Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that's what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity.
— Anatole Broyard, born on this date in 1920
Strangely enough, Frank, I got into a lengthy telephone jeremiad with a friend on this very same question. The point was on the FX front in audio drama, but it shares much in common with literature -- perhaps because there's a very dimensional emotional intimacy between artist and audience in both mediums that requires SERIOUS care and attention to get right.
ReplyDeleteI pointed out that a bad sex scene in a novel or a bad sex scene in an audio drama actually THROWS YOU OUT of the story. Many audio drama producers rely on a cartoonish high-pitched exaggerated kiss or, in matters of sex, over-the-top physicality and risible grunting. And it just sounds so goddamned phony. (The BBC is the worst offender, perhaps because of British reserve or cluelessness about sex. My own foley work on intimacy is a direct RESPONSE to the UK calumny!)
What you need to do -- in both forms -- is make it as real and as soft and as subtly layered as you can, thus reflecting the actual human experience. I won't go into the elaborate recording details of how I get my kissing foley, except to say that it usually involves me and another person, careful mic placement, and above all, something that SOUNDS subdued and human and intimate, and thus believable. I've never received any complaints about the emotional intimacy in my audio drama. If anything, I've been complimented! On the other hand, it's also quite difficult (but not impossible) to do kissing foley if you really like the other person. Alas, the sacrifices we make for art. :)