mwdegutis Loc: Illinois

Last year's Oscars offered the lowest ratings seen since 2008; this year may outdo last.

Paul Bois ~ September 19, 2017

Call Me By Your Name
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Gone are the days of movies that inspire our hearts, uplift our spirits, delve into the deeper truths of the human condition, or just, well, entertain us — the days when a given Oscar race would offer the eclectic likes of a Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Quiz Show. Best Picture winners now feature teenage boys giving each other hand jobs on a beach and Oscar bait films about the hidden beauties of pederasty.

This year's Oscar bait season may be the worst yet for films about sexual depravity. Three films that are generating Oscar buzz — Call Me By Your Name, The Shape of Water, and Professor Marston and the Wonder Women — go out of their way to feature radical and different kinds of sex, which reviewer Angie Han celebrates for being not "white, cisgendered, straight, and vanilla" sex "filtered through a heterosexual male gaze."

The first film profiled by Han is Call Me By Your Name, a "first love and sexual awakening set in the 1980s" between a 17-year-old boy and his father's 24-year-old male friend. Here's how Han describes it:

In typical Luca Guadagnino fashion, sound and image collide to create an almost tactile sensation. You can practically feel the sun on your skin and taste the sweat on your lips. Much attention is paid to the way the two romantic leads – young Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) – carry themselves and regard each other, and the physical attraction between them feels immediate and electric.

It's not that Call Me By Your Name is especially explicit (though the famous peach scene is definitely going to get people talking), but that it's unmistakably sensual. Sex is no mere byproduct of love; nor is love an elevation of sex. In Call Me By Your Name, the romantic and the erotic are inextricably intertwined.

The "infamous peach scene" referred to above involves the 17-year-old boy masturbating into a cut peach, which Armie Hammer's character eventually eats.

The next film up in the race is director Guillermo del Toro's "fairy tale love story" The Shape of Water, which apparently takes "less than fifteen minutes" before the film devolves into "full-frontal nudity and then masturbation" to show the "daily routine for our protagonist, Eliza (Sally Hawkins)."

It's startling at first, simply because it's so unusual. But del Toro presents this scene with a matter-of-factness that goes a long way toward normalizing it. The camera doesn't leer or laugh at Eliza, or frame her self-pleasure as something forbidden.

Ditto a later scene of Eliza making it very clear that she doesn't just love the Asset (the fish-man played by Doug Jones) – she lusts after him as well. The Shape of Water cuts away before we actually see them doing the deed, but it's frank enough to offer a quick and clever answer to the question you're already asking in your head. (Namely, "how?")

It's not just Eliza who has wants and needs, either. Eliza's best friend is Giles (Richard Jenkins), a single gay man who's got a crush on a diner waiter. The film's villain, Strickland (Michael Shannon) is a married man who enjoys some afternoon delight with his wife. Not all sex is good sex in The Shape of Water (Strickland doesn't exactly look fun in bed). But as a general concept, sex is treated as something natural and normal – this in a film where the main object of desire is a merman.

The final film profiled is the BDSM romance Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, a film about the sexual origins of the beloved comic book character Wonder Woman, whose creator William Moulton Marston had a three-way open relationship between his wife Elizabeth Marston and Olive Byrne.

The film looks deceptively conventional, in that it's designed, shot, and structured like any number of other biopics you've seen. But that's kind of radical in itself. When's the last time a tasteful period drama asked you to root for the long-term relationship between a queer, kinky threesome? Heck, when's the last time you saw that dynamic at all in a mainstream film?

In Professor Marston, kink isn't something seedy or shameful. (It's also not particularly extreme or explicit – we're talking a bit of roleplaying and rope play, maybe some light spanking, as filtered through soft lighting and breathless close-ups.) It's a pleasurable and private expression of the love between three adults. If the outside world has a problem with it, that's their wrong.

Han notes that the movies do not just portray illicit sex, whose novelty wore off the moment Mrs. Robinson told Benjamin "I'm available to you" in The Graduate, but rather unorthodox sex, specifically not "designed to titillate straight men."

Last year's Oscars offered the lowest ratings seen since 2008; this year may outdo last.

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

Here's a thought: Don't watch the Oscars. Who gives a shit. The only way to change some things, is to ignore it and eventually they'll get the message. If they're successful, you might want to move a little farther a way from Hollywood.

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

Not surprising as the effort to normalize all forms of deviant sex, I am surprised that a man and his dog were not included, maybe the next years nominations will include that and one of a Muslim and his goats.

mwdegutis Loc: Illinois

I haven't watched the Oscars in years and no, if you ignore them they don't go away...they're just getting more depraved every day. Read Romans 1:18-32 for a spot-on description of what is happening in this world. Don't be such a Dummy Boy.

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

...The reason it's spot description of what's happening in the world today, is that WE haven't changed, since the book of Romans was written. May as well go read a horoscope too.

mwdegutis Loc: Illinois

I will agree that we haven't changed since the book of Romans 1:18-32 was written but it describes EXACTLY the situation we're in today. We refuse to acknowledge God and have kicked Him out of just about everything. "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them."

karpenter Loc: Headin' Fer Da Hills !!

Hollyweird Being What It Is
Maybe They Think Depravity Is What America Wants
And Hasn't Tuned In Because They Haven't Given Us What We Want

I Saw The Latest 'Despicable' Installment
And Glad My Granddaughter Couldn't Make It
Because Some Of The Villian's Mannerisms Were A Little Disturbing For Small Children

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

I haven't watched that pile of human waste in decades .

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

Throw in that moonbat college professor having sex with mother earth and we would have the trifecta of deviant behavior .

karpenter Loc: Headin' Fer Da Hills !!

I Have To Un-Watch This Thread
The Soft Homo-Eroticism At The Top
And I Just Noticed The 'Bottle Placement'

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Don't watch the movies either.

jSmitty45 Loc: Fl born, lived in Texas 30 yrs, now Louisiana

I don't watch them, and have no desire to do so. The book of Romans describes our America as it is today. So sad that these young people of today will see it as that is just the way to be. So glad, that I was born in the mid 40's and was able to grow up seeing decent programs like, Lassie, Ossie and Harriet Nelson, Little Rascals, I love Lucy, etc. boy, the Blm group would sure make a stink over Amos and Andy. God gave them over to a depraved mind. It is sickening to watch tv anymore. There are no decent films, except Turner, has some that isn't bad. Sick world we live in today, and it is only going to get worse.

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

"I will agree that we haven't changed since the book of Romans 1:18-32 was written but it describes EXACTLY the situation we're in today."

-This is not a prediction, it is historical consistency. I'm glad we agree.

And if we haven't changed in 2000 years, why is this a barometer for the end of the world. We have been in far darker circumstances:

The plagues
Various serious events such as earthquakes, droughts, and volcanic eruptioins
Two horrific world wars

None of which God intervened to prevent, but apparently predicted.

Dummy Boy Loc: Michigan

I bet I can pull up the same whining about scriptural clap trap from 200 years ago. Each epoch of human history hasn't changed, regardless of how many believers are "created".

mwdegutis Loc: Illinois

Do you know what this means? One of the biggest signs of all that happened in 1948. Jesus said it himself...

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."