Sperm Count: Fifty Shades of Janovic Paint

Fifty Shades is such a ubiquitous part of the collective unconscious that’s its spawned a TV series, Submission, in which the characters' fantasies are fueled by a book called The Slave (though creators of the series have tried to differentiate it as a more realistic portrayal of human sexuality than that of its predecessor). It’s a little unrealistic to have a book like The Slave lying out everywhere, as it is in the series. Usually you keep Fifty Shades clones, in a drawer or under a mattress. The Story of O, for all its notoriety, never had it so good. But what'd most interesting is the meta universe in which the series exists. Unlike Fifty Shades, the willing suspension of disbelief is constantly cut short when characters wake up from their fantasies. And daydreaming is really what Submission is about. Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, but someone could do an analysis of the show called The Interpretation of Daydreams. Further, the world in which the series takes place, in which much of the sex is catalyzed by fiction, is a comment on our pornographic culture, in which those who read highly stimulating texts or go on sites, are inundated with imagery that ultimately separates rather than unites them with others. So strong are the images that may have stimulated sex that they end up overwhelming the sex itself, leaving the person who's fantasizing as solitary as he or she would have been were they simply masturbating to the same scenarios. E. L. James may find herself writing yet another sequel entitled Fifty Shades of Janovic Paint to deal with the color combinations on the walls of the rooms in which the characters of Submission live out their reveries of being enslaved.

Pornosophy: The Problem With Hedonism

Epicurus (photo: Interstate295)

The problem with hedonism is that it's so self serving. If you're constantly thinking about how you can maximize your pleasures there's no time for anyone or thing that isn’t an immediate source of pleasure. Here's a quote from a new Showtime series called Submission, which has an S&M theme that's obviously trying to capitalize on the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. “sometimes losing control has it’s own kind of power.” But though "submission" in an S&M context camouflages itself as a kind of surrender of the self, it's merely a technique of creating sexual excitement and ultimately of maximizing the intensity of the orgasm. Though such surrender  camouflages as a spiritual pursuit, it's totally egocentric. Epicurus is a philosopher whose name is associated with pleasure by virtue of the fact that epicureans, or would be followers of the dictates of Epicurus might be devoted to the cultivation of taste—at least in so far as food is concerned. But Epicurus was a proponent of moderation and the pleasure he proslyetized for was characterized by the diminution of pain. It was not based on a raging need to increasingly gratify urges, but a more even-handed ability to define sensibility, something which is ultimately a social phenomenon in which other peoples’ needs and desires are taken into consideration. But let's employ what might be called a "last supper test," something like one of those conundrums in ethics, in which, in this case, the condemned prisoner gets anything he wants. Imagine yourself hypothetically occupying your own death row. It’s your last day on earth and you sate your desires for wine, women (or men), song and of course glazed donuts. Every orifice is stuffed. Unfettered by the fear of consequences you have satisfied all your desires. But are you happy?

Pornosophy: The Joys of Nagging

engraving of Scold's bridle (John Dorman Steele and Esther Baker Steele)

Jung famously said the "craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our our being for wholeness...." The same can be said for nagging. Whether it’s a thirst is up for grabs, but it’s definitely lower level. A lot of people don’t have the stomach for full-blown S&M and it also requires not only the ability to maintain an erection (an increasingly dubious proposition in these perilous times) but also the ability to sustain a role—something which is incidentally one of the most important aspects of the actor’s art. Nagging is to S&M what improvisation is to what Stanislavski called Building A Character. You're not going to blindfold, handcuff, tie to the bedposts, flog, Greek, smother or gag. Rather you’re apt to criticize, humiliate (a cross over technique employed by both naggers and sado-masochists), demean, deride and generally push your love object to the point where they will scream at you (something produced in S&M sessions by both submissives and dominants but by other means). In the midst of bickering you might think to yourself, why can’t this misery be turned into something more glamorous and dramatic?  Anyone can participate in endless anal arguments and most people would rather be right than happy. But how many couples practice anal sex with dildos and restraints? How many couples live like the larger than life characters of Fifty Shades of Grey? Compare and despair. This is precisely the kind of thinking that loses sight of the subtle joys that go into nagging or being nagged to death. Familiarity breeds contempt is the mantra of the nagger who is not only tired of the person he or she is with, but with life in general. Sure you can and should probably move on, but you can’t and that's what makes the pleasure of hocking away at your loved one so sublime.

