Behind Closed Doors

Today is the birthdate of Tennessee Williams and Erica Jong, two people whose works remind us of the broad spectrum of activities that go on behind closed doors. Judging from the popularity of such shows as Desperate Housewives, American society has a scandalized fascination with this spectrum, and seems particularly interested in love affairs and their attendant effects.

Not that sex and adultery or their entertainment value is a new thing. Some people have always read the Bible for fun as much as for moral instruction. In American society, less fun by comparison is Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter or any number of tortured Victorian and Edwardian era writings that tried to get realistic. Since the Second World War, there has been a plethora of stories, novels, novellas, plays, poems, songs, memoirs, movies, and tabloids that have mined our social and sexual mores, exploring the stressors and fissures between attitude and practice, that spotlight the hypocrisy of an always shifting status quo. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Peyton Place, the Kinsey reports, Valley of the Dolls, "Harper Valley PTA," and much of John Updike's work are random but telling examples of such. These cultural outpourings eventually migrated to television via such heavily viewed series (and we love our continuous narratives -- they are ritualistic and deeply comforting) as daily soap operas, Dallas, Melrose Place, etc., and more recently by way of probingly less censored cable/satellite tv series like Sex & the City, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, and lately Big Love. And, of course, this is ripe territory for stand-up comics of all types and backgrounds.

These are interesting cultural strides, but one must continue to wonder about the collective sanity or maturity level of a society at large that is still far more willing to tolerate or even glorify violence than it is to discuss sexuality in a qualitative way. Even in 2006, advertisers obviously aim at the clueless herd mentality of teenaged boys, using this as their associative norm, exploiting sexual innuendo with all the subtlety and classiness of pornography. And a plurality of voters have recently shown far more tolerance and support for an outright liar and warmonger who condones torture and wiretapping than they ever did for a married president who merely allowed an enthusiastic intern to fellate him a few times in the White House. For that terrible crime, they would have impeached him and, perhaps, stoned him to death -- much like our enlightened "friends" in Afghanistan would now like to cut the head off a man for converting to Christianity.

Cultural mediation of sexual mores is helpful. As for me, after seeing the movie Kinsey (2004), I concur with two of its conclusions: within or without the framework of marriage, civil union, or any other arrangement, polyamorous behavior -- anywhere from fantasizing to flirting to actual sex -- is "normal" and not an apocalyptic disaster; but so, too, is human jealousy natural. Both polyamory and jealousy are probably hardwired within the human psyche. Still, aside from biological drives, hormones, and genetics, there are obviously traditional ethical and moral dimensions to contend with. Jimmy Carter caught a lot of heat for his merely honest admission to Playboy that he felt "adultery in his heart." The poor man. Life is not a card game -- adultery is nothing if not adult, and the emotionally-charged label "cheating" is a ridiculous euphemism for multiple love and/or sex interests, regardless of whether they're latent or consummated.

I've been dubbed by some as "European" in my outlook, and perhaps I can afford such a tolerant stance because I am divorced, employed, have no children, and live in my own space. I don't know the specific answers for the rest of society, but clearly there is a huge interest in exploring our social options. We have been in the process of trying to reach civil agreements about a variety of new legal partnerships, care of children, care of adults, sexual orientation, and any number of such complicated social matters -- for some time. Let's hope that civil society can become more civilized -- rather than less so -- and be able to agree to disagree without killing ourselves in the meantime. If there is one big thing we should learn from the violence practiced by extemist zealots of all religions and sects, it is that we must maintain a clear separation between church and state in the USA.