One of the fundamental controversies around Carolee Schneemann’s experimental short film Fuses (1974) is its unique blending of filmic artistry with sexually explicit images that are typically associated with pornography. As B. Ruby Rich points out in their examination of Fuses, it is this sense of rescuing the film from a particular type of moral panic that she argues relegated the short film to the basement of obscurity: “Because Fuses uses a vocabulary of images shared by pornography, that whole Pandora’s box of moral-artistic fever has also come to plague the film” (Rich 27). In essence, the question becomes: is Fuses art or smut? As Rich rightly notes, the very artistry of Fuses elevates it above the provincial, reductive reasoning most people of the time had about pornography into a genuine discussion of bravery, sexuality and intimacy.
Displayed largely in a kaleidoscopic set of grainy, tinted glimpses of Schneemann and her lover having sex, the images often shown in barely-visible, seconds-long glimpses that have been treated through special cinematic development processes, Fuses shows sex and love as something mysteriously calming. Schneeman sets the images of her lovemaking against the calm sounds of the beach, seagulls calling and waves crashing, as if to identify sex as both an extremely natural and tumultuous act. Close-ups of her lover’s erect penis are interspersed with images of their cat staring into the lens, or the curve of her hips moving against his in silhouette. Contrasting the animalistic nature of sex with the simple aesthetic beauty of the nude human body, Schneeman’s Fuses manages to deftly explore those issues of sex in a way that should feel celebratory, not offensive.
As Rich points out, however, the film was roundly criticized for its titillating imagery, setting the complex issue of whether or not it should be considered porn. In Rich’s mind, Fuses is an example of avant-garde performance art that allows the woman to “control her own lovemaking image” for once (Rich 112). However, some critics may argue that this just has the effect of allowing the patriarchal male gaze to flourish further by treating herself as a sexual object. That being said, Schneeman overcomes these perceptions by owning that image of herself as a sexual being, thus mitigating its potential sociological damage and making her own body and sex something that she can identify with and be proud of.
Works Cited
Rich, B. Rudy. Chick Flicks. Duke University Press, 1998. Print.
Schneeman, Carolee (dir.). Fuses. 1974. Film.
