Putting the "O" in Literature

Stoya knows good material in Hysterical Literature.

«««« Hysterical Literature. Directed by Clayton Cubitt. On YouTube.

“I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a hot-gushing, butt-cramping, gut hosing orgasm.”

― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

         

          Over the past two years, photographer/filmmaker Clayton Cubitt has been posting a series of provocative black-and-white videos on YouTube. Each features a solitary woman sitting behind a table with a book. After introducing herself and the title, she proceeds to read until—anywhere from five to twelve minutes later—she has an orgasm. Then she repeats the title and author of the book, and the video ends. Cubitt punnishly calls the series Hysterical Literature.

          These women aren't acting. The climaxes are courtesy of an unseen participant, hidden under the table with a Hitachi Magic Wand—the so-called "Cadillac of personal massagers." Some of Cubitt's subjects are widely known, such as comedian Margaret Cho, adult film star Stoya, and burlesque performer Stormy Leather, but most aren't celebrities at all. With no point or purpose overtly expressed, it's hard to say whether Cubitt wants to say something about sex, literature, their intersection, or something else entirely. Whatever it's about, Hysterical Literature is compulsively watchable, drawing more than thirty million views to date.

          Like some of the best subversive art, the series' tight, predictable structure conceals surprising complexities. The viewer hangs around for the climax, but it exposed to far more than moaning along the way. The person under the table, unseen but most definitely present, might as well be the writer him- or herself, wielding a particularly evocative "pen".

          The books—chosen by the performers themselves—tend to be cluster on the literary side of the shelf, including works from Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman, and Bret Easton Ellis. But they also include less familiar material, such as Supervert's Necrophilia Variations and John Ashbury's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Even when the book is a classic, the selection may or may not bear direct relation to the task at hand. The "therapeutic" torture scene in A Clockwork Orange, where the hero's body is forcibly conditioned to abhor violence, seems like a canny choice by "Amanda"; on the other hand, a dissertation on the music of Whitney Houston (in American Psycho) seems almost random—though quite fetching when Stormy Leather squeals at the part about the "great keyboard riff" on Houston's "How Will I Know".

          One question Cubitt doesn't seem to be interested in is "Is this pornography?" His subjects are, after all, fully clothed, and none of the sub rosa goings-on are seen. Aside from the buzz of the Magic Wand, which is only occasionally audible, one might think these women are hot and bothered about reading itself. It almost qualifies as a public service message. If this is pornography, then When Harry Met Sally should be filed in the XXX section too, just for Meg Ryan's thundering O in the Carnegie Deli.

          There's been no shortage of critical ink spilled on the nature and significance of the female orgasm. As Germaine Greer noted forty-four years ago in The Female Eunuch, it has "…become more and more of a mystery, at the same time as it has been exalted as a duty. Its actual nature has become a matter for metaphysical speculation." Women relishing their sexuality has always had ambiguous implications, depending on whether it is seen as something to celebrate or control. For men, women's capacity for multiple climaxes has been an object of awe, and a brass ring for them to strive for. As Greer argued, if conventional sex is something men perform and women judge, then the orgasm is the Perfect 10. So much more so, you'd think, if that 10 is earned—or seems to be earned—by words alone.

          Recently, science has peeled back some of the mystery. Brain scans of women in flagrante have shown activation in the hippocampus, cingulate cortex, striatum, hypothalamus, and cerebellum—areas associated with short-term memory, emotion, motivation, and movement. Fittingly, these are areas involved in the active appreciation of literature too. Movements in a story are mirrored by neurons in the reader; allusions in a literary text can trigger trains of personal memories that help make it a rich, immersive experience. Not surprisingly, the areas of the frontal cortex associated self-control go dark.

          But for my money the most apt comparison is not anatomical but spiritual. The orgasm has been long been called "a little death"— the closest mortals can get to the divine, or at least to the Grim Reaper. Not for nothing did the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini like to

Bernini's Blessed Ludovica Albertoni

evoke a sex-drenched union with God, as (for instance) in his obviously orgasmic funeral monument, Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. Overt religiosity is currently not in good odor among the literary classes, but it is not unusual to approach literature itself with a kind of religious awe. In this sense, Hysterical Literature is not about sex, but about women engaged in the only intellectually respectable form of worship.

          Why women? For this, it's worth clicking on some of the male parodies of Cubitt's series. The point there is comedic, of course—in the briefest, "Isaac" gets only one minute and nine words into his selection from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The joke isn't only on these particular guys. This may be a straight male speaking, but the bookish, almost shy Stoya abruptly waxing beatific for art is—if not exactly a sacrament—a thing of beauty. Watching a man offer up his teaspoon of fluid? Not so much.

           However you care to read it, Cubitt's series is worth coming for.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro