Weekly Intimate Labor Abstract Award
As I said, the
Cheang Shu Lea’s Japanese sci-fi porn film I.K.U. inducts the viewer as corporate manufacturer and consumer of the polymorphous sexual experiences collected mostly by simulation Japanese women. As viewer, the distinction between production and consumption collapses, as replicant female Japanese sex worker becomes both the instrument for the accumulation of sexual experience and the direct instrument of sexual pleasure. The replicant sex worker implodes fixed framings of the relationship among abstract labor, the body of the laborer, and commodity capitalism.
So, you’re probably wondering what this film is really about and whether you should put it in your Netflix cue. It must be a very serious art film indeed to become the object of scholarly research and commentary.
The reviewers at IMDB.com apparently haven’t given sufficient thought to the serious side of this movie. Here’s what the critics say:
Directed by a woman, this film is a mix of styles that reminds me of Blade Runner, Tron, Yellow Submarine, Matrix, (nearly) hard-core porno, bio-sex-technology, and a lot more.
The story thread of this is clever enough to warrant description.
No, it’s clever enough to warrant a dissertation!
Its designed as if it were a chapter in a “Bladerunner” world: replicants designed for (or at least adapted for) sex. The story is pretty complex, not in what you see but in what is explained. A replicant takes on seven bodily forms, so as to collect a variety of intense orgasms (apparently the Japanese term for orgasm is iku). The purpose of this is to transfer them to a pill so an evil corporation can make money and gain power. By transferring the orgasmic knowledge to the company, the replicant will buy her freedom.
Corporations are always evil in films and feminist conferences, but would it be so bad to have an orgasm pill? Snippets from other critics:
. . . a cyber punk piece of censored frustration.
I lost track of the so-called story after the first naked Japanese babe showed up on screen.
If you look at the box art and read the description this movie sounds like a Japanese “Barbarella” with sex scenes. Instead what you get is a silly porn masquerading as art.
Mercifully the version I saw was only 73 minutes long. I enjoyed it and found it exciting but soon started looking at my watch when it was apparent that nothing was really going to happen beyond sex scene after sex scene.
Form over substance sex video that forgot to make the sex interesting.
Embarrassing waste of time.
