New wave erotica: an interview with Anna Brownfield

Anna Brownfield of Poison Apple Productions and Hungry Films is a creator of films she terms "new wave erotica", and a lecturer in the Multimedia Design and Film and TV course at Melbourne's Swinburne University. Her work recently received accolades at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. Alexis Hazell interviewed her for Pleasure Activism Australia.

"I've always made films about sexuality and in particular female sexuality, and how we're exposed to them through cinema and images, and the way women are fetishised and objectified," she says. "In a lot of my films I generally turn that on its head, so that the men become objectified and they become the objects rather than the women."

Objectified in what way?

"I find a lot of the time the camera visually objectifies women: it becomes about parts of their bodies. There's a real fetishisation of female bodies: I wanted to turn that on its head. Things like nudity, as well - even in mainstream cinema, I find it really fascinating the way we're quite happy to see full frontal female nudity, yet we still have some pains about seeing a penis on screen. There's some sort of amazing phallus power: if we see it, my god, we're going to be struck down! Or it's going to take away its power, which I think is more what it's about. There's kind of this thing that while it's still veiled and hidden, and not something that's seen as being a normal part of life, then it still maintains this threatening power."

A lot of women nowadays don't identify as 'feminist', but more as 'humanist', or something like that . . . . why do you still identify as 'feminist'?

"I remember having this argument with my sister when she was about 16 - I've always said I was a feminist. My mum had a large part in that - she always brought us up to be very strong, independent women, telling us that we could do anything, that we could achieve whatever we wanted, that there was nothing to bar us, that we didn't need to be in a relationship, we didn't need to be with a man to make ourselves successful. We were brought up to believe we were valued individuals as much as any man. And I remember arguing with my sister at 16; she said, 'No, I'm not a feminist', and I replied 'Well, do you believe that women should get equal pay for an equal amount of work?', and she went 'Yes' and I went 'There you go, you're a feminist.'

"I think I've always been very strong, I've always been determined, I've always been very outspoken, so I think I still think of myself as a feminist. We're living in very conservative times at the moment: yes, we've got to a certain level, we're out working, and some of us are managing to work and be mothers and all the rest of it. But I still think, as a woman, in terms of popular culture and advertising, we still are incredibly objectified - there's still a lot of power that's taken away from us, and we still are socially conditioned to fit into this particular mold."

But you don't feel that your identity as a feminist doesn't clash with your work?

"We've ended up coining the phrase 'new wave erotica' just because as soon as we mention porn, there is this association that it's a product that's made for heterosexual men. Most of the porn that's out there is aimed towards a heterosexual male view of sex and sexuality; it's not geared towards the way female sexual responses work. So that's the sort of thing we've worked on, making it about female sexual responses, and the fact that it is so diverse. I mean, with a guy, basically, you get an erection, you can start fucking. Whereas with a woman it's a mental thing, it's about seduction, it's about sensation. And also the fact that we like a good shag. I think that people forget we are sexual beings. I think we're actually more sexual than men are, even.

"But sometimes I do still have that element of me going 'Oh my god, I'm making porn!'. At the same time, my whole attitude is that as women we're taught to be sexual, we're taught to use our sexuality to get what we want, and manipulate people through that; yet a woman taking control of her sexuality and being . . . . not aggressive, but in control of that, is still a very threatening sort of thing. And I think people still have a lot of issues with that. I've always been a very sexual being, I've always been very open about my sexuality, and I don't see that just because I'm a woman that I shouldn't acknowledge that I have a sexuality.

"Candida Royalle, she's been making stuff aimed towards women since the mid-80s, and initially, when she started, people said 'Oh, pff, good luck' - and she's done quite well. And there are mainstream porn companies in America that do actually make products more towards women, which tend to be more storyline, a bit gentler and so forth . . . . but at the same time, I find most American porn incredibly homogenised, so I find it seems to be very barbie doll, it's silicone tits, it's your lips pumped up to the max, it's being shaved within an inch of pre-pubescence, which I find really disturbing. So I suppose my thing is making something where there is a diversity of body ranges and types, where bodies are natural, too. Because that's the thing in Australia: while plastic surgery is starting to become an obsession, there are still lots of good natural bodies out there. I don't want any fake boobs. Unless," she says with a mischievous smile, "they're playing an evil nasty character.

"It's been interesting - we've started auditioning for the film, and guys, dime a dozen, you can find them anywhere. But women . . . . it's still a taboo, and has a connotation to it, as does working in the sex industry in general - that you're some kind of loose cheap floozy who can't do anything better. Whereas the reality is that there are a lot of incredibly intelligent, articulate women working within the sex industry, and in some ways it provides them with so many other options."

And so you see what you do as having a political component?

