Category Archives: sex

On Sleeper

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You know, Woody Allen’s movie, Sleeper (1973), would be funny if it weren’t so profectic. Today we are obsessed with our smart phones, tablets, and laptops to the extent that we would be helpless to do anything if the power went out. Woody awakes in a future world to find giant cooperations taking over the world, technology has disconnected people from nature, and robots have a human form, but they all have the same face. The heart of his satire lies with the juxtaposition of his skinny anti-hero, who takes silly to greater heights, and an advanced civilization whose technology has long since outstripped its feeble ethics and morals. Governments have turned into mechanized oligarchies, and primitive revolutionary groups roam the countryside, spouting anarchy and non-conformity. Technology has triumphed over the human form, and physical love can only be done in a machine. Yet, his satire seems almost innocent. He riffs on the dangers of too much technology, the alienating nature of technology, and the absurd inventions that are supposed to make life better. He also riffs on government, control, oppression, revolution, science, religion, sex, and institutional corruption. The visuals, the dialogues, the jokes play on a well-established cinematic traditions, satirizing a series of films from the late sixties and early seventies that deal with apocalyptic end-of-civilization scenarios. The film only takes itself (half) seriously when the main characters plot to steal the “great” leader’s nose–all that is left of him. “We’re here to see the nose. We hear it’s running.” Sleeper also riffs on Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, and Woody gives viewers a strange cautionary satire on the dangers of computers and how their interests are completely disconnected from humanity at all. The movie, in all its absurd silliness, seriously discusses the dehumanization of people as technology creeps in on all sides. This seems to be a common motif in the 21st century.

On Sleeper

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You know, Woody Allen’s movie, Sleeper (1973), would be funny if it weren’t so profectic. Today we are obsessed with our smart phones, tablets, and laptops to the extent that we would be helpless to do anything if the power went out. Woody awakes in a future world to find giant cooperations taking over the world, technology has disconnected people from nature, and robots have a human form, but they all have the same face. The heart of his satire lies with the juxtaposition of his skinny anti-hero, who takes silly to greater heights, and an advanced civilization whose technology has long since outstripped its feeble ethics and morals. Governments have turned into mechanized oligarchies, and primitive revolutionary groups roam the countryside, spouting anarchy and non-conformity. Technology has triumphed over the human form, and physical love can only be done in a machine. Yet, his satire seems almost innocent. He riffs on the dangers of too much technology, the alienating nature of technology, and the absurd inventions that are supposed to make life better. He also riffs on government, control, oppression, revolution, science, religion, sex, and institutional corruption. The visuals, the dialogues, the jokes play on a well-established cinematic traditions, satirizing a series of films from the late sixties and early seventies that deal with apocalyptic end-of-civilization scenarios. The film only takes itself (half) seriously when the main characters plot to steal the “great” leader’s nose–all that is left of him. “We’re here to see the nose. We hear it’s running.” Sleeper also riffs on Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, and Woody gives viewers a strange cautionary satire on the dangers of computers and how their interests are completely disconnected from humanity at all. The movie, in all its absurd silliness, seriously discusses the dehumanization of people as technology creeps in on all sides. This seems to be a common motif in the 21st century.

On Catwoman (Julie Newmar)

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The fascination for this character is extraordinary and produced one of the worst movies (Catwoman, Halle Barry, 2004) ever–horrible is generous way of describing that incarnation of the myth. The highly camp television version of the Batman story was both horrible and edgy at once, and the few episodes done by Julie Newmar in the Catwoman role are a tour-de-force in a no-holds-barred examination of blind materialism, greed, and ego. By contrast, Newmar played the role as a strong, take charge, get-it-done woman, but her character is unwilling or unable to take an ethical stand as a law-abiding citizen, which is the great tragedy of the character. Unwilling to share her loot with even a single henchman, she drugs the last one in order to keep her ill-gotten booty for herself. Appearing in thirteen episode during the show’s run, she is finally “killed off” when she falls into a bottomless chasm, unwilling to let go of a bag of silver and gold. Granted, she is supposed to be the ultimate femme fetale, curvy, beautiful, and very sexy, but she is fatal for all around her, unable to demonstrate even the slightest ounce of empathy for either friends or foes. Even though the show was rather cartoonish and production values were low by today’s standards, the script, if you could see past the silliness of it all, was really a kind of morality play populated by characters that were unambiguously either good or evil. Catwoman, though beautiful, was evil, egocentric, and sadistic. As a metaphor, Catwoman is a medieval misogynistic representation of the feminine, which is portrayed as uncontrolled animalistic emotion. Catwoman is the dark side of human behavior, uncontrolled, chaotic, and anarchic. Catwoman isn’t capable, though, of even saving herself, dying while trying to steal a bag of pirate loot. Even though the show was high camp and extremely exaggerated, the comedy only thinly veiled its criticism of poor behavior and bad choices.

