NEEDED NOOKIE

Your last post is very clarifying, in that it gives a sense of the broader perspective from which you approach this. This is reminding me of an extended debate I had with someone else on imdb a couple of years ago, which also fortunately was mutually civil.

Here’s my take. I totally get what you’re saying about our history of puritanism and repression and the harm it’s inflicted on people in the past. But one of the most important words there is “history”. Historically, you’re absolutely right. If this were the 1950’s, I would be enthusiastically agreeing with you. But nowadays, and if we’re talking about the United States, frankly I’m not seeing a lot of puritanical repression. I don’t have cable TV. But even with over-the-air local station broadcast, I can easily turn the TV on at 4:00 PM in the afternoon and catch a rerun of Seinfeld where the episode premise might revolve around masturbation or of Jerry finding out one of his sexual “moves” got copied by another guy. And that’s pretty much par for the course in entertainment media nowadays. I’m old enough to remember when this would have been perceived as shocking. But where’s the big outcry now? I’m not seeing it.

What about the fact that something like a third of all babies now are born out of wedlock, either to cohabitating couples or to single women where the father of the child has split the scene? Yet are these people ashamed to show their face in public? Are they being forced to wear a scarlet letter? I’m not saying necessarily that shame should be inflicted on such people, but I am pointing out that for the most part it’s not.

And we have gay marriage nationwide now. Sure, there are people who don’t like that idea. There’s always going to be some homophobia. But I look around and I’m not seeing chaos in the streets over gay marriage. For the most part the public is at least tolerating it, largely accepting it.

Now granted, there certainly are pockets of fundamentalism where you can find people who do cling to the traditional standards and are quite judgmental about it. But it’s a specialty persuasion now. It’s not the mainstream any more. And it will do nothing but become even more the norm as older generations die off and today’s younger people become middle-aged.

In short, I think people who feel the way you describe are still fighting battles in a war that largely was already won some time ago.

I’d like to point out, in the interest of sharing my larger perspective, that I am in fact a very liberal guy in most other aspects. I’m in my 50’s and all of my adult life I’ve been politically left of the center. I’m active in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship, a “religion” that has no creed and no dogma and accepts people of pretty much any lifestyle or gender or relational identity.

So my view of sexuality in society may sound incompatible with what else I’ve told you about myself, but that’s how I honestly see it. Fifteen or twenty years ago if you had talked to me then, I would have been in vociferous agreement with you. But eventually I found myself initially surprised to be having thoughts that maybe libertinism has gone about as far as it should, that maybe in today’s world a little decorum, a little taste, a little voluntary restraint might actually be a nice thing once in a while.

I’m going to take one more stab at what I was trying to say about the role of imagination. Forget for now using a lofty example like poetry. Let’s look at something more common like a TV commercial. Imagine a commercial for some sort of closet organizing device. You see a husband and wife who appear to be in their home. The husband is wildly exuberant saying something like “It’s Saturday. I’m so eager to do some tidying up around here! And I’m going to start with this closet!” You see him dash off and he exits offscreen. Then the wife says, “Honey, be careful. That closet it so full of junk you might start …” then her words are interrupted by loud sounds of items crashing to the floor followed by a cry of pain. You don’t see it; you only hear the sound. Then she finishes “… an avalanche.”

Now hopefully you can see how that could be funny precisely because you didn’t actually see the items crashing on the poor guy. The commercial led you up to that point, then left the rest for you to imagine. The creator made a choice to use some restraint to enhance humor, but it can be the case also with straight dramatic content. I don't feel that it's a waste to not show something simply because you could. That’s all I’m really talking about with imagination. And if you don’t ever appreciate anything like that, then I think you’re missing a good experience.

There’s still plenty of opportunity to clearly depict things, within the same work. Both approaches can be part of one work. But you seem to be insisting it’s all got to be one way.

Now you’re entitled to an opinion that perhaps this particular movie Sweet Land could have used more clear depiction and less restraint. Even though I love the movie and particularly like that they left the sex for us to imagine, I could have used a little more physical affection between the leads. But I’m just making a general point.

Sorry if this was a little long; I get a little carried away some times. I suspect you and I are people who agree on the facts and probably a lot else too, but have a different gut level “orientation”. For whatever reasons, you may feel puritan repression weighing you down, and I tend to feel societal tackiness and excessive libertinism weighing me down. Neither of us is likely to start feeling differently right away as a result of reading the other’s post. But in the long run, discourse of this kind can shape the evolution of one’s thought.