When I was watching the films of Lars von Trier recently, I made the bold decision to watch Nymphomaniac with someone else. All I and they knew about the film, besides its runtime of close to five and a half hours, was that it had real sex scenes that were created by digitally compositing the actor/actress’s upper half with the lower half of porn actors/actresses. After we’d finished the film, we had plenty to discuss but one thing they said that really struck me was “I don’t think the real sex was necessary. It was gratuitous.” I understood what they were saying but I also had the thought “Why not?” and so I decided that I’d express my thoughts today on why I believe that gratuitousness isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Let’s start off by defining what gratuitousness is and, in particular, what it means to the greater population. The term itself, gratuitousness, is defined as “the state or quality of being unnecessary or with no cause” which can be quite general. For instance, I could describe a story arc in a film as gratuitous if I think it didn’t contribute to the work. However, with regards to the general population, I’ve often heard the term gratuitous applied to film, TV and video games with graphic violence or sex. When I ask why they consider those things to be gratuitous, I’m often met with the response “Because I don’t need to see it”. While I understand that seeing these things might not strictly be important when it comes to story, I do think they can be very important when it comes to themes and impact.
Since I’ve already mentioned Nymphomaniac, why don’t we start with that. While it’s true that we don’t need to see the sex in order to understand the story, I do think that describing it as unnecessary is too harsh. For one, the film is about sex! I know this may sound strange but don’t you think, if the film is about sex, that we should see the sex? Additionally, I do believe that allowing us to see the source of suffering and addiction for the main character is quite important, particularly as she becomes more and more extreme in order to alleviate her emotional numbness. Sure, seeing this can be quite difficult and, in many ways, unpleasant but I do ultimately believe that the message of the film would be dulled were it less visceral.
Similarly, I think the principle similarly applies to violence within media. Avid readers of this blog will know about my love for the medium of horror and I could do an article in and of itself in how visceral violence enhances the experience. However, I thought I might simply point to a cinematic movement that revels in the visceral and transgressive, the New French Extremity, and how the inclusion of graphic violence elevates many of these films. Taking my personal favourite New French Extremity film that I’ve seen so far, Dans ma Peau is a stunning cinematic work about a woman who discovers and slowly becomes addicted to self-mutilation. There are sequences within the film where we see her graphically cutting, slicing and tearing herself. However, once she’s finished, she has to figure out how to conceal her wounds and attempt to continue her regular everyday life and seeing how she has disfigured herself and her attempts to hide the end result from others is, as far as I’m concerned, a vital part of the film. Graphic violence and sex are often looked down upon but I think they have a place.
However, there is an area of gratuitousness that I’m not fond of and that’s when it disrupts the pacing. I came across an example of this recently when I was watching the Herschell Gordon Lewis film “The Gore Gore Girls”. The movie itself follows a private investigator who is hired to solve the murder of a stripper which quickly turns into serial killing. The movie itself isn’t amazing by any stretch of the imagination but it’s certainly an amusing watch and one of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ better films. However, something which I was not particularly fond of was that, at the strip club, the camera would linger for what felt like long stretches of time on the stripper’s performance. Whenever this happened, it felt like the film came to a screeching halt with little to no story progression taking place and I would slowly lose interest until something of substance happened. This example is very much a case where I would describe those scenes as gratuitous and I would mean that it was unnecessary or with no cause.
It should be obvious that what is gratuitous to one person could be vital or the main attraction for another person. However, with regards to what society views as gratuitousness, I believe there are plenty of examples where it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, I hope that you readers can identify that my view is tied to quality and emotional impact and that there are also plenty of examples where gratuitous violence or sex take away from the work. Let me know your thoughts on gratuitousness, how you personally define it, whether you also believe that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, examples of media where content that would be considered gratuitous enhanced it or where it took away from it and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!