Gratuities usually mean good things for the gas-starved and gaunt among us. You can’t count on it though, like when it comes to Hollywood and its gratuities of sex and, if you’re watching a teen horror flick, that old bed buddy “gore.” Feed too much from that cornucopia and your soul will suffer soon enough from an endless succession of dry heaves.
This very thing happened to me a few nights ago when I got sucked into the cinematic bucket ‘o slime called “Music and Lyrics.” A biliary aftertaste lingers still, so I‘m trying to lay out my thoughts with great effort (Be forewarned, I'm divulging some critical plot elements in the next sentence over.) It would seem that only an action of grace can free my memory of the central scene in which the character of Drew Barrymore (plant caretaker/miracle lyricist) explains to Hugh Grant/Alex Fletcher, a trite parallel between the meaning of music and romance. With her lip twisting lisp, the Drew character observes with classic buffoonery that music and melody are like that first attraction and the sex that (curiously)must flow from it. The lyrics, like the real meat of the relationship, comes afterward.
Wow. An incredible romantic crescendo...to have sex first and form a relationship later. The movie’s one philosophic moment and it leaves us with this shipwreck of a revelation. What scares me more is that without sifting through the flotsam of this statement for a real splinter of truth, someone might take this movie’s message for something deep. Why don’t we just skewer people onto a sample platter and let strangers have a taste before they choose to buy?
It reminds me of those 3rd grade reading comprehension questions that ask you to order the three statements in the order in which they should happen. Just for fun, here’s the Drew Barrymore version: 1. Attraction 2. Sex 3. Love /relationship Here’s God’s version: 1. Attraction 2. Love /relationship 3. (Sex) Hey, and if you say the order doesn’t matter then you’re missing something fundamental about men and women.
Sex is an affirmation. Love is the thing affirmed. We can’t in the end say (truthfully, genuinely, with integrity) that we affirm something that doesn’t exist. Hollywood calls this insincere act “romantic comedy.” I call it “lying with your loins.”
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(Warning: spoiler ahead.)
I'd like to add another point in this backwards movie...
After Sophie (Barrymore) slept with Alex (Grant), the next day, they go to Sophie's sister's house for dinner. In the kitchen, when the sisters were alone, Sophie mentions that she slept with Alex. Her sister gets ecstatic, blah blah dialogue... THEN Sophie asks, "But how do you know when he's the one?"
Whoah! Wait a minute. Aren't you supposed to ask that BEFORE you sleep with him?
Either the writer or director got the sequence of events mixed up during final production or there's just really something wrong with Hollywood.
I know the answer to that!! There's really something wrong with Hollywood!
This disorder is even prevalent on tv shows -- Another good reason we do not get cable.
btw -- A quick note from A Catholic Notebook. . . . you can add your favorite books to the Blogger's Choice Catholic Reading List until Wednesday. The deadline was extended due to some special requests! I can't wait to see and share the results at the end of the week. Come on by!