BEFORE: Well, that Super Bowl was a letdown. But then, I fast-forwarded through the game just to watch the commercials, most of which were strange and confusing. Ben Affleck works at Dunkin Donuts now? m&m's are clam-flavored after Maya Rudolph took over for the CGI candies? Walter White is making corn chips now and giant rabbits are coming to throw us down the streaming rabbit hole. Will Ferrell and Kevin Bacon are driving electric cars, Mr. Peanut got roasted in more ways than one, and Steve Martin and Ben Stiller love Diet Pepsi, or perhaps they're just acting.
In case you haven't noticed, I've once again re-scheduled Black History Month in favor of romance month. I don't mean to seem racist - I just have a very full list of romances, more than a month's worth, so I need all of February and almost half of March to even make a dent in that list. Even so, it may build up again before next February - but if it doesn't, I promise next year I'll consider watching some Black History themed movies in February. Anyway, the only films on my list that might even qualify are "Antebellum", "Alice", and "The U.S. vs. Billie Holliday". If I allowed documentaries to count, sure, there are docs about Miles Davis, Dionne Warwick, Buddy Guy, Willie Mays, Arthur Ashe and Venus and Serena Williams, but docs feel like more of a summer thing around here.
Wolfgang Novogratz carries over from "The Half of It", and I promise you, if you're not already aware of who that is, you will be before this week is over. He seems to have cornered the market on playing handsome jocks in recent high-school films.
THE PLOT: After an innocent AOL chat turns racy, a Catholic teenager in the early 2000s discovers masturbation and struggles to suppress her new urges in the face of eternal damnation.
AFTER: This is a short feature about...doing it. No, not that, the other thing, the one you do when you're by yourself. Which is essentially the same thing, only you don't need somebody telling you how to do it or what to think about when you do it, and you just have to make sure you're alone in the house, it works better that way. Or you can do it with another person, that's cool too, that seems like another meaning for the title "Alone Together". I know I shouldn't quote Woody Allen, since he got cancelled for marrying his stepdaughter, but he's famous for the quip about masturbation, calling it "sex with somebody I love." Who hurt you, Woody? It was your first wife, wasn't it? Or the girls that wouldn't give you the time of day in college? You probably gave off the vibe of a guy who was going to marry his stepdaughter one day...
Surprisingly, there are still people who are against masturbation, they only see the bad aspects, they don't see the benefits - which means one of two things, either they're too stuck up to do it themselves, or, more likely, they're totally doing it in private. Isn't everyone? What some people have against it is that it's not part of "God's plan". Umm, OK, when did God say that, and to whom? What they mean is that it's not part of the Church's plan, and I mean the Catholic church from the medieval era. Back then the Catholics believed that there just weren't enough Catholics, they needed more bodies to fend off the Visigoths or the Huns or the Vandals or other heathens, and more sex between two people meant more people, which meant more people to fight the infidels in the Crusades. Also more parishioners who were obligated to donate to the church, you see where I'm going with this? God didn't make the rules, a bunch of priests made the rules and then said they were God's idea. Follow the money, who benefits from people having sex and not jerking off? The church, that's who.
And it's STILL that way, a thousand years later, because the Church did a great job of brainwashing everyone into believing their version of "right" vs. "wrong", everything is black or white with no gray area in-between. Abortion BAD, birth control BAD, masturbation BAD and ant combination of those will send you to Hell. Says who? And what proof is there that there even IS a hell - what if you die and that's it? Well, you won't be conscious or aware at that point, but if you COULD be, you'd probably wish you had a better life, with more sex and if that wasn't possible, then at least more masturbation. Man, it's going to suck when you're about to die, you can feel your life force fading and you realize that there's no bright light, no stairway to heaven, your life is over and you think briefly about how you could have had SUCH a better time on Earth, only you just didn't, because somebody told you that touching yourself was wrong.
