School is closed, no MTG projects, long before I need to worry about my new position with the Festival Chorus, no prep needed for the week at Mundelein. Choir winding down to the point at which the psalm of the day is the only "new" thing I need each week (we will still sing a few things for the first time, but we have been looking at RHOSYMEDRE and the Langlais for a while.
No need for heat or fan, it is still pleasant to water the plants, when I go over to work on my filing (who knew so much of a MD's workload, and it is a load, consists of filing and photocopying?) the loft will be lovely...
So naturally, as we are who we are,we spend unforgivable amounts of time slumped, he in Poang, I on the Hide-a-dem-bed, watching the boob tube!
But we're catching up on movies we wanted to see and never got around to.
(I am pleased to say that my evangelization has been successful beyond my wildest dreams, he is not only a Catholic, but also a Frugal; delayed gratification is acceptable and we make use of libraries, IFC, Free onDemand, garage sales...)
Anyway, several year or so old biopics recently, including Kinsey.
When it came out I was very aware of the good reviews, as well as of the extreme antipathy expressed towards it by conservative commentators on current culture, (like the often over-the-top, IMO, blogger at Church of the Masses.)
Well, they are both right. Superb performances, wonderful direction, interesting script, all that...
But its all in support of the Big Lie that is the hagiography of Kinsey and his Institute.
Yes, the movie acknowledges his own perversions (though it doesn't call them perversions, of course,) and his use of the perversions of others.
But the ultimate POV is the ultimate virtue of his intent and his achievement. So little weight or even screen time is given to the negative aspects of the story that it can hardly be claimed that the film doesn't have a POV strongly, strongly positive towards its subject.
I don't deny that the man accomplished some good.
But his "findings" were so subjective (to a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and to a closeted hammer it is too tempting to believe that most of the rest of the tools you meet, while they may claim to be saws or screwdriver, are really hammers,) and his methodology so suspect it is hard to idealize him as a scientist the way the movie does.
And the whitewash of his willingness to utilize and encourage and protect criminal sexual abusers of children and infants in pursuit of a "greater good" is really unconscionable.
Really, it was RIGHT not to rely knowledge of a subjects on-going pedophile activity to the authorities because then other subjects wouldn't trust him enough for him to obtain their dirty little secrets?
One wonders how a similar biopic of, oh, let's say... a prelate of the Church.
Who helped accomplished great things, (say, in the area of ecumenism, or civil rights.)
But also helped hide sexual predators because betraying them to the civil authorities would have interfered with other aims, or defied other principles of confidentiality.
Yes, I can see now how welcomed a film lionizing such a Great Man would be.
In movies like that, the hero always needs to have, maybe a pinkie-toe of clay, right? to keep it real. You know, the great general who doesn't spend enough time with his family, or some such, some innocent whose interests need to be sacrificed for the sake of the Great Man, and his Great Vision or Great Deeds.
Ooooh, or maybe an Intolerance type screenplay, telling parallel stories?
I can see it now, even to the advertising tagline:
Kinsey and Law
"Yeah, I know, it's tuff, but don't bother me now, kids, I got important stuff ta do"
No comments:
Post a Comment