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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
It must surely be admitted that ignorance is NOT bliss when it comes to sex...
The moral foundation for this movie is considerable, for what passed for sex education before Kinsey's research amounted
to a disgraceful and deplorable pack of misconceptions, falsehoods, and downright lies promoted by those of a conservative
religious or political persuasion. Their belief was that the dangers of sexual ignorance and misinformation were minimal compared
to allowing the public to have a greater knowledge about sex, which, they assumed, would then result in greater promiscuity
and sexual licentiousness.
Many laws were passed regulating various forms of sexual activity that had little or no relationship to what was happening
in the real world. Those of us who are old enough also remember those years more than a half a century ago when what passed
for sexual education was mostly a mandated list of "don'ts," because if you did "it," something horrible
was bound to happen. And that "something horrible" was graphically (but often incorrectly) represented in disgusting
black and white photographs that ended up having the unintended consequence of making everyone feel guilty about doing something
that they should have been able to do naturally with beauty, joy, love, and a profound sense of mutual caring and sharing.
So the larger portion of the populace passed into adulthood feeling that sex was something ugly and sordid and generally
a (woman's) duty to satisfy (mostly men's) carnal lusts in activities necessary only for procreation and limited to acts that
would only result in procreation. The other portion of the population, the smaller portion, knew better from personal experience
that this was all a pack of lies, but the "trash and tramps" of the world did not have the advantage of having public
forums like the church, the state and the school to get their message out.
The saddest consequence of this lack of sexual knowledge that ran the length and breadth of all economic and social levels
of society was that far too many loving, committed couples quickly found out after marriage that neither of them had a clue
as to how to please the other in what surely must be admitted is one of God's greatest gifts to His children. As is tragically
shown in this movie, what passed for sex education was a few minor, mostly factually incorrect tidbits of news that were offered
as an adjunct to home economics courses and personal hygiene classes that were often limited in their enrollment to married
couples and seniors in college. Many, many couples had questions to ask, but there was no one available with the expertise
to answer them.
Dr. Alfred Kinsey ended up starting to set the record straight on the matter of human sexuality, a process that continues
until this day. What was was then considered shocking and tasteless is now the subject of late night cable talk shows. What
was then shockingly depicted in laboratory and classroom pictures is now available for our perusal in full color pictures
in many "gentlemen's magazines" or sent out over the internet in moving video pictures.
While extraordinarily well done, "Kinsey" is steeped in the sadness of its participants, many of whom were damaged
psychologically during their childhood. Kinsey himself was damaged goods after having been psychologically damaged by his
father, Alfred (John Lithgow), a Methodist minister and professor who, it turns out, was even more damaged than his son.
Furthermore, the clinical study of the "hows and whys" of sex as pertains to the human animal is just that:
a scientific summation of the biological (i.e., animal) aspects of human sexuality without any attempt being made to cover
those aspects of sexuality that distinguish us humans from the animals. As Kinsey remarked during one of his lectures, every
one of the variations of human sexual expression that he has catalogued have all been observed occurring in the animal world.
The result is that today we all know a lot more about the variety of sexual behavior, but we are still as ignorant about
love as were Kinsey and his students some 60 years ago. Kinsey himself admitted to one of his research assistants late in
this movie that human sexual activity can be quantified and qualified and reduced to statistical analyses, but love as the
most important component of human sexuality is an intangible that cannot be defined or reduced to statistics.
While greatly appreciated by all who are justifiably appalled at the incredible ignorance about sex and the often grotesque
misinformation that passed for sex education before his research was published in the 1940's, this movie cannot get a summary
grasp on the 18,000 interviews that Kinsey and his assistants conducted during their massive investigation. This movie eventually
collapses into a mind-numbing blast of verbal snippets from many of those being interviewed and this overwhelming visual imagery
leaves us more or less unable to sort it all out.
It is equally obvious that Kinsey and his assistants were also unable to sort all this information out, but my definition
of the term "sorting it out" deserves some expansion. "Sorting out" the multitude of sexual expressions
as catalogued by Kinsey must at some point demand some sort of qualification, otherwise the whole exercise fades into an exercise
in futility. This is what the church and society should have been doing, which is placing reasonable societal "governors"
which would apply only to those expressions of human sexuality which clearly cause harm to one or both of the parties involved.
Somewhat sadly from my point of view, Kinsey was congenitally unable to do this. In fact, he reveled in his lack of judgment
concerning any form of sexual expression. Towards the end of the movie when he and his assistant travel out west to interview
an addict of perverted sex who has spent some 40 years cataloguing every single sexual activity that he has ever partaken
in, his descriptions become so revolting that even Kinsey's jaded assistant can't take it any more and he has to leave. Kinsey
remains behind to assure the subject that at least he will remain nonjudgmental.
There are two more scenes in the movie which also serve as distressing lessons of the negative and degrading aspects of
human sexuality, but no one in this movie seems to be paying any attention.
Kinsey's air of clinical detachment occasionally included himself as a Guinea pig when it came to experiencing a new form
of sexual behavior.
Out alone on many road trips with his research assistant, Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), Kinsey allowed himself to be
seduced by Martin into an act of homosexuality for the first time in spite of the fact that he was in a loving and committed
relationship with his wife, Clara McMillen (Laura Linney). As Kinsey and Martin both viewed this as "research,"
they came to the conclusion that they both were a "3" on a "0 to 6" grade scale of heterosexuality to
homosexuality.
