Friday, December 11, 2009

Netflix Three Pack #2: Soft Core Porn Makes You Think

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Friday, December 4, 2009

Tiger Woods' affair offers a teachable moment

Though I am in the middle of my second Netflix three-pack review, I am taking a few minutes to address the altercation that took place at the Woods’ residence early last Friday morning. This blog is about sex and the media. This week, Tigers Woods’ sexual practices became front page news.

Woods has asked for privacy. Obviously, there is little chance of that happening. However, we should keep in mind that his “crime” was a private one. He owes an explanation only to his wife. He did not promise the world he would not commit adultery. If his actions fall outside of the couple’s martial contract, it is wife’s business, no one else’s.

I assume he had promised her monogamy only because of her reaction to the news that he hadn’t delivered it. As I understand what happened: his wife attacked him with a golf club after discovering his affair. Part of me is surprised she reacted so violently. When a model marries the world’s biggest athlete, I tend to think it’s a business deal. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed in her as a Swede—those Northern Europeans are supposed to be free loving swingers.

I guess even the rich feel humiliation. Being a trophy wife is a two way street. Just as he needs an attractive blonde on his arm to help him sell razor blades, she is supposed to be hot enough to keep the attention of a man who has seemingly (but not actually) infinite romantic options.

That is the lesson I take from this event. Why did Woods slept with someone who wasn’t his wife? Because he wanted to. More scientifically, I believe it is the law of diminishing marginal utility. While there is a brief up tick in sexual satisfaction as one gets to know his partner, it soon slops downward. Woods cheated because he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, resist the excitement of someone new, someone different.

This event should also serve as a reminder that infidelity, suspected and/or confirmed, does not justify violence. The police should investigate the incident regardless of the parties’ cooperation. Assault and battery is a public crime.

I don’t want to totally absolve Woods. Lying to one’s sexual partner is both jerky, and is dangerous to her health. Also, Woods has not stood up for himself. He has not defended the right of consenting adults to engage in whatever sexual practices they choose. He has asked for forgiveness rather than asking if what he did was really wrong. I understand his decision. The media might forgive him for cheating on his wife, but it would never forgive him for challenging traditional sexual norms.

The final lesson: you can be a world champion athlete and still sleep with cocktail waitresses. That’s the lesson because those are the facts. Martin Luther King, Jr. had extramarital affairs. So did Albert Einstein. It doesn’t detract from their accomplishments. Monogamy is simple a political message because of all the times the facts have to be shaped to fit its message.

In that sense, I welcome Tiger Woods back to our side. This is the side that points out the limitation of marriage as an institution. It is also the side that insists love is a net benefit to society only when unaccompanied by jealousy. Otherwise it’s just a punch line waiting to happen. Right now, there are plenty of Tiger Woods’ jokes out there.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Random thought: DC needs to act

I watched The Dark Knight over the holiday weekend and I still think it’s over rated. The movie has profound moments but also basic superhero set pieces. The most heavy-handed example is when Rachel, Bruce Wayne love interest, and Harvey Dent, Batman’s most promising civilian ally, are simultaneously but separately tied up next to ticking bombs making the hero chose between his persona’s goals and his own personal wants. Batman’s Choice, so to speak. It’s also annoying that the Joke spends half the movie spouting off about not being into plans and the other half executing really intricate plans.

That said, the movie is still very enjoyable and ranks as one of the better comic book adaptations. Heath Ledger deserved all the praise he received for disappearing into his characterization, but Christian Bale also deserves a lot of credit.

Most of the masked superhero legwork is done by stunt men or computer animators. Toby Maguire plays Peter Parker, not Spider-Man. Michael Keaton could play Batman because he was really only playing Bruce Wayne. Christian Bale plays both by using the old acting tricks of voice and mannerisms, and it helps that he’s not trapped in latex body cast.

The Dark Knight stands as the lone great cinematic achievement from DC Comics. The executives can spin it any way they would like, but they have failed to bring the DC Universe to the big screen.

The original X-Men came out in summer 2000. It is late 2009 and all we have are two great Christopher Nolan movies and a Superman movie that was a domestic box office disappointment and a critical flop. We still don’t have a Wonder Women movie, we still don’t have a Flash movie and we still don’t have a Green Lantern movie. We certainly don’t have a Justice League movie.

Will a live action Batman ever meet a live action Superman? I have heard the issue is a non-starter for Smallville, even though it would make for an epic series finale. They can shrug off the question at ever press conference they give, but DC, which has the advantage of an entertainment juggernaut parent in the form Time Warner, has a moral responsibility to pair the world’s finest together in a live action movie. A responsibility they continue to ignore.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Monday, November 2, 2009

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Business of Women

Last weekend I caught an afternoon screening of The September Issue, the Anna Wintour/Vogue documentary. The movie’s producers had to have been inspired by The Devil Wears Prada, thinking that if Meryl Streep’s version made money, then they should certainly make money with the real Wintour. But The September Issue is not a Prada retread. It has no Anne Hathaway and the younger members of Vogue are seen only as background actors. This movie is about the women on top.