On Catwoman (Julie Newmar)

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The fascination for this character is extraordinary and produced one of the worst movies (Catwoman, Halle Barry, 2004) ever–horrible is generous way of describing that incarnation of the myth. The highly camp television version of the Batman story was both horrible and edgy at once, and the few episodes done by Julie Newmar in the Catwoman role are a tour-de-force in a no-holds-barred examination of blind materialism, greed, and ego. By contrast, Newmar played the role as a strong, take charge, get-it-done woman, but her character is unwilling or unable to take an ethical stand as a law-abiding citizen, which is the great tragedy of the character. Unwilling to share her loot with even a single henchman, she drugs the last one in order to keep her ill-gotten booty for herself. Appearing in thirteen episode during the show’s run, she is finally “killed off” when she falls into a bottomless chasm, unwilling to let go of a bag of silver and gold. Granted, she is supposed to be the ultimate femme fetale, curvy, beautiful, and very sexy, but she is fatal for all around her, unable to demonstrate even the slightest ounce of empathy for either friends or foes. Even though the show was rather cartoonish and production values were low by today’s standards, the script, if you could see past the silliness of it all, was really a kind of morality play populated by characters that were unambiguously either good or evil. Catwoman, though beautiful, was evil, egocentric, and sadistic. As a metaphor, Catwoman is a medieval misogynistic representation of the feminine, which is portrayed as uncontrolled animalistic emotion. Catwoman is the dark side of human behavior, uncontrolled, chaotic, and anarchic. Catwoman isn’t capable, though, of even saving herself, dying while trying to steal a bag of pirate loot. Even though the show was high camp and extremely exaggerated, the comedy only thinly veiled its criticism of poor behavior and bad choices.

On Marilyn Monroe

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A true movie star if there ever was one, Marilyn Monroe was a larger than life figure who embodied, literally, a wide-open sexuality that revolutionized puritanical America, its films, its entertainment industry, its cultural icons, its politics, its sexual mores and practices. Even with three husbands in her column, whether Marilyn herself ever participated in this revolution remains to be seen, but the long-lasting effects of her image, her movies, her photos, her charisma, are still felt today. She came of age as an actress in an extremely repressed post-war America that had long since lost its innocence on the battlefields of Europe and the atolls of the Pacific. After so much violence and killing, there was no possible way that the millions of returning soldiers could live in the pre-war innocence of their childhoods. They had seen too much, killed to many, been wounded, lost friends and colleagues, opend up concentration camps. They were jaded, cynical, tired. The image of the blond bombshell, i.e., Jean Harlow et al., had been around for awhile, but a sexually repressed America had always shoved these images to the margins of culture by designating all such women and images as sinful, dirty, or bad. Marilyn came along and changed all of that, bringing sexuality into the mainstream of the American conversation, eventually changing the way America looked at itself and the way it discussed sex. The reception of a novel such as “Peyton Place” is proof of that. These changes in American post-war culture were not brought on by Marilyn, but Marilyn and others certainly nudged Americans to question such important issues such as equal rights for all, racial or sexual. Questions of economic equality would have to wait decades. We are known by our repressions, and the interest of pop culture in Marilyn as an icon of sexual desire suggests that social repressions only last so long before older generations are swept away and younger generations re-evaluate what is going on and how they will deal with it. Some of Marilyn’s movies are important, if not unforgettable, but the revolutionary nature of her presence is what changed how America talked about sex, desire, bodies, and relationships–“The Seven Year Itch” is a prime example of this change. She and her image became an economic venture developed by Hollywood to take advantage of her marketability as a desired object of the male gaze. Regardless of who Marilyn Monroe was as a person, it was her appearance as a sexually desirable woman which still gives life to her iconic image some fifty years after her tragic death. Even actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor or Jane Russell, both of whom were very present in post-war film never achieved the giant iconic status of Marilyn Monroe. Taylor, especially in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” or “Suddenly Last Summer,” was as alluring or desirable as Monroe, and Russell was more blatantly sexual, especially in “The Outlaw,” than Monroe ever was. Yet in a movie such as “Some Like It Hot” where sexual roles are played footloose and fancy free by the entire cast, Monroe’s character oozes a white-hot feminine sexuality that eclipses all other performances in the film. After America makes those films, any of them, they could not put the genie back in the bottle and pretend like sex doesn’t exist, which, of course, was very bad for all three actresses, taking an enormous toll on their private lives and tormented relationships. Today, we live in a very wide-open society that, although it still has many hang-ups and repressions, is finally able to at least discuss sex without blushing, turning away, or giggling too much. Yet, for Marilyn the price was high: no privacy, tormented relationships, possible drug usage, paparazzi everywhere, insomnia, which caused her to be difficult and unpredictable. She was fired from her last film for not appearing on set for the shooting schedule. She died of a drug overdose, possibly suicide, in 1962.

