hit me with those laser beams

Music: And Also the Trees: The Klaxon ()

Leah Piepgras is an intriguing artist whose paintings attempt to capture moments of ecstasy or a reckoning with such moments after-the-fact. Evocative, in some ways, of another favorite of mine---Cliff McReynolds---Piepgras is particularly good at capturing "that face," the blissed-out-slack-jaw that is both alluring and slightly funny. Most of her work is a visual reckoning with jouissance, or as Bruce Fink puts it, a snapshot in oil of getting off by any means necessary, "however clean or dirty."

I discovered Piepgras' work by accident when a friend posted a story about one of her more controversial pieces on Facebook. The accident was quite serendipitous: although I've been focused almost exclusively on the textbook, this semester I have been trying to work on my "ejaculate essay," which I decided to put on the back burner until after promotion and tenure. You see, as a new assistant professor way back when, inspired by Burke's "demonic trinity," I decided over my career I should compose three essays on human excreta: one on shit, one on piss, and one on you-know-what. The current essay takes up the latter in film, and more specifically, in non-pornographic film. Shit has been done; piss remains.

For purposes of blind review (if I can even pretend that reviewers have gone blind), I don't want to say too much about the essay here. I can discuss one of my major claims: the so-called "cum shot" is simply all over the place in mainstream film. We recognize it most readily in action film explosions, but I argue its formal function is the same: periodization of plot. In a film, the story is the basic narrative, but the plot refers to how that narrative is deployed. Periodization refers to temporality in film, and specifically how temporality is sequenced. The cum shot was not primarily introduced to show the sex and pleasure on screen were "authentic." The "meat shot" from stag film was the innovation for that signature (a close-up of penetration). Rather, the cum shot arrived at precisely the same moment when porn went narrative and feature length: the early 1970s. What was distinctive about 1972s Deep Throat, for example, was that it had (gasp) a story and it had cum shots. The cum shots helped to signify the end of a scene. In short, I argue the cum shot is a plot device; it's about the timing of plot (even if the story is absurd or practically non-existent, things at least seem to be "moving along").

What are the basics of this most peculiar "shot?" A male ejaculates on a person. Fancy stuff, I know. Over the years the "target" of the shot in the shot has varied: at first a back or stomach, then the face, and so on. Formally, what is key is that someone is symbolically effaced, hence, the well-known feminist critique of pornography (as symbolic violence). To make the argument that this plot device has traveled, I'll need to show how, for example, explosions in non-porn action films emerged over the course of the 1970s to periodize the story (violence in horror film, and so on). It's very commonplace today (every summer blockbuster works this way---story, explosion, new scene), but periodization via "money shot" was not always there. So, I've been slogging through a lot of film theory to make sure I'm not completely off base here. And I'll be sharing my idea with my film studies colleagues in December, so I'm sure they'll help me get my facts straight.

All that said, Piepgras' art really concerns a minor claim in the essay that I extend from Linda Williams' classic (one might say seminal) porn study, Hard Core (1989). Williams is careful to note that the cum shot represents a peculiar filming decision: that those who experience pleasure would want you to see it. Now, as anyone who has a penis or clitoris would know, exchanging tactile pleasure for visual pleasure is not as much fun; it is much more pleasurable to continue bodily contact until the orgasm is over or you get sore, whichever comes first. In pornography, however, men usually “pull out” of an orifice to expend ejaculate---a sacrifice of the spectacle and, unquestionably, a limit to jouissance---a little self-restraint.

Of course, it’s even worse for the sex partner who bottoms, the one who must pretend---often moaning or exclaiming "shoot your load all over me" or something similarly funny---that he or she is deriving great pleasure from having semen on his or her face; of course, if the come shot is after a doggy style coupling, the bottom doesn’t even get to see the money---he or she only gets to feel the momentary warmth followed by a quick chill in the small of his or her back.

Something, however, is changing in popular culture (and here is where I'm departing from my essay-in-progress): the "frenzy of the visible," as Williams terms it, is also to be desired. No longer a contrivance of pornography---that is, to pretend one derives physical pleasure from being the target of ejaculate---it would seem the cum shot has not only traveled to non-porn, but to the real-life sexual experiences of non-actors. Leah Piepgras' Pearl Necklace is a testament to the arrival of this new sexual verity.

Piepgras explains that this worn art (you can purchase your own for $420) "is a visual marker of chaos turned perfection through an act of beauty and lust. Pearl Necklace is a physical reminder of a fleeting moment of pleasure."

At first blush, the art could be read as a feminist critique---but for the fact that this is Piepgras' best-selling and most talked about piece. In a series of email exchanges with Leah, I asked whether the website and promotion was part of the art, or separate. Although she acknowledged the photograph of the woman wearing the art was deliberate (marking an extension of her work in the "ecstasy" paintings), it is not part of the art piece. After sharing with her the background on my project, she said:

I see the necklace as having several cultural reads competing simultaneously and want the piece to morph back and forth between beautiful object, an artifact from an intensely personal and intimate moment, a pornographic money shot. For me it is a cultural signifier (like a wedding ring) that shows mutual possession. It is a choice to wear it and to mark your-self in that way, to completely give yourself over. I am not sorry that as a woman I choose to enjoy my body and have intense shared experiences. For me making an object is an act of empowerment. It is a choice to bring something fleeting into being. This piece is my "Big Bang" on a cosmic level.

As someone who identifies with the "pro-porn" feminists that emerged from the Sex Wars of the 1980s, I can respect Piepgras' statements here, as well as her intentions. As a critic, of course, I also read most forms of artistic expression as a symptom of cultural expression---of mania in that old-skool sense that links poetics and prophecy. Historically, the cum shot is a filmic innovation designed primarily as a plot device (a sense of an ending, with nods to Frank Kermode) and secondarily as a spectacle of authenticity. In Piepgras' art, however, this innovation has become the signifier of "possession" and "surrender," giving the phrase "I wear your ring" a whole new meaning---or more accurately, the historically accurate meaning.

Perhaps the ultimate irony of this art (which, let me just confess, I appreciate as a critique) is that it bespeaks an imperative to public intimacy that Lauren Berlant has persuasively argued got its political traction with conservative agendas in the 70s and 80s. If the "sexual revolution" of the late 1960s pushed for public expressions of sexual being, we can thank the New Right for making such public pubics political (abortion, sodomy laws, and other forms of publicized privates). In one sense, Pearl Necklace announces what the wedding ring signifies in DOMA: the right of a man to his woman's body as an object, what Carole Pateman refers to as The Sexual Contract.

Of course, the artist does not intend this critique; she intends the piece to be a bold, public expression of private ecstasy. On that score, there is still much to say. For one, the necklace does herald the "sex tape" era, the new, bold exhibitionism the Intertubes have made possible. The art signifies the way in which the "home movie" has taken up a "private" filmic innovation as stylistic expression. It also is an apt condensation symbol for the way in which daily life is experienced episodically; how one's day is periodized in "scenes," and how we experience life as a "series" or "movie." In the novel, life is measured by sleep: when one takes to it, when one wakes up. We no longer reflect on living like Proust.

Well, I could go on. But I have to bring this post to an end. I need to go to bed..