The other night, watching the movie Alien 3, I realized that among its other creepy charms, it contains a noteworthy example of sex as structural element. Here’s how it works:
The forever doomed spacewoman Ellen Ripley (played, as usual by Sigourney Weaver) has a quiet sex interlude with the resident doctor on the horror planet where she’s marooned. By quiet, I mean we don’t stay with it, have to go through it–the grinding, the panting, etc. That happens “off-stage.” (Shortly after, by the way, the Doc is consumed by the beast and abruptly gone from the plot.)
So what does it mean that these two make love? Nothing? Anything?
On the character level it softens and rounds out both both Ripley and the Doc–they are “human” after all. On the structural level it provides a moment of calm, a little breathing space between horrors. On the plot level…well, the plot consequences don’t add up to more than nil. What sex does for Alien 3 is useful, but when you add it up, of minor importance. It would have been inappropriate, then, to dwell on it.
Contrast this with the page upon page D.H. Lawrence devotes to his lavish and painstaking exploration of Lady Chatterley’s love-making. It’s beautifully written, and certainly fun to read, but does it perhaps call a bit too much attention to itself? Can we even venture to say it throws the narrative ever so slightly out of balance…?
My answer is no. Sexuality–specifically Lady Chatterly’s–is what Lawrence’s story is about. The prevalence of rampant sex not only supports the story, it IS the story.
Violence is the other member of the dynamic duo of literary spices. It is sex’s darker brother. They’re both radioactive (my personal term for them is “hyper-elements”), so much so that over-using them can take your reader’s focus out of the story. As writers, we are in something of a bind using these tools. “Why not?” we say. Or even: “how can we not?” But there’s also: “How much is too much?”
Once again, the principles are bone simple:
• Anything that weakens, compromises, undercuts, confuses your story is bad.
• Anything the strengthens, builds, clarifies, supports your story is good.
These two pillars alone, I feel, are all you need to make the right decision about whether, how much, when, etc. to use “the spices.”
