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Hysterical literature.

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I wonder whether this forum is mature enough for this kind of work.

Clayton James Cubitt, a.k.a. Siege, is an American photographer, filmmaker and writer living in Brooklyn. He is known for applying an "arrestingly controlled and sleek sense of style" to art, portrait, erotic and fashion photography.


In 2008-2009, Cubitt created a video series of Long Portraits, in which subjects were filmed sitting still for five minutes or more. The Long Portrait format became popular on Vimeo, inspiring many other photographers create their own versions. In 2012, Cubitt created a video series titled Hysterical Literature. Shot clinically in black and white, the films show women having orgasms while reading a passage from a book of their choice. The first installment in the video series featured adult performer Stoya reading Necrophilia Variations by Supervert, and has received over eleven million views on YouTube as of February 2014. Subsequent videos feature "friends and industry comrades" reading passages from books including Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Here is the first session with pornstar Stoya.
Here the home page of the project site.

You will notice that I marked this thread as NSFW, sexually suggestive, not "PC" and the like. In truth, the videos would probably not be classified as "adult rated" in many countries since, objectively speaking, each one only shows a fully clad woman reading a book.

Each video is about 6 or 7 minutes long. It is best not to use the fast forward button and watch till the end, so make sure you have some time to yourself.
 
I thought this was fun. I didn't know what to expect, but I as not embarassed. Instead it was fun and lovely, actually and kind of funny. I don't know about the other videos as I only watched the Stoya one, but I liked how it showed this woman experiencing orgasmic joy and she looked beautiful throughout. I have to admit that I, could no longer follow what she was reading though; what was happening before my eyes was very distracting. :grin: Ha! :-D

editing to add: I know I didn't go in-depth with the long portrait idea but just wanted to give my first impressions. Going to go read about the concept and what the artist was attempting to do.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Jerome,

I wonder whether this forum is mature enough for this kind of work.

Well, there must be something it is mature enough for. Maybe you have found it.

In 2012, Cubitt created a video series titled Hysterical Literature. Shot clinically in black and white, the films show women having orgasms while reading a passage from a book of their choice. The first installment in the video series featured adult performer Stoya reading Necrophilia Variations by Supervert, and has received over eleven million views on YouTube as of February 2014. Subsequent videos feature "friends and industry comrades" reading passages from books including Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Here is the first session with pornstar Stoya.

Well, a really nice -- reading.

Thanks so much.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I thought this was fun. I didn't know what to expect, but I as not embarrassed.

My intention was certainly not to embarrass people. Actually, I think that, because humans have empathy, most viewers would derive positive emotions from watching someone obviously experiencing a positive emotion.

From the artistic point of view, this is actually brilliant. If we consider art as a way to create emotions in the viewer, this is very well made. We have a very powerful emotion on display, empathy is reinforced by the fact that the actors are young, attractive and female, distractions are removed by the staging and B&W photography and "reading" works very well as a device to both make us realise that this is supposed to be art and not porn and to make us perceive the emotion better.

The marketing aspects of the setup are added benefits, of course.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I have not ever seen such an artwork, but I appreciate very much the link. It came with the sound turned off and even when I put it on the noise of workmen and gardeners, across the road preparing, a house for sale drowned out her gentle voice. If she's a porn store, (auto type correct from "star", LOL), I better catch up! I'd not imagined porn would be so elegant.

I have only watched for few minutes and will search out a quiet spot or hook up my Parrot bluetooth headphones and start all over with a cup of fine coffee from my wife's new Gaggenau coffee machine.......so I have "time for myself".

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
If she's a porn store, I better catch up! I'd not imagined porn would be so elegant.

The person known as Stoya is not a "store". She does play in rather explicit movies depicting human sexuality in rather blunt pictures, to which the word "elegant" does not really come to mind. The video link is not like her standard work, as far as I know.

This being said, an in addition to being physically attractive, she is obviously an intelligent, educated and articulate woman. She also has a tumblr blog, writes articles for the magazine "Vice and probably more than I know from a quick google search.

She published her commentaries about the video and why she chose Supervert’s “Necrophilia Variations” to read.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The person known as Stoya is not a "store".

My iphone really is imaginative in making auto corrections! Some are really funny!

She does play in rather explicit movies depicting human sexuality in rather blunt pictures, to which the word "elegant" does not really come to mind. The video link is not like her standard work, as far as I know.

