+1 verification of where the beef likely is
You're stepping on one of the greats ("Sentient glitter cloud"), there.
All right, @SamBarge, your question might be rhetorical, but you deserve a serious response to it anyway. Here are attitudes I would describe as philistinism, specifically in film:
1) Issuing judgment on films one hasn't seen. (That's a no-brainer, I hope.)
2) Failing to judge a film on its merits.
3) Judging a film on its merits, but then concluding that that judgment is a sign of the judger's moral superiority.
4) In many cases, judging this collaborative artform as though it were the product of just one person. (Although I'd be reluctant to apply this rule in Woody Allen's case, since his films really are saturated with his persona in a way few others are.)
I have no idea whether any of these apply to you personally — I don't know enough about you. However, that's my quick, probably incomplete definition of philistinism. And I'll add that when I see evidence of that attitude expressed anywhere, it drives me bonkers. Like the speaker is just dully repeating that line from Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."
At this point, I'd give serious attention to your own views on what constitutes philistinism. Surely you deserve at least that much consideration from me, for responding here and possibly reading through this little mini-essay.
Misguided moral indignation, okay — although the entire internet does kind of run on that stuff. It's the proudly proffered philistinism that gets me. As though it's a virtue.
Well, folks may tell you you're a bad feminist because of this, but you're totally okay with me. Plus, I need the eggs.
Yeah, that one's pretty righteous.
To be clear, "swearing off" Woody Allen means swearing off: Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Bananas, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, and Bullets Over Broadway, among many other films. Because you consider it impossible to find aesthetic merit in any of them, right?
As long as we're clear.
I've always wondered why the latter movie got made, when the earlier one needs absolutely no elaboration. Theories?
All right, I laughed.
I regret the outcome, but I appreciate your and @Jan74's attention to this matter.
I'm not likely to be intimidated by transparent bullying, but I suspect some other commenters might be. And anyway, everyone who participates on Jezebel in good faith benefits from seeing personal attacks like these rejected. Thanks again. #trollpatrol
Well, let's go easy here and give @feministabroad the benefit of the doubt.
Leaving aside the absolute nature of @feministabroad's comments, I note that the slippery slope can run in all sorts of directions: Certainly as I age, I find myself attracted to a wider variety of sexual types, most of which are variations on a few themes. Including, unsurprisingly, older women. This could surely be interpreted as "slipperiness" on a slope running in some direction or other.
Also I interpret @feministabroad's comments as acknowledging that there's some "slipperiness" in the development of his/her own sexual desire. That gives some additional support to the point above.
I agree with you that it's probably ridiculous to assume that 18-year-olds and 13-year-olds are equally sexually desirable to a large majority of people: The developmental differences between those two ages are incredibly vast. But if @feministabroad testifies to the existence of a slope of a similar kind in his/her own sexual desire, then I wouldn't dismiss it as impossible in individual cases.
Interesting — I didn't know that. Is Barely Legal actually similar to the somewhat restrained aesthetic of Perfect 10, maybe?
While I don't agree that Hugo is offering a judgment about the entire male gender, nor that his article's focus on male sexuality constitutes "prurient nastiness" — your other points are nevertheless relevant, and worth considering.
Thanks for your response. It's reassuring to know that Jezebel considers personal attacks like these to be out-of-bounds. A comment like yours helps to make that boundary clear.
Also, I'm new to #trollpatrol; are the two hashtags listed linked to anything?
Heh, well played. And hearted.
Actually I'm quite familiar with drunkexpatwriter's views and some of his work, and I find his discussions of many sexual issues to be consistently interesting and quite well informed. Perhaps we can agree that Jezebel would be an even more interesting place to visit if certain lightly-considered, knee-jerk responses were replaced with drunkexpatwriter's commitment to expressing an informed opinion in an honest way, without even a hint of self-aggrandizement or bullying.
Heh — "The heart wants what it wants," indeed.
Heh, I'd say Hugo's approach is to try to demystify the attraction a little bit — but you're right, that approach requires him to treat seriously some questions which others would instinctively reject. He's kind of taking the long way around. I guess I have a high tolerance for that.
And gender-centric...well, on Jezebel, I guess I have a high tolerance for that too.
But objectively speaking, you're right on both counts. I guess my instinct is just to give a lot of leeway to truly analytical approaches to questions like this one.
I understand how this can seem like overthinking, but I still find it interesting to see people try to treat some aspects of male sexuality in a systematic way. God knows my own haphazard collections of anecdotal info don't suggest conclusions which are nearly this interesting or illuminating.
And as you correctly note, sexual desire and fantasy are so overdetermined anyway, almost any explanation is likely to have some bit of meaning to it. Yet I wouldn't necessarily suss out that meaning via introspection or by discussing the topic with friends or random strangers on the internet. So it's interesting to see someone back up these various theories with at least a little substance, even if I don't think the theories apply to me specifically.
