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Freud was responsible for the term penis envy. But is there vagina
envy—an emotion that some males might be prone to experience after watching the
exuberant sexuality of a movie like Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adele in its original French version)? For those who suffer from this affliction the
question might then be asked, is a predilection a question of biology or an
acquired characteristic, a taste that one develops? Can someone born with male
gonads possess the sensibility of a lesbian? Is it possible to cultivate a
taste for sexuality the way you would a certain kind of art, in this case by
reading books like Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood
or seeing movies like Blue is the Warmest
Color? And is the converse true? Some activists who fought hard for the
notion that gayness was a matter of genes and biology might buckle at the
notion that one is not necessarily gay or straight at birth. This is not to support
the position of fundamentalist Christian deprogrammers who want to return gays
to biblically modeled heterosexuality--which is just another side of the same
absolutist coin (in both views sexuality is ideologized). Is sexuality perhaps more labile? Can one live
a gay style of life at one point and then switch over and become a heterosexual as is the case with Chirlane McCray, the wife of the Bill de Blasio? The question of sexual identity brings
up the classic dichotomies between nature versus nurture, between free will and
determinism. It's understandable that those who have felt shame about their
sexual inclinations or faced ostracism and disapproval about them would like to
find an end to a painful struggle. Human beings like answers. They want to know
and once they know who they are, they naturally want to join in and be with
those who like them for it. Interestingly Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) the young
protagonist of Blue is the Warmest Color
seems the most uncomfortable in the scene where she had her lover, Emma (Lea
Sedoux), attend a gay rights march. Another dichotomy that’s brought up in the
movie is that of existence versus essence. What if sexual identity is an
existentialist choice rather than the reflection of predetermined essence?
Wouldn’t it be specious reasoning to conclude that there is some platonic ideal
one must aspire to? What if men and women saw themselves as independent voters,
who pulled the Republican lever in one election and the Democratic in the next.
Dispensing with expensive and irreversible sex change operations, can’t men who
are enraptured by the sexuality of a movie like Blue is the Warmest Color undergo a change of consciousness in
which they don’t love like men who love women or men who love men, but like
women who love other women?
"Human beings like answers"...a brilliant insight, so succinct and the root of all philosophy, science and religion. Perhaps, while we are driven to seek answers, we simultaneously rebel against the constraints an "A is A" type answer implies (especially in relation to ourselves), which would account for our love of labeling others even as we demand freedom to explore all facets of our own being.
ReplyDeleteI love your explorations of existentialism vs. determinism.
Thanks Jylle. The question of course is always how free is free. Am I free to become for instance a man with the mentality of a snake or are there parameters to free will?
ReplyDeleteAh, you're asking The Question here. I don't think this question exists in other species (though I could be wrong about that); other creatures just do, and if it works they do it again. If it doesn't work they're usually dead. I'm not suggesting this as any kind of guideline to a sort of Darwinian morality, but it does seem at times like a restfully simple way of being. Angst-free, you know?
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