Warning: Slant-Eye Alert

Yes, that means exactly the same thing as "Sambo Alert" only concerning Asians. I openly apologize for anyone who is offended. It was intended to represent an offensive stereotype.
Warning: I'm about to rant. You may want to skip today's column if you're tired of this subject.
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Still here? O.K....
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The Sociopsychological Reasons "Mummy 3" will Suck, Big Time

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Reading the universally poor reviews for "Mummy 3" (Ah...I'll see it anyway--Can't resist Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh) I am irresistibly pulled back to what Nicki calls my "file drawer" conversation: cinematic images and sexuality and unconscious racism.

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First, a bit of context. I looked up the ten most popular films of all time, using two different lists: Entertainment Weekly and the American Film Institute. Here's Entertainment Weekly's list:

1) The Godfather

2)Citizen Kane

3)Casablanca

4) Chinatown

5)Raging Bull

6)La Dolce Vita

7)The Godfather II

8)Gone With the Wind

9)Some Like It Hot

10)Singin' In the Rain

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Now, the AFI top ten:

1)Citizen Kane

2) Casablanca

3) The Godfather

4) Gone With The Wind

5) Lawrence of Arabia

6)The Wizard of Oz

7)The Graduate

8) On The Waterfront

9)Schindler's List

10) Singin' In the Rain

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Note that most of these films are driven by love and passion. The urge to build and protect family. Sexuality as goal, coin, regret, undoing. "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" is the most common, central theme in all of Western literature (with the possible exception of "the child grows up or the old man/woman faces death" but even there, the closest thing we have to rituals of adulthood are sexual awakening and the attendant responsibilities of family life). Not much in "Lawrence of Arabia" to my memory (I won't count "your skin is...very fair") the Wizard of Oz (a child, after all), but in every other case romance, building family, and sex are central themes. Heck, Kane's entire life is initially destroyed because of passion for an untalented singer. So there we are.

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I think I've figured out part of this. Sexuality, at least in our culture, is a twining of two threads: beauty and ugliness, supreme good and ultimate evil. Hell, the story of Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden takes on a very interesting twist if the tree in the Garden is viewed as an understanding of sex. As long as Adam and Eve relate as brother and sister, it's cool. But a bite of the "apple" and suddenly they understand the "shame" of nakedness, Eve will bring forth children through pain and blood, and Adam will have to work hard to support his family. Wow.

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Remember I asked if there was anyone who

1)Was in a satisfying, passionate romantic/sexual relationship

2) Had no sense that sex is dirty

3) Finds their own body attractive

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Who doesn't like sex in films? While I'm SURE that there must be some, I have a very very strong suspicion that the vast majority of people who are repelled by sex in film would, disproportionate to the general population, NOT have all three of these characteristics. In other words, a general disgust with sex or a sense of jealousy ("I can't compete with Brad Pitt, or Halle Berry, and don't want potential sexual partners comparing me to them..") is at some unconscious level, going on here. Please educate me: if you have all three characteristics, and find cinematic sex repulsive, please let me know so I can factor your opinion in.

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So we have the incredibly powerful drive to mate paired with a powerful aversion to sex found in our culture. Leading to people sneaking around destroying lives, careers, and families to satisfy the need. In film, it's "dirty" but satisfies a deep, deep drive. But something happens when the "Other" comes into the picture. My theory is that if Brad Pitt is bare-assed, and you are white, on an unconscious level that's YOU up there (if you're a guy). So whatever repulsion you have on the one hand is balanced by the identification and need.

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(BTW---ladies, while I DO believe women have a bit less of this racial identification stuff than guys, you still have it. I suspect it manifests in the disproportionate number of fat black women set to directors by female casting agents. It's their way of undermining the "competition")

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So...if the star is white, sex and love are central to the story--a core human need for intimacy and connectedness and the continuation of the "breed" takes center stage: virtually all memorable fiction revolves around it. Trust me: if an adult Dorothy returned to Oz, the sequel would be all about her finding love.

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If the lead is non-white, suddenly this core human need vanishes, and in a strange unconscious variant of "releasing sterile medflies into the environment" suddenly there is dramatic slight of hand, and something other than this core human need is central. Suddenly, only the "ick" factor remains, and both audiences and Hollywood executives get the "Ah...there's too much sex in films nowadays. Let's try something else!" attitude. It is predictable as hell. I've watched it for upwards of thirty years, and it is as predictable as Liberal guilt.

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Which brings me to "Mummy 3." What drove the first two movies? Survival, and the mummy-priest's love for the Pharaoh's mistress, and Brandon Frazier's love for Rachel Weisz. Period. That's first and second chakra stuff, marching right up the line.

And according to all accounts, what drives Jet Li's Mummy Emperor? The lust for power. Skipping right over the second chakra. Sorry: doesn't work. That's a sterile med fly. A sucker's bet. Take that deal "all the power in the world--but no children to pass it to" and you are dead in a single generation. It's equivilent to the Morgan Freeman factor: he's played God more often than he's had kisses onscreen. We'll give you th world, but take your tomorrows.

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Of COURSE I could consider this all just coincidence. But when you look through the lens of "if the characters aren't white (European) or Exotic white (Arab, pale Latino etc.) then they will be de-sexualized" then a gigantic amount of this stuff makes sense. Patterns emerge which reveal unconscious social problems rooted in biosociological drives. I only talk about this because, as far as I can see, no one else does.

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So if Jet Li appears in a re-working of "Romeo and Juliet" ("Romeo Must Die") suddenly, mysteriously, the entire romantic story line disappears. And no one notices.

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Remember: The major reason I consider sex scenes the important measurement here is that they are visual and quantifiable. The truth is that the total ROMANTIC content of non-white mainstream (read: intended for white audiences) films is far lower. But I got tired of arguing about whether a mysterious glance should be considered equivalent to a frenzied make-out session, so I came up with the "movies over 100 million" standard for sexual content. Inarguable. All people can say is: "well, why does there have to be so much sex in movies, anyway..?" Which is the absolutely standard response, and is entirely changing the subject.

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Without love to hold the film together at least marginally, all you have is a series of chases, stunts, and CGI set-pieces. It doesn't work. You can't knit body parts together and make a baby. You need a beating heart.

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Mummy 3 was in trouble the moment they cast an Asian, because there was no way that he would be accorded his humanity. And therefore, nothing that happened around him would matter, really. So the script would have no life, no momentum, and no real heartbeat. And everyone in the audience would know it on an instinctive level...without understanding what went so damned wrong.

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Take another look at the lists of top movies. Classic movies. Top box office movies. These are NOT lists of what Hollywood makes. They are lists of what Audiences crave. Blaming Hollywood is entirely missing the point.

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