On smiling

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It seems that it takes, according to experts, lots of muscles to smile, but that babies learn to smile before they can even talk, imitating the faces that their parents make at them. I am no expert, but I think that trying to analyze what a smile is, exactly, takes all the sunshine right out of a smile. Perhaps the most positive sign of affirmation that anyone can receive is a smile: when we do something right, when we meet again after a long absence, when we need reassurance, when we wake up in the morning. We all smile for lots of different reasons: we are glad to see someone, we are feeling happy, we are getting exactly what we want, we want to reaffirm the efforts of someone else, we are euphoric, we are relieved, we are in love, we want to cheer up someone who might not be smiling. When I see others smile, it warms my heart even when I am not involved in the conversation. Seeing that someone else is happy, reaffirmed, right, creates in me a positive light in a dark world. With all the tragedy, chaos, and sadness that troubles our world (and has always troubled our world, let’s face it, we are far from perfect creatures), a smile is like a beam of sunlight on a cold winter’s morning when you know it’s not going above zero that day. A smile reaffirms the idea that this whole business of life is worth pursuing for a bit longer. Smiles are also sexy, and in the right situation, speak about desire, pleasure, love, longing, intimacy, craving. Smiles between a man and a woman are about more than anything that might expressed in words, and perhaps there are no words to express those kinds of feelings. Poets, philosophers, play-writes, mystics, barbers, bartenders, and theologians have tried to express the ideas and emotions behind the smile, but they have been at it for several millennium without getting it exactly right. What the smile communicates is complex, positive, and happy, and it’s happiness that illusive thing that we all pursue? In a world which often seems arbitrary, cold, and uncaring, a smile is often a light for a soul lost in the dark night of life. I would suggest that smiles, even when we are alone and only smiling to ourselves, are a sign of mental health, of an upbeat, positive view of the world. Of course, we have all seen creepy smiles on the faces of sales people, receptionists, and others who are paid to smile regardless of how they feel. I wonder if smiling actually helps them deal with tough situations (customer service, blech) in which those fake smilers must deal with unhappy and demanding and unsmiling folks who are bringing trouble–me, for example, when I have to take back a defective product. Could a smile be a shield against ill-will and anger? Does a smile defuse and angry heart? In the end, a smile, as opposed to a frown, seems almost to carry with it supernatural powers for healing, loving, caring in a world of frowns, of negative energy, of violence and chaos. So we smile at each other–non-verbal communication–and hope that the message gets across, but maybe a smile is not just a one-shot deal, maybe it’s a promise, or an ethos, or pathos, unwritten rhetoric of hope that cannot be truly expressed in words or any other verbal way. Maybe smiles are more about communication and less about words?

