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Is Kristen Stewart Breaking Up with Robert Pattinson, or the Twilight Phenomenon, or Both?
I should admit up front that I've long been skeptical of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's off-screen romance. They make a beautiful couple, as the Twilight franchise box-office numbers demonstrate, but, if you ask me, their real-life relationship has always had an odor of Hollywood hoodoo — the inspired idea of some marketing or public-relations executive who saw a way to keep fan interest in the blockbuster saga alive between movies.
Then again, a slew of respectable publications and websites are telling me it's real, and so who am I to disagree? People.com reported today, for instance, that a "heartbroken and angry" Pattinson had moved out of the Los Angeles home that he shared with Stewart, despite her head-turning public apology for cheating on him by making out in a car with married Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders.
The whole episode and the media frenzy it has provoked brings out the armchair analyst in me (I do have a Bachelors in psychology, by the way) and, whether I look at this from the perspective of a couples counselor or a cultural critic, I can't help but think that Stewart — subconsciously or consciously — is telling us that she doesn't want us to think of her as Bella anymore.
Although she seems to have become better adjusted to being in the spotlight recently, Stewart has never appeared comfortable with the insane kind of fame that the Twilight movies brought her. (Indeed, the last time she had to issue an apology was when she compared the paparazzi's photographing of her to being raped.)
I've never met her, but I wonder if that discomfort has to do with her self-image as an actress instead of teen idol movie star. Stewart's excellent performances in Into the Wild and the extremely underrated Adventureland tell me that she has Oscar potential. (I also thought she did Joan Jett justice in The Runaways.) With the right roles, she could be her generation's Jodie Foster. But at the moment, she's got to feel more like Mark Hamill.
Stewart's headlines-making cheating episode reminds me of the furor that erupted in 2008 when Vanity Fair published a tastefully topless photo of Miley Cyrus in the magazine. Like Stewart, Cyrus apologized for the incident saying she was "embarrassed" by the photo.
But the episode was really a smart bit of positioning on Cyrus' part: the image sent the message that Cyrus was leaving the adolescent world of Hannah Montana behind.
Intentionally or impulsively, Stewart has sent a similar message to the millions of Twi-hards out their who breathlessly monitor her every move. Bella, and maybe Robsten too are history. As one friend told People: "I'm not sure they'll be able to recover from this." I bet that friend is right.
Sometimes you have to break a few hearts to get what you want. Even when those hearts belong to your biggest fans.
* For the first time I feel sorry for dead-fish eyes Kristine. She can't even suck a guy cock without the paparazzo intruding on her 24/7. Frankly I'm not amazed she cheated on Pattinson. Probably got bored with his brooding silence BS and preferred someone much older and chattier like Rupert.
All you need to know about the Kristen Stewart affair that destroyed everyone
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Lady Gaga posts naked photo, Lindsay Lohan shots AND announces Machete role
Sophie Wilkinson on 27 July 2012
Lady Gaga has announced her first film role by posting the brilliant promo photo to her website. She uploaded the shot of her in Robert Rodriguez’s film, Machete Kills, last night. She’ll be playing La Chameleon in the movie, and the director confirmed it on Twitter, saying: "I just finished working with @LadyGaga on @MacheteKills... Holy Smokes. Blown away!"
This won’t be her first acting role – she once appeared as an extra in The Sopranos – but it will be her first film role, in the sequel to Machete. Which, incidentally, starred Lindsay Lohan.
Which brings us nicely (not that they needed much introduction) to the photos Gaga has posted of her and Lindsay Lohan living it up in the Chateau Marmont. As noted in heat’s spotted section, the pair were seen out last week at the LA hotel where Lindsay used to live.
Gaga tweeted about her companion’s bizarre request for cucumber at the bar: “@lindsaylohan when you ordered a cucumber and a knife to the bar last night i thought your were gonna perform a vasectomy #justaskinnyb***h.”
She also posted a photo of the knife, the glasses and the cucumber (sounds like the title of a bizarre fairytale, doesn’t it?)
Lindsay responded: “#skinnysnack1 @ladygaga hahaha”
Strangely, Gaga has since deleted her tweets. But it seems everything's cool - otherwise why would Gaga post the photos? The women spent the evening hanging out and play dress-up along with model-turned-photographer Ellen Von Unwerth, who we believe took some of the photos Gaga’s posted (they look properly arty).
A source told X17Online: “[They were] watching old movies and playing board games [at the] slumber party. The three of them had dinner in the garden on Tuesday night at Chateau, and then Lindsay and Gaga ran upstairs to play dress up and came down in different outfits.”
