cmaxwell

In the movie Kinsey, the famous sex researcher falters in his effort to raise questions that stem from the data he has amassed. His research has shown that a huge number of people are having both premarital and extramarital sexual encounters both heterosexual and homosexual in nature. Shown giving a lecture to a dwindling audience of appalled listeners, he posits a "problem of marriage"--that the institution of matrimony fails utterly to accommodate or even acknowledge many human beings' desire for varied sexual activity with multiple partners. In the film, Kinsey swoons and collapses, apparently overcome by vertigo at even broaching such a taboo subject.
Later in the film, two of his male associates have a fist fight because one of them is sleeping with the other's wife and they've fallen in love. It's clear that Kinsey has encouraged the sexual exploration, but his chief lieutenant, who has been cuckolded, castigates Kinsey for not recognizing that fucking can lead to romantic entanglement.
Because the film is as square as Kinsey himself is portrayed to be, everything works out--the assistant gets his wife back, and Kinsey's wife accepts Kinsey's own sexual explorations and even one-ups him, and the marriages stay intact.
More than a half-century after Kinsey shocked the nation with his expose of sexual behavior, the movie Closer presents postmodern characters who are struggling with the bad fit between their rampant sexual and romantic desires and the institution of marriage, or its postmodern equivalent, "living together," or committed non-married monogamy. Like some, they seem incapable of more than short serial monogamous relationships, yet they still hew emotionally to the ideal of exclusivity. They treat each other badly, unable to restrain their impulses and struggling to reconcile their emotions with their behaviors.
Unlike Kinsey, which is a movie that doesn't have the courage to follow through on the issues it raises and tries to impose a happy Hollywood ending, Closer is bold, brave, and sad. It's an updated Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff. And it illustrates how little distance we've traveled since the Kinsey report.
There are still prudes and religious fanatics trying to put the lid on polymorphous perversity -- any kind of sex except fucking in a straight marriage. Why, they're even organizing to protest the movie Kinsey.
There are still rebels who are trying to figure out how to be honest with their partners and still leave their relationships open. All hail these brave innovators and their unabashed proclamation of their right to be loving, human free beings.
Then there's the rest of us, mired in the contradictions. In a book I wrote years ago, I suggested that the institution of marriage artificially makes sexual pleasure scarcer in order to sustain civilization against the radical assault of free love. I suggested an alternative that I know now doesn't work any better. What does work? Polyamory and honesty? With the right people only--and those are rare. The Slick Willie solution? Look where that got him. More of the same? What else is there?
In Europe and other places around the globe, the mistress is tolerated or acceptable; in a few cultures, it's even possible for married women to take lovers without threatening to blow up their marriage. Here, though, we insist on the same approach that made Kinsey fall over: Despite all the data, we still want to pretend the problem doesn't exist. We just absorb the casualties and march forward, like soldiers in the Civil War.
What do you think? Why are sexual liaisons such a threat to committed love partnerships? How would you design an institution that works better than marriage?