On Little Red Riding Hood

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The story seems so simple, yet, of course, it is so complex. We read it to children, this horrifying story of violence and death. A wolf is loose, a wolf who can talk, and he is interested in eating Little Red. An odd name, that one, Little Red Riding Hood. Today, it’s just a red hoodie. The young girl does not have a name, not a real name anyway, and she lives in a rural area of farms and trees and isolated country cottages. She is carrying a basket of goodies to her grandmother, but of course her grandmother lives in a cottage in the woods, and by this we understand such things as fear, loneliness, and danger. After all, it is off the beaten path in the woods, and who knows what you might run into out there. Little Red is, of course, just a metaphoric player in this family drama about coming of age, sex, and awakenings. There is no talking wolf, but the wolf does eat grandmother, a tradition that doesn’t seem to alarm listeners, but it does scare me, being at times rather wolf-like myself. The most frightening part of the story is the conversation between Little Red and the wolf who has now put on the grandmother’s nightdress and hopped into bed. I imagine there are still little drops of blood on his whiskers, but let’s skip that ugly detail. “My, grandmother, what big teeth you have.” ” My grandmother what hairy hands you have, and you also need a manicure.” “My, grandmother, what big ears you have and they are pointy and hairy as well!” Why Little Red cannot see the wolf in grandmother’s clothing is a little beyond me unless Little Red is a little simple in her ways. The wolf attacks her, of course, and she runs, seeking the help of another wolf, the axe man/lumberjack who happens to be near grandmother’s cottage. Using his ever present phallic ax he proceeds to disembowel the wolf, saving Little Red and the grandmother from certain death. The goodies probably go to the trusty young handsome woodsman, and everybody is happy–the wolf has been defeated. Life seems to be all about defeating the wolf, who represents all sorts of unmentionable things that we really want to ignore in life–sex, violence, adulthood, coming-of-age. We would all like Little Red to remain a child forever, caught in a strange vortex or stasis where she is forever ten years old, innocent, unknowing, pristine, unmarked, virginal. The father of Little Red is strangely absent from the story, leaving things unsettled and the entire story is disquieting and problematic. The wolf, who is not a wolf, is only a person dressed in wolf’s skins. That is all the wolf has ever been–a person. How else could it talk? There are unanswered questions about the violence that Little Red witnesses, the fear she experiences at the hands of the wolf, and that strange red cloak that defines her very identity. Yet she is condemned to stay ten forever, never arriving at womanhood, forever trudging through the woods to her grandmother’s cottage. I hope there is snow in the version you have read because that will make her red cloak that much redder. She epitomizes womanhood and femaleness as a paradigm of innocence pursued by evil, a relentless evil that takes the form of a wolf, a violent carnivorous animal bent on destroying her. I have never completely understood the story, and perhaps I never will.

On Little Red Riding Hood

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The story seems so simple, yet, of course, it is so complex. We read it to children, this horrifying story of violence and death. A wolf is loose, a wolf who can talk, and he is interested in eating Little Red. An odd name, that one, Little Red Riding Hood. Today, it’s just a red hoodie. The young girl does not have a name, not a real name anyway, and she lives in a rural area of farms and trees and isolated country cottages. She is carrying a basket of goodies to her grandmother, but of course her grandmother lives in a cottage in the woods, and by this we understand such things as fear, loneliness, and danger. After all, it is off the beaten path in the woods, and who knows what you might run into out there. Little Red is, of course, just a metaphoric player in this family drama about coming of age, sex, and awakenings. There is no talking wolf, but the wolf does eat grandmother, a tradition that doesn’t seem to alarm listeners, but it does scare me, being at times rather wolf-like myself. The most frightening part of the story is the conversation between Little Red and the wolf who has now put on the grandmother’s nightdress and hopped into bed. I imagine there are still little drops of blood on his whiskers, but let’s skip that ugly detail. “My, grandmother, what big teeth you have.” ” My grandmother what hairy hands you have, and you also need a manicure.” “My, grandmother, what big ears you have and they are pointy and hairy as well!” Why Little Red cannot see the wolf in grandmother’s clothing is a little beyond me unless Little Red is a little simple in her ways. The wolf attacks her, of course, and she runs, seeking the help of another wolf, the axe man/lumberjack who happens to be near grandmother’s cottage. Using his ever present phallic ax he proceeds to disembowel the wolf, saving Little Red and the grandmother from certain death. The goodies probably go to the trusty young handsome woodsman, and everybody is happy–the wolf has been defeated. Life seems to be all about defeating the wolf, who represents all sorts of unmentionable things that we really want to ignore in life–sex, violence, adulthood, coming-of-age. We would all like Little Red to remain a child forever, caught in a strange vortex or stasis where she is forever ten years old, innocent, unknowing, pristine, unmarked, virginal. The father of Little Red is strangely absent from the story, leaving things unsettled and the entire story is disquieting and problematic. The wolf, who is not a wolf, is only a person dressed in wolf’s skins. That is all the wolf has ever been–a person. How else could it talk? There are unanswered questions about the violence that Little Red witnesses, the fear she experiences at the hands of the wolf, and that strange red cloak that defines her very identity. Yet she is condemned to stay ten forever, never arriving at womanhood, forever trudging through the woods to her grandmother’s cottage. I hope there is snow in the version you have read because that will make her red cloak that much redder. She epitomizes womanhood and femaleness as a paradigm of innocence pursued by evil, a relentless evil that takes the form of a wolf, a violent carnivorous animal bent on destroying her. I have never completely understood the story, and perhaps I never will.