And Lady Gaga’s photos prove it. They’re recreating old movies by dressing up in fur and tiaras, with shopping bags all around. Lindsay’s smoking (both literally smoking a ciggie and looking smoking hot) and Ellen’s playing with Lindsay’s hair – maybe braiding it?
Though they look a bit worse for wear, it’s understandable that they might have had a few drinks – what does anyone do on a girly night in?
Oh, and just in case you hadn't seen enough, these aren’t the only photos Gaga’s put online today. There’s one of her (nearly) naked in a New York hotel room after the opening of the Gaga workshop at Barney’s shop. Busy lady!
Hot Trailer: ‘Chasing Mavericks’
Directed by Curtis Hanson with a little help from Michael Apted, 20th Century Fox‘s Chasing Mavericks stars Jonnny Weston as legendary boardman Jay Morarity and Gerard Butler as the veteran who taught the young surfer to master the massive waves at Mavericks in Northern California. Elizabeth Shue, Abigail Spencer, and Levin Rambin also star in the October 26, 2012 release.
Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog
* I'll watched anything if Miss Rambin is in it...........
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George R.R. Martin Explains That There’s A Lot of Sex in ‘Game of Thrones’ Because Sex Is Awesome
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If you follow a lot of Game of Thrones commentary, you’ll probably hear the occasional complaint about the amount of sex in the series. In fact, critics have even come up with a cute word for it: Sexposition. I’ve never really understood the complaint, myself. Why would anyone complain about having to endure a sex scene? I mean, it’s SEX, people. Priorities.
Further proof that TV is the new film
July 26, 2012
It’s old news that the increased presence of high-profile film stars in TV land is just another not-so-subtle sign of the recession in action: Those usually used to a fat paycheck from the film studios have had to think out of the box — or rather, right into it, as have 2012 Emmy nominees Glenn Close of Damages, Kathy Bates of Harry’s Law and Steve Buscemi of Boardwalk Empire, to name just a few. But their presence is also a sign of another larger shift in the entertainment media landscape, one that has also been in development for a while now: The boundaries between the kind of content on TV and in film may be disappearing altogether.
Just take a look at virtually any of the films made by HBO in the past few years, from the fearless and breathtaking ANGELS IN AMERICA miniseries starring Meryl Streep in 2003 to last year’s equally breathtaking TEMPLE GRANDIN, which would surely have garnered Claire Danes an Oscar nomination had it been released in theaters. These films and many more (on many other channels as well) would have stood up spectacularly well in theaters, both critically and commercially, thanks in no small part to their casts.
The “TV Movies and Miniseries” nominated for Emmys this year are no different: Everyone from Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman and Emma Thompson to Kevin Costner and Clive Owen are nominated for their work in acclaimed films that are every bit as “cinematic” as, well, their cinematic counterparts. And series such as Game of Thrones have the same grand cinematic scale as any major release (Thrones also features celebrated film actor Peter Dinklage, whose breakout role was the indie favorite THE STATION AGENT).
For film actors on TV, the logic behind the move isn’t always financial (although admittedly, a gig on a TV series does allow for a lot more stability over time as opposed to a one-off for a film role). In a recent interview on Fresh Air, Jeff Daniels discussed why he took the starring role in the Aaron Sorkin-circus broadcast news HBO drama The Newsroom (and presumably, why he initially said no to DUMB AND DUMBER TO); on TV, there’s more time and room to explore a character in-depth. It’s also a great way for Daniels, a stage actor, to stay limber, since a new 90-page episode amounts to receiving a new “play” every two weeks.
The lines are shifting behind the scenes as well, since projects quite frequently change their medium many times over before shooting even begins (case in point: BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, Steven Soderbergh‘s hotly anticipated biopic of Liberace starring Michael Douglas, now looks like it will be shown on HBO as opposed to being released theatrically).
And then of course the term “theatrical release” means something entirely different nowadays as well. On-demand releasing is becoming increasingly popular — whether for a limited time or as a full-throttle strategy in parallel of a wider theatrical release, it’s now quite commonplace to be able to see a brand new Hollywood movie on the small screen. Not to mention the fact that online streaming video (whether legal or not) is about to make TV and film equally obsolete.
It all points in one direction: It’s getting harder and harder to differentiate, and envelope-pushing TV movies and series are taking the place of (or at the very least, becoming as important as) many of the movies being made today.
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Sherlyn Chopra, Indian Actress Poses Nude In Playboy: Hypocrisy In The Land Of Kama Sutra
Bollywood actress Sherlyn Chopra will become the first Indian woman to pose nude in Playboy magazine.
Chopra, whose naked body will grace the November issue of Hugh Hefner’s iconic publication, has come under attack from both Indian women’s rights activists, as well as social conservatives who condemn pornography as a Western ill.
