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Sex Sounds: On Aural Explicitness in

image of Sex Sounds: On Aural Explicitness in Call Me by Your Name

On its reception, Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017) remained insufficiently explicit for some critics, who lamented instances such as the pan shot that takes us away from Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) in bed together: ‘Once the two lovers begin having sex for the first time, however, the camera coyly drifts over to an open window, their early coital moans gentle in the background – the kind of tasteful dodge that practically nods to Code-era Hollywood’. This response is certainly understandable, and recalls a similar rallying cry from Rose Troche's 1994 film Go Fish: ‘What would you rather our collective lesbian image be? Hot, passionate, say-yes-to-sex-dykes or touchy-feely, soft-focus sisters of the woodlands?’ Guadagnino, in making a mainstream, high-profile adaptation, has, in the eyes of some critics, opted for the ‘touchy-feely soft-focus’ route. However, I would like to suggest that the film locates its explicitness in its sound design. This clever strategy is used to clearly convey actions which are not shown directly on screen. The film is filled with the sound of clothing slipping on and off of bodies, and with the sound of bodies in contact. In the scenes in which Oliver fellates Elio, there is audible sound design that articulates the action taking place. Drawing on work that discusses the importance of sound, audio design and affect, I would like to counter the suggestion that Call Me by Your Name is overtly coy in its display of sex. By attending to the details of the film's sound design we can see that it deliberately evokes the affect of pornography in order to amplify the film's explicitness.

Keywords: affect ; attentive listener ; audio design ; bodies on screen ; eroticism ; feeling ; intimacy ; Luca Guadagnino ; pornographic conventions ; queer desire ; sexuality ; sound design ; touch

Hardback ISBN: 9781789389425
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Sex Sounds: On Aural Explicitness in Call Me by Your Name
Intellect , 91 (2024); https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1386/9781789389425_7
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References

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References

  1. Aciman, André. Find Me. London: Faber & Faber, 2019.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Angel, Katherine. Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again. London: Verso, 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Alexander, Jonathan. ‘Being Cruised’, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2 October 2018. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/being-cruised/.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Atherton Lin, Jeremy. Gay Bar: Why We Went Out. London: Granta, 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Baron, Cynthia, and Sharon Marie Carnicke. Reframing Screen Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Brody, Richard. ‘The Empty, Sanitized Intimacy of Call Me by Your Name’, New Yorker, 28 November 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-empty-sanitized-intimacy-of-call-me-by-your-name.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Di Mattia, Joanna. ‘Some Thoughts on the Erotic Aesthetic in Luca Guadagnino's “Desire Trilogy”’, Senses of Cinema 86 (2018). www.sensesofcinema.com/2018/feature-articles/luca-guadagninos-desiretrilogy/.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Dolan, Xavier, dir. Matthias & Maxime. Sons of Manual, Téléfilm Canada, Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles, 2019.
  9. Ducastel, Oliver, and Jacques Martineau, dir. Théo et Hugo dans le même bateau (Theo and Hugo). Ecce Films, Epicentre Films, 2016.
  10. Fife Donaldson, Lucy. ‘Feeling and Filmmaking: The Design and Affect of Film Sound’, The New Soundtrack 7, no. 1 (2017): 31–46.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Guadagnino, Luca, dir. Io sono l'amore (I Am Love). First Sun, Mikado Film, Rai Cinema, 2009.
  12. Guadagnino, Luca, dir. A Bigger Splash. Frenesy Film Company, Cota Film, 2015.
  13. Guadagnino, Luca, dir. Call Me by Your Name. Frenesy Film Company, La Cinefacture, RT Features, 2017.
  14. Guadagnino, Luca, dir. Bones and All. Frenesy Film Company, Per Capita Productions, 2022.
  15. Guiraudie, Alain, dir. L'Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake). Les Films du Worso, Arte France Cinéma, M141, Films de Force Majeure 2013.
  16. Halberstam, Jack. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Lodge, Guy. ‘Why Is Call Me by Your Name So Coy About Gay Sex?’, The Guardian, 23 November 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/23/call-me-by-your-name-gay-sex-oscars.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Mars-Jones, Adam. Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-Esteem. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Miz Cracker. ‘Why Do Gays Keep Falling for Call Me by Your Name?’, Slate, 28 November 2017. https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/11/call-me-by-your-name-is-not-a-gay-movie.html.109
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Miz, Cracker. ‘Why Do Gays Keep Falling for Call Me by Your Name?’, Slate, 28 November 2017. https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/11/call-me-by-your-name-is-not-a-gay-movie.html.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Mowlabocus, Sharif, and Andy Medhurst. ‘Six Propositions on the Sonics of Pornography’, Porn Studies 4, no. 2 (2017): 210–24.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Saketopoulou, Avgi. ‘To Suffer Pleasure: The Shattering of the Ego as the Psychic Labor of Perverse Sexuality’, Studies in Gender and Sexuality 15 (2014): 254–68.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Sobchack, Vivian. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2004.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Sontag, Susan. ‘The Pornographic Imagination.’ In Styles of Radical Will, by Susan Sontag, 35–73. London: Penguin, [1966] 2009.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Troche, Rose, dir. Go Fish. Can I Watch, Islet, KPVI, Killer Films, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1994.
  26. Williams, Linda. ‘Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, Excess.’ In Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, edited by Sue Thornham, 267–81. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, [1991] 1999.
     [Google Scholar]

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