Tag: masturbation

mou5elee – Untitled (2015)

Drawing/illustration is not a field where I have any sort of expertise.

About all I know is the stuff that crossing my Tumblr dashboard and that’s control by the interests and aesthetics of the blogs I follow.

Thus, it’s probably pretentious and definitely solipsistic for me to assert that most of the illustration work I see these days shows one of two characteristics–the sort of clean, minimal look that by this point has been completely co-opted by the tech sector (Apple, web dev standards, etc.) or this sort of Schiele-cum-Picasso styling.

I really like the above because based upon my limited understanding of trends and techniques in illustration, the way this is shaded actually reminds me of woodcuts.

Source unknown – Title unknown (201X)

While I think this could probably be interpreted as an allegory of how to behave on the internet when given a front row seat to explicit content, i.e. drool appreciatively and keep your comments to your self.

But I’m gonna go a different direction. I saw this the morning after having a dream that was very similar in tone–look but don’t touch. I’m intrigued enough to want to track it down even though I suspect I’m going to end up turned off when I discover the original context.

Does anyone happen to know where it’s from?

Source: modern-kink

Mysterious CC – Misungui (2016)

@misungui‘s alias apparently means “spirit of the wild cat” and was prompted by a genie appearing to her under the influence of ibogaine.

I’ve followed her with something not unlike reverence ever since I first encountered her after stumbling onto the photographs Plume Heters Tannenbaum–whom I consider to be one of the most jaw-droppingly talented, visionary and thoroughly fucking brilliant people making pornographic Art right now.

She identifies as a performer, model, queer feminist and pro-sex, anarcho-communist activist. I frequently gush about her work and the work of artists in her orbit as this performance art writ large as a medium for educating w/r/t kink, genderfuckery, public vs private and just general debauchery.

A video from her birthday party showed up over on Vimeo and reminding me more than a little of the spirit of Maria Llopis’ Public domain porn version–which may be my single favorite thing I’ve ever learned about running this blog–except where for Llopis’ the politics of the performance seems to be the point, Misungui seems to sublimate politics in favor of the transgressive glee of pure, unmediated experience. (Also, the birthday video is the first time I’ve actually understood the draw to shibari.)

But the other thing that I want to draw attention to besides offering an introduction, is to point out a leitmotif in Misungui’s work that I appreciate immensely.

Although it’s not as true as it was a decade ago, it used to be that one of the main things separating mainstream cinema from the art house was–for lack of a better term: poetry.

Let me try to illustrate what I’m thinking. Consider the following scene as it might be written in a script.

EXT. Train Station – DAY

A uniformed soldier embraces his lover. She is tearful. He his strong and stoic. The train whistle sounds, people push towards the train climbing aboard. The soldier picks up his suitcase and moves to the train.

INT. Train – DAY

The soldier boards the train, finds his seat and turns to look at the window as the train starts to move. He waves at his love as she walks and then runs along the platform as the train picks up speed.

Forgive the fact that this portrays the woman as nothing more than her relationship to the male character. I hate that shit more than most people but I did it to illustrate a scenario we’ve all witnessed in one film/TV show/Etc. before.

Now in a mainstream movie, this scene will be broken down into a number of setups. An establishing shot. The couple on the platform together. Close-ups of their faces. Perhaps an insert of him picking up his suitcase. A reverse shot of him moving towards the train with her unsure of whether she should follow him or stay where she is so he’ll know where to find her once he boards the train and finds his seat. Not to mention various close-ups of their faces to convey their emotional state.

You can show him boarding the train–the question of whether you show him boarding from outside or move the camera inside has profound implications with regard to how the director and editor envision cutting the scene.

Inside the train though it’s the same thing. Establishing shot to provide a sense of the place. Him finding his seat. Perhaps checking his ticket to be sure of the seat number. Sitting and looking out the window while the train begins to pull away from the station.

In other words, the mainstream way involves all the information being conveyed in a cleanly parsed, easy to digest fashion. There’s nothing to linger upon. Nothing left for the audience to imagine. You don’t sense the impending separation because you’re too busy readjusting to knew sensory stimulation.

The arthouse way of shooting this scene would be something closer to a one shot. The camera framing an empty seat inside the train, the camera focused through the wind as the couple embraces on the platform. We see him pick up his suitcase, he moves towards the camera passes and we are left watching the woman not sure what to do, her face a mess of conflicting emotions. Rack focus as he sits, turns to look out the window, rack focus again to see her follow the train as it begins moving. Droplets of rain fall on the window, thicken, the train picks up speed. The woman falls out of focus, her blurry form stops running. Focus racks back to show the main staring out the window as more and more rain falls.

