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Everybody loves sex — 34 Comments

  1. One of the sexist moments in a movie: Patricia O’Neal taking her shoes off after asking John Wayne in “In Harms Way” if they have the room alone for the night. “Well then…” she says after slipping her shoe off. Wayne replies, “Well then…” Fade to black. The smile on her face says it all…and I’ve been in love with her every since. 🙂

    The imagination is a powerful thing. Modern Hollywood has lost its ability to tease that out of us.

  2. So why is it (having sex) so poorly represented in cinema?”
    There is a big porn industry that does nothing but photograph people having sex. Years ago I was helping clean out a store that had gone out of business and found a big box of porn videos. I took a few of them home to see what they were like. They become boring very quickly. It’s difficult to tell an interesting story when the whole thing is about having sex.

  3. Maybe some of the excitement is over seeing known actors having sex (tapping into the celebrity obsession culture)?

    My problem with watching the more explicit scenes is I am thinking “Gee, must be weird for the actress to be having that dude [put his mouth there, stick his hand there].”

  4. When I saw this, it only confirmed my opprobrium for all things “Hollywood”. Years ago when I read Anna Karenina, I was amazed at how the subject of passion and adultery could be so penetratingly presented without any smut. This kind of debauchery seems to fit well with the present cultural/political circumstances we live in. The Weimar Republic as depicted in Cabaret.

  5. I agree with Neo that based on the description this film is nothing but porn. Not that porn is all bad, but porn has been around for many years – so why all the hype? I’d say the mainstream film makers are getting desperate if porn is all they have left to draw an audience. The left love to push the boundaries, but there are few boundaries left to push. Where will they go next to push the boundaries – perhaps they will follow the lead by ISIS and will produce snuff movies?

  6. Sexuality has become politics. What good is ever achieved by making private matters public? When sexuality morphs into porn, society suffers. In so many ways we are on the eve of self – destruction.

  7. Socrates: Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted me eagerly, and then he said: —

    Cephalus: You don’t come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.

    Socrates: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’ –Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?

    Cephalus: I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is –I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles, –are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

    1) Hypocrisy when wisely used is a good thing for society, especially when it comes to sex.

    2) Sex is different for men and women.

    3) Without suggesting any deeper implications, sex is a ridiculous physical act, appearing more ridiculous with age.

    4) The sex saturation of the West is a bad thing, it has assumed too central a role.

    5) Modesty in general and sexual modesty in particular is gone, and that is a bad thing.

    6) In truth, the pleasure derived from sex is so ephemeral, and so basic a bodily function, its celebration is absurd, beyond the knowing recognition of its undeniable power, its mysterious role in love, and its necessity for procreation.

    7) In truth, much of sex nowadays is sheer exploitation of another human being.

  8. for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden….

    Anni Ultimi

    The Emperor he served … Nero.

  9. Yes, character does matter when it comes to sex, as well as old age and everything else in life.

    Categorical thinking is the enemy of character, the disprover of character.

    The categorical approach to sex speaks for itself.

  10. This is cinematic and thematic navel-gazing. Like making a 7 course meal from nothing but desserts.

  11. I find myself fast forwarding through many of the gratuitous sex scenes in books. Really is explicit sex ever pertinent to the real issue of the book, unless the issue is the sex? I don’t think so. I feel the character interaction emotionally told in words and description of feelings is so much better than a play by play sex act.

    I have not seen many movies, or any for that matter, lately, so I cannot comment on any recent ones.

  12. Tonawanda, thanks for that excerpt with Socrates and Cephalus. Nice touch to this otherwise somewhat sordid subject. (the movie, not sex) The old gents conversation reminds me of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in their old age conversing through pre-pony-express correspondence.

  13. Bravo, Tonawanda, for the philosophical musings of Socrates and Cephalus as well as your personal observations. Old age ain’t for sissies, but losing lust and learning what love is really all about is certainly one of its blessings.

  14. It does seem to me that these people (Noe et al.) are ever more frantically stimulating themselves, while they lose sight of the transcendence in life. They think this is the way to have peak experiences, I guess.

    Most of them have no idea of true eroticism, which is the whole orchestra playing together, not just the bull fiddles….

    Not long ago, I said to my dad (85 years old) that I thought it was terribly sad that the kids don’t date any more, they just “hook up,” and added that it was especially bad for the girls.