India is not only battling an epidemic of sex crimes against women, but also finding it increasingly difficult to comfortably integrate Western moral standards with Indian traditions in an increasingly globalized world.
"At a time when innocent women across the nation from Gujarat to Guwahati have been subjected to sexual abuse and humiliation, one wonders if Sherlyn Chopra's pictures wound a woman's integrity," wrote a female blogger named Gayatri Sankar.
"Isn't it an irony that on the one side as common women strive hard to safeguard their modesty, the Sherlyn Chopras encourage voyeurism?"
Chopra reportedly asked Playboy in writing if she could appear in the magazine, and it responded in the affirmative immediately.India is not only battling an epidemic of sex crimes against women, but also finding it increasingly difficult to comfortably integrate Western moral standards with Indian traditions in an increasingly globalized world.
"At a time when innocent women across the nation from Gujarat to Guwahati have been subjected to sexual abuse and humiliation, one wonders if Sherlyn Chopra's pictures wound a woman's integrity," wrote a female blogger named Gayatri Sankar.
"Isn't it an irony that on the one side as common women strive hard to safeguard their modesty, the Sherlyn Chopras encourage voyeurism?"
"It is not an easy task to be nude in front of the camera and look good at the same time," she told BBC.
"I have become the first Indian to pose naked for Playboy, and nobody can take away that achievement from me.”
She added that she could not "miss the opportunity of posing nude for the world's most established adult magazine.”
"My sister is proud of my achievement. I haven't told anything to my mother, but I think I will visit her and tell her that she has to accept me the way I am," Chopra, 28, added.
India has an extremely conservative attitude toward pornography and nudity -- indeed, kissing is banned from Bollywood films, while couples who show affection in public are largely scorned and sometimes even spat upon and attacked.
Pornography is also illegal, although it is available on the Internet and other venues (Playboy is itself banned in the country).
Chopra’s appearance in the flesh in a foreign smut magazine has not elicited the kind of derision it would if she were a major star; rather, she is a D-list actress who has appeared on Indian reality TV shows, hardly a Bollywood queen. Indeed, she has been shamelessly promoting nude photos of herself on her Twitter account for at least the past two years.
Nonetheless, the criticism she has received underscores a basic hypocrisy of Indian society -- sex is hidden in a culture awash in sensuality and linked closely with spirituality.
Ancient Hindu temples featured explicit depictions of deities and people having sex, particularly the carvings and statues in Khajuraho. In Hindu temples in southern India, young girls were frequently recruited to serve as prostitutes for devotees.
India is also the land of "Kama Sutra," the massive ancient Sanskrit text on sexual pleasure and one of the most explicit and detailed documents on human sexuality ever produced.
If "Kama Sutra" were released now, the authorities in India would no doubt ban it.
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Before Kate Upton.......there was Brooklyn Decker.......
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Carly Rae Jepsen Nude Photo Scandal Is Everything Wrong With Our Culture
I thought I had finally gotten “Call Me Maybe” out of my head, and then Carly Rae Jepsen became the most talked-about thing on the internet, and the song popped right back in. After two almost-scandals involving nude photos and a sex tape that were both found to be fake, the 26-year-old singer is in the midst of another media blitz over nude photos.This time, it’s being reported, they’re real, the result of someone illegally hacking into her computer. Though Jepsen is the victim of criminal activity, most discussion of the photos has tended to blame, shame, and point fingers at Jepsen herself.
There are two common criticisms being thrown around. The first, very eloquently put forward by Camira Powell (among others), is that Jepsen stands to profit from the increased media attention. Camira correctly reminds readers that numerous stars, including Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, first earned their fame through making sex tapes. Perhaps, she poses, this was all in fact a publicity stunt propagated by Jepsen herself.
The second piece of criticism I’ve encountered is that, as one news outlet put it, “if you don’t want naked pictures of yourself leaked on the Internet, don’t take naked pictures of yourself.” I’m actually going to address this latter issue first.
Yes, I must concede, it is impossible to leak naked pictures that don’t exist. Nevertheless, the impetus lies not with Jepsen for (allegedly) taking the photos, but with whoever chose to violate her privacy and break the law by hacking into her laptop. The fact that this hacker happened to find naked photos does not mean that Jepsen deserved to be hacked. If Jepsen had been the victim of identity theft because a hacker stole her credit card information, I doubt that anyone would even think to insinuate that it was her fault for having credit cards.
You might argue that naked photos are far more scandalous than a credit card number. Why, exactly, is that? Jepsen is a legal adult who has every right to take photos of herself is she so chooses, and that is none of our business. The fact that people consider a woman worthy of having her privacy violated because she chose to take sexual pictures of herself is truly troubling, and seems to follow the same logic that people employ when they argue that a woman wearing a short skirt is “asking” to be raped.
