The scene represents a normal sexual encounter between two students. There's moaning. There's orgasming. And yet, it falls flat. While the play wants to promote the idea that this kind of sex is hot and fun, in this scene, it is boring and banal. Erotic sex ideally involves mystery and an electric connection—longing—between two people. But the exhibitionism of Speak About It kills this mystery and longing—it leaves little to the imagination.Speak About It, by the way, is a "variety of skits and monologues dealing with sexual consent, assault and misconduct, and bystander intervention" developed by students at Bowdoin and now used at other colleges. So it's basically a sexual hygiene play, and while it sounds it's no match for the one in Love and Death, I doubt electric connections and mystery were intended as part of the offering.
The rest is gabble about Allan Bloom, "the hookup culture," and oh Jesus kill me now Lena Dunham, who apparently still haunts these people's dreams.
The economy sucks but apparently there are a lot of jobs for rightwing scolds who tell readers they don't really know how to have sex and then offer them The Closing of the American Mind instead of the butterfly flick.
it's no match for the one in Love and Death
ReplyDeleteNothing ever could be.
So, the kind of mystery that leaves a young woman wondering if she was raped because she didn't scream "STOP" in his ear and start tearing his hair out, though she said "not now" or "no" repeatedly, and tried to push him away, is erotic? I hear that rapists get what may be "an electric jolt" from pushing past those weak protests.
ReplyDeleteUnambiguous consent as a negative. Hmm. Guess having consensual sex repeatedly and exploring erotic experience together once the two have an established, mutually gratifying sex life together would make the play too long.
Erotic sex ideally involves mystery and an electric connection—longing—between two people
ReplyDelete...and those two people--one man, one woman, as God intended--shouldn't do it until marriage, at which point they will stay together regardless of whether there's an electric connection, or any real connection at all, lest they suffer the worst fate of all: becoming poor. Yes, EES, we know your script. However, we of the reality-based community have a different viewpoint: that learning about sex, including learning about how real sex looks (as opposed to porn) is, well, better for people than promoting a largely-unattainable fantasy. Possibly, the hook-up culture is a result of this largely-unattainable fantasy and the unrealistic portrayal of sex shown in porn, and showing what real sex looks like puts the emphasis back on some kind of emotional or even honestly sensual connection rather than either some Pre-Raphaelite chivalric fantasy or on James Deen jackhammering Stoya or whatever.
A puckish satire of contemporary mores.
ReplyDeleteI would hear more of this "jack hammering" you speak of.
ReplyDeleteSexual encounters staged like actual real life sex are less interesting to watch than ones explicitly staged to be interesting to an audience? Alert the press!
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, Roy, did you give up before the end of the column?
ReplyDeleteIf we want sex to be sexy again, perhaps we should speak less about it.
It's a deal, Emily. You first.
"Erotic sex ideally involves mystery and an electric connection"
ReplyDeleteLook if it takes a pair of jumper cables to get you off, then that's cool, everyone (consensually) have a good time, but you have to accept that not everybody shares your kinks.
Speak About It, by the way, is a "variety of skits and monologues dealing with sexual consent, assault and misconduct, and bystander intervention" developed by students at Bowdoin and now used at other colleges.
ReplyDeleteShe also found her biology textbook lacked intrigue.
Exactly my reaction. She needs to take her own advice.
ReplyDeleteSo she goes to a stage documentary about consent and safety and expects Romeo and Juliet? And she thinks she's the one to lecture the rest of us about sex?
ReplyDeleteIs there any better duo for a discussion of cinematic erotica than Daffy Duck and Brian Griffin?
ReplyDeleteFunny. A couple months back, I was thinking, "You know, it's been ages since I've heard a conservative moral scold whine about The Vagina Monologues. I wonder if they'll find a new play to complain about?" And here we are, talking about a presentation that will be the only thing some bloggers will discuss for the next decade.
ReplyDeleteNot that Smith is a moral scold. I'm sure she's just realized the profit to be made in railing against the mythical "hookup culture" and...you know what? I just realized that they've been going on about that nonsense for my entire life. And yet so much else has changed.