Look, I've been there - my sex education classes were taught by priests and nuns, and that's so ridiculous when you think about it. First off, who knows less about sex and marriage than they do? They're talking the talk, but most of them have never walked the walk. And then the medical stuff is so tied up with their dogma that nobody can separate the two - we shouldn't be assigning "good" and "evil" to bodily functions. Is a sneeze evil? A fart? Of course not, so how could ejaculation or an orgasm be wrong? And even if they are, then why did the Creator give us the power to have orgasms and ejaculation by ourselves? This is that whole free will argument, right? What a bunch of crap. And if blood pressure meds or insulin can't be considered evil, then birth control can't be evil either - it's all just science and medicine.
Alice goes on a religious retreat here - it's like summer camp but all the songs are about God. Lately there'd been a rumor around her parochial school that she "tossed someone's salad" when they were alone together at a party, but she's not even sure what that phrase refers to. Now she's been branded as some kind of slut, and it's prompted her to enter the AOL chat rooms (this is set in the early days of the internet) and some guy sent her some dirty photos and wanted to have "cyber-sex" with her. Up until this point, she'd only felt any kind of erotic energy after watching the steamy sex scene in "Titanic" over and over.
Meanwhile, she has to sit through a sex education lesson from a priest who talks about how it's a sin to "spill your seed" or to have sex for pleasure and not procreation, within marriage, which is between a man and a woman only. What a bunch of crap - the sex organs are designed for both, pleasure and reproduction. The religious types don't seem to understand that there's a choice, or they refuse to acknowledge it, but you can have the pleasure without potential parentage - oh, right, birth control's a sin, too. How convenient. Anything that interferes with God's plan is a sin, and somehow they know what God's plan is. Today's "Love Tip" is to not pay any attention to the religous right, and practice your human right to pleasure yourself whenever you want. Only, you know, not in public. By yourself or with a consenting adult partner, please.
Sex is a lot like reading - you can read by yourself, you can read with a partner, you can read in a 6-person Book Club if you want. But when somebody comes along to tell you WHAT you can read and what you can't, WHO you can read with and tries to make laws about HOW you read, well, you know that person's full of crap, and it's all about controlling you. We have laws in this country that say you can read whatever you want, we're supposed to have freedom of speech and freedom of expression - and a separation of church and state, for that matter. So how come there are movements gaining ground about banning certain books? You know who banned books? Nazis and Communists, just saying. And what do you know, it's the same people who don't want their kids to learn about "alternative lifestyles", like being gay and trans and being able to love whomever you want. That's not a coincidence, it's brainwashed religious extremists who want everyone to have their same beliefs about Heaven and sin and God's plan, never mind all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, pertaining to the pursuit of happiness. Freedom of religion grants everyone the right to believe in God, but not to the extent where you don't allow conflicting thoughts about God or gods or the lack of God.
Anyway, Alice discovers on her retreat that some of the retreat leaders are getting it on, and even the priest is watching porn movies on his computer. (With AOL and dial-up speed? Seems unlikely...). OK, since nobody else is abstaining, why should she? She awkwardly kisses Chris, the big strong retreat leader (Wolfgang Novogratz!) but it turns out she doesn't need him, not when she puts her phone on "vibrate". Later she gets some more perspective from hanging out in a lesbian bar, since the owner is a former Catholic herself, who recommends that Alice get herself to a college on the East or West Coast, and away from the silly Midwestern attitudes about sex. Well, I think we've all learned something tonight. Everybody masturbates, it's just that some people are better at hiding it, or are unwilling to admit it.
Also starring Natalia Dyer (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "The Hustle"), Francesca Reale, Susan Blackwell, Alisha Boe, Donna Lynne Champlin (last seen in "Downsizing"), Parker Wierling, Allison Shrum, Matt Lewis (last seen in "Irresistible"), Pat Fisher (ditto), Carey Van Driest, Blair Nesbitt, John Henry Ward, Paige Hullett, Tre'len Johnston, RJ Shearer, Teesha Renee, Zach Allan,
RATING: 6 out of 10 "mortal sin" marshmallows
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