In this second version you’ve conveyed the emotional resonance of the scene in a fashion that is conceptually resonant with the information you are trying to convey. It’s not parsed, it’s not clean but it is clear in the same way a good poem evokes far more than what the words describe/explain.

All this is really by way of saying that Misungui’s work always strives for a more poetic approach. How cliche is the pornographic trope of a woman masturbating and licking her fingers when she’s done. This conveys the same sense but in a much more kinky and visually legible way.

I’ve never seen anything like it and it’s extremely impressive and hot.

bLod Lod – blue (2010)

Okay… so I am 120% infatuated with this image even though I don’t think for even a second that it’s objectively ‘good’.

The light is nice and the limited palate–the white-white light falling through the window behind the sink with the white of the counters and sink, the red high heals and vermilion nail polish, the dark blue dish in the sink and the cerulean dress–are all extremely effective.

But the–what are those 3 inch heels–push things over the line into porn territory; while the carefully positioned right index finger seems less like an honest attempt to pull things back and more like a winking see-what-I-did-there?

(EDIT: a reblog called into question whether or not I’m implying that porn is objectively bad and suggested that I’m implying that based upon heel height. The suggestion is arguably missing the forest for the trees but I’ll admit that it’s possible to take things that way just based on the evidence that someone clearly took it that way. I was referring more to the porn trope where heels remain on in situations that are grossly unfit for heels. I mean I really can’t image climbing up on a counter wearing heels and not legit fearing about breaking my neck. So I was referring more to contrived artifice and less to the objective good or bad of porn. Alternately, I was absolutely imply that contrived artifice in image making is a godawful thing.)

And the framing is super problematic. The angle of view is awkward and the way her left knee, head and shoulders and right knee are cut out of the frame offers no suggestion that there exists a continuity extending beyond the frame edges.

But when I look at this I see the angle corrected so that the camera includes the entirety of the subject from head to toe and suddenly all the things that are problematic about it disappear and it’s a hauntingly perfect, narrative image.

Why narrative? Well, maybe not a detailed narrative but there’s a sense that the subject has masturbated to orgasm and is enjoying the post orgasmic afterglow. (The erotic is after-all the conceptual structure which most closely mirrors narrativity, i.e. attraction, arousal, negotion, climax, post-climax.)

I love the way that the water standing in the sink basin furthest to the right is poetically suggestive of ejaculation while the water filling the blue bowl in the sink suggests that the arousal has not yet been completely sated.

I’ve tried several times to recreate this image. None have succeeded. Largely because I can’t find a sink facing a window, partly because I can’t decide whether or not I want to take a picture of a friend and sometimes collaborator or if I want the same friend and collaborator to make a portrait of me like this.

Well see. Until then I hope you enjoy the potential of this concept as much as I do.

FTVGirls – Brea (2010)

As far as porn outfits go, FTVGirls is tres problematic. First, there’s the use of the word ‘girl’–which I find more problematic than ‘teen’ and ‘barely legal’ porn. A girl is 11 or 12; in the US someone has to be at least 18 years old to appear in pornographic images/videos. At which point they’re no longer a girl but a grown ass woman.

Also, with FTV there seems to be a fixation with IPD–improvised penetrative devices, especially with extremely large or otherwise unusual props.

That being said–although I loathe their bright, airy SoCal meets daylight studio suffusion of white-on-white light aesthetic–they are at least head and shoulders above most other mainstream porn purveyor in that they actually demonstrate some creative use of technology.

For example: with the image above, You’d expect most porn to have a greater depth of field that would’ve render both her genitals and her face in focus simultaneously. And while the shallow depth of field is intended to draw attention to what’s happening w/r/t her genitalia, I love the way it diminishes the camp value of her expression. (My instinct–if I’d been shooting this would be to focus on her face, while letting the foreground and background bokeh. But I’m pretty sure that would’ve resulted in awkwardness that would render the frame pretentiously arty yet still too porny to really ever be even remotely close to artistic.)

Either way, I really do love the way Brea’s expression scans her.

EDIT: Due to travel related distraction, I neglected to un-queue this. I still agree with my superficial observations; however, I think it would’ve been more interesting to compare/contrast with this image by Natalia Nobile. I feel like both have entirely identical aims that neither quite manages to achieve completely.

Erika Lust – An Appointment with My Master (2015)

You know that feeling you get when the idea behind something is solid but the execution just isn’t up to snuff? That’s how I feel about Erika Lust.

Take her It’s Time for Porn to Change TEDx talk: a feminist/sex-positive vision of a new porn with an emphasis on characters presented in context and diversity in depicting modes of sexual expression. Awesome. A+ I’m 120% on board sign me up.

Completely discounting my opinion of TED (hint: it’s hardly rose colored), it’s an awkward, halting ramble/rant all but devoid of any dynamism.

