Bridgewater Review

Volume 1 | Issue 2 Article 9

Dec-1982 Cultural Commentary: Affectional Preference on Film: Giggle and Lib Joseph J. Liggera Bridgewater State College

Recommended Citation Liggera, Joseph J. (1982). Cultural Commentary: Affectional Preference on Film: Giggle and Lib. Bridgewater Review, 1(2), 21-22. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol1/iss2/9

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. CULTURAL COMMENTARY Affectional Preference on Film: Giggle and Lib

omantic attachments on screen the romantic man whose passionate desire With the great artist abandoning R these days require at least a hint of is for a person unquestionably of the romantic love--Bergman has lately something kinky to draw the pop audience opposite sex. So straight are his lusts that announced that his next two films will be his which in the days of yesteryear thrilled to no one seemed to notice the dilemma posed last--leaving the field to an oddity like Allen Bogart and Bacall, but which now winks in Manhattan of a man in his mid-forties or television's "Love Boat", the pop knowingly at Julie Andrews in drag. having physical congress with a fifteen year audience, which never warmed to Bergman Something equally aberrant, in fact moreso, old. This year, A -Midsummer Night's Sex or his like anyway, might find solace in Blake more blatant and proselytizing, quickens Comedy renders two points of sexual Edwards, an intriguing director whose last the mental loins of the liberal film-going metaphysics for those still lost in memories three films and his wife's, Julie Andrews, mind; anything less denies the backbone of a gender-differentiated past, the first changing image in them illustrate a syn­ upon which liberal sentiments are oddly enough insisted upon by the women: if thesis of audience demands with a structured. Pop audiences want just a hint a man overwhelmingly wants a woman, he crowd pleaser director's offering. Prepped of the arcane to tease the appetite, to let must, therefore, by definition, also love her. by years of psychoanalysis, Andrews has everybody know they know what is going on Allen in his role as a crackpot inventor long sought to shed her innocence, and these days. In the Goldie Hawn vehicle Foul voices the second himself: love is worse Edwards has anxiously tried to project her Play, for example, Dudley Moore makes a than sex; sex relieves anxiety, and love inner woman. Thus 10 gives us a suggestive smash appearance, revealing his apartment creates it. "Think about that," he crows. His older woman in leather boots, Dudley to be fitted with all the pleasure devices one mentor for this andotherAllen films, Ingmar Moore's choice over the plasticized reads about, even blow-up dolls of women Bergman, the most expansive artist in vulgarian Bo Derek. For giggle power there which, unfortunately, pop into view at just cinema, has all but abandoned romantic is a gay lyricist and the neighbor's orgies the moment he approaches Goldie, much to love, his staple for over thirty years. Two viewed through Moore's telescope. Ms. his embarassment and our knowing decades ago he proclaimed, "Marriage is the Andrews' further unveiling was the sexual chuckles. The intelligentsia also need to base upon which hell is built." His last film intent of the very clever flop S.O.B., a box know that they are no longer hooked on old reduced men and women to marionettes, office failure because it starred no more fashioned desire, or, in the other direction, robotized children tearing physically and than, in Robert Preston's praise, "a first­ anything base for that matter; even their sex psychically at each other, and gave his most class pair of knockers," -- old hat, even if is to come wrapped in the plain brown moving scene to a homosexual who doubts they do belong to the ex-Mary Poppins. envelope of some liberation movement or the substance of his own skin. These are the Perhaps European directors just do better other. Goddard's Every Man For Himself male-female polarities, one by a solid, with their lovers on screen, for Mr. Edwards was thus hailed as a feminist film because it popular artist, and the other by a cinematic, is so chaste in the revelation scene that it is supposedly protested sexual exploitation of but despairing, genius. enough to turn the viewer back to her women, when in reality it supplied opening "Polly Wolly Doodle" number graphic erotic detail to those liberals where one can wonder at a remove just with their eyes glued to the screen. how passionate Ms. Andrews might Straight sex hasn't yet disappeared but really be. The film proves she is a high and low brow both need the lady whether she, her husband, or her aberrant to set the libido free. analyst know it or not. Let us wonder Is the simple love of a man for a about stirring her passions if we want. woman and vice versa a remembrance A lady is a lady after all because she from our emotional bourgeois past? If forces eroticism where it should beu today's films mean anything, the until the time comesuin the mind. answer is yes. The pop audience needs The last film, Victor/Victoria, tries to giggle at sex via the straw