There is one thing that you will not see in Star Trek, Terminator or any of the summer blockbusters; One thing that is perfectly natural, usually harmless and a subject of great interest to most people on the planet. That one thing is not shit (you will see a lot of that this summer) it’s something that stinks much less and is completely unrelated to any chimpanzee taboo.
It’s a hard-on.
A simple erect penis.
Hollywood, indeed our whole culture, is terrified of the erect cock. They will show tig ol’ bake fitties, they might show you a bit of bush and it’s even possible that you’ll glimpse a flaccid penis. But you will not see an erect cock.
That remains taboo.
pic nicked from here
It has not always been so in the West. Even if Hollywood’s Sparta refused to mention it, we all know exactly what those Greeks were up to. In Rome you could hardly turn around without tripping over your cock. Or someone elses’. Or their statue of one. Cocks were everywhere.
A good portion of Petronius’ masterpiece of Roman satire, The Satyricon, revolves around the impotence of its hero, who tries everything to have his hardon returned to him. In the days before Viagra, this was worth pages of drama.
Blaming the Christians for our cock-terror is easy. It’s also shallow. Pointing that finger, then following its direction, will only take us down a well-travelled path, not penetrating into the forest but just skirting the edges of the bush until we arrive nowhere new. I see little point in even starting that journey. It’s too obvious.
Christians have some odd opinions about the body. We’re all familiar with that.
Even without those opinions, our cock-terror remains. Though we try to make fun of the organ and its functions in some of the more ribald comedies, we are much like children giggling at a funeral. We know the subject is serious and that, in itself, amuses us. We must make the bogeyman into a clown.
Left alone and treated honestly, the erection is simply too powerful a symbol.
Should we picture James Bond waking up with a boner that he must pee-off, he no longer seems the striking hero but a simple man. At best. More likely, he would appear comical; A top-hatted aristocrat slipping on a banana. Bond’s erect penis is more powerful than Bond. To make him believable, to make Bond into Bond, his erection must remain off-screen.
But does it?
The erect cock is too powerful to be held down. Since it cannot appear on-screen, it assumes a mask. Because our movie heroes cannot have hard-ons, they become hard-ons.
They’re stiff and rigid men, hard men, characterized by their unyielding will. They penetrate right to the heart of every problem and ejaculate bullets all over it. Blood, the most acceptable of all bodily fluids spurts everywhere.
Insert clever one liner: “I impregnated you. With death!”
Not only do our heroes have the virtues of an erection, they also have the vices. They’re mavericks. Just as our own organs often ignore our weak, inept brains and oppressive social conventions, these movie heroes often ignore their weak, inept bosses and oppressive social conventions.
Penis erectus non compos mentis.
A stiff prick knows no conscience.
And by the end of these movies, our intrepid hero usually learns the importance of love. His previous impotence –that brief, selfish period where Achilles refuses to step up to his duty– is cast aside in the name of romantic love. The female protagonist needs rescuing from the somehow effeminate super-villain. She has worked some vagic upon him. His resolve hardens. And so does he.
Insert montage of hard tools being forged.
And this is what the modern image of manhood is: Not of a man who has hard-ons but of a man who is a hard-on. In suppressing such a forceful power, we have not eliminated it. Instead we have elevated it beyond all reason.
People watch these heroes and, because art does have power, they attempt to imitate them. Without too much thought, men absorb the value system of an erection. Our mythology does not create men. It creates hard-ons.
It’s time to create a new mythology.
But, in the meantime . . .
3 comments
laurenarcher
May 13, 2009 at 11:07 pm (UTC -5)
So that’s why I love action movies so much! Die Hard isn’t so much about a man who is difficult to kill, but rather about a giant erection with a gun.
Oh, John McClane. He’ll literally Die Hard.
I fully support more full frontal male nudity in mainstream film, be it soft, semi, or full blown. I also support more through the leg ball sack shots in mainstream film, but I might be in the minority on that one.
The first time I ever saw a penis on the silver screen was in The Talented Mr. Ripley when I was twelve. I had the most terrible nightmares that night. Not because of the nudity, which I thought was fascinating, but because, if my Mom and Dad’s reaction was any indicator, I was obviously not supposed to like it, leaving me quite conflicted.
If full-frontal male nudity wasn’t such an oddity, if it was normal, I don’t think I would have been so negatively effected by it.
I’m a bit of a masculinist. I think in a lot of ways men are suffering because of the one-sided way society, especially government policy, has decided to enforce gender equality.
I know a lot of men who are unsure of how to be men, and are quite troubled by this state of ambiguous gender identity.
Action movies eroticize these dick-men. Romantic Comedies vilify them. Those searching for Truth in Hollywood Blockbusters are probably quite confused. Real Man status is unattainable, a dehumanized, unfeeling stereotype that is in no way realistic, or even somewhat acceptable in a post-second wave feminism world.
Alas.
Also: Vulcan penises are supposedly double-ridged. Or at least that is the general consensus amongst those who care to think about such things. (Not me, really.) If Star Trek did have full-frontal Spock it would have quieted a few long-standing debates, at least.
Lady Amelia
May 15, 2009 at 7:48 pm (UTC -5)
XD
I completely agree — not just James Bond, but Indianna Jones, Bruce Campbell, 300 — it truly is everywhere.
(PS – I’m a fairly new reader, and I must say, I’m liking it here! You’re honest and blunt, and have wonderful clothes articles. As an author, I an appreciate the attention to details.)
Ryan Oakley
May 21, 2009 at 8:32 am (UTC -5)
Happy to have you join us Lady Amelia.
Lauren: Through the legs ball sack shots. That plain makes me smile.