The song "As Time Goes By", in the film Casablanca and later by Frank Sinatra, begins: "You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss...". But that was then.
In my day when at the end of a date a young lady embraced you with her lips in kissable position that was understood as assent and an invitation. The account does not say whether she kissed him back or merely passively endured the 'discomfort', but she seems not to have recoiled or turned her head to avoid the incoming.
It seems nothing else happened and the kiss was just a kiss. But it was also the opportunity for victimhood and attention, the new status marker.
Interestingly, the opening lines to the orignal (1931 - Herman Hupfeld) were omitted in screen versions:
"This day and age we’re living in gives cause for apprehension, With speed and new invention and things like third dimension. Yet, we get a trifle weary with Mister Einstein’s theory, So we must get down to earth, at times relax, relieve the tension. No matter what the progress or what may yet be proved, The simple facts of life are such they cannot be removed."
Hupfeld never foresaw that the simple facts of life can indeed be removed.
Well opined Frank. I think it is pretty safe to say that 'sex as a taboo' in the days of olde was just a little too restrictive for what is actually a normal God-given biological and enjoyable activity. But like most social and moral developments, it has clearly swung way too far the other way. The private has indeed become public! Media prurience is rife and commonly now (online) newspapers & magazines run so called 'lifestyle advice' or 'opinion' columns that consider weirdo deviant sex-related conduct as completely typical of everyday life. Nothing appears to be off-limits. I am no wallflower puritan, but if I am unlucky or stupid enough to read some of this crap, it makes me feel genuinely ill. What normal person engages in such oddball activities? I guess when you give the deviants an inch, they take six of them and do something very strange with it.
When I think of "the transformation of sex into a transaction," I tend to go back to Charles Dickens' absolutely brilliantly funny "Pickwick Papers," which, I think, was published in instalments in 1836 to 1837, but was set in the late 1820s. Poor Mr Pickwick, a confirmed bachelor of a certain age, unwittingly and unintentionally led Mrs Bardell (I think she was his widowed landlady) by his conduct to believe that he had offered her a promise of marriage! She successfully sued him for damages in the civil courts for breach of a contractual promise to marry. Note the word "contract." Pickwick refused to pay the damages. In those days, debt was a crime, so he was incarcerated in the Fleet Prison, a very famous debtors' prison in London. Mrs Bardell was subsequently unable to pay the legal fees she owed to her (crooked) solicitors for pursuing the claim against Pickwick, so she herself was arrested for non-payment of debt at the Spaniard Inn, a pub that still stands on the outskirts of Hampstead!!! Pickwick, being a gentleman, then pays the damages to Mrs Bardell so she could pay her solicitors and avoid imprisonment! Tremendous stuff. I don't know whether this is better or worse than poor Mark's experience. I seem to recall that Pickwick was imprisoned for a few months or so.
On "the pathologisation of intimacy," Frank, to some extent, the aims intended (the abolition of the private, including the family) remind me of the community of women and children in Plato's Republic. I feel very sorry for young Mark. What an environment within which to grow up. Good gracious, no doubt he has university, next, where, as you suggest, it may get even worse. And the police, as you say, have taken the enforcement of this quasi-Platonic dystopia to heart. They are the instrumental arm of our government and they clearly see their job as being the imposition of the latter's Cultural Marxist agenda. I must confess I tend to follow Leo Strauss' interpretation of Plato's Republic, namely that Socrates never intended his "best city" in speech to be enacted in practical terms! Rather, it was meant to discourage potential political leaders from ever attempting such a dehumanising, tyrannical, utopian project. I suppose that Starmer and his self-righteous chums, being as thick as they come, never got the memo...
It’s all so sad. As the morals and Christian virtues have been set aside and anything goes. So now limits have to be set because of the lack of virtue which is not good for us. God’s way is always the best.
As an aside- who is Bonnie Blue. How seared her soul must be.
