Grak on Movies: Kinsey

Grak recently saw Kinsey. On Grak's view, movie like being kicked in balls repeatedly, which is fun when Grak do to others, not fun when done to Grak. First, Grak already pretty psyched about masturbation (for example) and does not need a movie to remind Grak that masturbating OK. Grak admit that sometimes it acceptable when movie have clear message, but think this particular message about 25 years too late. Propaganda only permissible under the dire-est of circumstances... Like: if brain sucking were about to be forbidden (just suppose!), then Grak would direct pro-brain-sucking propaganda Grakself.

Secondly, Grak dislike hagiography. Even when they're tempered with perfunctory attempts at revealing the dark sides of their heroes, hardly anything cinematic more boring than a hagiography. Now a movie that make the saintliness of its central character a matter of serious doubt -- perhaps as the central drammatic tension of the film -- Grak could like. Temptation make for great movie, Grak think. It never seriously in question whether Dr. Kinsey is a saint (except perhaps in narrative asides).

The problem is not that Grak want (as Grak might want a news program to present both sides of a debate) that Kinsey be portrayed as both admirable and not. This might be problem if Grak seriously doubted the central claim of the sexual revolution -- i.e. that most sex (considered as such, and not, say, as cheating on a lover) between consenting adults is morally blameless. If Grak enemy of sexual revolution, then Grak would wish (with one of three eyes to objectivity) that movie portray oracle as flawed. But Grak on board with sexual revolution, for most part. The problem is an aesthetic one: how can Grak care to suck brains of a character that is merely a vehicle for the celebration of a moral fact? ...much worse, a vehicle for the celebration of a widely accepted moral fact?

Here is another movie Grak might have liked: Kinsey pay some narrative attention to some of the Very Strange and Fraught personal relations between researchers on Kinsey's team. But we really only get about 5 minutes of this. Grak enjoy watching strange and fraught personal relations unravel on screen, but need more of it to make movie good. Anyway, even the inter-personal conflict is message-y: sometimes sex makes people jealous.

(Now Grak surprised to discover this, since demons of Grak kind not get jealous -- only ferulous (which is different, though inexpressibly so). But Grak friends assure Grak that it is widely known in the human community that sex leads to what are politely called "complications".)

So Kinsey peddles hagiography in order to tell us: sex OK, but sometime disturbs the emotions of humans (though apparently rarely -- it hard for Grak to tell).

Grak wonder what David Edelstein thinking...