Asleaves fall outside our movie theaters and cinemas, Hollywood mounts a fall campaign against the last remaining strains of mainstream American culture. With films like "To Wong Foo: Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar" and "Showgirls," morally bankrupt Hollywood decision-makers offer movie-goers gay men dressed as women and professional lap dancers, as the Autumn film season's main fare.
But do the West Coast agenda setters, with their supposedly shrewd industry sense, take note of the film appetites of Jane and James American? Obviously not. Public opinion polls show strong bi-partisan support for moral attacks on Hollywood, and ticket sales reveal high demand for family fare like "The Lion King," "Forrest Gump" and "The Flintstones," the first, second and fourth top grossing films of last year.
But if America has Hollywood with all of its cultural absurdity, Dartmouth has the Hopkins Center and the Dartmouth Film Society. Through the indispensable aid of College funds, the seemingly disturbed cinema wonks of the Film Society have given us "Sex In The Cinema" as this term's film series.
Last Friday, the DFS marketed "Kids" to the looking-for-anything-to-do Dartmouth student body. According to the film guide, "Kids" chronicles "a dark and contemporary world in which 'safe sex' means sleeping with a virgin." But, sitting with a grimace of horror and disbelief in Spaulding Friday, witnessing child debauchery, I waited for FBI agents to storm in through the fire exits and arrest the audience for solicitation of child porn.
Surpassing Calvin Klein in its exploitation and exhibition of 15 year old flesh and libido, "Kids" is only the beginning of a rash of offensive movies that, according to the film guide, include congregational transsexual masturbation and pornographic cartoons.
Sadly, the DFS film selection, meant to be accessible and enjoyable to the diverse Dartmouth and Upper Valley Community, instead turns out perverted and disturbing. Artsy film mavens who have spent collective years watching movies, gather in a society and select a film series that supposedly appeals to the student body. But in the end, the DFS, just like Hollywood, winds up a bunch of out-of-touch decision-makers. After years of exposure to Hollywood films, the artsy film mavens' values, taste and even minds appear to have become warped. They follow their strange proclivities and churn out film series suited only to their tastes.
Take for instance, Chris Kelly, co-developer of the "Sex In The Cinema" film series. In his January 30, 1995 column "Lessons To Learn From Spanking The Monkey," which appeared in The Dartmouth, Kelly applauds a movie in which "the hero," driven to sexual frustration by his inability to masturbate, pursues an incestual relationship with his mother. "'Spanking The Monkey' interests me so much because it deals with the two most opposite sexual taboos," wrote Kelly.
He went on to say that Dartmouth appears to be sexually repressed. "Sex, it seems to me, isn't something people are very comfortable discussing here." He concluded that Dartmouth needs "to be aroused, to be shaken up, to see that sex can be pretty cool, even sexy." As a last suggestion, Kelly advocates replacing Bema icebreakers before DOC trips with a "college organized game of truth or dare."
And there you have a possible pathological history of the disease. One student views a morally base Hollywood film, is influenced by its themes, begins to view class and college resources as a means to promulgate his newly inspired views on sex, exercises his influence as a DFS decision-maker, and springs the "Sex In The Cinema" film series on an unsuspecting Dartmouth community.
To Chris Kelly and the DFS: Thanks but no thanks.
