance? Yes, we could say that's the case in the male film, which accented the dull, esoteric nature of the post-anal orgasm cigarette-break silence of the two males lying naked on the bed with Stoic expressions, lost expressions, sad expressions, bewildered expressions. This is the general GSM world-view of male homosexuality as dirty. unreal. contemptible, and perverted.

Was the female film pleasingly and lovingly colorful, blending a hazily romantic feeling with expert visual double images of the two women running and leaping over hill and dale with ecstatic faces? Yes. Especially the female film setting; in Springtime. on an isolated mountain cascading into a cottage with flashes of their sensuous lovemaking so Ariellike in their airy summer villa.

BClub

EColumbus

1575 E. Livingston Ave. (614) 252-2474

WEEKDAYS $3 LOCKER $5 ROOM 10 am-2 pm 1/2 Price Special

YOUTH NIGHTS MON. & WED. 25 & UNDER

WEEKENDS

4 am 12 pm Price

$4 LOCKER $6 ROOM

4 pm Fri.4 pm Sun

by James Stuehr

In contrast, the setting for the male film was in the ghetto district of an urban city in a Greenwich Village type apartment-complex. Mix that with the dull black and white flesh tones of the males film and you get my picture, or rather the Director's.

Therefore, it must be stated that the male film on homo-sexuality was THE MORE REAL for it exposed true existential despair in the vivid post-anal orgasm scene. The female film showed no post-orgasm footage, which would have hurt the Sapphic love. The close-up on the woman's facing receiving vaginal stimulation was nothing short of blissful, technically brilliant, ethereal, heavenly; and I was moved.

This mood of pastoral-Daphne joy in the female film was its central theme. The male theme was estrangement, for they met in a park, went to the Ghetto apartment, made love, and departed each other's company, presumably a one-nighter, or afternooner, as their case was. Indeed, after scoring, the male left the apartment and went back to the park; looking for new pickups?

The females were obviously long-time lovers, as the chateau in the spacious mountains was freedom-filled. The slum apartment of the males suggests decadence, degradation, and certainly not truth and beauty.

So what, finally, does all this mean? The way the male film ended is telling, as the male left the slums, went to the park, and stood still in the middle of an open field with a gaze of (as the

FEBRUARY 1976

camera zoomed up onto him) tragedy, defeat, waste, lostness, despair, and loneliness. Contrast this to the way the female film ended, where they joyously ran smiling and guiltlessly laughing and holding hands. They ran from the deep darkness of an alley INTO the camera in the light street, the rosy fingers of dawn in the lightened street symbolizing their Coming Out in public. unafraid of the public.

The male ending, with the male questioning his maverick desire for men, symbolized the immense social stigmata of his desire that has made him the Supreme Existential Rebel, the sexual outcast, a man who walks through the valley of the shadow of death, an enigma to society that is male-dominated, a perplexed voice crying in a moral wilderness.

The female film gave no hint of any deep socio-historical guilt to grapple with; no Antigone here. Just pure bliss for bliss' sake. The female film implied no hang-ups in the families, no indication of any darker side of guilt.

Males, throughout the eons, have been the building-blocks, the foundations of all nations for war, peace-time labor. athletics, etcetera. Women have been, unfortunately, placed on the sidelines.

For a man to be nomosexual in the 20th century is to piss in the wind at the perennial forces of Western society and its males-based Ethics. Therefore, a male homosexual should (as depicted in the film) experience a deeper feeling because he destructs the entire gargantuan man-made edifice of sociopolitico-historical meaning.

Females can experience deep feelings, existential feelings, esoteric feelings, feelings beyond the grasp of many an ignorant male. Yet since the world is "RUN BY MEN," to thrust ones self AGAINST the man's world is to become the "Supreme Existential Hero."

Put simply, the female film did not imply any guilt or any need to philosophize, as the females were happy and content. The male film, as produced by the Director, IMPLIED such Higher Criticism.

GREENERY EVENT

Plants & Accessories Home & Commercial Design

2785 Euclid Hts at Coventry, Cleveland Heights, OH 44106

216-932-9422