The Republicans are Banning Sex

The movie Basic Instinct 2 is bombing at the box office, and the most logical explanation coming from those who used to be able to bank on some good money as long as they produced a movie with a modicum of titillation in it is that the Republicans are banning the erotic. The target audience for movies is from 15-35, making Sharon Stone old enough to be a grandmother to a not insignificant portion of that demographic, and yet the Republicans are to blame for the fact that no one is really interested in seeing Sharon Stone's breasts anymore. They should have had Heath Ledger play the Sharon Stone roll. Apparently we are not doing a very good job in banning sex, especially since we are the only ones who have kids anymore. Or maybe that is just another glaring example of our hypocrisy.

Paul Verhoeven, director of the first "Basic Instinct" (which scored $353 million worldwide) as well as the widely ridiculed "Showgirls" (now regarded as something of a camp classic), attributes the genre's demise to the current American political climate.

"Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States," said the Dutch native. "Look at the people at the top (of the government). We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends."

Scribe Nicholas Meyer, who was an uncredited writer on 1987's seminal sex-fueled cautionary tale "Fatal Attraction," agrees, noting that the genre's downfall coincides with the ascent of the conservative political movement.

"We're in a big puritanical mode," he said. "Now, it's like the McCarthy era, except it's not 'Are you a communist?' but 'Have you ever put sex in a movie?'"

How distorted is your view of the world that you make comments like these? The notion that anything erotic in this country has been banned is clearly belied by the fact that of the 25 million websites in existence, all but approximately 4 are pay-for-porn sites. Even this site will temporarily have porn when Professor Vic is up for tenure at Holy Cross (he has an article written for the old Ideas Hatched on his CV), and I am a Republican. Of those 25 million websites, about 2 cater to showcasing women who remember where they were when Kennedy was shot (or so I'm told), so again, maybe the problem is at central casting. (Indeed, the Chartreuse Alcoholic stumbled onto my website while performing an experiment at work. He had a theory that no matter what you googled, within three pages of results there would be a pay-for-porn site. He sat there all day at work googling things from his past, and stumbled upon my story of the Bat Bike Regatta, which is his noteworthy contribution to the drunkards of the world.)

This, I know, will come as a shock to Sharon Stone, who recently said that Hillary Clinton will have a tough time getting elected because she is not yet past her "sexuality," and that too much sexual power will handicap her. If she believes that about Hillary, I could see where she wouldn't understand why we're not lining up to see her bare some skin. Independent of age, Hillary Clinton lost all her sexual power when her ankles started resembling her thighs. And I'm sure there is some strange psychological theory that suggests good old Bill was paradoxically driven into the arms of any women who would have him due to Hillary's sexual power (and even a few that wouldn't have him), but surely he too could see those ankles, and Okun's Razor requires that the ankle theory surely must trump the modern psychological theory.

Look, I'm all for banning sex in some circumstances. In particular, after being subjected to watching Joakim Noah lead the Florida Gators to a national championship with that ugly mug, I think there ought to be a law against hot Swedish chicks marrying black French ("African-French?", "French-African?") tennis stars, but other than that I think I'm OK with most of this sex stuff. I just really have no interest in seeing Basic Instinct 2.