Certainly, the leaders of Vogue chronicled in The September Issue all dress in fashionable, expensive clothes. But they are also women in their 40s and 50s and 60s shot in unflattering lights without movie makeup. For a movie about fashion, The September Issue is about real women…and a few gay men because someone had to inspire Stanley Tucci’s character from Prada.

The problem with the The September Issue is that it lacks movie drama. Officially it’s the story of Vogue’s titular 2007 fall fashion guide that defines a season, weighs over 5 pounds, and comes in at 840 pages. But as a documentary, it fails to create a compelling arch. We see only disconnected glimpses of planning and implementation. The stakes are ill-defined and the obstacles underwhelming.

The conflict is supposed to come from Grace Coddington, who seems the inspiration for Wendie Malick’s character from Just Shoot Me—a ‘60s model turned successful fashion editor. Coddington is a quite competent creative director, though. We see her personally wrangling models on a 1920s inspired photo shoot. But the movie doesn’t explain why that particular set of photos belongs in the September issue.

Wintour’s job is to say yes or no to each photo. Doing so, Wintour is not particularly cruel or overbearing or even brilliant, just in charge. Coddington’s job is to champion her work and to be disappointed when her stuff gets cut. The movie fails to make us believe this is any more important, or any different, from every other mundane workplace disagreement.

If we don’t see the September issue, we do see daily life at a fashion magazine. It is a world where Siena Miller drops by for a fitting and then later editors debate if her photo was too “toothy”. It is days when every other word is airbrush and the most valuable employee is the guy who runs the color printer. It is people like editor-at-large André Leon Talley who plays tennis to lose weight and for an excuse to wear his tennis bracelet…I mean, tennis watch.

Ironically, The September Issue arrives when the national job average climbed to 9.8% in September. I saw this movie while waiting to hear the results of a recent job interview. I watched it expecting a mixture of jealousy and relief. The relief is that I don’t have to report to a boss from hell and I don’t have to worry about back-stabbing co-workers. The jealousy is that these people have their dream jobs while I simply dream of a job.

Coddington explains in a moment of frustration that she stays at Vogue because she cares about the art. Every person, and every organization, goes to work with two goals: 1) make money and 2) fulfill a mission. The first one usually just pays for the second, but the first can be comfortingly objective when the second seems too fleeting.

Studies have shown that receiving a new job closer to one’s skills and interests is one of the few life events that increases a person’s baseline life satisfaction. Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to create job satisfaction outside of actual employment. But maybe we have to try. Because unemployment is reaching the point where, just like climate change, we should no longer talk about preventing it, but rather how to adapt to it.

I don’t want to speak on economic subjects too far outside my expertise, but a jobless recovery isn’t necessarily apocalyptic. I recently read that the best analogy for the Great Recession is neither the Great Depression nor Japan’s Lost Decade, but Europe in the 1980s. High unemployment and a large government imprint. But we should also remember that France has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. The people working may resent higher taxes used for unemployment checks but at least they have reason to take off the pajamas in the morning.

I wish The September Issue gave us better insight into fashion’s economic model. Early on, we do see a relationship building breakfast with a department store CEO. He asks for Wintour’s help to increases designers’ shipping frequency, and Wintour kind of blows him off. I think the problem with understanding fashion has always been that even the best dressed people in real life or the powerful people on TV never wear the clothes seen on the catwalks. Maybe it’s all a trickle down effect, like that discussion of the cerulean blue sweater in The Devil Wears Prada.

The Devil Wears Prada changed my life. It convinced me to choose the life of a demanding career because I wanted the financial and non-financial rewards. With the economy the way it is, a lot of us have to find rewards elsewhere. There is danger if we fail and waste skills and ambition because there is no accompanying paycheck. There is also danger if we succeed because a generation of us may come to think of offices as movie sets, something for people on screen. I’m reminded that the most important divisions are not between men and women, or black and white or gay and straight, but between success and failure. After seeing The September Issue, that line is just as stark and just as mysterious.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Kubrick Made a Good Sexy Movie

Since my initial blog entry, the first two chapters of “Long Red Nails” have appeared on the Erotic Mind Control Story Archive. I even received my first piece of fan mail and a couple favorable posting on the mcforum message boards; all very exciting and encouraging. I am currently editing Chapter Three but am taking a quick break to catch up on my Netflix Queue with three quick reviews.

At least that was my plan. But Eyes Wide Shut just demands its own posting.

