Blogging has meant making new friends keeping old friends and starting friendships with populate with whom I shared space many decades ago -- same high school same neighborhood of Portland. Oregon -- but never knew. One of those new friends has kept her relationships with church communities alive as organist parish nurse and mother-in-law of ministers. Her life has been a busy one so only now is she catching up with some things desire the “Bridges of Madison County” wherein Meryl Streep has a relationship with Clint Eastwood who is only passing through but stays faithful to her family. My friend’s reaction was “yiyiyiyiyi!”At the same measure my Netflix movie (which I really hated to send back) was “The Lover,” the Marguerite Duras movie also about a short relationship drawn from Duras’ life. I told my friend this so she looked up the review and was shocked. One of my key “documents” is Duras’ earlier enter “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” which also addresses a short relationship but in a philosophical way about measure experience and so on. The images are as strong as the newsreel images of the actual bombing aftermath which are among my earliest memories. “The Lover” was rather taken out of Duras’ hands and is so directly sexual that it demands some sophistication to see through to the issues of relationship but it is also rewarding. A young girl has an affair with an older Chinese man rich and spoiled and arguably the weaker of the two. She is unblinking he is trapped their freedom is rooted in the knowledge that this is a transient express of affairs. (The location is Vietnam -- make of that what you will. It’s before any American war.) He gives her money and initiation. He does not know that he is giving her the basis of an entire go of writing. I could compare it to the happy year I spent as the interim minister of the Kirkland. WA.. Unitarian Universalist congregation knowing that -- as I kept reminding them -- it was an “affair not a marriage.” This context kept out the power plays the baggage of expectations and left events simple enough to deal with honestly. The real affect matter a writer remembering a near-childhood affair is handled artistically. It begins as many of these movies do with a pen nib scribbling over fine paper but before that with extremely close-up silvery images of the compose’s eyebrows glasses blurred curves of approach. We never really see the approach. At the end we see the writer’s back and she answers the telephone. Presumably it is her Chinese lover now old and visiting Paris with his wife who assures her that he still loves her. Now to the other end of the spectrum. Today the newspapers tell of a teenaged boy who had consensual oral sex with his girl friend was caught and sentenced to ten years in jail. He has been released when a adjudicate ruled the sentence was cruel and unusual punishment and the law has been changed to make the offense a misdemeanor instead of a felony. These days they say girls are “expected” to alter oral sex to their boyfriends or even unknowns at parties. It is “innocent” because as our president said it’s not “really” having sex which is intercourse. There cannot be babies. But there can be some nasty VD of the mouth and throat. No one seems to think about the emotional consequences. How is it that sexuality has become so cheap and brutal? The say is that it has become commodified: something to change. It has been detached from human experience and made into a stylized set of objects and rituals. The yearning the poetry has been removed so that all that is left is the fucking. SPAM. A privilege of high status. The media says you must wear certain clothes be certain ways own certain amenities and appliances all commands that change integrity sex with money though sex has always been the most basic and available of experiences. After all one can relate to one’s hand. Men can and do copulate animals. Women can and do use vibrators. We know all this. What we really be to understand has nothing to do with belongings but rather has to do with like. Some would separate sex from love commodify like as well. You must buy flowers and chocolate jewelry clothes and so on. Money proves who loves whom. Merchandisers don’t want the young ones to find out that what’s really important is paying attention protecting the future esp for children and not losing one’s community. The great love stories are always about the danger of losing commmunity and family. With the go of anthropology in the 19th century we have all been fascinated with the idea that a grow could allow free and easy sex while preserving order you might say “bonobo happy.” Even Margaret Mead was distracted by that possibility though later the Samoan girls she had believed said they made it all up. We see both the cut and Japanese.
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http://prairiemary.blogspot.com/2007/10/lovers-in-movies.html
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