Faces only?

Interesting idea.

I am told by people who know such things that the hardest thing to draw is the human face. And, since I have no skills as an artist, I take their word for it, both because I trust them and because it makes sense.

It is such a supple, subtle piece of our organic real estate. Where you look for the windows to the soul. Where the first shadow of illness falls. Where inklings of grief or joy leak out.

A few years ago, when I worked for awhile across a desk from a guy a where his monitor blocked the lower half of his face, I remember being struck by how much nuance was lost. No accident that they call a carefully controlled and contained mien a “poker face”.

So the question is, is this porn? Or, if you prefer, erotica?

Orgasm: The Faces of Ecstasy is a 2004 release from Blank Tapes and LIBIDO Films that set out to answer the question, "What does the face of human arousal look like?" They interviewed 22 people, aged 22-68, in the San Francisco Bay Area and then asked them to have orgasms for the cameras. They told all the participants they would be shot only from the shoulders up. Some came alone, some with partners.

This is a record of their experiences -- an intensely intimate yet non-explicit exploration of human sexual response. Available both in DVD and VHS formats. Approximately one hour, plus a full hour of additional footage including the original 9-minute Faces of Ecstasy, a short film made by Joani Blank in 1996.

Just video of people’s faces as they come. That’s all. You could show it on commercial teevee. Hell, theoretically the only difference between this and a certain Eddie Murphy sketch from “Weekend Update” is a laugh track.

And yet…

And yet, I would absolutely class this as erotica; potentially very good erotica.

Why?

Once upon a time, Harlan Ellison explained that he didn’t find hard core porn erotic because it reminded him of a fur-covered industrial film. I think that sums it up pretty well. Now I like to look at women (and then some), and the nekkider and attractiver the better. However there’s a line out of “Glengarry Glen Ross” that nails down what I think really commands the attention of the discerning eye, memory and libido when it comes to sex.

(Brief Mamet aside: Throughout the play, Mamet is brilliantly interlacing the laser-guided, predatory, Always Be Closing focus of the salesmen and their realspeak with the 57 flavors of fastpatter bullshit they use to create a hurry-up, fake intimacy between them and their prey just long enough for the dirtpushers to churn ‘em, burn ‘em, and move on the next meal.

And in that interplay – whether the salesmen are inward-facing, brutal and desperate, or outward-facing, brightly feral and packing of an arsenal of gladhands and studied smiles – the truth about who we are and how we move in the world glitters and sparks behind every syllable Mamet incises onto the page.

Oh, and there’re a lotta swears.

End brief Mamet aside.)

Here, Ricky Roma salts the mine with flecks of genuine insight in the service of getting James Lingk to walk right into the slaughterhouse, singing a happy tune.

ROMA

The great fucks that you may have
had. What do you remember about
them?

LINGK
What do I...?

ROMA
Yes.

LINGK
Mmmm...

ROMA
I don't know. For me, I'm saying,
what it is, it's probably not the
orgasm. Some broads, forearms on
your neck, something her eyes did.
There was a sound she made...or,
me, lying, in the, I'll tell you:
me lying in bed; the next day she
brought me café au lait. She gives
me a cigarette, my balls feel like
concrete. Eh? What I'm saying,
what is our life?
(pause)
It's looking forward or it's
looking back. And that's our life.
That's it. Where is the moment?

Go rent the movie or see it live or read the play. But before you do, consider the great sex you’ve had.

What do you remember?

I don't know. For me, I'm saying, what it is, it's her face. That moment when her body delivers her the urgent telegram that climax has locked on to her. Painted her like a target and there is nothing on Earth she can do to stop it.

That realization of the inevitability of the little death as it flushes across her cheeks.

Gulping air like a deepwater diver oxygenating her blood.

Then…surrender…

…the timeless, top-of-the-rollercoaster-pause-for-which-there-should-be-a-specialized-term-(probably-French)…

…the foreshocks like the distant rumble of an approaching army…

…and then a cotton-footed Giant punts her at the speed of thought through the Gates of Heaven. Depth charges detonate -- Boom! Boom! Boom! -- in scrambling, rolling, body-sized seismic waves as she dissolves into screaming atoms.

All of it sketched in the finest, most achingly eloquent detail on her face.


Offhand I can’t think of anything more erotic than that.