PEDDLING SEX

If you wish not to read all this, do, at least, see the last two paragraphs, especially the quote that ends the post.

For a topic above I tried to put as simply as possible the primary thing, in my opinion, that Horrywood does. (See previous posts for an explanation of that designation for our entertainment industry. In fact, if you've not read every one of these, you've missed a store of wit, wisdom, and inspired use of our language, by which I mean English)

Yes, of course, in one way or another not a few of Horrywood's citizens sell their bodies, some literally, for fame and fortune, but what I mean is that it seeks to sell you and me on the concept that sex is the "non pareil" of the universe.

A textbook example of that view is the film, "Pleasantville," amusing and humorous on some planes, disgusting and malevolent on those of its primary thrust. Via electronic, television mischief, teenage brother and sister are transported from the present into the gray scale, sitcom world of the 1950's.

Their new mother, a primly-dressed home-maker, and dad, who comes home in a suit and tie and calls, "Honey, I'm home," sleep in twin beds, as do all married couples. The school basketball team, boys, is perfect and has never lost a game. The girls are cute, modestly dressed, and when pairs drive down to Lovers' Lane, they sit in the cars, hold hands, and kiss. In this land, though, no one is truly happens, which deprivation is symbolized by the black and white existence.

The visitors from the future, however, agents of change surpassing even B.O. & Co., revolutionize life in Pleasantville, and their principal instrument is sex. Sister is the leading exponent, and before long the parked L.L. cars, each now rocking violently to and fro, reveal only feet, not heads and shoulders. When Mother tells Sister that Father wouldn't be interested in anything like that, Sister teaches her to masturbate! Is this progressive or not?

As life is transformed in these inguinal ways, improvement and joy are signalled by patches of color's creeping into the film of the stultified, Philistine 1950's. Mother's liberation is complete when she abandons home - Father is left announcing "Honey, I'm home" and whining "I want my dinner" to an empty house - to become a contuberal with the soda fountain proprietor. Brother, who works there, has encouraged him to allow his business to go completely to hell and to take up art, all abstract and riotously pigmented. Naturally, pursuing his self-esteem and gratification has outstripped any tendencies towards utility and capability.

Pleasantvillians opposed and resistant to these advances, (Pleasantvillains?) - people dissatisfied with their now losing basketball team, color, double beds, and the like - are portrayed as an angry mob of Nazi's, destructive reactionaries.

In such fashion does Horrywood purvey its favorite idol, sex, and you must have noticed it everyday that you have turned to an amusement created by that industry.

I wish to conclude this communication with a quote from a remarkable little book, A Right to be Merry, by Sister Mary Francis. She was a brilliant, poetic, and loving member of the Poor Clare Colettines, an order of enclosed nuns. The title suffices to dispel any suspicion that a life of penance, poverty, seclusion, obedience, and chastity is bleak and colorless, but consider this passage.

"The motive of the religious [for remaiining celibate] is unique: she wishes to give herself, body and soul, to God. This positive aspect of holy virginity is far too often entirely ignored. Virginity is thought to be a mere abstention. Many, dazzled by the coruscating, if specious, logic of psychologists of the Freudian school, think it is a blight on the development of the personality. One cannot experience the fullness of happiness in the virginal state, they maintain. It needs only one long look at the faces of nuns, one long listen to their laughter, to blow the proposition sky-high - or better, earth-low."