    “It’s bad for the boys, too,” he said seriously; “bad for their character, bad for their hearts.”

  15. Our mother, who died in 2009, said that it’s up to us women to lift men to our moral level when it comes to sex — never to sink to theirs (ahem!).

    There’s something to that: women traditionally have been the boundary- and standards-setters. It was tough to do even when our culture supported it, especially when you were in love; but now that the Left has turned the public square into a nonstop bacchanal, it’s almost impossible for a teenage girl to hold any lines.

  16. This is what the Left wants,
    all the sexual *choices* you can possibly fill your life up with.
    Followed by US Gov supplied weed, so you will always *vote* for your *needs*.
    The fall of Rome revisited.

  17. I think Pagalina said that lesbian / feminist porn was awful because it attempted to be arty, and the usual male porn that was strait up sex was better.

    If I’m gonna watch a movie with a story I want an interesting story and don’t need explicit sex. If I’m gonna watch porn I want porn.

  18. snuff movies

    Documentaries about the abortion industry?

    Can you imagine the Democrats, progressive liberals/libertines, popular human and civil rights groups, generational feminists, and others with a sincerely held belief in sacrificial rites in the dock at the ICC? The privacy veil will never be drawn back while people’s integrity and conscience are suppressed by secular opiates.

  19. Beverly – your Mom was a great lady, I’ll bet. That’s sound advice for a young lady and true today as well, albeit the “nonstop bacchanal” doth make it more difficult.

  20. Apropos this topic, “Fifty Shades of Grey” recently appeared as a film and now is out in video.

    While I ignored the novels, I did see the film – two years too late, methinks.

    In it’s broadest sense, the well-worn subject of D/s in literary porn is done creditably. I expected worse than the viewer got, I believe.

    It was a helpful ‘teaser’ for why some significant segment in BDSM are somehow damaged or different than most of us. The viewer can thus grow in empathy, even as erotic horizons or range is expanded.

    I expect the worse in the film because now self-made billionaire has so muc time “to play” at so young an age….well, until the Facebook age and Mark Zuckerburg came along. (Oh, and he’s much too good-looking. But this is Hollywood…MOVE along!)

    “Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult…” – if I remember my Rilke correctly.

    What was true a century ago, remains true today. If life and the pursuit of happiness was simple, we’d all be as glib as game-show hosts and self-fulfillment would be trite. We aren’t, and it isn’t.

    Thank you, neo (Jean), for changing the subject from those dispiriting matters that absorb us too much, and too much away from the finer and finest experiences in life, like love and sex.

  21. For further reading: “The Closing of the American Mind” by Alan Bloom.

  22. Wow! A number of years ago my niece was looking through a box of stuff I had held onto and she came upon a colleged handbook we were given in our freshman year which was 1961-1962. She was astonished at all of the rules and regs and couldn’t believe that life was so restrictive. I said to her that back then, in order to be rebellious, all we had to do was smoke in our room or wear bermudas on campus on a week day. Her generation had to rob a bank. I think that this generation has no options that do not include porn or suicide bombing. God help us.

  23. For the sake of completeness of a sort, and the doubling back, Prof. Bloom’s teacher Leo Strauss’ course on the Republic (1957) is recently available at U. Chicago Leo Strauss Center for free download. Bloom’s own translation of the Republic is very good too.

    It’s funny about Strauss’ course that he begins with the relation of Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae to the Republic, where, if we look, we’ll see the protagonist Praxagora looking quite a bit like little miss Lena Dunham of Girls fame. But see for yourselves.

    Further along our doubling back to eros, Strauss’ course on Plato’s Symposium is also available to us, thanks to the efforts of another of Strauss’ students, Seth Bernardete.

  24. Like music, the performance can be highly repetitive and this is far more stimulating for the performers than for the audience.

  25. You know, given the success of Fifty Shades of Gray — the book, at least — and the wild success of “mommy porn” now that it can be obtained on a Kindle without the cover showing, I’m not sure I buy the notion that women don’t want explicit sex.

    I also remember seeing an art film in Germany long ago — 30 years, I guess — that was pretty explicit and replaced actual human sex with definitely unsimulated horse sex.

    I’m suspicious the European audience may not quite be as you think them to be.

  26. Pathetic, when an entire civilization thinks their propaganda used to control them is entertainment. They get what they deserve and they will never aspire to anything better when they are satisfied with what they got now.

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