Thursday, 3 December 2009

No Sex Please - We're Human


The film New Moon has caused a stir in mainstream media - like everyone knows - the film has a male character (he happens to be a valiant vampire) who refuses to have sex with the girl (she’s gor-jus) who he’s in love with.

The mainstream media reportage of New Moon is very patronising. Newspapers all over the world are using the same headline - 'No Sex Please - We're Vampires'. Each review in any 'mainstream' paper has tetchy paragraphs deriding Edward and Bella’s chaste love. Acres of online comments diss the story for not being ‘realistic’ – well of course it’s not ‘realistic’. Were you ever in love with a vampire? Did a vampire ever love the scent of your blood? But no, the fact that the movie has a lot of animal eating vampires is not what makes it 'unrealistic', it's that the fact that the young couple, Edward and Bella do not have sex.

There’s way too much media kvetching and theorising as to why the teenage couple don’t have sex.

The most pathetically anti-intellectual criticism of New Moon claims that the media's most 'unbelievable' ,'far-fetched' storyline is that the vampire/boyfriend does not want to take his girlfriend’s virginity. In fact, he refuses the girlfriend's offer of her body. Oh-ho this is the most fantastical theme of all! One wonders if the movie reviewers are not entering into this fantasy novel a little too much – there’s way too much explaining that Edward is a religious vampire and so he won’t have sex because that would not be good for Bella's soul. As if one needs to be a vampire to stay virginal! But he is a male vampire, and anything/anyone male equals sex mad.

It's part of the message 'to belong to the human race means having sex whenever and wherever you can’; that not to revel in all the sexual delights of the flesh is something only a non-human would do. As if an unmarried boyfriend and girlfriend (they may even be human) cannot try to control their sexual urges for each other’s good. I have not read the Twilight series of books, but must ask, is there any human NON-VAMPIRE male in the books that tries to stay virginal? Is there any 'regular guy', as they say in the US, who for his girlfriend's sake, does not want to take her virtue?

Me thinks the Net and the newspapers doth protest too much.

And it all comes back to the 'well the author is a Mormon, yawn! She's trying to peddle her 'no sex before marriage doctrine', like we wouldn't have guessed!'
http://www.newsweek.com/id/148052 Where you will find this commentary;
‘Meyer, who is Mormon, has said that she doesn't want Bella and Edward to have sex before marriage. For most romance novels, the "no sex, please," notion would be blasphemous.’

Ultimately what's happening is that films that champion chastity are being rubbished in the media; there's lots of preachy reviews telling the public that this virginity thing is sooo old school. We need the good journalists to tell us that we are wrong in loving these flicks. The papers and the online sites know best afterall.

This implies that any book or film without heavy sexual content will be rubbished.

Only books/films with the 'everyone is doing it, why aren't you?' message will be triumphed as good 'instructive' entertainment, especially if the main characters remember the condoms. In the mainstream media, does anyone criticise films that are too sexually explicit? Recent films such as ‘500 Days of Summer’, or the (ruined) film version of ‘Picture of Dorian Grey’? It seems the opposite, we are living in an era where films with chaste characters and without heavy breathing sex scenes are the films that will be most analysed.These films will cause the media fanfares.

Only the religious press are pointing out the value for teenagers in viewing films with a chastity message. The Catholic Herald's Sophie Caldecott gets it right with this simply-put but superb article.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000500.shtml

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Greetings! Welcome to my blog on how to find eternal love like that of Romeo and Juliet. Ah, fair Romeo and Juliet, the most celebrated romantic couple in history; who hath not wanted to have a relationship like theirs? But lo! Romeo and Juliet waited until marriage before having sex. If it worked for them, can it work for us? I hope that by writing this blog many people can find help, and advice on sexual matters. Oh, I am a twenty-something writer based in London. I was named after the Grecian princess, St. Philomena. The original St. Philomena, who wanted to love only Jesus Christ, was decapitated by the Emporer Diocletian because she refused to marry him. I, however, feel called to marriage. Oh that I would be a 2009 Juliet!

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