Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts

Friday, November 14, 2008

sex, alcohol, smoking - and cinema






Is this a love scene? A murder scene? From an adult film? None of the above.

The picture is from "Constantine", a fantasy film starring Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz. It's obviously a movie for all ages.

Then what explains the revealing water scene, where the beautiful Weisz sports a diaphanous top and disports in a fetching black bra?

Scenes like these are very common in Hollywood movies: even where no hint of nudity is called for, a none-too-subtle suggestion of eroticism is inserted for effect. Weisz is beautiful in any kind of clothes: why exploit her body?

The pressure to reveal (and, incidentally, have sex) is immense in western culture.

"Diseases which half a century ago mostly affected men and female prostitutes are now affecting men and women in roughly equal numbers. STDs affect people in all sections of society, though in Britain the most noticeable increase in numbers of patients is among teenagers(Don MacKean and Brian Jones, "Human and Social Biology", London: John Murray 2004, p 267)."

Incidentally, in this film Constantine is a chain smoker – he had been smoking since he was fifteen – and is now coughing up blood: he is going to die. He lights up in nearly every scene: young boys are known t be influenced by "macho" scenes of men smoking like chimneys. In the end, Constantine pops a chewing gum into his mouth, of course, but kids have seen him puffing in more manly fashion.

Smoking, alcohol and sex are a heady combination for teenagers – and movies help to promote all three.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Engendered Space (satire)

Iftekhar Sayeed, Engendered Space


(click above for article)


Anthropologists are supposed to use their sense organs – at least, the pair of eyes. But, thanks to the agenda they have to have to swell their CVs, they use other parts of their anatomy – like the head, for instance.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Huxley, and the meaning of words

Huxley, and the meaning of words




(article at above link)

This essay is a tribute to the victims of democracy: the long-suffering Palestinians, the traumatized Iraqis, ...black Americans, Native Americans. We're trained since childhood to ignore victims of democracy and to associate democracy – the word – with feelings of well-being and bonhomie. Aldous Huxley was well aware of the conditioning behind the emotive aspects of the word, as long ago as the 1920s: he knew it was sheer falsehood.



Excerpt:


When a Palestinian uses the word ‘democracy’, he means oppression. When a white, middle-class American uses the same word – well, he or she feels the reverse. When a Hindu uses the word ‘beef’, he definitely does not have the same sensations as a Muslim. And when a Frenchman says soixante-neuf, well, we have a fairly clear idea of what he is getting up - or down – to.