The location is perfect for the occasion. Casting was great; never mind if characterisation will be another thing. Cameras are ready and actors are in character. Directors still have scripts in their hands, to see whether actors will stick to their lines or adlib. Camera angles have been agreed on. A new Ghanaian film is about to be born: Action. Cameras pan, zoom and roll. Then suddenly, we hear “cut, cut, cut”. The scene has to be taken all over again. The kiss was not passionate enough. It seemed quite contrite and too choreographed. “Get her lips and suck them. Make it real. That is how they want it,” a director yells. A close angle shot shows the full circumference of a wet tongue salivating on another and the other hitting the alveolar ridge of the partner’s.
The next action in the plot involves sex. “And here, we are not pretending to be having sex; we are going to have real, passionate sex,” the director might add. With the kiss still fresh on their lips, actors and actresses stretch open their legs and slug it out, cameras giving very close shots of regions of the body that are usually hidden beneath the sheets. They turn around and change positions, trying unusual ones such as the wheelbarrow and anything less of the missionary. After lots of goings and comings, there is a climax. But the film itself is yet to reach a climax. Sex is the rising action, and it will be the dénouement. In the end, we didn’t produce a porn film but we are horny all the same.
A new Ghanaian film has appropriately been titled ‘Adults Only’. The plot is not exactly clear, but nobody will be interested in making sense out of a sexy sequence of events, just for the sake of sex. It features some of our brilliant actors and actresses engaged in what is strictly for the eyes of adults only. There is an all holds barred steamy lesbian showpiece of passionate, nipple feasting rendezvous. Then, there are otherwise good actors biting out raw flesh and banging away, sweating it out like no miner’s business.
Reviews have been critical. How exactly do we want our films? Do we want to see folks showing naked bum and kissing through all the pages of the script? Can we ever tell a sexy story without invoking Pamela Anderson? Are scriptwriters and directors needlessly titillating the sexual fantasies of a mostly religious population?
Who wants to go back to the ‘I Told You So’ days? They told our story very well but we have moved on. What prevented Kobina Jones from kissing Rosina, and probably getting couple of ‘quickies’ from some of Rosina’s friends before the wedding? It may not sit well with our idea of morality but it would be a likely sequence in the plot of Sex and the City. Modernity, really, is about modernising the way we used to do things. If Dwokoto has given way to sexy G-strings, to our delight and comfort, then perhaps soft porn and full blown porn must be the new vehicle for expressing modern sexuality.
But at what price? At what point do these soft porn films become dangerous for our purposes? If the producers have identified a good way to sell sex, then it means it in the interest of the buyers. In most cases, whenever a marketing objective is achieved, a product is deemed satisfactory. Perhaps, the marketing strategy is working but customers are still undecided about the usefulness of the product. Or just plainly, we love porn.
Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin
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