Lately…it seems that a slight virginal breeze has been blowing through the worlds of publishing, theater and Hollywood.
There is something quintessentially British in …[the] troubles [of the two lead charcters in Ian McEwan’s new novel, “On Chesil Beach”]. (It’s almost laughable, for example, to imagine a French couple in their place, even in 1962.) And of course, sex with consequences didn’t go away with the pill, in life or in novels, even those peopled with sexual-revolution partisans like the ones created by John Cheever, John Updike and Joan Didion. Then came AIDS, which united sex and death in a more real way than the Victorians ever did, providing the playwright Tony Kushner and others with a powerful metaphor.
But there is a sense that these recent artistic creations are partly a response, maybe partly unconscious, to the current state of sex in our society, where it can often feel like just another form of the cheap entertainment and distraction that now pushes in from all sides. That impression is fed by proliferating cable channels and the Internet, where the leak of the latest celebrity sex video already seems like a weary ritual, not more much momentous than the latest short-lived reality series….
The sociologist Alan Wolfe, who has conducted hundreds of interviews over the last two decades for books about the country’s beliefs and politics, said he saw a reflection in such works of the way people seem to struggle now for a greater sense of societal structure. “They do want to go back to a more conventional sexuality, morality, whatever,” said Mr. Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. “But they do not want to go back to an era of repression. So a kind of muddled, middle position is where it seems to me that most Americans are these days.”
I’m sorry, but I just have to leave an off-topic and irrelevant (irreverent?!) comment on this one. Am I the only one, or is Kendall’s juxtaposition of the author’s name and article title just a little bit unfortunate / snicker-producing? (or have I just been too influenced by my British colleagues and friends?!) :red:
–elfgirl
elfgirl,
comes from watching too much BBC America.
Even the New York Times is beginning to notice the trend.
Great choice for the advocate of random hook-ups: a wealthy, aging boomer, Jane Smiley. late 50’s, past childbearing.
She shows complete lack of awareness of how her role modeling of the pursuit of pleasure may effect the behavior of those of others. The consequences are greatest for those with least social power: girls and their babies. The girls from poor and uneducated families can get pregnant, often do get pregnant, and then wind up having abortions they regret or children they cannot care for.
#1
You are obviously a very, very naughty girl, whose reasserter credentials are blown to shreds. Still: it’s not just the ‘randy’, it’s also the ‘kennedy’. Reminds me of one of the first big reporters of the AIDS crisis, whose name, I think, was Randy Shilts. And who subsequently, I think, died of AIDS. So it’s both humorous and deeply serious.