Review of David Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus

Shortbus, the succès fou of independent filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell, is the ultimate feel good-movie. It is a heartwarming comedy with an avowed critical edge. Mitchell says in an interview that the film is about diffusing the fear that has become so prevalent in American society and politics. “Why is it that terrorists, illegal immigrants, and sexual outlaws are equated as equally dangerous by the right wing?” he wonders in New York Magazine. The film, however, does not so much seem to engage with the question why this is done, as with the question how this is done. It paints a picture of a society in which the distinction between the real and the hyperreal has been dissolved. One need only look at the causes for going to war in Iraq to see how radically substantial reality is replaced by a generally accepted reality shaped by political circumstances. The lack of reality, however, leaves a void, a void we fill with the only option left to us, that is consuming a commodified, hyperreal version of reality. As Mitchell points out, art, politics and sex (and one could add innumerable more fields of social interaction) are infiltrated by consumerism.

His focus in Shortbus is sex. Kids, he repeats in various interviews (for instance here), now learn about sex mainly from porn, because it's available on the internet, and porn, he continues, imposes a certain image of sexuality. Literally in the sense that it makes you believe you have to have sex in a certain order, and in more profound ways because it connects sex to credit cards and to the fervent labeling of identity politics and the porn industry (gay, straight, twink, top, bottom, butch etc.). Shortbus tries to liberate one from this limited conception of sex so as to criticize the stranglehold of consumerism in contemporary Western societies. In an ambiguous way, however, the film shows how hard it is to free oneself completely of normative schemes. It promotes living out your sexual fantasies as one way of liberation or subversion. But how authentic is this liberated desire and how effective is it in changing existing social, political, and economic structures?

It is entirely appropriate that Shortbus uses and shows ‘real’ sex rather than the sheeted and hyperreal version of Hollywood (although it is ironic that the male actors apparently needed viagra to keep them going). ‘Real’ as opposed to hyperreal is the defining opposition of the film, which is nicely summed up at the beginning of the film in the visit of gay lovers James and Jamie to ‘relations councilor/sex therapist’ Sofia. After a few minutes of one-on-one conversation with the therapist, Jamie happily exclaims he has had a breakthrough. In fact he hasn’t been close to one. Nor does Sofia, who—it turns out—has never had a ‘real’ orgasm.

The yearning for real experiences is often (in ‘real’ life as much as in the film) translated into unconventional and sometimes extreme experiences. This urge for the unconventional, however, does not automatically lead to a closing of the gap between real experiences and simulacra, but can easily produce a new rhetoric of hyperrealism. In Shortbus this is, ironically, represented by the club which gives the film its name, an underground sex club which, while apparently devoid of commodified sexuality, nevertheless subscribes to or even imposes normative schemata. An example of subscribing to a cultural scheme is the desire for a ‘significant other’, for an exclusive emotional bond beyond the ‘mere’ sexual as illustrated by Ceth. He cruises the club with a ‘partner-finder’, an electronic gadget identifying your ideal partner. An example of a cultural code imposed by the visitors of shortbus is the need for Sofia to experience a real orgasm, a hitherto apparently not so problematic problem (after all she enjoys sex) which, after its idealization, or should I say, divination in a conversation with a lesbian subsection in the club, she then tries to trigger with a remote controlled vibration egg. That these gadgets do not bring a resolution to their desires is consistent with the movie’s narrative, but the fact that the narrative itself is structured upon the final resolution of , amongst others, Ceth’s and Sofia’s ‘problems’, does point to a protonormative agenda which promotes liberation of certain cultural schemata, but leaves intact another set of cultural assumptions. The result is a highly ambiguous, somewhat vacuous Bohemianism that reminds one too readily of the ‘let’s make love, not war’ adage of the hippie movement. The film acknowledges this connection when a shortbus-host says “It’s like the sixties, only with less hope”.