The argument that these photos could be a publicity stunt is far more valid, but still has its roots in our culture’s flaws. If Jepsen chose to release this rumor, it’s only because she knows that nude photos are a surefire way to receive media attention. And that is only true because a media frenzy has accompanied the release of every scantily clad photo or sex tape. Paris Hilton only became famous after her sex tape because we made her that way, making what was at the time a betrayal by someone she had dated into front-page news. The more scandalized and outraged we get over nude photos, the more we famous someone can become for releasing them.
In a culture in which girls believe that nude photos are the easiest path to stardom and hackers believe that nude photos are an open invitation to break the law without doing anything wrong, we can probably expect to see a lot more of these stories in the future. Maybe then we’ll finally get sick of them.
The second piece of criticism I’ve encountered is that, as one news outlet put it, “if you don’t want naked pictures of yourself leaked on the Internet, don’t take naked pictures of yourself.” I’m actually going to address this latter issue first.
Yes, I must concede, it is impossible to leak naked pictures that don’t exist. Nevertheless, the impetus lies not with Jepsen for (allegedly) taking the photos, but with whoever chose to violate her privacy and break the law by hacking into her laptop. The fact that this hacker happened to find naked photos does not mean that Jepsen deserved to be hacked. If Jepsen had been the victim of identity theft because a hacker stole her credit card information, I doubt that anyone would even think to insinuate that it was her fault for having credit cards.
You might argue that naked photos are far more scandalous than a credit card number. Why, exactly, is that? Jepsen is a legal adult who has every right to take photos of herself is she so chooses, and that is none of our business. The fact that people consider a woman worthy of having her privacy violated because she chose to take sexual pictures of herself is truly troubling, and seems to follow the same logic that people employ when they argue that a woman wearing a short skirt is “asking” to be raped.
The argument that these photos could be a publicity stunt is far more valid, but still has its roots in our culture’s flaws. If Jepsen chose to release this rumor, it’s only because she knows that nude photos are a surefire way to receive media attention. And that is only true because a media frenzy has accompanied the release of every scantily clad photo or sex tape. Paris Hilton only became famous after her sex tape because we made her that way, making what was at the time a betrayal by someone she had dated into front-page news. The more scandalized and outraged we get over nude photos, the more we famous someone can become for releasing them.
In a culture in which girls believe that nude photos are the easiest path to stardom and hackers believe that nude photos are an open invitation to break the law without doing anything wrong, we can probably expect to see a lot more of these stories in the future. Maybe then we’ll finally get sick of them.
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We need really smart Miss USA contestants...
California, Delaware, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, Vermont are the only ones that didn't appear to mention "both sides" as if creationism is a scientific theory.
I want to know how the hell some of these girls said No. I wanted to smack Wisconsin (we're supposed to be smarter than that, stupid!), but I was rolling at ALL THE SOUTHERN STATES not mentioned above, especially Utah (live here, and she just reminds me of 90% of the females I encounter on a daily basis: vapid air-headed breeders.)
Comment of the Day : I'd like to fuck their brains out but I guess I'm too late.
Here's the parody for some lulz:
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Study: Proof That We Sexually Objectify Women
We look at women the same way we look at houses and sandwiches: as composites of attractive parts.
PROBLEM: Few would argue that the objectification of women is a real thing -- and a real problem -- but as yet there's been no cognitive explanation for it in a literal sense. Do we really look at women differently than we do men, and are they actually objectified in the eye -- and brain -- of the beholder?RESULTS: Regardless of gender, participants consistently recognized women's sexual body parts more easily when presented in isolation. Men's sexual body parts, on the other hand, were more memorable as part of their entire bodies.
CONCLUSION: The cognitive process behind our perception of objects is the same that we use when looking at women, and both genders are guilty of taking in the parts instead of the whole. When we look at men, we use global processing to see them more fully as people.
The full study,"Seeing women as objects: The sexual body part recognition bias," is published in the European Journal of Social Psychology .
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Amber Heard : by Ellen von Unwerth [Guess Summer] 2012
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Malaysian cops smash Nigerian Casanova ring
MALACCA - Images of nude bodies and African men participating in a sex orgy with a woman have lured at least 21 gullible victims to the foreigners' social network site and seduced them into parting with more than RM400,000 (S$163,760) since January.Most of the victims were students although there were also a 60-year-old businesswoman and professionals like lawyers and lecturers.
Following a tip-off, seven Nigerians and the woman were arrested at an apartment in Bachang near here in a 1am raid yesterday.
They have been remanded until Aug 8 for questioning under Section 420 of the Penal Code, for cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property.
Malacca commercial crime department chief Supt Soh Hock Sing said the syndicate enticed victims with expensive gifts from overseas and asked them to deposit money to purportedly set up a joint business or settle some so-called Customs excise duties to release the gifts.
