Monday 6 September 2010

Tube Tales: Horny

'Horny' is a short film directed by Stephen Hopkins - released in 1999.  It's about a man who gets sexually aroused by a woman on a tube while it's in motion.


We see a newspaper being held up, similar to the way the average commuter would hold a newspaper whilst walking.  The newspaper has the title of the short film 'Horny' in-captioned in big white, bold lettering on the front and it lists the director's name on it.  First of all, this is the kind of headline we'd expect to see on a tabloid such as 'The Sun' (the newspaper which lists the title); more importantly however, the title isn't presented in graphics or title cars, as it is in feature length films.  It also gives us an idea of the plot (written and pictured on the tabloid), unlike feature length films.

We then see a tracking shot, down a staircase - showing all the commuters going off to work.  The lighting is artificial, which connotes disheartenment on a weekday morning.  The music, which is non-diegetic, starts as the viewpoint, now a side shot, finished and the tracking shot of the main character (a woman) starts.  The music is fast paced, jazzy music: a bass guitar which makes the music have a deep sound.  If fits in with the rate at which the woman's walking, in addition it makes it sound like she's on a mission.  The woman is the only focal point of the camera because she's the one talking to us.

The woman's first line is "Is it just me or do tube journey's make you horny?".  This is a strange first liner for a film as there hasn't even been a formal introduction to her, not only that but she directs the question at the audience.  All characters in feature length films interact with each other, but she talks directly to us as if we're reassuring her; already, we know that she's discomfited with herself as most woman are.  She drops her dress and anxiously picks it up - straight after she's asked us the question.  We see she's in a rush and she continues talking to us, all the while, dabbing her face with cotton wool: she's left home in a rush.  She mentions "being shunted backwards and forwards through a long dark tunnel" which suggests what kind of things we will see later on.  She makes suggestive comments throughout her walk through the station corridor, saying "ejected at the other end" and "sticky".  We can't see in the film what she's talking about, but they are innuendos.

As she sees the tube, stationary at the platform, we see a close up of the nervousness on her face "shit!".  We feel a sense of urgency like she does and even though she hasn't had an official introduction, this situation informally introduces us to her.  We can see that she's talkative because she's chattered away to us and made us develop friendly feelings towards her.  She boards the train at Bethnal Green on the Central Line and as the train moves, she says "it brings out the pube show devil in you".  The train departs and as it  leaves we see a hoarding, advertising a model.

There's one shot of her in the glass door as she examines herself.  This POV shot allows us to get more intimately acquainted with her.  It shows her as skeptical and as she brushes away her hair - unconfident about her appearance.  She tells us "fuck it, it's not as if you're going to see any of these people again"; she's not as insecure as she seems and this is a line which is true for most of us when we're in public.  As she bends down to secure her bag, we see a high angle shot, showing off her curvy bum in her dress.  We see a close-up of an old man, fixating admiringly, down on her and looking to the side to check if anyone else is inspecting.  As the tube stops, liquid lands on the woman's breasts: she catches the man looking at her and she looks back at him with a sexually evocative squint in her eyes.

She sits down (doing her make-up in front of a pocket mirror) and looks at the elderly lady who's sitting next to her (staring at this young exotic woman) with a demeanour (as if to say 'mind your own business!').  The old woman looks shocked and it's only when we see the whip pan of the young woman looking surprised that our attention in drawn to an extreme close-up of the bulge in the man's trousers.  She winds him up by pulling her skirt up, revealing her toned legs, winks at him, blows her breasts just as the train makes a halting sound (like she's polishing her breasts) and making yet another suggestive comment "if you're gonna go for it then why not do it somewhere between Liverpool Street and Tottenham Court Road?" which tells us that she wants the old man to think that she wants to have sexual intercourse with him.  It is through the close-ups of his erect penis animate in his trousers and the close-ups of the amused expressions on other peoples' faces that we find our sense of humour in this.

The scene gets intense when the lights flicker very quickly, symbolising the blankness of the mind when having an orgasm (we see different shots each time the lights flicker, which furthers our sympathy for the man because we don't know what's going on and he thinks it's a set-up) and the cutaways (inside the man's mind) of Margaret Thatcher and the Queen.  At these cutaways, the music fades as the shots do, from jazzy, to spiritual music.  The train exhausts its fumes again and each time it does that, his penis moves more and more upwards, this, along with the sound of a pacing heartbeat, is the metaphor for a climax of an orgasm .  He's imagining the young woman, but trying not to get an orgasm.

The intensity is broken when a little girl comes in, asks her mum "what's that?", pointing at the man's penis and the young and old woman laugh.

'Horny' is metaphorically an orgasm.  It represents both genders as self-conscious, which makes for the intensity of the film, but represents women as teases and a sexually titillating gender whilst men are represented as vulnerable to emotion, victims and easily sexually arousable perverts (hence why an old man got aroused over a young woman).  This film confronts issues everyday that we face with the male and female attraction.  While it would be abnormal to have this in any film in the 1990s, short film acts as a basis for experimentation and opposite-gender attraction has become more common because society is more open to talk about issues such as this.

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