Lust, Caution
Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is the most powerful movie I have seen in a long time. To be direct; I don’t know what was wetter, my shirt sleeve (from crying) or my underwear.No but seriously, Ang Lee has a subtlety that makes everything sensual, as delicate as provocative in this controversial tale of wartime espionage. Lust, Caution is set in the early 1940s during the Sino-Japanese war, mostly in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The heroine belongs to a university drama troupe plotting to assassinate a collaborator. Assigned to seduce the target, an official in the puppet government, she falls into an oh-so predictable-yet-addictive affair.
The politics are fascinating; the music is enveloping and delicate. Suspicion is enhanced by passion, and vice versa. Til this day I had never been scandalized and turned on at the same time. It made me feel like my sex life used to be a desert compared to this (and it’s not for lack of activity). And it made me remember I have a heart.
And no the movie is not all sex, the scenes might make only 5% of the time. But you remember them. The positions could not be worded, yet everything seemed natural and oh-so-worth of trying if only I could figure out where the legs went. Raw yet tender. The lovers seemed to know each other inside out yet seemed to be discovering something nirvanously new every time. It made me want to be the girl. It made me want to be the guy. I just so wanted to be part of it, not only the sexual part, but also the political activism, in place, in time. I wish I also had something to die for; country, love.
All I can say is, the movie made me want to act, and now. Yet I’m here writing.
Thank you, Bill and Monica!
Okay, so maybe it's old news, a little bit, but I just can't not share it. A friend of mine sent me a link to this news article: Apparently, some theatre in the US was forced to change its marquee from The Vagina Monologues to The Hoohaa Monologues, because some parents found it "offensive".
Okay, skipping over the sheer idiocy (and the irony) of the name change, because that's just too easy to make fun of, I'll ask instead: What is it about vaginas that so often gets people's goats?
Strangely enough, I think this situation actually can find its parallel in Harry Potter: You know how everyone's afraid to say Voldemort's name, because he's such an all-powerful wizard? And how they have to replace his name with You-Know-Who instead because they're so scared of him? I think that's what's going on with vaginas.
People are scared to death of vaginas, because vaginas are representative of sex, an act that traditionally is seen as dirty and forbidden and terrible. Thus, they must resort to veejayjays or down theres or hoohaa instead. Vaginas are the Voldemorts of this world. (They even start with the same letter! 'Nuff said?)
Furthermore, why is it that the word anal, as in anal-retentive, is used relatively often and without fear? There doesn't seem to be a stigma attached to anal the way there is with vagina, even though an anus strikes me as a body part that's a hell of a lot dirtier than a vagina can ever be. So really, it's totally the sexual aspect of vaginas that gets people scared.
You know, it's stuff like this that makes me wish for another huge Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. In the ensuing media explosion, we were constantly bombarded with stories of sex and sex and even more sex. Over the space of a couple of months, we heard all the gory details about Bill and Monica's sex lives: their sexual intercourse, their "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", their oral sex, and if you were lucky enough to hear it, their "kinky" use of a cigar as a sex toy.
It's not that I bear any ill will towards Bill Clinton or any other hapless politician following his pecker. In fact, I don't believe that what goes on in a person's bedroom (or on the expensive mahogany desk in the Oval Office) should be exhibited for public judgment and scrutiny. No, but just pause for a minute, and imagine what would happen if George Bush was caught bangin' his intern while in office ...
... The world would undergo a temporary sexual renaissance of sorts: For a glorious few months or so, their sexploits would be splashed across newspaper headlines and blaring from primetime newscasts. For those wonderful few months, sex would be completely demystified and stripped bare. For those liberating few months, there would be no stigma placed on sex, and people would actually be unafraid to talk about it in public.
And maybe, hopefully, it would be during those few months that The Hoohaa Monologues could regain its rightful name again.
- Yun