Two other narrative strands come together in the attempted suicide of James. James, a former male hooker, has literally become impenetrable as a result of too much vacuous sex. Thus an overexposure to commodified sexuality has caused an abstention of anal penetration, which we could, in a mirroring of Sofia’s ultimate female bliss, interpret as the privileged moment of homosexual elation. This barrier which constrains him from the realization of his happiness/freedom, leads, it seems, to his suicide attempt. The success of this attempt is prevented by his voyeuristic across-the-street neighbor, Caleb, a stalker cum guardian angel, who has so excessively romanticized James and Jamie that he even tries to intervene in ‘real’ life by trying to prevent Ceth from mixing with the couple because they, ostensibly, are ‘perfect as they are’—a blatant misinterpretation. The suicide attempt forces him to leave his passive position and draw James from the pool in which he is drowning himself, eventually, thereby, saving James and himself. This is symbolized by the fact that James allows Caleb to penetrate him, causing James’ ultimate redemption, and also Caleb’s who can finally start an active life of his own. This double breakthrough affirms the function of anal penetration as a pivotal moment on the road to liberty.

The counterpoint of all these breakthroughs can be found in the character of dominatrix Severin. Her inability to self-realization as a result of commodified sex even exceeds James’ blockage. She cannot, for instance, say her real name. When Sofia, ever the therapist, asks her to write down her name, she reluctantly writes ‘Jennifer’, only to efface this apparent progress by giving as her surname ‘Aniston’. Severin remains bound up within a commodity fetishism that is comically illustrated by two dildos in a windowsill overlooking ground zero (ironically subverting a later statement in the film that 9/11 is the only real event in many young peoples life). She is unable to step outside her role as dominatrix, and in that respect she stands for America at large which also is unable to sidestep the language of domination, Hollywood, and money. She operates entirely in a realm of simulacra, and this makes her extremely anxious. Instead of a breakthrough she has a breakdown during which she sobs and discloses that all that she wants is a nice house in the suburbs.

Her agony is shown in the closing sequence of the film, but only in passing. The focus during this scene, in which all characters gather in Shortbus during the New York blackout, is on tying up the various narrative strands; on James and Jamie, who seem to reestablish their monogamous relationship, on Ceth and Caleb, who seem to become romantically interested in each other, and, of course, on Sofia, who finally achieves her orgasm, creating so much energy that it ends the Blackout. That the rather distressed state of contemporary American society is dealt with as a point in passing, is appropriate for a film which romanticizes the positive power of sex and love. Directing ones desires towards achieving orgasms may be very pleasurable and soothing, but will dilute any real action towards the more structural changes that are so urgently needed.

One might contradict that the jouissance the film advocates provides the critical counterpoint to the present state of the American society in that it is precisely this message that has been confined by the conservative revolution of the last decennium. For several reasons I would disagree. First, as I have tried to make clear, the desire the film celebrates, is not as liberal as it might seem at first glance. It is at best a very partial liberation affirming several traditional values and cultural clichés. Second, it ‘personalizes’ the ‘political’ and thus revisits not only to the ‘sixties’, but also to the days of the identity politics which, despite its obvious positive contributions during the 1970s and 1980s, has turned so murky and ineffectual during the 1990s. Finally, whatever remains of its purported subversive message is castrated by the narrative closure (or should I say totalization) of the film which remains faithful to its genre and bows its head to an overwhelmingly ‘happy end’. What this ending signifies is that what we have seen is only a film—fiction, not reality. It diffuses the prevalent fear, as Mitchell says, but only, unfortunately, as long as the film lasts. Recent Spanish comedies, notably those of Pedro Almodóvar, have shown that superb comedies do not need traditional narrative closure. Shortbus’ subsumption to this traditional genre characteristic makes the film's texture no more real than the hyperreality it sets out to criticize. It presents us with a fictively mediated picture of reality created for our entertainment—a goal, I must admit, it reaches very effectively.