Controversial show at local art gallery featuring adults having oral sex isn't newsworthy, or even new; it's just parochial

Pete McMartin
Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Speaking of oral sex -- and who hasn't lately, what with Rafe Mair going on about "corporate blow jobs" -- I have yet to decide where I come down on the Oral Sex Issue. I am either in the "In Favour Of" category or the "Yes! Yes! Oh Gawd Yes! In Favour Of" category. It depends a lot on how much I've had to drink.

By now, I hope you would be asking yourself, "What in hell is McMartin going on about?" To which I would reply:

This is a cheap attempt at using sex to get your attention. So while you're here, I'd like to talk about the pressing issue of Oral Sex As Art.

To wit:

A local art gallery with the pretentious name of The Art of Loving -- and I say "pretentious" because there's something ridiculous about a consciously artful lover -- will mount on June 26 a two-act play entitled, equally pretentiously, Public Sex, Art and Democracy, in which a thespian -- good golly, Miss Molly! -- will perform oral sex on stage, right here in River City.

I believe we of the bourgeoisie are meant either to be (a) outraged, (b) titillated, (c) in artistic solidarity with the play's brave thrust (double entendre alert!) against this country's repressive morality laws, or possibly, (d) all of the above.

But man, I'm snoring already, and this is a play with three of my favourite things in the title. Maybe if they had called it Public Sex, Ashley Judd, Art and Democracy, they might have piqued my interest. But as it is, it sounds terribly serious and terrifically earnest, like something an Emily Carr art prof would write.

Hey, wait a minute, it is!

Emily Carr instructor Martin Guderna co-wrote and produced the play with lawyer John Ince, who owns The Art of Loving. As it happens, the gallery will coincidentally be staging a show of new erotic art by Guderna entitled -- and I do not make this stuff up -- Labyrinth Soixante-Neuf, thus batting a thousand for pretentious titles.

Ince and Guderna claim not only that their play tests the limits of sexuality that Canadian artistes are allowed to explore, it also makes a statement about what they claim is the media's and public's conflicted view of sexuality.

"Why the media's tolerance for pain and agony," Ince wailed in an earlier interview with The Sun, "but not erotic pleasure? In Canada in the 21st century, reasonable people are still worried that armed men in uniforms might raid an art gallery for displaying nothing more dangerous than love-making. Why? How can a culture be seemingly so intoxicated with sexuality yet be so squeamish about it?"

This squeamishness, Ince claimed, is evidenced by the fact that no television station will broadcast this scene, even in a newscast, and no daily newspaper will publish a photo of it for fear of violating the country's repressive sex laws.

"Yet the same media outlets routinely deliver scenes of violence, suffering and death into the homes of the nation."

This isn't a new argument: every porn performer since Linda Lovelace has memorized this speech since the early 1970s. This battle was engaged long ago, and Sexuality and Artistic Expression won the field hands down. Or pants down, if you wish.

As for Ince's comments about the media's reluctance to publish a photo of the play's climactic scene -- and here's hoping the actor can rise to the occasion, given opening night jitters -- my question would be: Why would we?

Or to put it another way: There is Deep Throat, the movie, and there is Deep Throat, the secret Watergate source. The first is in the realm of the mundane, and is therefore not newsworthy: The second, whoever he or she may be, is in the realm of real political import, and is therefore valuable information to everyone. Hey, there are people out there who can swallow swords, but they don't get in the newspaper, either. It's old hat.

But people getting bombed in Baghdad is news. To ignore it, or censor it on the grounds of "squeamishness" would be a disservice to readers. And for Ince's edification, newspapers and newscasts rigorously edit overt scenes of violence. We have our limits, even for bloodshed.

But to publish a photo of a pair of actors on stage making love, however artfully, would leave The Sun and any other self-respecting newspaper open to the charge of, not bad taste, but gratuitousness. When we run photos that even veer toward the sexual, the complaints we get are not usually from outraged grannies of the repressed Victorian variety, but from serious readers who wonder why we would waste news space on such trivialities as, say, a photo of a girl in a thong bikini. Sex is great, they'll say, but c'mon guys, there are more important matters to discuss.

(Speaking of testing sexual limits, and gratuitous moments, remember Hair? There is The Big Moment in it when the house lights darken, only to come back on dimmed and flickering, with the silent cast bravely and defiantly standing there completely starkers. It was meant to epitomize the New Morality the audience would have to face, I guess, as if the cast members were saying, "Gaze on us! We are Young! We are Pure! We are showing you our gazongas to test the limits of Artistic Expression!" But all I can remember of that moment is my acute embarrassment -- not because of the nudity, which I appreciated from a physiological point of view, but because the scene contributed absolutely nothing, and was so gratuitous I could feel the playwright pulling my strings. I remember thinking, "This is it? The Big Moment?" Sort of like the first time I had sex.)

Do Ince and Guderna have a legitimate point to make?

Oh, probably. I'm sure there's a 1910 obscenity bylaw that will be struck down somewhere because of their brave effort at pubic art. Why don't we do it in the road, The Beatles asked, and who knows, maybe one day, in the name of Art, we'll be able to.

But between 24-hour satellite porn channels, and The Red Shoe Diaries, and Sex TV, and Sex and The City, and a gazillion porn Internet sites, and Hustler, and escort services, and the strippers at the Cecil Hotel, and Christine Aguilera's inner slut, and the adult section of my neighbourhood video store, Public Sex, Art and Democracy seems to me more pathetic than brave. Two kids getting down and dirty in front of a live theatre audience isn't groundbreaking: it's parochial. The only thing new is the venue.

Real live sex in a theatre? Ho hum. Yawn. Not tonight, dear, I have a headache.

It's just not an issue I can get excited about anymore, metaphorically speaking.

pmcmartin@telus.net or at 604-605-2905
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