Books, Arts & Manners: Pols and Dolls

HAD T. S. Eliot written nothing else beyond “human kind cannot bear very much reality,” he would have earned his berth among the immortals. Why is it that sex and violence dominate our screens? Because we are all closet erotomaniacs and sadomasochists? No; it is because sex and violence are forms of escapism.

Yes, escapism almost as in those old movies about tropical paradises, virtuous secretaries who find Mr. Right in their bosses, or madcap families that inherit millions from unknown uncles. The truth—even in sex and violence—is fairly mundane and ultimately boring. Movie sex and violence are generally just as unreal as the various Crosby-Hope-Lamour itineraries. But by being sadistic, lascivious, somehow “forbidden,” they are turned into exciting, iconoclastic verities. If they were shown as they really are, which happens all too rarely, they would become part of that reality of which human kind cannot bear very much.

JS

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John Simon

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HAD T. S. Eliot written nothing else beyond “human kind cannot bear very much reality,” he would have earned his berth among the immortals. Why is it that sex and violence dominate our screens? Because we are all closet erotomaniacs and sadomasochists? No; it is because sex and violence are forms of escapism.

Yes, escapism almost as in those old movies about tropical paradises, virtuous secretaries who find Mr. Right in their bosses, or madcap families that inherit millions from unknown uncles. The truth—even in sex and violence—is fairly mundane and ultimately boring. Movie sex and violence are generally just as unreal as the various Crosby-Hope-Lamour itineraries. But by being sadistic, lascivious, somehow “forbidden,” they are turned into exciting, iconoclastic verities. If they were shown as they really are, which happens all too rarely, they would become part of that reality of which human kind cannot bear very much.