That’s not to say I dislike her videos. The concept underlying her XConfessions series–of which the above scene is a part–invites folks to share their fantasies with the video makers. Subsequently certain fantasies become prompts for explicit enactments. (I’ve featured another XConfessions scene I Wish I Were a Lesbian previously.)

And I wanted to draw attention to the above scene. I love the way in muddles the line between mutual masturbation and frottage–both masturbating as foreplay but edging perpetually closer towards engaging sexually. Further the fact that both are using their right hands and the balance between one visible hand each in the foreground and one mostly obscured hand in the background is deftly balanced from the standpoint of composition.

The thing that bothers me–and I haven’t seen the entire scene but I’m guessing from my reaction to I Wish I Were a Lesbian, I’m almost certain my instinct is on point: it may be pretty and resonate with me but Lust demonstrates some astounding technical lapses.

Back to the above scene. It’s pretty–nice warm light. I’d like to have seen this same shot in a wide master, but I’ll grant that’s a matter of personal taste. It’s the fact that this embodies a style of lighting that I detest. A set lit with stylish practical lighting and then a super hot theatrical spot overhead which emphasizes the action.

It’s this sort of hyper stylized lighting focused on cheap and easy effect. And it’s becoming endemic. (Netflix Daredevil is an–what’s the opposite of glowing?–opaque; what the fuck were they thinking shooting some of those scenes so goddamn impenetrably dark. It’s awful.)

As a counter point–Blade Runner presents an endless stream of pitch dark vistas–but unlike most of the lighting in Hollywood fare these days–what light there was was always thoughtfully shaped/sculpted so as to be legible to folks sunk into their seats in darkened theaters.

It’s like I teach my students in lighting workshops: you know the classic quip where the petulant veteran actor demands the hotshot young directory what’s my motivation? Good lighting is–more often than not–logical motivated by the augmenting of existing, naturally available light or illumination provided by extant light sources.

To preempt the standard objections, no David Lynch isn’t a fucking excuse, shit bird. You clearly haven’t watched his films with any sort of detail oriented eye because that man is a goddamn master at selling hyper stylized lighting and the reason he’s so good at it is because it’s logically motivated by light sources you can see in the frame.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

People speak to me about boundaries.
This is work. That is play. This is public. That is private.
This is for friends. That is for lovers.
I don’t understand imaginary lines in the sand.

I want to know the ones like me. Daughters whose mothers
Left them to wolves, trusting the tutelage would
Lead–one day–to understanding the words
tattooed over their shivering hearts:

There are no lines. There are no boundaries.
A horse will run until it dies.
And death, death is better than dreaming about
what it might’ve been to run free.

FTVGirls – Tiny in Big Ways featuring Megan Rain (2015)

If someone were to tell me hey, there’s this clip where a girl uses an eggplant as a dildo, you’d be wise to bet on the fact that I’m going to find and view said video at my earliest available convenience.

What I would expect given the above description is a preoccupation with the extremity of the action and a tone that shifts mercurially between coy and so over-the-top with awkward enthusiasm that it’s vaguely uncomfortable.

That is exactly what you get from these production stills.

And while I can’t argue this is a good clip, there are some interesting elements to it. The action isn’t played directly toward the camera–and although it’s still hell of graphic, the graphicness seems more consequence than motivation.

The distinction seems important. Unlike the stills, this scene plays as if we’re getting to watch someone experimenting. The experiment isn’t necessarily for the viewer, it’s merely something the viewer is allowed to witness.

Also, it really appeals to me how obviously public this location is. And I feel like that ties into the effectiveness of this gif. After all, masturbating like this in such a public location renders ambiguous that line between the risk of being seen vs. actually being seen. In my mind, that heightens the sense of voyeurism and despite the close proximity of the camera to the action this framing allows for a suspension of disbelief as far as whether or not Ms. Rain is masturbating or pretending to masturbate for the benefit of the camera and subsequently the consumers of this content.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

Narrative this image is not. In fact it’s pretty goddamn contrived–a cishet male photographer appropriating lesbianism for erotic effect.

But that realization serves as a narrative spark and I can’t help but think that as these two women were leaving post-session and one of them–probably the one on top (the woman on the bottom with the protruding tongue is a little too lipstick lesbian for me to believe she has any personal experience with cunnilingus) works as a prostitute but is a lesbian. She accepts these photo gigs because they pay the same as sex work and she doesn’t have to deal with men.

Yet the sessions themselves are the closest she gets to tracing the outline of her true desire and as such she frequently jokes with other woman with whom she is photographed about how ridiculous the way heterosexual men think about lesbian sex is and hoping that the other model will just once nod a little too knowingly and one thing will lead to another.