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| El juicio de Paris, Enrique de Simonet, 1904 |
I'd been planning to continue my output with another Johansson billing in which I reviewed Joseph Gordon Levitt's Don Jon - which I pre-ordered back in December (since apparently I was the only one who didn't see it in the cinema). In fact, it ushered in a season of watching films on Saturday nights that I'd missed on the big screen for the last two or three years. Makes me weep to think my infrequent cinema outings have been variously wasted on an awful Bond film and an awful 'Star Trek' film. For about three and a half years I watched a different film almost every night until 2010. That ended when the drive to acquire new DVDs yielded some disappointments and I started getting a feeling that too many ninety minute blocs of my life were being irretrievably lost. You can psychoanalyse me pretty clearly off the back of that. Flying in the face of that live-predictably ethos, I put £12.25 down on a pre-order of Don Jon, having not even seen a trailer. Despite not visiting the cinema regularly, I listen to Mayo & Kermode's film review thing podcast every Saturday morning and was intrigued on the basis of this interview with Levitt.
Despite being marketed as an overt comedy, I was extremely interested in the premise. Essentially, the titular character is a modern take on the legendary womaniser Don Juan with the hypersexuality turned up to eleven. The driving force of the story is that Jon, for all the women he gets into bed, can't really get off unless he's sat at his laptop vigorously masturbating to online porn. That alone would be an interesting look at how men consume media depictions of sexuality and how it does or does not impact their concept of sexuality. What intrigued me in the interview, is that the woman Jon falls for (Barbara, played by Johansson) has her own concept of relationships warped in parallel by the media that she consumes - romantic comedies.
This was an extremely fresh look at the subject because the truth of the matter is, there are two people in a relationship (for clarification: heterosexual, original genitals, monogamous, etc, etc). Without the counterpoint it would likely be a run-of-the-mill thought-quack about how internet pornography is destroying society and only men look at it and therefore men are destroying society. Listen, plenty of women look at it even if it takes a different form be it audio or textual rather than visual; there's far more social pressure on women to deny that just as the prevalent thought is women enjoy sex less than men. The morality of the business of pornography is no more important a topic than the business of media and the behavioural conventions it instils in a different set of consumers. Do Disney fairy tales movies make every young female viewer into a narcissistic entitled Princess? Does every porn clip make an adolescent male a misogynist? When I think back to the Spice Girl's proclamation of Girl Power, I wonder if anyone else thought it was fittingly tragic that the opposing force to the worst that lad culture had to offer was the same attitude gender-swapped.
Jon's porn problem is evidently a problem - we see the look in his eyes when he is absorbed in the fantasy. So too do we see it in Barbara's when she takes him to see a romantic comedy. It's vital to note that the relationship is doomed whether or not Jon is addicted to porn because Barbara's fantasy of a relationship is also in conflict with reality. The key scene occurs when Jon announces he's going to buy some cleaning products for his apartment which he takes pride in maintaining.
Barbara: Don't talk about vacuuming in front of me, come on!Another character points this out very vocally in case you didn't get it. Without revealing details, the film progresses on the idea of shared experience trumping self-pleasure. For Jon, sex with all the women he brings back to his apartment from the club is a chore. He feels he is putting all the effort into a performance in which he cannot lose himself while she, to coin a phrase, lies on her back. Only with porn do Jon's eyes really glaze over, and his solitary workout regime in the gym reflects the idea of working toward no goal but his own satisfaction.
Jon: Why, what's wrong?
Barbara: Why? Because it's not sexy, that's why!
¶ SPOILER
Throughout the film, Jon, having banged multiple women and whacked off multiple times, goes to confession to absolve his recurring sins. The priest instructs Jon to say however many Hail Mary-s for these sins. After Jon enters into a fulfilling sexual relationship he once again goes to confession proudly informing the priest that he has not looked at pornography, but that he has had sex out of wedlock though he characterises it as 'making love'. To his confusion the priest instructs him to say a greater number of prayers than on the previous occasions. It's a scene that very clearly comes down against the church, not even necessarily the Vatican as explicitly depicted. To his mind, this instance of so-called fornication was much healthier than the soulless exploits seen at the start because it was borne from an intimacy completely lacking previously. And yet the 'punishment' is greater as the church draws no distinction.This is one of my major gripes with Christianity (or the Abrahamic religions in general). I've remarked before that I have philosophical objections to the ideas of submission, of servitude, of supposedly being a dirty repository of a supernatural entity. It's that ultimate form of mind-body dualism that has pervaded Western mores for more than a thousand years and something akin to a virginity cult. It's a wonder anyone was born during the reign of Victoria. I can only imagine what the Romans would think at their language becoming the medium for a liturgy of the denial of humanity. I find myself quite fascinated reading about the various neopagan revival movements in Europe. I'm no closer to believing in a multitude, a handful, a trinity, or one deity; it's that the embracing of human nature is far more favourable than Mosaic Law dictated but not read, chiselled into stone and heavy like the weight around your neck that it is. A lot of neopagans don't believe in their literal existence either and chose to interpret it as almost an ancient form of psychology. There's an analogy to be drawn between the idea that the pantheon represent various facets of human nature, whereas the strict rule of monotheism (rules bent slightly with the Christian trinity) is a rigidly imposed one-size-fits-all ideal for living.
This is a far more open theology which is demonstrated by the growth of the Roman pantheon as it incorporated regional deities from the lands incorporated into the Republic and later Empire. In fact, they were quite aware of the similarities between their Italic myths and those of neighbouring Greece and it was politically favourable to embrace the culture they admired and to which they considered themselves heirs. What really stuck in their craw, regards the Jews and Christians (which started off as a Jewish sect), was their resistance to integration. Oh, the modern parallels. Rome, in the theological sense, continued the syncretic approach but never gave the additions equal footing. There was only room for one at the top and everything else was altered to suit - hence Jesus just happens to be born around the winter solstice and undergoes a resurrection cycle at the spring equinox. However, I don't delude myself that the indigenous paganism of pre-Christian Europe was some kind of Eden - get it? Proto-Indo-European society was demonstrably patriarchal and women evidently don't get much of a word edgeways in Classical Roman and Greek society. I dare say reconstituted paganism is more able to adapt to rectify these issues than the Anglican church which is preparing for a schism over ordaining female bishops.
The neopagan movements, concerned in many regions with language revival or interesting in ethnic history and identity, can obviously be understood as reflexes against globalisation and the homogenisation of culture. Ironic I think, because I read a few weeks ago a comment that perfectly summed up the differences between the Old and New Testaments. The Old is a manual for preserving your culture in the face of domination - the children of Israel have done just that. The New is about spreading your idea globally in the face of entrenched cultures. For better or worse. Amen?
I just had to end my writer's block on the wrong side of midnight.
[1682 ; 3.5]
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