"Definitely, it's always been a part of what I'm about. For me, it's the reclaiming of women's sexuality, and it being a positive thing. Politics has always been a part of it for me: the representation of women and how women are represented has always been something I've thought about a lot in my films, and I don't want to fall into clichés or ideas about what a woman should be.

"I've always been very concious of my depiction of women and the roles they inhabit in my films. I think it's important to show women in control of their sexuality and their environment, that the way they behave isn't dictated by the male characters and that they not just there as a plot device or love/sex interest. While we're exposed to images of women as sexual objects, or as sexualised, we still have very conservative ideas about women who are in control of their sexuality: within the hetero world, we're seen as temptresses who use our sexual power to manipulate men. There is nothing as scary or monstrous as a woman in control of her body and mind!

"The other thing is dominance - in porn you don't see a lot of women being very dominant in the situations. I remember the first time I watched gay male porn, I went, 'Why is this so different? There's something in it that's making me think this is really different. Is it the fact that it's guy-on-guy? No, I've seen that before, that's nothing unusual.' And then I went 'It's the first time I'm seeing a man in a passive role.' As a woman in a lot of pornography, ultimately, you are being fucked, and you are still passive, and there's not that sense of real control in it. And I think now, because there's been a push in pornography to become more and more hardcore, more and more extreme, in a lot of ways for me, there's an element of more and more degradation going on - there's this big movement for choking at the moment, and gagging, and things like this. And I think, 'Well, fine, if that's what you're into, but do I have to see it every time?' It's the same with the facial cum shot: really, cum doesn't taste that good, why does every scene have to end with that? It's like we don't believe this man has come unless we see a wad full of cum on her face. And okay, sure, you might get into that, and that's fine, I don't have any issues with that - but I just don't want to see it every time."

Do you make an effort to try to represent a diversity of genders and sexualities in your films?

"In this current film, The Band¹, there's not really any sort of gender-bending going on; but I'm really obsessed with the idea of men being fucked up the ass, so I want to put that in all my films. Women are constantly penetrated, are always being fucked, and for a man to really understand what he's doing if he's having sex with a woman, I think he really needs to be fucked up the ass, he needs to understand how it's quite an intimate thing. It is quite invasive, and if it's not done right, it's horrible.

"We've got one character in this film, an anally-obsessed bass player, who just wants to try to fuck everyone up the ass. Which he finally does with one woman - and then she actually ends up 'getting back at him' by screwing him up the ass with a strap-on, which he loves and thinks it's great. I mean, men's g-spot is actually in their ass!

"One of the things I'm really conscious about is that a lot of porn or erotica out there is what I call "Penthouse and Playboy lesbianism": it's this depiction of lesbianism as being something for heterosexual men, all long fingernails and stilettos and big tits. It's this attitude of 'Yeah, you want to get down there and lick pussy, but really, you're just waiting for the cock to arrive'. It's such a gentrified examination of it as well - you don't see anyone getting 'down and dirty'.

"I think there's only one film I've seen, Madam and Eve - which showed at the Queer Film Festival a few years ago - which had some good lesbian sex in it, and that was just like 'Oh yay!'.

"You can make stuff in a film that will cross over into lots of different sort of sexualities. This one doesn't have any male-on-male action, but in the next one, I want to have guys having sex in it as well. Because often in porn you have women having sex together, but not men - even if they're fucking the same woman, it's 'Oh no, you're not going to touch me!' to each other."

So you're looking to produce something that falls outside of those fairly fixed narratives of mainstream porn?

"I think it has become very fixed. It's very fixed in terms of the way sex scenes are done; there's not a real natural flow with a lot of sex scenes. It's like 'I go down on you, you go down on me, okay, let's try position one, we do that for two minutes, we try position two for two minutes, then we swap and do position three for another two minutes, then we do position four, maybe we might get to position five, and then we come', and that's sort of it. And even if it's got a storyline, and you've got acting going on, you get to the sex scene - and it just becomes about a documentation of the act. It's not necessarily in the style of what they're talking about, or the characters, or anything like that. So I find that with a lot of it, there's not a natural rawness to it. Which I think is really important to make it interesting and exciting. There should be a natural flow, a natural build up to it, a scenario that's believable.

"You look at most porn, it's like, girl sitting in room, guy walks into room, both suddenly have their clothes off and are fucking. That's the way it works a lot of the time, and I think to myself, 'This is crazy, it doesn't happen like that in real life!' Half the time you're sitting there trying to get your shoe off, and you can't quite get it there, or you fall over, or something.

"I actually think humour is really important, because sex is funny. Sex is really funny. It's quite a hilarious sort of thing, and I think people forget that as well - that it is kind of clumsy and awkward at times. That's the human part of it that I think is sort of lost in pornography."