Supt Soh said the group took advantage of lonely women who spent hours chatting on social media sites, including Facebook, and used romantic phrases to draw them into parting with their money.
Four of the men are students of a private college in Kuala Lumpur while three others have invalid travel documents.
The Nigerians are aged between 23 and 33 while their woman accomplice is 23.
Supt Soh said 21 victims had lodged police reports; 17 from the Melaka Tengah district, three from Alor Gajah and one from Jasin.
"We are working with the college, including tracing e-mails sent through laptops, to see if there are victims who have not lodged police reports," he said.
Supt Soh said the police seized several electronic gadgets, ATM cards, laptops and pen-drives installed with romantic poetry in the raid.
"We found smut material stored in the laptops and handphones that we believe were used to lure victims," he said, adding that police believed they had crippled a major Nigerian Casanova racket in the state.
Separately, he cautioned companies about a syndicate that altered the names of cheque recipients.
He said the syndicate which begun operating early this year, would use a special chemical to erase printed details of the actual recipients and replace with the names of their ring members.
Supt Soh said police found out about the racket following the arrest of a 32-year-old man on Wednesday.
The suspect had attempted to deposit a cheque amounting to RM265,000 issued by a food manufacturer here and bank officers, suspecting something amiss, alerted the police.
Supt Soh said the police received three reports on the racket so far.
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Beauty brings ethnic horn to Miss World 2012Representing Vietnam at Miss World 2012, Hoang My, Miss Vietnam 2010’s runner-up, will bring an ethnic horn presented by K’Tham, a village patriarch from the K’Ho ethnic group, as a gift to a charity auction.
According to new requirements from the organizers, all beauty pageant participants have to prepare gifts which are of good quality and hold meaning to auction at a gala dinner where proceeds will go to poor children.
Besides this special horn, the 24-year old is bringing three stones, symbolizing the northern, central and southern regions of Vietnam as presented by Viet Hoang Jewelry. They include the Trong Mai (husband and wife) stone from the north, fossil stone from rocky mountains in the center and Phu Tu (father and child) stone from the south. The stories and legends will be written in a note attached to these stones, which will be displayed at the World Rock Garden.
For the requirement of an image of a flower or plant representing the country, Hoang My carries with her a portrait made from rice of a beautiful lotus by the Quynh Vy painting company, in order to introduce traditional Vietnamese handicrafts, as well as the national flower.
In addition to the painting, My is bringing a photo of a terraced rice field taken in Northwestern Vietnam by photographer Dang Minh Tung.
Last but not least, she will also donate a National Geographic book on Vietnam to the Miss World library. She expects those who read the book to see beautiful scenery in Vietnam, understand more about the culture and life of the country, and fall in love with this peaceful, friendly and hospitable land.These gifts will represent a beautiful and peaceful country with full potential to keep pace with the world, as My had previously said in her introduction video.
Hoang My has been praised for her mix of Western and Eastern charm, intelligence, and good command of English. Last September she was the Vietnamese representative at the Miss Universe beauty pageant held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Though My didn’t win any top prizes at the pageant, she attracted the attention of the local media not only for her beauty but also for her outstanding fashion styles.
On July 18 My departed for Miss World 2012, which is ebing held in China from July 18- August 18.
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| By Arleen Spenceley July 26, 2012 |
Is There Room for Erotica in Christianity?
Erotica is experiencing a very big comeback. What does this mean for Christians?I knew there wouldn’t be a second date the moment the guy asked this question:
“How do you feel about strip clubs?”
Not for ‘em, I said.
“What about porn?”
Are you kidding?
In the conversation that followed, I rebutted his defenses of both. He, a Christian (nominally, at least), was a consumer of erotic media, convinced that using it can be good. He is the only Christian I've met who has defended pornography. But he is not the only Christian who defends other kinds of erotic media.
When a bestselling erotic novel and a movie about male strippers simultaneously swept the female half of the U.S. in recent weeks, Christian women spoke up. Some criticized the book because it promotes lust. Some criticized the movie because it promotes the objectification of men. Others criticized the critics.
Popular erotic media is good, proponents said, if it can sexually excite a couple whose sexual relationship otherwise would be lacking.
It is good, one woman wrote in a blog comment, because “giggling over guys in thongs gets women to talk about what they like and don't” in sex.
What erotic media does for sexless marriages and sexually frustrated women is important, some said. One said if erotic media objectifies people, it’s only a problem when women and men are unequally objectified. That erotic media designed for women validates female sexuality in a world that rarely does. That it acknowledges the existence of desire where the church often has denied it. That as such, erotic media can be a powerful weapon in the war against sexual oppression.
