In 1972, the actress Maria Schneider showed up for the filming of The last Tango in Paris, one of Bernardo Bertolucci’s most successful and controversial films, and at that very moment the director told her that they were going to film a rape scene in which her co-star, Marlon Brando, was going to use butter to lubricate her while he abused her. Schneider – who at the time was only 19 years old – was unable to say that she was not comfortable with that situation, and she was subjected to abuse – sexual and power – by Brando and Bertolucci to get the scene that the director craved. show. He was not looking for Scheneider to fake her anger and humiliation, but for him to really feel it.
Something similar happened to Kim Basinger during the filming of Adrian Lyne’s erotic drama, 9 and a half weeks, released in 1986. If Basinger’s character was despised on stage, they also had to make the actress feel that way. So high was the level of abuse they exerted on her that in a scene—which would ultimately be eliminated from the final cut—in which Basinger had to show vulnerability, her co-star Mickey Rourke—under the director’s orders—grabbed her arm tightly. before starting to record, and he did not let her go while she cried and hit him, causing her to have an anxiety attack. In Lyne’s eyes, they had to “break” Basinger if they wanted the film to work.
For many years, women in the audiovisual industry have been subjected to all kinds of abuse and malpractice when filming scenes in which sex has been involved. Many times due to a question of abuse of power, exercised by figures – traditionally male – who thought that the means to achieve a certain result consisted of subduing their actresses; but on other occasions, due to a lack of knowledge on the part of those in charge of making artistic decisions when it comes to fictionalizing sexual relationships that would be authentic and realistic for those who saw the film, and comfortable for those who appeared in it. For many years, the only sexual pleasure represented has been that of cisheterosexual men. but this is a drift that has begun to transform in recent years.
Changing the way sex is represented is something that some creators who are producing successful fiction, such as Shonda Rhimes, producer of The Bridgertons —which has just released its third season on Netflix—, and what he said a few days ago in an interview for S Fashion that in their filming they want “everyone to feel safe and comfortable” and, above all, that they do not seek to “take advantage of anyone’s body.” To do this, they use a relatively new figure when filming bed scenes or scenes with sexual content, that of the intimacy coordinator.
The privacy coordination department “follows the same logic as the action coordination department. In the same way that, when there is a fight scene, no one would think of leaving the actors without instructions and waiting to see what comes out, because most likely someone is going to get hurt and it will not be realistic, what this figure does is manage intimate content. We act from pre-production, and what we seek is to mediate all those conversations between the production and the actors to ensure that they always have an open communication channel and that the consent of the artists is respected,” explains Tábata Cerezo, one of the co-founders. from IntimAct, the pioneer company in Spain within the coordination of intimacy.
The figure of coordination of intimacy, which is sometimes requested by production companies or, increasingly, by the artists themselves, has the objective that actors and actresses no longer have to go through moments as violent as they did in their day Schneider or Basinger. And the scenes in which they intervene not only seek to represent new perspectives on pleasure, but also to create an especially safe environment when what they seek to recreate are scenes of sexual abuse or assault. “There what we do is put a lot of emphasis on the preparation, on the conversations, framing this work in fiction, not only on a mental level but on a physical level, preparing those bodies for what is going to be represented. We are going to tell a story of violence, but we are going to do it together at all times,” says Lucía Delgado, the other co-founder of IntimAct.
Furthermore, their work is not only limited to the work they do with the artists, but they think about the impact that those images will have on the people who watch that series or film. “We must be able to generate conversations about the impact of these images on society. We must be aware of how we record sexual violence, of what images we are going to leave there in the world. Especially now, because with the Internet era it is inevitable that we have to have another type of responsibility with the images we generate, because there is a permanence and there is a reproducibility of the content, especially if it is taken out of its narrative context,” says Cerezo. .
This is a conversation that the American director Martha Coolidge already started several decades ago, when in 1976 she released a hybrid between fiction and documentary in which she told the story of her own rape, and combined it with reflections on her responsibility as a filmmaker to the Time to tell that story.
And the fact is that, at a time when new MeToo accusations continue to emerge in different territories in the film industry – such as the French case in these weeks -, that sexual education in schools is still very deficient, and that the majority Part of the sexual references of people—especially the youngest—are found in cultural products and pornography, Delgado and Cerezo are aware that their work entails a responsibility. “Every time we manage to transform a scene that was initially going to be penetrative intercourse into masturbation or another type of activity, no one finds out, no one knows that that was not the case in the script, but for us it is a victory. In the same way as when we manage to introduce a moment in which, in a very natural way, a character uses a contraceptive method,” they say.
There were millions of people who, at the time, saw The last Tango in Paris either 9 and a half weeksin the same way that now there are millions of people who are enjoying the new season of The Bridgertons, with scenes in which male characters perform oral sex on female characters, or where women’s bodies that deviate from normativity and white hegemony are presented to us as desirable and beautiful. “We have an audiovisual language at a technical level that today has at its disposal tools that are constantly evolving, which is a precious opportunity to continue imagining and creating imaginaries that go beyond the references we have,” conclude the co-founders of IntimAct. .
Cinema and series are developing this new audiovisual language in relation to representations of sexuality and sexual violence, and, therefore, we are observing how our imaginaries gradually find paths that move away from the canon and allow us to explore other forms. to live sex and desire.