What, you're not turned on by long discussions on turkey love? People complaining endlessly about TV shows they don't like don't get your heart racing?
ReplyDeleteI don't know how well the scolding is going to go if the first scold out of the gate is complaining that the rape prevention play didn't make her wet enough.
ReplyDeleteErotic sex ideally involves mystery and an electric connection—longing—between two people. But the exhibitionism of Speak About It kills this mystery and longing—it leaves little to the imagination.
ReplyDeleteJenny Lewis said it so much better. IBIMB...
Her next column will be "Burqas are HOT! HOT! HOT!"
ReplyDeleteThe safe word is "cranking amps".
ReplyDeleteWorst slashfic EVER!
ReplyDeleteThanks B. My brain has now crawled out of my ears and beaten me to death.
ReplyDeleteOr something like Erica Jong's "zipperless fuck." Nothing really happens in real life like it does in our heads. Not even picking something up at the grocery store--- because we tend to see only what we want to see and do in our imagination--- not the long line, not the empty space on the shelf, not the list still sitting on the kitchen counter, not the card that won't scan for some stupid reason.
ReplyDeleteWhat the movies usually portray is like having sex without having to occupy physical space without exception and without having to deal with all the physical objects in that space that one encounters, including that person who actually moves of their won volition and not in magic concordance with the other. Most of the physical reality is edited out. The transcendent sexual experience is completely unnecessary to the enjoyment of sex, unless a person demands it, for some strange reason, like feeding on disappointment.
Too many syllables. Short and unmistakable words are the best, because you're less likely to...uh...
ReplyDeleteI'm getting that look again, aren't I?
One wonders whether these sorry folk have ever been laid. IIRC, it can be quite therapeutic.
ReplyDelete"While the play wants to promote the idea that this kind of sex is hot and fun, in this scene, it is boring and banal."
ReplyDeleteShe seems to think she is watching a typical liberal indoctrination film aimed at turning good, God-fearing Christian boys and girls into libertine atheist. Perhaps to be followed by gay agenda propaganda.
I'm sure she's just realized the profit to be made in railing against the mythical "hookup culture"
ReplyDeleteYou are exactly correct, as proven by the uptight, nattering agreement in the comments to her article. There will always be a market for moral scolds.
It's telling that Smith can't think of any contemporary artist who describes or shows sex she can approve of. Don't get her wrong, she loves eros! Just no one's gotten it right since the 13th century.
ReplyDeleteAnd oof, shorter Smith: "If only modern Americans saw sex the same way as 13th-century poet Sufi, modern America's best-selling poet."
ReplyDeleteWash that dirty mouth out with soap! ;)
ReplyDeletePreferably applied to the scrotum for maximum pain
ReplyDeleteI would like to ravish this comment in a fashion that is vaguely disappointing.
ReplyDeleteThink of the poor actors in all those hollywood sex scenes - they must have so disappointing personal sex lives as they can't compare to what they portray on screen - must be why the divorce rate there is so high
ReplyDeleteSo what are you going to do for those 3 days after your first 15 seconds ;)
ReplyDeleteGod, that (13th-century) stuff was hot:
ReplyDeleteTouching of hands or any contact between a man and an anchoress is a thing so
unseemly and a deed so shameful and so naked a sin, so horrible to all the world
and so great a scandal, that there is no need to speak or write against it, for
without any writing at all the foulness is too apparent. God knows, I would much
prefer to see you all, my dear sisters, dearest of women to me, hang on a
gibbet so as to avoid sin, than see one of you give a single kiss to any man on
earth in the way I mean.
I'd like to wait on line for this comment only to find it is not on the shelves and I have to have sex with the store brand.
ReplyDeleteI *wish*.
ReplyDeleteEsfahani is a tell.
ReplyDeleteThere's moaning. There's orgasming. And yet, it falls flat.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a few decades since my sex ed classes, but I believe that this is often a natural progression, Emily.
next up: the 40 most conservative sexual positions.
ReplyDeleteClumsy, sloppy sex is great, but the camera doesn't seem to like it. It likes to look at actors' butts and women's tits. Maybe cause the camera doesn't have sex, or a butt, or tits. Huh.
