The Art of Erin Wilson

Erin Cressida Wilson, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter, is hot. Her writing is hot, the classes she teaches at Duke as associate professor in theatre studies are hot, and her movie Secretary, which prompted the jury at Sundance to make up an award on the spot, is really, really hot.

Wilson's erotic literary world is a powerful one, to be sure--a vein of pulsing sexuality that challenges through excitement and celebration, rather than resorting to politically-loaded shock tactics. Her refusal to politicize sex makes the writing rare and compelling: a simple triumph of, in her words, "female sexuality with no apologies."

Her screenplay for this year's film Secretary certainly makes none of them. It stars Maggie Gyllenhaal (of the criminally unnoticed Donnie Darko) and James Spader (a Sundance veteran of the seminal sex, lies, and videotape) as two sexually extreme characters who enter into a rather unusual employer/employee relationship. The woman finds an appropriate outlet for her secretive impulses in her punitively accommodating boss--after all, there's really no reason that office chores and handcuffs need be mutually exclusive, is there?

In other hands, such a racy subject may have led into a po-faced parable against deviance or been trivialized by absurdity. But Wilson herself describes it as "a very simple love story about two people who fall in love, but who fall in love with each other's shadows--their dark sides--first."

In its warm review of Secretary, Variety magazine affirmed that the extreme sexuality operates as a framework for intricate character development rather than titillation: "resonant, distinctively romantic and very gratifying.... Anyone seeking kinky bondage kicks will leave needing to find relief elsewhere." It's the feel-good sado-masochism movie of the year!

And apparently distinguished enough to make a strong showing at a Sundance festival that has been dubbed the "Year of Busting Female Stereotypes"--a trend Wilson acknowledges as "very refreshing." Secretary was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize, and director Steven Shainberg walked away with a Special Jury Prize for originality. "Special," as in, "made up on the spot." The special honor has brought Secretary a considerable amount of attention, and Wilson said there are deals on the table for potential distribution to a wider audience.

Of course, the film market for light S/M romances is somewhat unproven. But that's all the more reason for Wilson's screenplay to prove it. Though positive female characters thrive in a climate like Sundance, mainstream cinema still holds females bound within sexist roles. Sex and nudity and violence are exploited throughout the system, and this observation prompts Wilson to wonder aloud, "Why should it be strange to see a loving relationship that acknowledges violence and nudity and sex?"

But the realm of cinema doesn't seem to hold Wilson's attention--despite the encouraging success of her recent entry into it. She loves the transgendered rock-opera Hedwig and the Angry Inch but found last year's other musical, Moulin Rouge, to be unbearable--"an assault." And she mistrusts any film that strays too far from reality: "I take them too seriously, I get too involved.... I'm a writer that naturally likes to weave in and out of realities and have fine lines between dream and real. Because my mind is already like that, I hate to be pushed further into it."

And yet, Erin Cressida Wilson and Lillian Ann Slugocki never intended to be dangerous. Just sexy. "Our agenda was that we had no agenda," claims Wilson. This powerful yet simple act of depoliticized sexual exploration becomes more pronounced in the context of other female erotica of the O90s. The Erotica Project was being written around the time that Eve Ensler was developing The Vagina Monologues. Both were critically acclaimed upon release, and yet it was The Vagina Monologues that went on to worldwide renown and annual Valentine's Day performances. Ensler's political bent differs markedly from the tone of Wilson's piece, a fact that may account for the wider success of Monologues. And its fiery anti-phallic declarations were probably instrumental in garnering such popularity, an idea that makes Erin grimace in frustration.

"Of the pieces I saw, every portrayal of heterosexual sex was negative--a rape or a molestation. The only one that wasn't was the lesbian scene." Wilson rejects this phallus-rejection: "I mean, we're still going out with men--we must like something about them."

God bless you, Erin Cressida Wilson.

In Wilson's writing, the psychological and emotional dimensions are inextricable from the sexual--as reviewers have noticed about both The Erotica Project and Secretary, what looks like erotica actually feels like poetry. But she's very wary of being pigeonholed into this kind of writing and insists that it does not contain her aspirations. "I think I'm done," Wilson says flatly when asked whether there's more erotica to come from her. "But," her face brightening, "I would really like to teach a class here on it."

"I love teaching here," she says of her seven years at Duke. "It keeps me grounded and involved, and I learn a lot from my students. It sort of brings me back to the process of writing, the original germ or spark, which is very important--especially when there is a lot of hype around a project."

Her students certainly see the side of her which, for me, was buried at first amid the sexual imagery of her work. Between all the praise for her classes, they mention that erotica "never really comes up." And flipping back through The Erotica Project, I realize that it's not even about sex--at least, not entirely. It's about the thinking and talking--writing--about sex that, in some ways, is even more exciting than the act itself.