Fornication = Horrible Death

Hi

I joind this forum to ask a question I've had in the back of my head since 1979 when I saw the horror classic Phantasm. Here it is: Why do Hollywood filmmakers insists that fornication will ultimately lead to horrible death? This thought bothers me because I love good films. Movie making can communicate the human experience without the use of words and sometimes explain the inexplicable. Modern movie making is a very powerful tool. So why do the powers that be in Hollywood use this tool to program people into thinking that hot & horny sex is a bad thing? Is this a consevative Christian American propaganda? Or are there other countries who demonizes sex in films?

Just few examples:

Phantasm (1979)

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

Can you name other films, foriegn or domestic?


Aqua B

Wow, this revelation hasn't been made since the original Scream.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Well, I'm not going for originality here. It's a question I never bothered to ask until now because it's only recently that I got into the internet thing. So asking friends and family who are inexperienced in films or just plain uninterested would be a waste of time, theirs and mine. With internet, now I can communicate to world as opposed to the very few in one city. That..and I try not to waste my time and money on every film ever made. So after having seen Dawn of the dead today, I realized that Hollywood had not gotten past that cliche since 1979. Why?So can you give me some insight the "why" and on what Scream was communicating in the film? Anyway, I didn't get into Scream as I hated the actors.

Lay down the bong and step away from the conspiracy theories. There's no one out to get you and there's no one to blame for your mistakes, only the decisions you made to get them. I'm kind of kiding.

As for sex meaning a nasty-sweaty-moaning-horny death, it's just better that way. People like sex. Without sex I'm pretty sure most of us wouldn't be here. So, with it being so important and us liking it and all, what better way to dramatize a death scene than to put something we love so much in it. Kind of like the way Kubrick used the song Dancing In The Rain during the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange. That's a wild guess. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's because sex sells and the more T&A movies like Friday the 13th have, the more likely some 8th grader is going to rent it so he (or she now'a days) can watch it during their "alone" time.

I haven't even remotely answered your question, sorry.

In films sex is presented as bad, why? Hmm. In Dawn Of The Dead (DOTD) was sex a bad thing? Or were they trying to give more traits to develop the characters. A girl who hooks up with some dOOd while zombies are around says a lot about that person. Would you agree she was retarded? I'd place my bet on the assumption that she was. Does it mean you shouldn't have sex? I would say no, only that if zombies are around you should think twice. The Day After Tomorrow (In Two Days), I don't see how sex was presented as a bad thing. Except for that weather guy. Again, that supported his character believing L.A. had no chance of fluctuating weather, rather he found his time better spent with some intern. Again, I'd say he was retarded.

Maybe this answers some of your questions or atleast gives you another point of view, even if it is from some Christian conservative.

Pimpin' It,
PimpDaShizzle

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Well thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, Pimp.

“what better way to dramatize a death scene than to put something we love so much in it”

Good point. Ah, melodramatic death, let me count the ways…

“A girl who hooks up with some dOOd while zombies are around says a lot about that person. Would you agree she was retarded?”

I think that scene has more to do with the pleasures of living in excess and enjoying glutony, and all for free and free of guilt. I can’t agree that the girl was retarded for wanting sex in a time of crisis because at that point in the movie, they nested in quite nicely inside wonderland, which is probably everyone’s little fantasy: Take over a friggin’ shopping mall and play! And I think it’s more natural to feel a need for sex after a session of intense violence stress, as a survival instinct to relieve stress and (I’ll go over the top here) to carry on the spieces.

“Spieces” Now that’s a sexy movie. Alien sex?? Sheesh! Is that played out too?

Wait, what about hollywood’s rejection of the rave movie Groove for not having a death in the story? Was that motivated by just plain hollywood greed? To sensationalize drug use by peppering it with the sense of death for the sake of ticket and rental bucks?? Because if it is, then hollywood’s run out of ideas.

In Two Days.. a prime example because the death and destruction was “an act of GOD”, and GOD shall cast you in hell for being retarded enough for fornicating secretly in your office! Ooh, now I’m scared! What a bunch of nonsense. It just pisses me off thinking that there are a few powerful people (with limited point of view and imagination) in hollywood calling the shots.

There are quite a lot of independent films out there that stretch the so-called 'hollywood' boundaries, check out some films from independent filmakers instead of going to see the blockbuster movies and hating the way they're shot. Interesting point though

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Concert Tab!! MOFO poetry Been Dreaming Lately?

you can try and read Mishima too. not for nothing has orgasm been called the little death.

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We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.

This concept has nothing to do with hollywood. It goes back to ancient stories from the beginning of time, like The Anniad. Regardless, even in film, it dates much further back than 1979, and was by no means limited to Hollywood. How about the entire film noir cycle, foreign and domestic. Ever read Dante? The Femme Fatal (clearly french in origin) is death and sex personified..the destructive lady Circe reincarnated, hailing all the way back from Homer's The Odyssey. Phantasm and Friday the Thirteenth are just two more stories in the legion of material that follow this paradigm.

The reason it is still in films, books, music and every other form of art known to humans is because we, as a race, are apparently obsessed with the diametric opposites of death and birth (sex).