This week, the fanfare that sparked the fight for erotic media has faded. In its wake, I am left with a realization: That there are followers of Christ among the women who latch on to erotic media is, indeed, indicative of the existence of a need.
In the realms of love, marriage and sex, the church has dropped the ball.
The reason a marriage is sexless or women are sexually frustrated is complex, but a marriage has never been sexless because it hasn’t had enough exposure to erotic media. A woman has never been sexually frustrated because what she really needs is to be part of a culture in which women and men are objectified the same amount. And when the body of Christ consumes erotic media and praises it for what it does for sex and sexuality in Christian marriages, it really isn’t alleviating the problem. It is perpetuating a problem that underlies it:
In the realms of love, marriage and sex, the church has dropped the ball.
I know this because of how rare it is for people in the church to talk about love like it’s any deeper than sentiment, attraction or infatuation. Because few and far between are the folks who, like Pope John Paul II, remind the world that love is “the authentic commitment of the free will of one person, resulting from the truth about another person.” We are hard pressed to hear sermons or read books that say marriage is designed to result, in part, in the destruction of self absorption. And the church neither commonly nor clearly communicates what should be a cornerstone of any Christian sex talk:
There are two kinds of sex.
One kind of sex is the world's version. Its primary purpose is pleasure, and it is often utilitarian in practice (“I’ll use you, you’ll use me, and it is good as long as both of us enjoy it.”). The other kind of sex is sex as it was designed to be, which has a twofold purpose: procreation and unity. It involves the creation of a unique, pleasurable sexual relationship between a wife and a husband.
"Saving sex for marriage" becomes "waiting until marriage to objectify my partner."
"Saving sex for marriage" becomes "waiting until marriage to objectify my partner."
Wedding nights are confusing or traumatic when what happens in bed neither looks nor feels as good as TV and movies imply it should.
The church divides again when one set of Christians rejects the only kind of sex the other set of Christians knows exists. And because the use of erotic media aligns nicely with the one kind of sex they know, to reject erotic media, to them, is both to reject sex and to be complicit in the oppression of sexuality.
But is it really? I don’t think so.
Because erotic media perpetuates the objectification of humans, the rejection of love as selfless and the promotion of sex as recreation. Objectification, selfish “love” and recreational sex are misuses of human sexuality. And when we are able to think a misuse of sexuality is ok, we might just be oppressing ourselves.
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HOW TO WRITE SEX SCENES
HOW TO WRITE SEX SCENES
Copyright 2012 Diana Gabaldon
[This is a short piece that I wrote on request for a Canadian magazine called Chatelaine, earlier this year. I have the reprint rights back, though, and since a Twitter acquaintance recently expressed a desire to “write smut”—I thought I’d at least provide him with the basics.]Copyright 2012 Diana Gabaldon
Where most beginning writers screw up (you should pardon the expression) is in thinking that sex scenes are about sex. A good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids. That being so, it can encompass any emotion whatever, from rage or desolation to exultation, tenderness, or surprise.
Lust is not an emotion; it’s a one-dimensional hormonal response. Ergo, while you can mention lust in a sex-scene, describing it at any great length is like going on about the pattern of the wall-paper in the bedroom. Worth a quick glance, maybe, but essentially boring.
So how do you show the exchange of emotions? Dialogue, expression, or action—that’s about the limit of your choices, and of those, dialogue is by far the most flexible and powerful tool a writer has. What people say reveals the essence of their character.
Example:
_“I know once is enough to make it legal, but…” He paused shyly.
“You want to do it again?”
“Would ye mind verra much?”
I didn’t laugh this time, either, but I felt my ribs creak under the strain.
“No,” I said gravely. “I wouldn’t mind.”_
Now, you do, of course, want to make the scene vivid and three-dimensional. You have an important advantage when dealing with sex, insofar as you can reasonably expect that most of your audience knows how it’s done. Ergo, you can rely on this commonality of experience, and don’t need more than brief references to create a mental picture.
You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large, it’s better to use sensual details, rather than overtly sexual ones. (Just read any scene that involves a man licking a woman’s nipples and you’ll see what I mean. Either the writer goes into ghastly contortions to avoid using the word “nipples”—“tender pink crests” comes vividly to mind—or does it in blunt and hideous detail, so that you can all but hear the slurping. This is Distracting. Don’t Do That.)
So how _do_ you make a scene vivid, but not revoltingly so? There’s a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional. (Many people use only sight and sound. Include smell, taste, touch, and you’re in business.)
Example:
_The road was narrow, and they jostled against one another now and then, blinded between the dark wood and the brilliance of the rising moon. He could hear Jamie’s breath, or thought he could—it seemed part of the soft wind that touched his face. He could smell Jamie, smell the musk of his body, the dried sweat and dust in his clothes, and felt suddenly wolf-like and feral, longing changed to outright hunger.
