What’s wrong with showing childbirth in the movies?
A lot of the anxiety that seems to be surround the idea of going out with men in Article 2 in 1930 goes hand in hand with the pressure from society NOT to have sex. Was there no such thing as birth control? All those women who felt peer pressure to be both wild and conservative were left with only shame and confusion as a consequence of their lifestyles. Today we still struggle with the notion that the “loose woman” is wrong and disgusting while the Don Juan of men is to be venerated. This ties back to the regulations of “population-control” delineated and dissected by Foucault. Referring to basic psychology, the worst disaster is for a man to raise a baby that isn’t his. This is the root of a lot of anxiety surrounding the sexual boundaries of women. The unsupervised nature of this “sexual awakening” of the modern woman in the 1930s does not seem to be free at all. Rather it is a land of dangerous territory for women who have no guidance and risk a ruined reputation both for breaking the old rule or for denying men satisfaction. This is not at all the utopia of free love that I would imagine. Since then, have we found an equilibrium? Media in the 1930s and media in the present rules our sexuality. In article 3 the argument that movies are detrimental to the morals of young girls is compelling. Call me old-fashioned, but I would agree. We underestimate the power of film because it is under the category of “free expression”. Yet movies are a product like any other and the film industry to this day still profits from making films that appeal to our sexuality. It is one thing to be driven by your own passion but to emulate the danger and mystique of impossible movie characters is naive and certainly destructive. This is just as entrapping as the parents forbidding their child to go out at night. I like to think that we are breaking out of these influences but maybe this is just my own skewed perception. With the coming of the internet people are able to educate themselves, create their own boundaries and find their own sexual circles where they won’t be judged for their preferences. But is the internet a way of freeing us or simply a bigger net to influence our tastes? The majority of people can still be enchanted by what they see in the tabloids and in romantic films or books. But for those who want to explore they have the chance to dig a bit deeper. I keep thinking of the internet exhibit at the Museum of Sex and how broad the range of acceptable sexual activity is, how much it is exploited and publicized and yet how deeply secretive people can still be about it. Is our sexuality becoming less intimate as it is more open and marriage isn’t a necessity or is it becoming more personal than ever? I still have not come up with an answer for this.
