Future Sex

I got asked some interesting questions about future sexuality, and what if the love scene was gay? Hah! I’m not going to be thrilled about seeing a black man in a homosexual relationship unless I’m not seeing that any more often than I see white actors in homosexual relationships, relative to their representation in heterosexual relationships.

There it is. You don’t think I didn’t notice Will Smith’s kissing scene with Kevin James in “Hitch” being front and center in the advertising? Jesus, he’s smart (I thought to myself). In order to do a romantic comedy, the black guy has to also be helping the white guy get laid AND diminish his perceived masculinity by kissing another man. Then it’s safe for white audiences. I think Smith’s brilliant: he’s figured this game out at a level no one else ever has.

But having a futuristic situation where you have a black man with a wife AND a husband? Interesting. But not until I’ve seen one with a girlfriend (note: you don’t get love scenes between husbands and wives very often.) doing the boy-meets, boy-loses, boy-gets routine with at least a PG-13 love scene. This character arc is as common as drinking water: unless you're not white.

Oh, and “The Great Debaters”? Unless that love scene is with Denzel, no I won’t count it. If Felix Leiter got laid instead of Bond, think the audience might be a little pissed? Just another way of distracting from the Big Problem. Here I am, asking for something that white audiences get 24/7, 365 days a year, and I can’t get it ONCE. It’s like I say: notice that women never drive cars in movies? And people say, “well, there was one driving a motorcycle!” “She was a PASSENGER in a car!” “well, I saw a movie once, and NO ONE drove a car in it…” “what about if there was a movie that took place in the future, and the cars were computerized. Would that count..?”


All irrelevant. But funny.
##
People mention Colin Powell, and how many people wanted to vote for him. You can’t say that without also looking at the volume of death threats he received: the secret service lady I spoke to said that they’d never seen anything like it. So if you don’t factor that in, isn’t that just a bit disingenuous? Saying someone “can’t be President” isn’t contradicted if large chunks of White America would vote for him, but there’s also a real, serious, no-b.s. chance that thousands of other white Americans would like to kill him. Same is true for Obama, but I’d still back him. If he doesn’t get the nomination, it’s been a good run. If he gets it, runs a good campaign and loses, he’s still made history. If he runs, and wins, and makes it to the Oval Office and does a good job—fantastic. The images systems controlling American minds would shift with incredible speed. If he gets elected and one of these whackos hurts him…well, that would shift America as well. And I think, in an ultimately positive way. I don’t want to put anything out into the ether that isn’t already there, but as long as he has presented himself as pretty much the guy he is (and my indicators say that’s true) Obama is most interesting to me: like me, he never believed Iraq had WMDs or that Saddam had intentions to vastly expand. Maybe we were both right based on an accident or coincidence…but maybe not. And I’d have a hard time voting for someone I thought dumber than me.

But can he make it? Not if Denzel or Will Smith can’t get laid, no. That’s my position, and I’m sticking to it. “But what if someone ELSE in Denzel’s movie…” “what if he’s married, with kids, so it’s obvious that at SOME point he had sex…” “What if he meets a really hot chick, and the movie ends before he speaks to her, but in your heart you KNOW they’re gonna do it later…”
“What if it’s G-rated, and they kiss, but you know that in an R-rated movie they WOULD have…” “What if it’s an SF movie, and no one has sex anymore, but there are these Orgasmatrons, and they both hook up…” “What if there’s a transvestite but (chuckle!) Will doesn’t realize it—and neither does the audience (guffaw) until morning!”j “What if…what if…”

I’ve heard them all. None of them apply. Sex just isn’t that complicated. Unless, apparently, it’s revealing unconscious prejudices on the part of millions of supposedly enlightened Americans. Then it’s oh-so complicated. The creative meetings where they try to figure out how to avoid it THIS TIME must be hysterical. Or the way that, unconsciously, them sex scenes get re-written out of existence if the film was originally for a white star (say, Sylvester Stallone for “Beverly Hills Cop”) when a black star is cast (Eddie Murphy). No, no, no. No escape. Resistance is futile.
I'm afraid Obama is toast.