Eyes Wide Shit is the best NC-17 movie ever made, even if the film was technically rated R because after director Stanley Kubrick’s death additional figures were digitally added to the famous orgy scene to block out some of the juicy parts.

Most NC-17 films lack sex. Instead, they earn their rating with a few a nude scenes that are barely plot related. Eyes Wide Shut is a film where challenges to conventional sexuality morality appear out of every character and ever scene.

Eyes Wide Shut grabbed headlines from its inception because it stared then Hollywood golden couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. They play Dr. William and Alice Harford, a married couple with a posh NYC apartment, a charming young daughter, and a healthy sex life. They movie begins as they prepare to attend a Christmas party hosted by Bill’s uber-rich patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) and his wife.

At the party, both of the Harfords face temptation. Alice flirts and dances with a Hungarian playboy played by a poor man’s Jeremy Irons. Bill also flirts with a pair of models who seem to offer every male’s fantasy in the film’s first 20 minutes. The Harfords confront these dalliances the next night in bed. Alice vacillates between being jealous of Bill’s flirting and accusing Bill of underestimating her own sexuality. Cruise plays Bill as full of false calm. He parries all of her attacks until she blows him away by confessing to having lusted after a naval officer the family encountered during their last vacation. The argument ends when Bill receives a call that an elderly patient of his has passed away.

Part of what makes the film dream like is that there’s always a phone call or other coincidence to interrupt when things get to heavy. The call about the patient takes Bill out of his bedroom and his boxer shorts and puts him in a suit on the dark nighttime streets of New York City. Along the way, he has visions of Alice making love to a man in full navy whites. These images continue throughout the film and by the end both Alice and the imaginary sailor are fully nude and intertwined.

Kubrick loves ambiguity and I love that Bill’s reaction doesn’t have to be all about jealousy. I like to think he’s even a little excited. His reactions during the rest of the film are not simply revenge at Alice’s revelation but instead an attempt to do what no man can really do: compete equally with a fully sexualized woman.

Bill walks the streets of New York City and sex seeps every ounce of celluloid in a series of bizarre encounters. Eventually, Bill wanders passes the jazz club where his old medical school buddy, Nick Nightingale, is playing piano. Nightingale is played devilishly by director Todd Field. In character, Field actually challenges Hugh Jackman to the title of “the one threat to my heterosexuality”. Nick lets Bill pull out the details of Nick’s after-hours gig: playing piano blindfold at an orgy.

Bill is ridiculous through a lot of these scenes. He keeps passing around his medical license like a badge, bribing people for the tiniest favors and ordering beverages he doesn’t really want.

Finally, Bill arrives at the Long Island mansion hosting the party and the movie’s famous orgy scene begins. A group of Ventian mask wearing clocked figures observe a ceremony featuring about a dozen servant women in masks, g-strings, and tasteful black heels. And sure enough, Nick is in the corner playing a keyboard blindfolded. Even in the edited version, Bill’s wondering through the house is well, an orgy. Participants are grouped in twos and threes while more people watch. There is probably one example of each sex position, both intercourse and oral, and plenty of women with other women.

Most Kubrick defenders champion this film as being devoid of sexuality. That always makes me ask, which orgy were they watching? I think Kubrick did deliver an art-house porn film. It also interesting to note as a mind-control fetishist, how much of the film portrays a mind control fantasy. The servant women at the orgy move very much like hypnotized sex slaves.

I think the critics expected a supposedly steamy but ultimately safe scene over a ceramics wheel or a grand piano. But true fantasies are scarier because they are about freedom, control and power, and not some celluloid cliché. Eyes Wide Shut exposes the truth that we can never share our true sexual fantasies with our lovers because what makes them fantasies is that they involve other people. Of course, Bill does eventually share everything with Alice in the end and her reaction is probably the film’s most ambiguous moment.

The final third of the film is Bill trying to figure out how sinister the cult was and who paid the price for his crashing the party. The film never reaches the full heights of the orgy again, but there are plenty of sexual set pieces, including Bill’s various trips to a costume shop where his rents his orgy disguise. Eventually, Bill is summoned back to Ziegler’s house. Harvey Keitel was originally supposed to play Ziegler but this is the perfect Sydney Pollack part. He makes his explanation that what Bill saw was merely a mock sex cult for rich people’s role playing enjoyment and not an actual sinister, murderous sex cult sound like a discussion on shady business ethics. Personally, I want to believe Ziegler, but then I always want to believe the best of sex cults.

Ask most men who see Eyes Wide Shut if they found the movie sexy and they will answer a resounding yes. Given the chance, they would crash that orgy as quickly as Bill did. And that’s Kubrick’s point. Like Bill, most of us live with our fantasies just out of reach and with the fear they are occurring behind closed doors in opulent mansions.

To me, that provides some hope because it means the affordable, accessible middle class orgy is still available to be invented.