He wanted._
In essence, a good sex scene is usually a dialogue scene with physical details.
Example:
_”I’ll give it to ye,” he murmured, and his hand moved lightly. A touch. Another. “But ye’ll take it from me tenderly, a nighean donn.”
“I don’t want tenderness, damn you!”
“I ken that well enough,” he said, with a hint of grimness. “But it’s what ye’ll have, like it or not.”
He laid me down on his kilt, and came back into me, strongly enough that I gave a small, high-pitched cry of relief.
“Ask me to your bed,” he said. “I shall come to ye. For that matter–I shall come, whether ye ask it or no. But I am your man; I serve ye as I will.”_
And finally, you can use metaphor and lyricism to address the emotional atmosphere of an encounter directly. This is kind of advanced stuff, though.
Example:
_He’d meant to be gentle. Very gentle. Had planned it with care, worrying each step of the long way home. She was broken; he must go canny, take his time. Be careful in gluing back her shattered bits.
And then he came to her and discovered that she wished no part of gentleness, of courting. She wished directness. Brevity and violence. If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.
She raked his back; he felt the scrape of broken nails, and thought dimly that was good–she’d fought. That was the last of his thought; his own fury took him then, rage and a lust that came on him like black thunder on a mountain, a cloud that hid all from him and him from all, so that kind familiarity was lost and he was alone, strange in darkness._
Like that.
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Tue, Jul 17, 2012
Married Straight Guy (Fred): Do men freak? Maybe the ones who do are afraid of their own inner latent homosexuality? More likely, they make displays of disapproval to prove to the world that they’re not gay — which just makes them seem gay, in a repressed way. Homophobia has that effect. The men who quietly freak on the inside when confronted with attractive male nudity do so for the same reasons women quietly freak on the inside when they’re bombarded by attractive female nudity: it makes you feel insecure and inadequate, and makes you worry that the significant other watching the movie/show/art with you would prefer that naked ideal over you. Women just have more practice at dealing with these negative feelings because female nudity is so much more prevalent. Which begs the question: why is female nudity so much more prevalent? My main theory is that guys are much more visually sexually driven than women (women usually close their eyes when they masturbate, men usually want to look at something) and so injecting female nudity in entertainment, even when it’s not necessary to the story, makes the whole thing more enjoyable for guys, it amps them up, so it can turn, say, a good movie into a really good if not great movie for them (like someone was occasionally tickling their balls while they watched). I’m not sure the same would be true for women. And certainly men outnumber women when it comes to the people making the big decisions in the entertainment industry.
Single Straight Guy (Megan): There is a lot that goes on in the man cave that women aren’t privy to. Just like men aren’t allowed into the quilting circle and don’t see how women relate to other women when men aren’t around, women don’t see how men relate to other men when women aren’t around. Men judge each other, but they do it discreetly and viciously. There are old standards and expectations that we’ve inherited and that we were born into without our consent. Men expect other men to be the bread winners, to be the head of household, to be athletic, to be manly and on and on. You know the image. What you don’t know is that men who don’t stand up to the image are passive-aggressively ridiculed by other men and cast out of the man cave. They aren’t invited to office lunches anymore. They aren’t invited to private parties. They aren’t called to have beers with the guys unless there is some woman friend of yours they want to hit on. It’s archetypal. Part of that archetype is for “proper” straight men to be anti-gay. It’s not necessarily a conscious, deliberate thing, but there is an unconscious pressure from the man cave that creates anxiety when men, for example, see other men naked. I can appreciate a good, firm ass. It gives me something to strive for. I mean, have you ever seen Baryshnikov in his prime? His butt is like a cantaloupe that was sliced in half. For this appreciation, however, I don’t really get asked out with guys very often.
Committed Gay Guy (Dwayne): I love to see a guy’s naked butt 10 feet tall on a movie screen and would love to see more. I think the issue goes back to Pope Paul IV turning the church away from its more sinful past by adding marble and plaster fig leaves to groins of all the nude male statues in the Vatican. Blame religion.Athena cosplay at ChinaJoy 2012 sweeps the Internet
But who’s the first-day star among so many beautiful and sexy babes of the ChinaJoy 2012 that opened to the public in Shanghai on Thursday?
The answer definitely is....
The latest Athena cosplay by a 22-year-old babe, named Li Ling from Hunan.
Innocent look and short costume to make her lace panties and shape of her private part visible to the masses. People were outrageously impressed!
Soon, more information of the post-90s girl was published too, as her Athena cosplay photos went viral online.