On Jean Harlow

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She only lived twenty-six years. Born in 1911, she was dead by June 7, 1937. Perhaps it is those stars who burn the most intensely, cannot burn for very long, and she did burn brightly. The paradigm for all platinum blonds, she wasn’t the first female star to take advantage of her sex appeal, but, excluding the special category “Mae West,” she was perhaps the most shocking actor of her time, more often saying just what she meant, skipping the euphemisms, metaphors, small talk, and double entendre. I first stumbled upon her in several short films she did with Laurel and Hardy as a comic spoil, a comic femme fatale. She dyed her hair platinum blonde, and it glowed like a halo in those black and white films. There is no doubt that her physical presence in films was notable, and all the big stars wanted to work with her, regardless of the material, regardless of how bad the film might be. Her shower scene in “Red Dust” is astonishing even by today’s standards. Part of her legend has it that she often refused to wear underwear. In her public personae, she was pure feminine sexuality unleashed, and many of her films were boycotted by religious and conservative groups, but those boycotts only served to make her more popular, and they never hurt her box office numbers. She starred in six films with Clark Gable, including the already mentioned “Red Dust.” In most of her films she played the “original” bad girl, and both Marilyn Monroe and Madonna admired her work enough to emulate the platinum blond look. In the ’80’s sitcom “Night Court” a framed picture of Harlow hung behind Judge Harry Stone’s desk in his office. In 1937 while filming “Saratoga” with Clark Gable, she became ill, and suddenly died of kidney failure. The star burned brightly and was gone. According to the Internet Data Movie Base, “[Harlow] is portrayed by Gwen Stefani in The Aviator (2004), by Carroll Baker in Harlow (1965/I), by Susan Buckner in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) (TV), by Lindsay Bloom in Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell (1978) and by Carol Lynley in Harlow (1965/II). She once said, “Men like me because I don’t wear a brassiere. Women like me because I don’t look like a girl who would steal a husband. At least not for long.” If you ever get a chance to watch one of her films, you won’t ever forget it.

On Jean Harlow

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She only lived twenty-six years. Born in 1911, she was dead by June 7, 1937. Perhaps it is those stars who burn the most intensely, cannot burn for very long, and she did burn brightly. The paradigm for all platinum blonds, she wasn’t the first female star to take advantage of her sex appeal, but, excluding the special category “Mae West,” she was perhaps the most shocking actor of her time, more often saying just what she meant, skipping the euphemisms, metaphors, small talk, and double entendre. I first stumbled upon her in several short films she did with Laurel and Hardy as a comic spoil, a comic femme fatale. She dyed her hair platinum blonde, and it glowed like a halo in those black and white films. There is no doubt that her physical presence in films was notable, and all the big stars wanted to work with her, regardless of the material, regardless of how bad the film might be. Her shower scene in “Red Dust” is astonishing even by today’s standards. Part of her legend has it that she often refused to wear underwear. In her public personae, she was pure feminine sexuality unleashed, and many of her films were boycotted by religious and conservative groups, but those boycotts only served to make her more popular, and they never hurt her box office numbers. She starred in six films with Clark Gable, including the already mentioned “Red Dust.” In most of her films she played the “original” bad girl, and both Marilyn Monroe and Madonna admired her work enough to emulate the platinum blond look. In the ’80’s sitcom “Night Court” a framed picture of Harlow hung behind Judge Harry Stone’s desk in his office. In 1937 while filming “Saratoga” with Clark Gable, she became ill, and suddenly died of kidney failure. The star burned brightly and was gone. According to the Internet Data Movie Base, “[Harlow] is portrayed by Gwen Stefani in The Aviator (2004), by Carroll Baker in Harlow (1965/I), by Susan Buckner in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) (TV), by Lindsay Bloom in Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell (1978) and by Carol Lynley in Harlow (1965/II). She once said, “Men like me because I don’t wear a brassiere. Women like me because I don’t look like a girl who would steal a husband. At least not for long.” If you ever get a chance to watch one of her films, you won’t ever forget it.