The premise, style, acting, and direction of film 'The Girl Next Door' makes me want to vomit red, white, and blue shreds of fabric.
Tight-wad, do-good high-schooler falls in love with his new next door neighbor who turns out to be a porn star, turning his pristine world upside down. He eventually comes around to "loosen up" a bit, and she rediscovers her innocence in the sweet nerd.
So let's see: In the form of porn-star girl, America is presented with a challenge to its anti-porn conservatism. However, America, who has no other option but to relate to the protagonist in this particular cookie-cutter literary format, through a series of cutesy and humanizing (and ultimately universalising) anecdotes and pat affirmations of its moral code, eventually comes 'round, its morality stretched just so to now include and embrace porn stars. "they're just people after all" And the porn star is reassigned a state of grace, despite her previous fall from it.
"Boy, let me tell you, I was really put through the moral wringer. I was made so uncomfortable by this. Eeeew. She's a porn star. But in the end, I came 'round and I too could love a porn star. After all, it's just a girl."
The limited continuum of moral parameters within which this story can effectively happen is my concern here. There are actually people in this world somewhere who could care less about porn stars being a "hush hush topic" and might just simply not understand the HIGH STAKES this character is going through. And that these "high stakes" are completely framed within a secular Christian dialectic of salvation and redemption further illustrates the shallow and extremely specific group of viewers that may be effectively impressed by such a film.
But I should stop because I haven't yet seen the film.
21 April 2004
20 April 2004
THE CONFLAGRATION OF ENTERTAINMENT AND ADVERTISEMENT
LINK TO ARTICLE
Susanne Somers, under the guise of authorship, has decided to venture into pharmaceutical sales. The manipulation of the popular mind into taking this as anything other than an advertisement for "bioidentical hormones" quite possibly may be one of the most blatant uses of contemporary black magic.
Susanne Somers, under the guise of authorship, has decided to venture into pharmaceutical sales. The manipulation of the popular mind into taking this as anything other than an advertisement for "bioidentical hormones" quite possibly may be one of the most blatant uses of contemporary black magic.
14 April 2004
THE MECHANISMS OF MORALITY or GLIMPSES OF THE NIP
Yahoo! News - Wal-Mart Sells Anti-Smut DVD Player
Read the above article and then come back to this page.
I am distressed about the state of "moral affairs" in this country. That people would go to such great lengths as purchase technologies that seek to eliminate any inappropriate imagery or language from entering their personal spheres and thusly, the attendant feelings of discomfort due to perceived infringements on the particular set of selected or inherited morals with which people have claimed as their own and equate with their entire identity, is a disturbing reality.
I cannot endure living for much longer in this culture of shame and psychological complexes that motivate the pixellating of nipples and the covering up of penises and the censoring of voices. It is crippling, even to me with my angry voice of neo-liberal rebellious finger-pointing, to have to giggle uncomfortably when we see something we "shouldn't have seen" and a great waste of time, frankly. Why do we giggle uncomfortably? It's a BREAST.
This failure to address the mechanisms of morality that set us up to perceive pain and to take offense perpetuates this completely ridiculous cycle of set-up-this-moral-code to have it-be-threatened-by-this-breach-of-its-sacredness. We need to ask why and how. Once we understand the why and how the mechanism works, we can then step outside of its conditioning.
WHY does that nipple need to be covered up?
Is it because we in actuality really really really want to see it so so so badly because it stirs in us powerful emotions that we don't get to feel? Is there a psychoanalytical analysis to be made? (of course)
But then isn't the reason why it stirs up powerful emotions that we don't often feel (and we lust after glimpses of the nip) precisely BECAUSE they're usually covered up?
What if nipples were never covered up?! Would they lose all their power as objects of desire? Would their meaning as objects which lustful tongues desire to lap disappear? Absolutely.
Why keep things hidden? So we can discover them over and over again in a titillating game of eternal hide-and-go-seek with ourselves?
What a waste of time.
Check your mechanism.
And do not shop at Wal-Mart.
Read the above article and then come back to this page.
I am distressed about the state of "moral affairs" in this country. That people would go to such great lengths as purchase technologies that seek to eliminate any inappropriate imagery or language from entering their personal spheres and thusly, the attendant feelings of discomfort due to perceived infringements on the particular set of selected or inherited morals with which people have claimed as their own and equate with their entire identity, is a disturbing reality.
I cannot endure living for much longer in this culture of shame and psychological complexes that motivate the pixellating of nipples and the covering up of penises and the censoring of voices. It is crippling, even to me with my angry voice of neo-liberal rebellious finger-pointing, to have to giggle uncomfortably when we see something we "shouldn't have seen" and a great waste of time, frankly. Why do we giggle uncomfortably? It's a BREAST.
This failure to address the mechanisms of morality that set us up to perceive pain and to take offense perpetuates this completely ridiculous cycle of set-up-this-moral-code to have it-be-threatened-by-this-breach-of-its-sacredness. We need to ask why and how. Once we understand the why and how the mechanism works, we can then step outside of its conditioning.
WHY does that nipple need to be covered up?
Is it because we in actuality really really really want to see it so so so badly because it stirs in us powerful emotions that we don't get to feel? Is there a psychoanalytical analysis to be made? (of course)
But then isn't the reason why it stirs up powerful emotions that we don't often feel (and we lust after glimpses of the nip) precisely BECAUSE they're usually covered up?
What if nipples were never covered up?! Would they lose all their power as objects of desire? Would their meaning as objects which lustful tongues desire to lap disappear? Absolutely.
Why keep things hidden? So we can discover them over and over again in a titillating game of eternal hide-and-go-seek with ourselves?
What a waste of time.
Check your mechanism.
And do not shop at Wal-Mart.
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