In fact, the Hunan-born beauty attended last year’s ChinaJoy as well, but she did not catch the public’s eyes. She also worked as a Tao Girl (a model hired by merchants at China’s largest shopping site Taobao to pose for products), and co-starred some online micro-films.
But she only became known in this year’s game fair. Obviously, she was determined to promote herself now.
This Gay Indie Sex Movie Isn't Really Porn, Even Though It Kind of Is
* interesting tid-bits on James Franco
The Supreme Court has never explicitly defined what constitutes pornography. Instead, they go with the old, "we know it when we see it" doctrine (and considering Clarence Thomas is still on the bench, I have a feeling the Court has seen plenty of it). Yes, there are many shades of grey (50 to be exact) between what constitutes a work of art about love and sex and what is just straight up spank material. A photographer once told me the difference between erotica and porn is "better lighting."That seems to be the stance that San Francisco director Travis Matthews took when making his gay indie sex drama I Want Your Love. The movie depicts the gay post-graduate creative class in San Francisco complete with light sweaters, thrift stores, regrettable tattoos, facial hair, piercing, yearning to be a performance artist, and lots of angsty discussions about their relationships. Oh, and there are boners, too. And buttfucking. And cumshots. And a beej or two. And all the penises are real, and going into real assholes and mouths.
This is getting Matthews a whole lot of attention. Not only is it selling out screenings at gay film festivals (including two at Lincoln Center this weekend) but he caught the attention of celebrity dilettante James Franco, and just wrapped filming a real-gay-sex movie project with him.
Here's why Matthews thinks his movie isn't porn.
VICE: How would you classify this movie?
Travis: If I were to just toss it into a genre? I think of it as an indie art film with gay sex in it. I don't classify it as a porn.
Why not?
To me pornography is something you watch with the sole purpose of jerking off to. When we were filming it, it wasn't to film sex scenes for people to jerk off to, but to film sex scenes that aren't documented in film and to use sex to bring out story and character elements. Surely there are shots of explicit things going on that may or may not be sexy, but I was more interested in showing the sloppiness, the funniness, the painful moments. My intention was not to make it hot for hot's sake.
What if guys do want to jerk off while watching?
Great. I'm not policing anyone's experience about how they engage with it. I think it's exciting that people have different experiences with it. Some people will think the guys are hot because they have natural bodies, and to some people that's a buzz kill. Even if someone calls it pornography, I'm not interested in arguing if they interpret it as pornography. I can tell you my intention, but it's a losing battle to get defensive about.
Naked Sword, the gay porn video on demand site, put the money up for the movie. Does that make it harder to say it's not porn?
It certainly makes it an easier leap to say that it's porn because a porn company funded it. But a porn company has never really experimented with a narrative film. They gave me creative freedom. They saw In Their Room. [Matthew's previous project of guys jerking off in their bedrooms] and they said they know it's not porn but they're interested in me doing what I'm doing to see if there's a market for it.
So what happens when a guy gets a boner during a screening? Should he touch himself or reach out and touch someone else?
Both! Why limit yourself to one choice.
Do you think it has mainstream or non-gay appeal?
I knew that it was limited in certain ways. It's an all-gay cast, it's a micro-budget film, and there's real sex in it. I didn't have any illusions about it.
How was shooting the sex scenes?
They are different and it kind of depended on what we were trying to capture, but I respect and understand how much trust these guys are putting in me. There was a lot of prepping for the scenes in a logistical way and a talking way. We tried to keep a small set and choreograph things, and I let them know I'd interrupt them, like, "Put that arm down. Do more of this." We knew what point A and point B were and I gave them a bit of freedom to find that themselves because it would look more natural.
Would you ever have sex on screen?
Probably not. It's not something I’ve ever seriously considered. That said, I'm not supposed to say much about this project at all, but I'm going to be in the James Franco project, but I'm not having sex.
How did you and James Franco find each other?
He is doing a project that contains explicit gay sex and his agent found me because they wanted someone who had done this before and who would compliment his. I'm not supposed to talk that much about it. I signed a contract.
Did James Franco threaten you with bodily harm?
[laughs] Yes, with a bullwhip.
Does it suck that the only way you can get attention these days is to have a celebrity's name attached to yours?
I don't feel like that's totally true. He has a million art projects, but because it has real sex in it it will be talked about for a minute. I get how that’s helpful for me in people discovering I exist. But I've been on a good path getting my work screened outside of the Franco thing.
Come on, you can give me some dirty details about the project, right?
I wont' say anything.
How gay is James Franco, really?
[laughs] Well, no comment. I'm not going to speak for him. He can speak for himself.
Has James Franco ever given you a rim job?
[laughs] Only that one time and it was rehearsal, so it was art.
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Ladies and gentlemen......Miss Maggie Grace
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