Month: November 2004

Sex Education.

Hoo boy, the Red Staters obsessed with “moral values” out there are just gonna love Kinsey. With its unflinching recognition of myriad forms of human sexual behavior, its intimations of bisexuality and wife-swapping among team Kinsey, and its occasionally graphic (albeit antiseptic and not at all titillating) depictions of the act of coitus (to channel Maude Lebowski), Bill Condon’s biopic of Indiana’s famous sex statistician is the closest movie we have this year to a Passion of the Christ for science-minded free-thinkers. In fact, the film seems almost genetically designed to get under the skins of the abstinence-firsters and moralist types who’ve decried Kinsey’s studies for fifty years.

That being said, the strength of Kinsey, and what elevates it to being a better-then-average biopic, is the way it ultimately gets under everybody’s skin. Alfred Kinsey is not simply white-washed as a martyr to science and a hero of sexual enlightenment (although, in its most conventional moments, such as the last ten minutes, the movie hammers those particular points pretty hard.) Rather, Kinsey is portrayed as a man whose relentless pursuit of sexual knowledge often leads him down some troubling and morally ambiguous roads. Even the most open-minded libertines in the audience may find themselves feeling that things seem to have gotten a little out-of-control around the home office in Indiana by the end, and get extremely discomfited when Liam Neeson’s Kinsey sits down with an even creepier than usual Bill Sadler, a pedophile and sexual predator who’s taken some notes of his own.

Kinsey is at its best when it rides this razor’s edge, honoring the professor’s undeniable contributions to science and society while recognizing that his dispassionately treating sexual behavior as he earlier treated gall wasps ultimately opened the door to immense personal pitfalls, particularly for the men and women around him who had trouble maintaining such a scientific distance. Speaking of which, while Neeson is solid and Laura Linney is Laura Linney as usual, the supporting character work in Kinsey is particularly good. Special marks go to a fearless Peter Saarsgard as Kinsey’s #2 (Watch out, Ewan – you’ve got a competitor now for the full-frontal roles), John Lithgow for his bleary final scene as Kinsey’s father (which redeemed an otherwise one-note character), and Dylan Baker as the long-suffering Rockefeller Foundation point person (who must partly have been picked here for his memorable role in Happiness.)

In sum, although it ends with a rather bland huzzah for the march of science, Bill Condon’s Kinsey is for the most part an intelligent, nuanced, and multifaceted appreciation of one man’s probing (and occasionally perilous) quest to illuminate humankind’s most intimate frontier. (And as such, it’ll probably go over like a lead balloon in American Pie country.)

University Blues.

Feeling oh-so-oppressed as usual, student conservatives at Berkeley decry the 7-1 Dem-to-GOP ratio among Humanities and Social Science profs nationwide. Tsk, tsk…they say it like it’s such a bad thing. Well, if you’d prefer that we lefties work elsewhere than academia — say, in government — y’all know how to vote next time.

Construction Time Again.

By way of Do You Feel Loved?, Depeche Mode announces they’re beginning work on a new album. I’d love to see the band get out of the “I adore you like a black crucifix” thematic rut they’ve been in for almost two decades now and try to recapture some of their earlier political period (“Everything Counts,” “Monument,” “Get the Balance Right”) But, Martin Gore’s recent work hasn’t been all that promising in that regard.

Hope it’s a Capital One.

Faced with the grim morning-after receipts of Dubya’s feckless splurging and deficit-exploding tax cuts, the Senate is forced raise the debt limit by $800 billion (again) to stop the government from going into default. “Though an increase in the debt ceiling was never in doubt, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress postponed action on it last month, until after the elections, to deprive Democrats of a chance to accuse them of fiscal irresponsibility.”

Spoiling the Spoils.

Even in success, it seems, the Right can’t be relied upon to play by the rules. As the House GOP moves to shield Tom DeLay from the Rostenkowski rule they passed eleven years ago (mandating that an indicted leader step down), Senate Republicans look to the “nuclear option” for ending filibusters of judicial nominees, which would allow said filibusters to be ended with a simple 51-vote majority. Finally, in a dubious display of bipartisanship, the Bushies aim to peel off one more Senate vote by offering Democratic Senator Ben Nelson the Agriculture post.

D for Don’t Blow It.

Another classic Alan Moore property moves to the big screen as Matrix and Star Wars AD James McTeigue takes the reins of V for Vendetta. I haven’t read V in over a decade, but I remember it as being rather dark and political. Well, let’s hope it’s more From Hell than LXG. Is Miracleman next?

First, We take the DNC.

“Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I just might win. You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline.” The DLC and other Democratic centrists push Tom Vilsack, Jeanne Shaheen, and a handful of other milquetoast contenders to be the next DNC head (and to thwart the Dean alternative.) Look, it’s obvious the Republican-lite status quo wasn’t working. It’s time to drop the protective camouflage and articulate a progressive narrative that highlights the grotesquely pro-corporate nature of the GOP. With that in mind, let’s sidestep the party flaks, and go ahead and pick Howard. At this point, it’s not like we have anything to lose.