Well, Jerome, such a woman has a generous heaven-gifted advantage over most of us. She's especially elegant-looking and in the reading delivers a mood of total innocence and gentleness that any person aspiring to to unspoiled beauty could treasure. That's the special uniqueness of the setup. She represents innocence and even imagining what's actually going on, the dominant feeling of her gentility wins out, even as we see her unable to mask her reactions to pleasure overwhelming her body and senses. This, I agree is brilliant art. My only possible beautiful candidate for such a performance art project would fail to read for more than 37 seconds. Stoya, OTOH, made it for a good 5 minutes in perfect control!

This being said, an in addition to being physically attractive, she is obviously an intelligent, educated and articulate woman. She also has a tumblr blog, writes articles for the magazine "Vice and probably more than I know from a quick google search.

She published her commentaries about the video and why she chose Supervert’s “Necrophilia Variations” to read.

Jerome,

Porn in this case is then, it seems, just a job, for her......................perhaps hardly different from a superstar PH.D. in chemistry working for a cosmetic company, creating eye make up, incidentally tested in the eyes of unlucky rabbits). The daily work must be boring, but the person does not have to fuse with the stratum in which one mines one daily bread!

Think of the brilliant surgeon who still has to pull like a laborer, to rip out the long, tortuous and ugly veins from the legs of patients with varicosities. It is also not an elegant way to spend a day!

I imagine it's something like doing follow up visits I did in my office with men treated by me for prostate cancer. Not a choice experience, but needed wednesdays after lunch, to map out the prostate bed, make careful drawings and compare with previous findings. The actual practices, even with a glove and the patient's pose, are not exactly desirable or rewarding experiences, but part of the "job" and for the greater good!

I guess one "switches off" the norma boredom or disgust aroused doing such things, but still uses skills and is totally aware of everything else.

I wonder how many educated insightful women there are working as pornstars and otherwise being seen in elegant evening gowns in art openings, fundraising galas, the opera and classical music concerts.

Certainly, such women are very complex, layered individuals with a strong sense of self-worth that keeps them in balance.

I'm impressed by the art and fascinated by Stoya as a human being with such complex facets of her life!

Thanks for sharing this with all of us! This will influence me and I appreciate my mind being opened to such unique rich characters and unusual creativity.

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I would not think that having sex can be compared with "ripping out the long, tortuous and ugly veins from the legs of patients with varicosities" or operating prostate cancer, Asher. Some of the actors are considered attractive. For women.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I would not think that having sex can be compared with "ripping out the long, tortuous and ugly veins from the legs of patients with varicosities" or operating prostate cancer, Asher. Some of the actors are considered attractive. For women.

Some women "having sex" are really acting a role and doing a technical job but are divorced from the eruptive emotional accompaniments and sequelae of such unions. They include some educated and elegant women, professionals doing a low ranking, but skilled yet often boring job.

Even though doctors are on a very different social plane and their activities are considered much more socially valuable, they are also doing a service when performing what they are skilled at. Sometimes, the work is really odious and even smelly, but one, as a professional, represses all such reactions. in that brief time, there's very little relief, apart from knowing that one's lightest sentient touch and sweep of a tip of an index finger can detect a flat prostate bed or else a worrisome even cancerous nodule. The real needed balance of course, is not the payment, but that inner pride and satisfaction gained in successfully mapping the state of the location accurately - more so, in being able to provide a well-informed opinion to the patient on the control of their treated prostate cancer. (I do not know whether porn stars or prostitutes get any such personal satisfaction that so fills them with pride. Perhaps that also occurs in their trade too).

But essentially, as a physician, on this such occasion, one is still putting one's finger in some stranger's rectum as part of a way of earning a living and paying for one's kids to go through college.

Women who "comfort" men, on a far lower social level, are still, arguably, doing a great community service. One could imagine all the families staying together, perhaps a few children here and there not molested, but the fact remains that that the carnal needs of certain men are met in a far less destructive way! I'm not elevating these porn stars or prostitutes to the level of physicians, but surely they must, at the very least, do as good a job, in calming troubled men, as many priests, clergymen and prelates.

My only argument is that it might be artificial and unfair to rank them as people, because of the "low nature" of their skilled services, especially as their customers, so well "comforted", likely include at least more than a few of the gentlemen enjoying the same theater, concerts and art galleries as I do.

I'm not saying that you look down on them, as you've not disclosed or hinted on your opinions, but I view them as workers, (some with far less dignity than others), same but to a different degree as with doctors and other princes of society!

After all, we're all inside overlapping bubbles of insight and delusion. In reality we're, without exception, "apes with some kind of iphone"! Our attitudes on rank, worth, appropriateness and stature are too often expressions more of our self-delusions than insights, I'm afraid.

