Is There Life After Sex?

"The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli

Sex is the manifestation of the "life force," a term coined by George Bernard Shaw though it is not clear if he ever had any--sex that is. But certainly it's the force behind creation. In the case of the human species which is burdened with consciousness, evolution has creatively offered the concept of idealization or romantic love in order to afford consummation and inevitably the prolongation of the species. So humans are wired for sex even when libidinous desire wanes and their pheromones go on the fritz. The damage has been done by the onset of senescence, but the neurogenic pathways of the brain still are wired for longing  even when there are no residues of drive. It’s like a huge highway which attracts little traffic due to environmental adversity, population change or both. Some older couples revert back to a kind of pre-adolescent sexuality that exhibits the innocence and charm of a high school production of Romeo and Juliet. Of course dementia can cause disinhibition and there is a percentage of the elderly population who become randy. Rape and STD’s have become problems in some nursing homes. However, the majority who neither develop infatuations or cases of late onset satyriasis or nymphomania are faced with a challenge that requires the creation of a new form of passion that takes the place of physical love. 

Last Tango in Lille

Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color begins with a discussion of Marivaux’s The Virtuous Orphan: Or, The Life of Marianne in a high school classroom in Lille. The very sizing up and choosing of potential romantic partners constitutes the nature of the discussion, which eventually brings up the question of free will or predestination. Of course this is the foreshadowing for the seemingly fortuitous initial encounter between Emma (Lea Seydoux), an artist and art student and Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos), a high school student. When we first spot Adele in a series of crosscuts, she seems to move around like a random atom, her progress in life only subject to her preternatural appetites, which include boys, girls and food. However, the conflict between free will and determinism quickly gives way to a debate over appetite versus taste—which can, when you think of it, be looked at as one refinement of the earlier question. As Adele's appetite for women drives her to Lea, the gourmand turns into a bit of a gourmet with Sartre’s famous dichotomy between existence versus essence, the art of Schiele and Klimt and the films of Louise Brooks appearing as citations along the way. But is this haute cuisine, cuisine bourgeoise or merely fast food? The answer is that Blue is the Warmest Color is all three and that is what creates its daunting complexity. It’s surprising that Camille Paglia didn’t have a cameo, at least at one of the artist soirees since the eroticism of the sex between Lea and Emma dwarfs any heterosexual sex scene that has appeared in either porn or straight films. If Paglia’s Sexual Personae argued that male sexuality played a poor second fiddle to the power of the feminine drive, then Kechiche’s movie is the  graphic proof of her point. And yet this might be called the fast food element of the movie to the extent that all passion is predicated on impossibility and Kechiche’s lovers fall into a long line of tragic victims of sensibility including Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary (the eponymous Emma after whom Kechine’s character is named). Amongst the many references in the film one can’t help but think of Last Tango in Paris. Exarchopoulos has the late Maria Schneider’s lips and hair style (with a bang covering her face throughout ) and like the character Schneider played in Last Tango, Adele is a child in woman’s form. Significantly, and to the chagrin of her older more sophisticated lover, who is constantly trying to Pygmalianize her (class and class consciousness are yet one more level of concern in Kechiche’s ornate tapestry), by getting her to change her career objective to something more creative, Adele has immersed herself the field of early childhood education. Blue is the Warmest Color won the Palm D’Or and only the French could have produced such an erotic film that also is an extended philosophical discussion out of the pages of Pascal and Montaigne. The film could have been shot at the Ecole Normale Superieur. Rather than Blue is the Warmest Color the film might better titled Last Tango in Lille. But make no mistake, the delicate and complex layering and sensations of this particular confection definitely qualifies the final product as haute cuisine. The palette of emotions Exarchopolous is able to draw upon is extraordinary. Her cheek moves involuntarily in a nervous tic as she begins to fall apart. One should also note that besides Lea Seydoux’s character being named Emma, the movie takes place in the north of France which is Bovary country.

Non-Aspirational Naming

Romeo and Juliet by Ford Madox Brown (1870)

Selma is the most non-aspirational name you can give a kid. When you name your daughter Selma, you are giving her the subliminal message that you don’t want her straying far from the family manse.  Ceil is also making a similar statement. Naming your son Rutherford, Forbes, Cumberland or the self same daughter Prudence, Missy or Babs and you convey a different sort of message, particularly if you're not a blue blood. Then there are simply the Inas, Madges and Adeles. If you want your daughter to be one of those wizened old ladies before she’s out of her swaddling clothes then name her Blanche. Okay there was Blanche Dubois, but most Blanches make us blanch. And what parent  wants their daughter to be regarded as with it, names her Muriel or their son Howie, Irving, Harvey or the old Harv. Now Earl or Duke pose some real problems. These are regal names, but you can’t name your kid the Earl of something or Duke of something if haven’t inherited a title. When you name a kid Duke it sounds like Duke Snyder or Earl, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe. And then of course you have 'The Duke of Earl." Gaylord is another matter, but the name, like certain jobs, doesn’t come with the usual benefits. Now there's a middle line. You can name your boy Tom, Dick or Harry. Tom Smith is a veritable tabula rasa, on which he will lay his own imprint. In Israel there’s Moishe. Italy has lots of Fabrizios, and Germany its Klauses or Clauses and what would Russia be without its Olgas or China without its Chiangs. Jack is a nice one. If you have a subliminal desire to birth a kid with an edge, it’s a great moniker if your last name happens to be black. Jack Black took no flack, nice! Fiona and Spencer both occupy the 38^th parallel when it comes to naming since by naming your child one of those you are coming perilously close to putting them in enemy territory. “What’s in a name?” Juliet asks in the famed balcony scene. “That which we call a rose.”

Suicide

Emile Durkheim

“In l738, a journalist (possibly Samuel Richardson) claimed that suicide was England’s 'new religion,'” Freya Johnston remarks a TLS review of three tomes on suicide, Kelly McGuire’s Dying to be English, Paul Seaver et al, editors, The History of Suicide in England, 1650-1850 and Richard Bell’s We Shall Be No More (“Suicide Watch,” TLS, 1/18/13). “Melancholy seemed to infect everyone and everything: even a sedan chair, narrating the history of its life and adventures in London in l757, admits that it has flirted with self destruction: ‘Since my reparation, I have had a very particular dejection of spirits. Whether I am almost tired of a foolish and ridiculous world, I can’t tell…’” Shakespeare reflects the suicidal British temperament. Hamlet was suicidal, Ophelia drowns (and there has always been a debate about whether it was suicide or accident), Othello did it along with both Romeo and Juliet. Of course another English great, Virginia Woolf, would drown herself. Hume, Johnston points out, condoned suicide while “Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) condemns the act in its definition of “SUICIDE:” “Self-murder, the horrid crime of destroying one's self.” Not that the English have any monopoly on suicide, which has been particularly prevalent amongst American poets including Anne Sexton, John Berryman and Sylvia Path. Amongst the Italians Primo Levi survived Auschwitz only to take his life after the war (although there are those who have cast doubts on whether his fall from his Turin residence was suicide or not).  Cesare Pavese, a noted editor and writer, also killed himself. And speaking of melancholy Danes, the Swedes were always known for their high incidence of suicide despite all the entitlements of the welfare state. Albert Camus famously began The Myth of Sisyphus by saying, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”And the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, wrote a book on the subject tersely titled Suicide, in which he attempted to isolate factors such as religious belief, marital status, sex and education, which contributed to suicide. Protestants he concluded were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics or Jews.