So what sort of response have you had to your films?

"It will be interesting to see how this next film [i.e. The Band - Alexis] goes, because it is, in a way, 'erotica' or 'porn', so it has that sort of capitve market for it. In terms of my other pieces . . . . I've played a lot of festivals, I have actually sold a few bits and pieces and things like that. But I don't know, my stuff is always a bit left-of-centre, so it's harder to find and categorise.

"When I made The Money Shot, we did look into a distributor - but we've had no luck at this stage. I'm self-distributing at this point in time. As a future thing, I'm sure it's something that will eventually get picked up. As it is, when you're making something that's low-budget, it's that little bit harder, and I'm doing everything myself - well, I did with that film, it was financed through my credit card. But this film we've actually got an investor on board, he's underwritten our first film. We're going to do three - the other two are Glimpses, which is set in the 1950s; and one with the working title 'Porn Noir'. We're looking to get investors on board for both of these. They're all through Hungry Films, a film company I've formed with Aer Agrey of Macrobioticerotic.

"The Money Shot was a different kettle of fish, because I made it with my partner at the time, and it was more of a mainstream film - it probably wasn't quite as edgy as the stuff I'd normally make, because he was a lot more conservative. But that movie has probably had the most success - we won best screenplay, best director and best actor at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. Which is traditionally a very male bastion, so that was kind of a coup. But that one's a bit more mainstream than most of my other stuff. I've had some stuff play at the Women on Women Film Festival, and a lot of pubs around town.

"Some people find it weird. I spoke at the AGIdeas design conference last year; we got feedback forms, and a lot of people found what I showed - in particular my earlier work - they said 'Oh, she's got a bit of a strange take on sexuality.' And I was thinking, 'Maybe I do!'

"The film I made previous to The Money Shot was Tainted Eden, which had gratuitous nudity and cock shots, all about objectifying men and men being the 'victims' more than anything. Women absolutely loved it, and men came out of it going 'Oh fuck, that was a bit scary.' I kind of like pushing that, making it a bit more extreme and edgy."

Are you interested in collaborative work?

"Yes, I'm quite open to that. I don't think I can produce enough a year, because I don't want to compromise on the quality of the product. So that is one thing we're looking at in the future, working with other directors and working with other people - other women particularly - who want to create erotica."

Do you see your work becoming more mainstream in the future, such as moving into being an accepted part of adult cinema, or non-adult cinema, or alternative cinema?

"I think eventually, if you stick at anything long enough . . . . I don't know, there are still issues. I think people still have a lot of issues about sex and sexuality. Our censorship laws are geared so that we can watch a lot more violence than we can sex - we still feel more threatened by sex than we do by violence.

"It's interesting, I've put stuff up on the Web site, looking for bands who might have music we'd be interested in using. And I've got a guy, who is the most incredible misogynist, absolutely beating me down every time, telling me that I shouldn't be doing this: 'Imagine if it was your daughter or your lover or your sister!' But all the time he's fixated on this exploitation of women in adult film, he doesn't also realise that men are paid less, if they're paid at all. And he seems to be obsessed with women being gang-banged - he talks about women being gang-banged, he talks about this all the time. And I'm, like, 'Hang on, this is your fantasy, this is what you want to see really, what you think it's going to be like - yet you're saying I'm really fucked up for making porn? What, because I'm taking control of the situation?'

"So I think people are still very threatened by sexuality, and sex in general. We still have that very Victorian attitude that it's something that should be behind closed doors. We're quite scared of it, and at the same time, in terms of our exposure to sex, and to sexual imagery, it has increased a lot. I mean, there's been talk of the rise of raunch culture, and things like that, which I find really fascinating - it does disturb me seeing really young girls walking around in miniskirts and crop tops, and striking these poses, but not really having an understanding about what sex or sexuality is."

Speaking of 'raunch culture', what's your opinion of Ariel Levy's work?

"Sometimes I think she has hit the nail on the head, in a lot of things, in the way culture is. But there are elements where I don't agree with her. I mean, she talks about this obsession with pole dancing in America. But if you look at bellydancing in terms of the cultural thing, in its time it was taboo, yet it's since become very much a mainstream thing. And it's also about empowerment.

"It all depends on who you are doing it for; ultimately, I think that's what it comes down to. You can do anything you want, is my attitude, as long as you're not hurting yourself or hurting anyone else. Go for it, do whatever you want, as long as you're doing it for yourself, and it's making you feel good. As long as you're not doing it to please a man or to please someone else, then my attitude is, go for it."

Thanks Anna!

Notes

1. The Band is set in the Melbourne rock scene; parts of it are based on true stories that Anna collected while working in a Melbourne rock venue.