ReplyDeleteOf course, some people do like to have sex with a camera watching. I've heard rumor that a lot of those people are kind of disappointed with the result. Probably the same reason why we're not all talking to each other on big screens like on Star Trek.
I panicked while that was loading. Don't let it be goatse!
ReplyDeleteWho the fuck is that?
ReplyDeleteJust no one's gotten it right since the 13th century.
ReplyDeleteFewer things did more to give me fucked up ideas about sex and relationships than reading Petrarch as an impressionable teenager.
Yeah, because "cold" is obvious.
ReplyDeleteWhippersnappers and their ability to recall...
ReplyDeleteDenis de Rougemont's book Love in the Western World argued that the whole cult of mystery and electricity and longing, pretty much beginning with the Tristan and Isolde saga, had totally fucked with people's heads (not his exact words) for centuries and it was time to get over it.
ReplyDeleteHad to be K-Lo.
ReplyDeleteSomething something like unto a warhammer, if thou knowest whereof I doth speak, and verily, I surmise that thou doth.
ReplyDeleteWell, there's missionary light flyweight, missionary flyweight, missionary super-flyweight, missionary bantamweight....
ReplyDeleteGeology 101 spoke of the earth moving... but it did no such thing for her.
ReplyDeleteOpposition, disdain, disapproval...
ReplyDelete... shameful self-loathing...
ReplyDeleteHmm, is there something more ridiculous than conservatives pretending to be authorities on rap? Oh, right – sex!
ReplyDeleteMaybe there wasn't enough, "Oh, God, Oh, God," during the orgasm part?
ReplyDeleteReading Smith is a lot like listening to Malcolm Muggeridge. (Wasn't it said of him that there was no point in describing him as "old," because even in his teens, he was never young?)
ReplyDeleteAcademia should probably use the phrase fucked in the head more often. Just for the sake of clarity.
ReplyDeleteThe great thing is that most of them don't require a partner.
ReplyDeleteThe play is usually much hotter, but on that one occasion the actors were distracted by an audience member throwing a cell phone across the room...
ReplyDeleteI do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good.
ReplyDeleteI don't know who you are but certainly you're going to
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All of them variations on the missionary position.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking more "socks on, lights out, man on top get it over with quick," "no socks, lights out, man on top get it over with quick," "lights on, under covers, man on top get it over with quick," and "sitting in a public restroom stall tapping your foot at the guy in the next stall."
ReplyDeleteSexquester
ReplyDeleteOkay, this subtle product placement has won me over. I'm Netflixing Girls.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who was in college not long before Bloom penned his book, nothing in it sounded even remotely like the sex lives of anyone I knew.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and what about your hair getting all snarly in back?
ReplyDeleteYou mean the stuff that grows on my shoulder-blades?
ReplyDeleteYou can't move to the gay agenda until the minutes from the last gay meeting have been read and accepted.
ReplyDeleteBecause they all involve going to third-world countries and trying to convert children?
ReplyDeleteFinance, tax policy, foreign policy, human rights, media policy, dog-catcher appointments...
ReplyDelete"He's Sufi King Good!"
ReplyDeleteI could not bear to open any of the links.
ReplyDeleteApparently they really and truly believe that any kind of attempt to teach sex information is actually a cover for hot-cha sex shows, all about turning on your God-fearing chaste children to the world of wanton fucking. I thought they were just being perverse to try and hoodwink their voters, but I guess not.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Milgrim experiment meets Rule 34...
ReplyDeleteSo Abelard & Heloise meet the cut?
ReplyDeletebetween two people
ReplyDeleteOnly two? So that's what we're doing wrong.
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When you're waiting around for all your sex to have "mystery and an electric connection," you end up not really fucking very much.
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Always wear your apron when you're in front of the stove.
ReplyDeleteC'mon, everyone knows the ending to that story.
ReplyDeleteWarhammer? So there are Orks involved?
ReplyDeleteSo there are Orks involved?
ReplyDeleteYou don't usually watch C-SPAN, I take it?
I see what you did there.
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