Needless to say, Clara, always called "Mac" in this film, hit the ceiling when her husband confessed to her
about his now divided sexual loyalties. Her tears and her protests that she thought that their mutual commitment meant something
to him were all to no avail as Kinsey remained a practicing bisexual for the rest of his life.
This might have been considered a normal reaction on her part, but her resultant behavior was not. Some time later Clyde
Martin confesses to Mac Kinsey during a lunch in her house that he is tiring of being exclusively a homosexual and wishes
once again to experience a heterosexual relationship. Kinsey walks in on this conversation and verifies that these feelings
are indeed normal for someone like Clyde.
What happens then is both shocking and surprising. Clyde confesses that "I want to have a relationship with Mac,"
with both Mac and her husband present there in the room. More surprising yet, Mac accepts his offer and even jumps at the
chance by telling him, that, "Yes, I think that I would like that," and Kinsey gives his permission. The two are
soon happily sporting about in the Kinsey bedroom upstairs.
It is in several scenes like this that my jaw dropped down to my navel while I was watching this movie. Furthermore, I
was stunned (and saddened) to find that Mac had so easily gotten over her feelings of distress and anger about having lost
the sexual loyalty of her husband.
The other scene that symbolized the commoditization of sex in this movie is at the very end when Wardell Pomeroy (Chris
O'Donnell), one of Kinsey's research assistants, has just gotten married. The Kinsey team is standing around at a sunny outdoor
reception after the wedding and all the guys talk about having sex as if they were in a gymnasium locker room.
The bride, surely used to her new husband's occupation by this time, still blanches at the crudity of it all. No romance,
no love, no respect, just plain getting it on and getting it off. One might have thought that at least on this one august
occasion some joy and gratitude might have been given to those aspects of human sexuality that distinguish us from the animals...
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Young Alfred Kinsey is seated at the back of the room while his father, Alfred Seguine Kinsey (John Lithgow), is giving
a hellfire and brimstone lecture on the dangers of sexual behavior. Many times the subject comes up for discussion at the
Kinsey family dinner table and his mother, Sara Kinsey (Veronica Cartwright), always suffers in silence and in embarrassment.
It is obvious that she does not share her husband's passion for a lack of sexual passion.
Kinsey's father is a Methodist minister who also teaches at a local college where his son some years later has just been
enrolled after his graduation from high school. In another all too frequent argument between the two, who do not get along
at all, Alfred tells his father that he has dropped out of school.
"You couldn't have dropped out of school or they would have told me."
"They didn't tell you because they all hate you," his son replies, and he then tells him that he is enrolling
in another college.
"How can you go there? How will you be able to afford the tuition?"
"From the money that I have saved and also because I have received a partial scholarship."
And thus the break between the father and the son is complete as young Alfred goes off to achieve a doctorate in entomological
studies.
He picks Gall Wasps as his field of study because even though they are winged, they can't fly. This prevents them from
spreading about so that even one small hill can define the total area of existence for one specialized family of wasps. The
result was that many taxonomists had incorrectly assumed many wasps in the same family to be members of a separate genus because
of their highly divergent appearance. After 20 years of study, Dr. Kinsey ends up amassing the world's largest collection
of Gall Wasps, a collection consisting of over a million specimens.
One day a young lady sits entranced in one one of his classes while the other students appear to laze around the lecture
auditorium with varying degrees of interest. Kinsey lectures with passion because he loves what he is doing, but most students
cannot see the connection between Gall wasps and the real world. However, she can and she later invites herself to join him
at an outdoor picnic on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
This is how Clara McMillen, "Mac" to all her friends," first became friends with her professor. It was
a perfect meeting of the minds, but his later proposal was hedged by Clara's confessing to Kinsey that she was also entertaining
a second proposal from another man. Hurt and angered, Kinsey withdraws only to throw himself wholeheartedly back into marriage
with Mac shortly thereafter when she comes back to him and tells him that she will be his if he will have her.
Indiana University campus life includes many young married couples who find out that the current courses in home economics
do not adequately cover questions about their sexuality and ways to give and receive sexual gratification. The few courses
on this topic are taught by Thurman Rice (Tim Curry), another IU faculty member. Even the Kinsey's are not immune to this
problem as they have to seek out help with some sexual problems that they are experiencing in their own marriage.
Kinsey's openness and approachability on the subject of sex results in many students seeking him out for advice as opposed
to going to the very ignorant and judgmental Thurman Rice for answers.
Dr. Kinsey finally decides to approach the university dean, Herman Wells (Oliver Platt), with an offer to teach a course
in human sexual behavior. Dean Wells is at first reluctant, but he audits Rice's lectures and experiences first hand their
shortcomings. This gives him the impetus to okay Kinsey's initial efforts in this area.
In preparing for his new lectures on human sexual behavior, Dr. Kinsey finds that he cannot answer all the questions that
his students ask him because there is no place where he can go to find the answers to their questions.
In a fortuitous set of circumstances, he meets the head of the Rockefeller Foundation who agrees to fund his research
proposal for the next year in what will eventually come to be known as the Kinsey Institute for the Study of Human Sexual
Behavior.
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