Movies, My Family and Sexuality

By Lindsay Dennis

God bless the cinema. I’m so thankful for the fact that this country wholeheartedly supports a multi-billion dollar industry designed to allow us to spend quality time with our friends and loved ones without actually having to engage in that pesky business of conversation or looking at one another. This makes life so much easier for those of us stricken with debilitating cases of extreme social awkwardness. Or, at least, it used to.

Back in the day when they’d just come out with those new-fangled talkie films, cinema was much simpler. The storylines were classic and wholesome, so as to appeal to the whole family. But these days, all those heartwarming tales of angels getting their wings and whatnot have all been done to death, leaving filmmakers with no other option than to start pushing the envelope with crazy raunchy sex movies (because sex is the last thing that still really makes Americans uncomfortable).

There’s not anything inherently wrong with these movies, per se. They are often sincere, artistic, thought-provoking, or even just downright hilarious. The problem I have with these movies (which really hit home for me this weekend in Harris as I was sitting between my good friends watching the third or fourth orgy in scene in Short Bus) is that I never think through the implications of watching certain films with certain people. Surprisingly, as aware as I am of my own awkwardness, I never seem to think ahead about the content of a movie before sitting down to watch it with the family. This has led to me making the questionable life choice of watching American Pie, Kinsey, and the 40-Year-Old Virgin (uncut, no less) with my parents.

Granted, my parents were hippies. They are both alums of Reed College, and they have a history of liberal politics (marching through the streets of Portland shouting “Nixon eat shit!”, etc). However, this fact does not overcome our family’s uncomfortable WASPy tendency to completely ignore the reality of sex. For example, my primary experience with sexual education from my parents comes in the form of two succinct statements: “Herpes lasts forever” and “Don’t ever have sex…well, don’t ever have unprotected sex”. There was also a brief but exceedingly uncomfortable discussion about how diaphragms are no longer effective if you lose a lot of weight, a fact that is apparently proven by my existence on this planet. Still, despite these moments of mildly earnest sexual discussion, the general rule in the house is silence about sex.

As such, watching scenes of Jason Biggs humping a pie, an old lady masturbating, and Steve Carrell watching porn in a Circuit City was more than a little upsetting. Even though I never really got a clear impressive of what my parents expected normative sexual behavior to be, I was pretty certain that it wasn’t this. So I merely laughed awkwardly and tried to pretend not to understand the raunchier jokes. Those for which I couldn’t hide my knowledge, I simply played off as things I learned about in that one Bible class on what you should never do if you don’t want to burn in the fiery chasm of Hell. I assume that I was fairly convincing. But really, how would I know? We don’t talk about these things.

All in all, I like to think of these mildly traumatic experiences as opportunities to learn about the importance of considering consequences. I figure things have to normal out someday, and I will either find myself avoiding these situations entirely, or finally coming to terms with my sexual identity in a way that I feel comfortable sharing with my family. I’m thinking silence and avoidance is probably the more realistic option.