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Asher, you are an intelligent man, but you seem to be trapped in one of the prejudices of your culture.

May I suggest that you watch the video (all 8 episodes), wait a few days, and watch them again with the eye of a physician. These videos demonstrate a simple medical fact that is not consistent with that prejudice of your culture.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Asher, you are an intelligent man, but you seem to be trapped in one of the prejudices of your culture.

May I suggest that you watch the video (all 8 episodes), wait a few days, and watch them again with the eye of a physician. These videos demonstrate a simple medical fact that is not consistent with that prejudice of your culture.

Jerome,

When you hold me to account or catch my errors, you're most often correct, LOL! So I have to take your criticism quite seriously!!!

Still, 8 episodes is a lot! I'll endeavor to find the time. Always prepared to recognize and correct my own shortcomings! Don't always succeed!

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
The prejudice I was thinking about is the idea that women would not enjoy "having sex" in front of a camera. It is quite common in the western world (so in your and in my culture). A slightly different version is that women would only enjoy sex with men to whom they are emotionally attached.

On the surface it appears correct. The porn "industry" actually reinforces that belief because it appears to mainly produce videos with women obviously faking pleasure in situation more akin to athletic competitions than anything else.

Except that there a few producers specialising in a different kind of videos. Except that there are a few performers who were able to steer their careers so as to control the kind of videos they perform in and with whom.

Most importantly: except that the series shown in this thread prove a simple medical fact: orgasm is a reflex. It is not something that women can control and keep exclusive for men they would be attached to, it is something that automatically arises from the right mechanical stimulations. So at least theoretically, and contrary to the prejudices of our culture, orgasmic pleasure could happen in front of a camera with an unattractive or "unromantic" man, provided the stimulations happen to be just right.

There are a few other prejudices of our culture at play here. One is that the male performers would be unattractive or demeaning to women. There is no reason for them to be so. Another one is that the videos do not correspond to female fantasies. Actually, the opposite appears to be true: the psychologist Nancy Friday compiled reports about women sexual fantasies and being dominated by one or more men is by far the most common one. Exhibitionism is also very common. It thus stands to reason that being subjected to the actions of a man in front of a camera crew must be a fantasy common enough amongst women for the porn industry to get enough willing candidates for their needs. Last but not least, a prejudice would be that being a porn actress would confine one to social rejection. That is also not true: porn "stars" are also stars and enjoy more fan attention (male and female) than, for example, internationally known photographers or world class surgeons.

Therefore, at least in some cases, performing for a sex video is akin to enacting one's fantasies in a perfectly safe environment (obviously nothing dangerous will happen in front of a camera crew), maybe get some intense pleasure out of the mechanical stimulations and in most cases getting the congratulations of one's fans for it. It does appear vastly more fun than "ripping out the long, tortuous and ugly veins from the legs of patients with varicosities" or operating prostate cancer.

Does this mean I am in favour of that industry or that I believe that all performers have the time of their life in front of the camera? No, of course. Actually, I believe that this industry needs a change in regulation, because it appears to have manoeuvred itself in a dead end. I also believe that only a very small number of performers manage to steer their career in a positive direction.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
You surprised me, Jerome! I thought I'd have to declare my "Mea culpa"! However, I've no knowledge of the culture you describe or it's clearly misogynistic attitude to women's self expression.

As to the seemingly "reflex" nature of orgasm, it does not automatically follow appropriate stimulation. Arousal can be inhibited by disgust, fear or simply that some 75% of women have considerable difficulty in reaching climax.

Furthermore, direct testimony of some street workers is that they often choose to act and "f$&@$" with the Johns, just to complete the service on their terms and not be "involved" or "there", mentally. So there must be such a wide variety of attitudes, physiology and timing at play, that no sweeping assumptions can be made on the occurrence of climax in sex workers.

This doesn't detract one iota from the brilliant originality of the performance art you have introduced us to!

So thanks again!

Asher
 

Chris Heilman

New member
I was struck by the similarity from one session to the next. I would be interested in seeing the sessions that did not make the cut. In my (admittedly limited) experience, individuals vary to a much greater extent than depicted in these nine videos.

Some of the discussion here has centered on pornography/prostitution. I read that the majority of his subjects are acquaintances. This would help to explain the isotropic look to the series.
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Chris,

Yeah, it sounds like a Sybian, but we don't get to see. One of the women apologized for kicking someone, so, well, hmmmm.
Well, it was said that there was a "handler" (my term) with a vibrator under the table.

Perhaps this is what happens to focus pullers now that we have better AF for cinema.

Best regards,

Doug
 
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