Kubrick (who extricated himself from Hollywood, almost from the start) uses this theme constantly and I can cite specific examples from each of of his films to corroberate my claims..From the hooker in the war zone in Full Metal Jacket, to the dead woman in the tub that attempts to seduce Mr. Torrance in The Shining, to the clear sexual metaphor in Dr. Strangelove (the name itself plays on this concept, while the characters drop nuclear dicks, certainly a strange love, from the airplane), to his final work, Eyes Wide Shut, which is absolutely dripping with this concept. Clearly, Hollywood has absolutely nothing to do with these films, so this concept can not be limited to, or have been created by, Hollywood.

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i agree with Sedai here. and may add that the concept of sexual demons incubi and succubi date from the European middle-ages, if not even pre-Christian.

I don't think any of the movies you have listed are Hollywood's ways of trying to say "don't have sex or you're going to die."

First off, as Sedai pointed out, it has nothing to do with Hollywood. The first movie you noticed it in, Phantasm, was incredibly far from Hollywood. This alone should tell you that it isn't some moral agenda put out there by Hollywood, it's just the way things happen.

If you want to think it is Hollywood's moral agenda though, take a gander at all the thounsands upon thousands of films in which people have sex and are NOT killed off afterwards. The only situation this happens in with any consistency is horror films and it isn't a message on abstaining from sex, it's just common practice. Sex is the act of creating life so it only makes perfect sense that to throw that cycle out of wack would be to follow the act of birth with an immediate act of death. It isn't punishment for actually having sex. Sex is just something that lowers people's defenses, which makes for an easier death.

Though yes, most horror films do throw in nudity and sex for the arrousing nature of it. However, this is no different than it becoming standard practice for westerns to have a gunfight in them.

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Horror's Not Dead
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In his book, Monsters From The Id, E. Michael Jones suggests that many horror films/stories were created (conciously or otherwise) to represent the supposed horrors of sexual promsicuity. That they are a metaphor for the danger of sexual desire when it is not tamed or tempered in some way.

He takes his case too far, no doubt, but does provide a number of insights along the way. Most impressive is his breakdown of Alien (and its sequels), which he argues is partially a metaphor for abortion and sexual freedom. He demonstrates this through a number of observation:

• The spaceship the crew enters in Alien on the strange planet looks an awful lot like a pair of open legs. Inside, they find eggs.

• The alien itself lives in your stomach and, when it burts out, looks a hell of a lot like a fetus.

• At one point in the series, Ripley is "impregnated" by the alien via a very phallic-looking extension of the Alien's mouth. The aforementioned fetus-like creature in her stomach results.

• At the end of the first film, Ripley cavorts around the spaceship in her underwear with her cat (single woman living alone, anyone?) before discovering that the alien (pregnancy) is lurking there. She then kills it via suction (one way in which abortions are performed), but must watch it dangle outside the ship by a cord placed right in its midsection (ambilocal cord).

And, of course, the spaceship's computer on the planet is called "Mother." There are also countless examples of the "Queen" Alien breeding relentlessly, threatening the crew through sheer fertility; which ultimately is only stopped by Ripley's decision to sacrifice herself.

In other words, Ripley -- the strong, independent woman -- ultimately cannot escape biology, despite using many technological means to try to do so throughout the series of films.

Wow.
Reading Sedai's posts are so...informative. I appreciate the thought that goes into everything you post. I agree with OG-, here. It's common place in horror movies and most horror films have teenagers as main characters. Of course it's a stereotype, but most of us would say that teens have an active sex life. Not to mention, when you're having sex, you're totally preoccupied and vulnerable. You could say the same thing about sleeping and taking a shower, which we all know there are many horror movies involving those situations as well. My guess is it has to do with being vulnerable; the better to stab you multiple times.

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Ya got me feelin' hella good so let's just keep on dancin'

I think it's a combination of what Sedai, Yoda and others have said regarding Eros and Thanatos (love and death, a theme that goes way back) and simple math:
The geeks and the people who feel that they are geeks way outnumber the popular kids. If you have a class of 300, you have a prom king and queen, a homecoming king and queen, and 296 people who aren't sure where they stand. So appealing to the geeks by killing off the obviously popular (and what isn't more popular at that age than success in the sexual arena) can sell more movie tickets. Yay!

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

Damn Yoda, now I have to go watch Alien tonight, because you just opened a whole can of worms that I, in my constant hunt for metaphor in film, had completely failed to pick up on...

I gots them smarts real good!

_Cheers

I think that's a huge leap.

Not when you consider that the man who designed the monster, H.R. Giger, had a bizarre obsession with contraceptives, even going so far as to create a painting where a pill dispenser doubled as the magazine in a revolver.

If all we had to go on was a woman and a cat, and then the alien, I'd agree with you...but a vaccuum, and then dangling from a cord? When grouped with all the other parallels with pregnancy through the rest of the film? The leap is suggesting that these are all coincidental.

Some people go way too deep into movies.

And some people are idiots.

What are you trying to imply? eh?

He's implying that there's nothing wrong with delving into movies, even overly so. Frankly, that's (more or less) what this site's for.