man harder by pushing her image still aberrance, which it secretly uses and further. She plays a woman--breasts, discards for its own safety, while the it is loudly trumpeted throughout the liberal relishes the aberrant, welcomes film, strapped downuwho imitates a and sings the new lifestyle, under cover man disguised as a woman. Again the of liberation. Pop audiences really don't giggle is a gay farce in the background want to see so much as wink; liberals, which fools no one; we know what is whatever their excuses, demand the what. Our appetites are teased but our incarnation of their ideas. They want to cerebral maidenheads remain intact. see skin. The liberal mind is far more canny at Woody Allen's foray into the pop disguising its hollow heart, usually arena may be the last celluloid stand of The Laughing Audience William Hogarth 1733 claiming to see a beam of moral 21 Giggle and Lib. . continued Lest anyone rejoin that Edwards and Blier latent homosexuality because he stares at are only examples, keep in mind that they the ceiling thinking of his friend's tragic war are successful types of what appears in film. liberality where there is rarely a speck. experiences rather than rolling over to For example, pop audiences were tecently Ironically it is the liberal who needs to see in solace the abandoned and vulnerable order to believe. Bertrand Blier, a French girlfriend. director whose Get Out Your Two points come to mind by way of Handkerchiefs won the best foreign film conclusion if I can pull back long enough award in 1978, and whose Going Places Even the dean of auteur from the complete retinization that introduced France's two most popular male critics, Andrew Sarris, threatens all filmgoers. The first is that in an stars, De Pardieu and Dewaere, is an accused . .. Robert De Niro in overly psychoanalytical consciousness like example to contemplate. Female critics ours, perhaps the kind prompting Ms. ponder Mr. Blier's subtleties. Pauline Kael The Deer Hunter, of latent Andrews to show what we really don't want called her earlier effort a "sexual keystone homosexuality because he to see, the arts are a last refuge to teach how cops," and Molly Haskell, author of the stares at the ceiling thinking and what the human spirit really does think and feel. If we need the vile and art gives it to feminist approach to this whole issue From of his friend's tragic war Reverence to Rape, mused over what his us to feed a famished appetite, we lose touch with what the universal man and woman films can actually mean. Here are the experiences .. feel. We capitulate to the aberrant, be it complexities of Going Places. The heroes giggle or lib. Bergman is, to my mind, the debauch each other when there are no great artist of our dismal century, and he women to assault. They take turns on one faced with a rush of gay films, and even sees the darkness clouding the soul more woman for so long, she begins to enjoy the Dustin Hoffman looms in our future in drag clearly than anyone else has. Having company of these two boyish fellows, as Tootsie. But once again the liberals go all revealed it to us in an output more insightful decided to tag along with them, and a the way. I Love You, a Brazilian film, and shattering than we perhaps deserve, he nursing mother in the back of a public busis acclaimed by conservative critics too as a now threatens to walk away from what he forcibly suckled by one of your heroes who sensual delight, is really an endless X-rated has found, rather than repeat it. The second is trying to reassert his potency after a film. Of course if anyone hungers for a point will sound more fundamentalist than gunshot wound in his private parts. Believe scrawny woman and a pot-bellied man, here Jimmy Carter defending himself with an oar it or not, when Mom came to her senses, so is the lib film of films. Real life extends against a white attack rabbit, but I believe it did I. We both left the film, in our own ways. celluloid life in some way also with the to be true; certainly Bergman, a minister's Handkerchiefs, not as crudely made, premier German director, Fassbinder, a son, would understand. Jesus said that in was, in fact, hailed as a typically joyous transsexual, recently overdosing while the end times, "Because lawlessness has French lark. To be quick, in this one, a watching a video type of his latest film. After increased, most people's love will grow thirteen year old, after opening the legs of three films with Blier, Dewaere abruptly, cold." For lawlessness, read any of the the heroine to inspect the wonders therein -­ and for no published reason, committed giggles and libs mentioned herein; for love my mind sticks (or blocks) as to whether we suicide. Even the dean of auteur critics (and that's grown cold, we need only keep our see anything -- bests the two heroes, plus his husband and mentor of Molly Haskell) eyes on the big silver screen. own father, and impregnates her. Forget Andrew Sarris, accused non less than By Joseph J. Liggera your hanky, and get out your barf bag. Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter, of Professor of English

A Scene from Bergman's The Silence