Disloyalty: Worse Than Pornography
Many fans of old movies, who lament the amount of
skin and sweating that is displayed in films today, miss
a point. It does no good to hide the bodies of the women
in a movie--if the CONDUCT OF RELATIONSHIPS
between characters displays that selfishness which is
the real root of promiscuity.
I have watched many supposedly clean and wholesome
old movies in which, though SKIN was not on display,
SIN was being excused. That is, there would be married
or engaged characters who were made to look good for
breaking faith with their partners--NOT because those
partners had done them any wrong, but only because
the unfaithful ones had found someone who was more
physically attractive or had higher billing in the movie.
Yet just because no one was directly pictured squirming
in a bed, these movies could get away with promoting
themselves as"family entertainment" and as "great love
stories." Betrayal of trust and a callous disregard for
promises were somehow "romantic."
I am far less offended by movies with a lot of sex--but
at least some bond of mutual kindness and care between
characters--than by movies whose "cleanliness" is only
visually clean, while evil attitudes that injure innocent
partners are falsely justified.
posted by Joseph Ravitts @ 7:36 PM
1 Comments:
Jan and I went to see Sandra Bullock's latest movie, "The Lake House." It was really good and enjoyable. But there was just that litle irritation: someone involved in writing was resolved that it just COULD NOT be romantic enough unless someone TOOK someone FROM someone else. There just had to be another man who had some claim on Sandra Bullock's character (at least in the fact that she had encouraged him), so that Keanu Reeves' character would have a rival to defeat. Note, not merely a rival, but a rival who had been there first. It's too bad that the writers of an otherwise excellent film just could not let us get by without one more dose of the idea that rejecting prior loyalties MAKES a story romantic.
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