Pornosophy: The Postmodern Playboy of the Western World

John Millington Synge

How does the post-modern playboy pass his day? Back in the 50’s Hugh Hefner introduced the Playboy life style which had something in common with Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Fearlessness and savoir faire were combined in a gently sadomasochistic form of hedonism. The hero of Fifty Shades of Grey is perhaps the grandson or great grandson or a close relative of Bond’s just as the literary heritage of Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus might be traced back to Hamlet. But surely today’s metrosexual is not mixing martinis in a silk bathrobe or looking for direction on sophistication from the Playboy advisor or anywhere else. For starters the postmodern playboy might literally be questioning whether he is in fact a boy. Perhaps he partakes of the sensibility of a woman who loves other woman or even of a woman who loves other men or simply a man who loves other men. But like a Connecticut Yankee, it would be fun to consider the possibility of  scenarios where our hero is sent back to the equivalent of King Arthur’s court. Give this creature a fast car, beautiful women and a cold war adversary and let’s see see what SSRI would enable him to weather the ensuing anxiety attack? Hugh Hefner is still living. Albert Broccoli who produced many James Bond films is dead. Perhaps our hero would be a sad boy with a book, a Hamlet  picking up his well-worn copy of Shakespeare’s play. J. M. Synge wrote The Playboy of the Western World. Someone should write The Postmodern Playboy of the Western World, perhaps modeled, not on spies like Wild Bill Donovan, but on the career of polymorphously perverse mega artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Love Story was the big splashy romance of l970 which every serious filmgoer and critic loved to trash. Fifty Shades of Grey is the candidate for 2015. The difference was--and it would be quite telling to analyze the cultural substrates out of which both films were conceived--that Love Story’s melodrama derived from dispossession while the catharsis or lack thereof in Fifty Shades derives from possession. Possession is part of the lexicon of sado-masochism as is control which Fifty Shades underscores as a kind of meaning making in and of itself. Action seems to have more significance precisely because it becomes a religion which is prescribed and ritualized to the point where its intention is totally transparent; the freedom and poetic ambiguity which is the lingua franca of so-called normative love is replaced with something  more emphatic. For instance one of the great S&M masterpieces of all time, The Story of O,  derives its power from the protagonist’s complete and utter abandonment of her ego, the loss of self that  comes from giving one’s will over to another person entirely. Fifty Shades is a romance in which there is a sado-masochistic sub plot. It’s a peccadillo of Christian Grey’s (Jamie Dornan) that Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) has to put up with to win him over. Similarly though Grey claims that he's not looking for love, he's constantly negotiating and caving in on his demands in order to win over a woman who is more a wild card than a true submissive. It’s always fun to consider works of popular entertainment like Fifty Shades beneath contempt. But it’s also boring because what's bad about it, the stock characters (the rich guy and ingénue girl with their respective wounds) and settings (the dressing room filled with ties that have multiple uses and the overly polished executive suite with its fashionista secretaries) is more obvious than what has potential interest. For instance Christian presents Anastasia with a contract specifying the acts which she will consent to participate in and the devices. She rejects genital clamps, along with anal or vaginal fist fucking. But she’s a good sport when it comes to floggers and suspension. It’s the sadomasochistic version of a prenuptial agreement. But isn’t this exactly what the state of California is requiring in its latest affirmative consent statute whereby on campus foreplay becomes reduced to litigation (“I’m not going to touch you until I have your written consent,” Grey says). True sadomasochism in both pornography and serious art films like Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac participates in no such mediation, providing instead the illusion of the disturbing kind of degradation and humiliation that's the vehicle by which not only clothes but ego are shed. The character of Christian Grey as rendered by Sam Taylor-Johnson's direction of the E. L James novel, is too tentative to be truly unsettling. His childhood trauma has made it impossible for him to trust or tolerate intimacy as much as he's portrayed as desiring those very things. So the affect of dominance allows him only the illusion of control. In fact, he’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing. The ambivalence with which Grey undertakes his calling may account for the character’s commercial appeal. But in this case, it also humanizes him and almost makes him interesting.