"Say hello to my little friend."
Apparently Quentin Tarantino created Kill Bill to comment on how violence-focused our society has become. You could have fooled me, it seemed to raise the bar and make us more desensitized to gore, machine guns, and sensational death with symphony music in the background.
However, the violent culture is nothing compared to the sexual culture. This claim has been made for centuries and it will continue to be used for centuries more: kids these days are more promiscuous and know more about sex than any other generation. Back in my day... yada, yada, yada.
Humor me and remind yourself of the last time you saw a TV show or movie where the first kiss didn't immediately lead to the bedroom. Or the couch, if it was more than one room's walk to the bed.
My favorite Canadian TV show, Being Erica, disappointed me when two women friends exclaimed that sleeping in the same bed, but not having sex was "taking it extremely slow." There was a scoff and a pair of rolling eyes thrown in there. We get the picture, she was a puritan for keeping her pants on.
Sex and passion in TV shows like Grey's Anatomy look like the two characters are as famished for Love as the kids in the Christian Children's fund commercials with flies buzzing around their heads are famished for rice. They're addicted to the other person, they must have them right now.
In this country, we've resigned to the fact that we're all fat. We shame the fat people, put them on reality weight loss shows, and make them the butt of jokes (yes, we've made that easy joke many times). This has become a free space for ridicule...
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If a 400 pound guy were to attack a hamburger with the kind of inertia that Dr. McSweaty and Dr. Doe Eyes come at each other in a moment of passion, he would have ketchup on his shirt, a mouth full of meat and cheese, and an audience rippling with laughter. It would be hilarious.
I'm picturing Will Ferrel as the 400 pound guy. You would go see that movie, wouldn't you?
Why do we get to make fun of the fat guy? "Because they should go on a reality show and get control of their waistline and eating habits."
Why does valuing temperance end there? Shouldn't we extend it to sex? It seems like we're rationing our moments of seriousness instead of rationing moments of spontaneously indulging passion.
When you watch a movie like "It Happened One Night," where the man and woman characters separated their room with a "Wall of Jericho" layer of fabric for modesty's sake, it is appalling to realize we've come to the decade of Grey's Anatomy, Sex and the City, and passionate moments that inevitably lead to "just sex."
All this ranting and I have no solution for you. All I can hope is that people will see the emptiness and realize the true freedom in looking at their counterparts with respect and a desire to know them without the lustful use of their bodies. Call me a puritan, I dare you.
10 comments:
Someone calls me a puritan, I say thanks for the compliment.
It is with great difficulty that I pick up my nephew and niece from their high school with the parade of breasts and legs and midriffs coming out the doors at dismissal. And it's just as bad when I pick up my other niece at the middle school down the street.
The adults are letting them get away with it, sadly.
I wish I had the solution.
My grandma still talks about the days where women who modeled bras wore sweaters underneath. We sure have gone a long way since then. It is really sad.
Even in ancient history, writers complained about the young people. "It used to be so much better when I was a young" is a sentence that has been exclaimed for centuries, even millenia. Was it better in the past? I don't know.
What I do know is that I don't like the way love is portrayed in movies and television series. It always disappoints me when the 'hero' ends up in bed within days (or hours, or minutes) of meeting a nice girl. And I also know that this is way less common in real life than the producers want us to think.
...yeah, how come every movie has got to have the "love interest"? i'll be darned, dude is fighting off alien invaders and he's lucky enough to find a really pretty woman AND find the time to sleep with her while saving the planet!
you puritan you. ;)
the sexual revolution is so disheartening.
Wow, right on, HM. Funny how that always works out for the hero. And the girl is always beautiful, smart, funny, and just slutty enough to keep you from thinking, "Whoa, I could never take her home to mom."
Katy- The man who invented the bikini had to hire strippers to model it because the normal models wouldn't strip down for fashion.
Ciska- "Love" is confirmed by lust in movies. It's almost like sex is a symbol for the audience: "Okay, do you understand? They like each other."
Oh I just missed you! It is so disheartening, I hope people grow out of it. Even the puritans are affected, though we may wish we weren't.
PURITAN!!!
I actually just watched "It Happened One Night" a few weeks ago with my FOCUS missionary friends - and it was a great movie!!
Oh, and my grandma and grandpa slept in twin beds... yea... they still had 6 kids.
Nice to read your post this morning, Liz. Hope you are feeling better and back to full speed (whatever that means!).
The solution? Well you are doing your part by simply being a living witness of the "feminine genius," the wonderful insightful posts you push out here, your work with Theology of the Body, etc.
BTW, I'm sure we are called puritans because we won't buy a two-piece bikini for our 2-year-old. Oh it's cute and innocent "they" say. But there comes a point where it's not so innocent anymore. Who gets to decide when that point occurs. So, we will err on the side of purity!
Have you read Mere Christianity? C.S. Lewis has this great analogy about sex and food. I know you'd get a kick out of it!
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