Blue morality and Kinsey
Kam and I went and saw the new movie Kinsey last week. It was excellent; well worth seeing. Lots of good content, plus good acting. I didn't love it quite as much as Mary Anne did, but I did think it was quite good.
Now Mary Anne passes along a New York Times article titled "The Plot Against Sex in America," by Frank Rich, which is a combination review of Kinsey and commentary on modern political trends that make the movie all too relevant. Parts of the article sound to me like fearmongering, designed to make liberals worry that that lobster pot is heating up; on the other hand, a lot of the article's tone seems pretty reasonable to me, and it mentions some worrisome situations.
I think it's too early to say, but I do begin to wonder if the US political pendulum is swinging, with the force of backlash, toward a period of general condemnation of libertine sexual ideas and practices. It's not like such periods haven't happened before. In the 1990 movie Flashback, Dennis Hopper's character memorably said "The '90s are going to make the '60s look like the '50s"; I sure hope the Aughts (or the Naughts?) aren't going to make the '50s look like the '60s. Still, I remain pretty confident that in the long run, the pendulum's center point is gradually shifting in the direction I prefer.
As a side note, I had a moment of confusion at the beginning of the article, over the phrase "the bluest of TV channels, public broadcasting's WNET, in the bluest of cities, New York"—without context, I momentarily thought he was using "blue" in the sense of bluenose or blue laws, rather than in the sense of "blue state."
Anyway. I'm not sure anything above is coherent; if not, ignore it and do two things: go see Kinsey, and stop by the Kinsey Institute page and poke around.
Oh, and I recommend having sex with someone you like. As a protest, of course.
