Metasexuals

We had the era of Metrosexuals. Now with Girls, the latest in the sex on television sweepstakes, welcome the Metasexuals. At the beginning of Episode two, Hannah (the character played by the series’ lead character and creator Lena Dunham) is having sex--though we can’t really say making love--with her boyfriend who is better described as a guy she occasionally hooks up with. He calls her a whore and asks if she wants him to cum on her tits or her face. He tells her he is going to send her home to her parents covered in cum. This last little paraphilia is particularly telling since in the previous premiere episode Hannah’s parents in a gesture of  “tough love” tell her they will no longer support her after she leaves her job as an unpaid intern. The regressive jeremiad to parents eager to force their children to grow up too fast, is also a kind of rude updating of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, who also faced a certain opprobrium after being left to her own devices in the big city. But the initial engagement on which episode #2 begins is also significant when you realize that the series is written and created by a woman and the so-called submissive is really the choreographer of the action both in the scene in question and behind the scenes. Pornography and law have one thing in common and that is precedent. Most pornography particularly of the sado-masochistic kind is a vicarious reliving of previous porn which itself finds its provenance in other pornographic works (can we say that the seven days of creation of the ur-pornographic universe began with Sade?--probably not). So what we are experiencing is a far cry from passion or even the de facto improvisational lustiness of the tryst. We are now in the world of metasexuality, where all sex acts are citations and what is ultimately missing is human connection of either a loving or sadomasochistic kind.