Creative Scotland defends 'simulated sex' film but draws the line at 'real sex'

[ArabellaScott]

Creative Scotland have clawed back 90% of funding for 'Rein', but defended their decision to fund it. An earlier R&D grant was not clawed back, and they've refused to publish the grant application.

"Themes of sex and sexuality have been seen in art throughout history and continue to be visible in contemporary life. It is not Creative Scotland’s role to censor work, nor be the arbiters of cultural taste. However, Creative Scotland does have important responsibilities to the public for the appropriate use of public funding, responsibilities we take extremely seriously.”

...

He said: “Rein was originally supported in the knowledge it would be a challenging, creatively ambitious piece of experimental performance art, with a clear storytelling narrative, strong sexual themes and simulated sexual performance, and would speak to a particular audience rather than the mainstream.
...

"The explicit representation of certain aspects of queer culture and sexuality in Rein had been carefully considered in the approved application and the team was understood to be sensitively addressing the nature of the content.
“However, as became clear in March 2024 when the project team developed new content for their website and publicised that as part of a call-out for participants, one new and significant difference emerged which took the project into unacceptable territory. That was the intention to include real sex, as opposed to performance depicting simulated sex, in the work.

“This represented a significant change to the approved project, moving it from ‘performance’ into actuality, and into a space that was, in Creative Scotland’s view, inappropriate for public funding.”

https://archive.ph/oHl67#selection-1349.0-1427.199

Ffs have they no shame.

As soon as you label something as 'Queer' you can be sure that some people will throw money and approbation at it because they see it (and thus themselves) as automatically edgy, cool, or wokier than thou 🤷‍♀️🙄

They are ridiculous and the film sounds ridiculous but actually as a general rule I would say making a distinction between "simulated sex" and real sex seems acceptable. On one side of the line you have what could be art (I mean not always or not always good art) and on the other side porn. If you did start saying "no sexual scenes" you would rapidly get into arguments about what sexual was (and rules about actors keeping one foot on the floor at all times). But you need some sort of a line and that sounds like a good one.

But more likely this is an attempt to save face by a body that was too dazzled by the queerness of it all to ask proper questions/do due diligence before assigning funding.

Well it would seem that creative Scotland knew they were paying to produce a pono all along

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/creative-scotland-in-porn-project-controversy/

FFS
"described her project as ‘pro-sex worker’." Obviously 🙄

Arts are fucked in Scotland.

im making a wee joke, but it’s not remotely funny.

'Now it has been <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/B3vVu/www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/12719394/creative-scotland-controversial-show-sex-acts/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebarweb" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">revealed that, despite officials denying full knowledge of the show’s contents before this point, Creative Scotland was in fact aware of the show’s plans to include ‘non-simulated sex acts’ a year before signing off on the hefty sum.'

'While quango bosses suggested that it was only this year that the full extent of the project’s explicit plans became clear, documents dating back to 2022 suggest otherwise. It transpires that the government-funded quango had sight of a ‘monitoring form’ submitted in 2023 by director Leonie Rae Gasson, which detailed proposals for explicit on-stage sex scenes and the hiring of an intimacy coordinator. Gasson, who promotes herself as someone who approaches her work ‘from a queer and neurodivergent perspective’, has described her project as ‘pro-sex worker’. In the creator’s cash request from 2022, the director added that her team were ‘researching legal and ethical frameworks’ to showcase explicit acts. ‘In this [research and development stage] we will not be filming or performing any explicit sex acts,’ the submission notes, before adding: ‘We anticipate the final performance to do so.’ In descriptions of the performance provided to Creative Scotland, officials were told of plans for the use of ‘nude Doppelbangers’, ‘leather-clad Daddies’ and ‘sheer tulle draped Princesses’. Crikey.'

I think this is an interesting problem.

Because after all, to a large extent this is the line that exists in mainstream films. If it's "acting" it is ok (albeit may have a mature audience rating) whereas if it's real sex, generally it will be seen as porn, or at least crossing a major line.

You can have real nudity, even, so long as the sex is faked. Increasingly they talk about it being important that it's done with intimacy coordinators and such.

There are a few exceptions, Brown Bunny for example, which aren't mainstream, but generally are seen as art films, not porn.

I don't think we have a very culturally consistent view about depictions of sex, tbh.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceqq04v75p9o

According to this article: "Her [Gasson's] previous work includes a project at the Traverse Theatre with Lyceum Youth Theatre involving "teenagers and a child" taking items from audience members' bags and making sex toys with them."

Just grim.