The song "As Time Goes By", in the film Casablanca and later by Frank Sinatra, begins: "You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss...". But that was then.
In my day when at the end of a date a young lady embraced you with her lips in kissable position that was understood as assent and an invitation. The account does not say whether she kissed him back or merely passively endured the 'discomfort', but she seems not to have recoiled or turned her head to avoid the incoming.
It seems nothing else happened and the kiss was just a kiss. But it was also the opportunity for victimhood and attention, the new status marker.
Interestingly, the opening lines to the orignal (1931 - Herman Hupfeld) were omitted in screen versions:
"This day and age we’re living in gives cause for apprehension, With speed and new invention and things like third dimension. Yet, we get a trifle weary with Mister Einstein’s theory, So we must get down to earth, at times relax, relieve the tension. No matter what the progress or what may yet be proved, The simple facts of life are such they cannot be removed."
Hupfeld never foresaw that the simple facts of life can indeed be removed.
Well opined Frank. I think it is pretty safe to say that 'sex as a taboo' in the days of olde was just a little too restrictive for what is actually a normal God-given biological and enjoyable activity. But like most social and moral developments, it has clearly swung way too far the other way. The private has indeed become public! Media prurience is rife and commonly now (online) newspapers & magazines run so called 'lifestyle advice' or 'opinion' columns that consider weirdo deviant sex-related conduct as completely typical of everyday life. Nothing appears to be off-limits. I am no wallflower puritan, but if I am unlucky or stupid enough to read some of this crap, it makes me feel genuinely ill. What normal person engages in such oddball activities? I guess when you give the deviants an inch, they take six of them and do something very strange with it.
Very interesting essay. Thank you, Frank.
When I think of "the transformation of sex into a transaction," I tend to go back to Charles Dickens' absolutely brilliantly funny "Pickwick Papers," which, I think, was published in instalments in 1836 to 1837, but was set in the late 1820s. Poor Mr Pickwick, a confirmed bachelor of a certain age, unwittingly and unintentionally led Mrs Bardell (I think she was his widowed landlady) by his conduct to believe that he had offered her a promise of marriage! She successfully sued him for damages in the civil courts for breach of a contractual promise to marry. Note the word "contract." Pickwick refused to pay the damages. In those days, debt was a crime, so he was incarcerated in the Fleet Prison, a very famous debtors' prison in London. Mrs Bardell was subsequently unable to pay the legal fees she owed to her (crooked) solicitors for pursuing the claim against Pickwick, so she herself was arrested for non-payment of debt at the Spaniard Inn, a pub that still stands on the outskirts of Hampstead!!! Pickwick, being a gentleman, then pays the damages to Mrs Bardell so she could pay her solicitors and avoid imprisonment! Tremendous stuff. I don't know whether this is better or worse than poor Mark's experience. I seem to recall that Pickwick was imprisoned for a few months or so.
On "the pathologisation of intimacy," Frank, to some extent, the aims intended (the abolition of the private, including the family) remind me of the community of women and children in Plato's Republic. I feel very sorry for young Mark. What an environment within which to grow up. Good gracious, no doubt he has university, next, where, as you suggest, it may get even worse. And the police, as you say, have taken the enforcement of this quasi-Platonic dystopia to heart. They are the instrumental arm of our government and they clearly see their job as being the imposition of the latter's Cultural Marxist agenda. I must confess I tend to follow Leo Strauss' interpretation of Plato's Republic, namely that Socrates never intended his "best city" in speech to be enacted in practical terms! Rather, it was meant to discourage potential political leaders from ever attempting such a dehumanising, tyrannical, utopian project. I suppose that Starmer and his self-righteous chums, being as thick as they come, never got the memo...
Thanks again.
It’s all so sad. As the morals and Christian virtues have been set aside and anything goes. So now limits have to be set because of the lack of virtue which is not good for us. God’s way is always the best.
As an aside- who is Bonnie Blue. How seared her soul must be.