This past Saturday I went to see "Spanking The Monkey," which as far as I can tell, is the first mainstream (relatively speaking) American film to deal with the subjects of masturbation and incest.
The film is about an MIT student who is forced to give up his lucrative summer internship in order to stay home and take care of his bedridden mother. The title comes from the fact that every time the hero tries to "spank the monkey" (i.e. masturbate), the family pet begins barking outside of the bathroom door, thus precluding any opportunity to masturbate, and precipitating a great deal of sexual frustration. A strange relationship develops between mother and son, and things eventually spill over into sex.
"Spanking The Monkey" interests me so much because it is a movie that deals with perhaps the two most opposite sexual taboos. Masturbation is about the safest form of sex one can have; incest is perhaps the most devastating and destructive. But for some inexplicable reason, you don't hear much about either, particularly at Dartmouth. Sex, it seems to me, isn't something people are very comfortable discussing here.
For instance, last Friday, I was having a conversation with a friend who works at the Collis Information Desk about "La Dolce Vita," and I mentioned to him that I thought it was incredibly sexy movie. That statement, however, brought about at least two (that I noticed anyway) exceedingly strange looks from the people standing in the BlitzMail line. At Dartmouth, public acknowledgment of sex -- heck, just saying that something turned you on -- is apparently a big faux pas.
But what is more troubling than people's resistance to talking about sex, is the fact that when sex is discussed, no one ever seems to have anything nice to say about it. Two weeks ago in my dorm, posters were put up announcing a Seduction Workshop. I figured this was something I really could use -- a program that would teach me how to seduce someone. Finally that student activity fee that shows up on my tuition bill was coming through for me. As I later found out though, the seduction workshop was actually a discussion about the do's and don'ts of hooking up at Dartmouth -- with apparent emphasis on the don'ts.
Any dialogue about sex is invariably coached inside the dialectic of punishment and danger. We simply don't know how to deal with sex in a way that makes it a common -- and by extension a sometimes good and sometimes bad -- part of every day existence. I've opened this newspaper at least a half dozen times to find articles about the relationship between sex and alcohol or the negative effects of our community upon the notions of romance, but not once have I seen an article about people who are having sex because they like each other or an article about the connections between regular masturbation and good grades.
I'm not suggesting that we should ignore issues like sexual assault, incest or rape; the reason I began this piece making reference to "Spanking The Monkey" was because it is a movie that deals with sex both safe and dangerous, pleasurable and destructive, in an intelligent, artistic, thoughtful and thought-provoking way. I laughed a great dealing during the film, but by the end was completely shaken, and surprisingly disturbed.
What we need at Dartmouth is more of the same: dialogues, literature, newspaper stories and performances that ask us to think about sex and sexuality. I'm a firm believer in the power of art -- the power it has to force us to look inside of ourselves and ask questions deeper than any lecture or published study could ever inspire us to ask.
At the end of every term, I make a point to see one of the "Untamed Shrews" performances. Despite their male bashing tendencies, I admire what they do tremendously: they are the only campus group (and that includes publications) that I know of that takes a look at sex -- in virtually all of its many forms, with all of its complicated ramifications -- without preaching and without statistics supplied from Dick's House. But The Untamed Shrews are just one group, and this is a pretty big place -- a place where people seem afraid or unwilling (or both) to loosen up and expose themselves.
I'm taking a filmmaking class now, and I've joked a number of times about how I'm planning to make a porno film for my final project. The more I think about it though, the more the idea grows on me. Maybe that's what Dartmouth needs -- to be aroused, to be shaken up, to see that sex can be pretty cool, even sexy. Or maybe we need to think smaller, perhaps with a college organized game of Truth or Dare (it could replace that stupid People to People Bema activity before the D.O.C. Trips) to get people talking. Whatever the case, I think it's time to unleash our community repression -- time for Dartmouth students to unwind, think sexy thoughts -- perhaps even voice a few -- and spank their collective monkey.
