Elaine's date with Phil Totola takes an unexpected turn
I. He Took It Out
When asked by a friend to comment on recent cases of sexual misconduct involving male celebrities, including that of the comedian Louis CK who admitted to masturbating (or asking to masturbate) in front of various women on several occasions, I have to admit that my first thought was of a famous scene in an episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Stand-In' (S5/E16).
In the episode, written by Larry David, Jerry sets Elaine up on a date with one of his friends, Phil Totola, who, at the end of the evening, instead of simply accepting a goodnight kiss, indecently exposes himself. The next day, Elaine - played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus with perfect comic timing and delivery - tells Jerry what happened: "He took it out."
Jerry is perplexed and somewhat disbelieving: "How can this be?" Kramer, however, after his initial shock reaction, offers a possible explanation (and justification): "Maybe it needed some air." Whilst for George, told by Jerry of the incident later at the coffee shop, it's a moment of revelation: "Wow! I spend so much time trying to get their clothes off, I never thought of taking mine off."
No one - including Elaine - thinks of the incident as a form of sexual assault or harassment; it's inappropriate and unexpected behaviour, but it's not criminal, or worth getting particularly upset over. She isn't thinking of reporting the incident to the police and she's not going to require counselling. Ms Benes has no idea of herself as being a victim and she's not going to start an internet campaign, because such a thing would have been #inconceivable in 1994, a very different time and a very different world, to the one we live in today ...
II. The Case of Louis CK
In November 2017, five women told The New York Times that Louis CK was guilty of gross acts of sexual misconduct. In a statement released 24-hours after the story broke, the comedian admitted that the allegations were true and he apologised at length to all parties concerned.
Despite this public confession and heartfelt expression of regret, a predictable storm of moral outrage and feminist fury followed, seriously damaging his reputation and threatening to permanently derail his career (which was largely built upon his willingness to joke about taboo subjects, including masturbation, for which he clearly has a particular penchant).
Asked to comment on the case of his friend Louis CK, Jerry Seinfeld amusingly seemed just as perplexed as when his fictional self heard about Phil Totola: How can this be? For him, such aberrant sexual behaviour doesn't even make sense; he can't understand why a man would want to strip naked and masturbate in front of a woman - even though, within the pornographic imagination, CFNM is a well-established (if somewhat niche) genre.
Naturally, the media has also called upon various psychologists and therapists to help explain Louis CK's behaviour ...
III. Reflections on Male Sexuality
According to the experts, such behaviour is not simply exhibitionism; masturbating in front of another person without their consent is far more complex than erotic display. Ultimately, they say, it's not even about gaining sexual pleasure so much as it's about exercising power and control and should be seen, therefore, as a form of aggression; specifically, a form of violence against women.
Well, maybe ... but maybe not.
One might alternatively suggest that rather than see this as a sort of high-end form of gunning intended to embarrass, humiliate, or terrify women, maybe we can view it as a joyful and innocent expression of male libido once the latter has been freed from all the usual constraints placed upon it due to the privileged position enjoyed by these very successful and talented men.
Push comes to shove, I tend to agree with the poet and cultural critic Simon Solomon, who calls for a new narrative "if only to break this dangerous and disturbing cycle of women publicly recounting tales of fleeting sexual encounters months - or even years - after the alleged incidents took place, and of men accused of conduct deemed to be improper being obliged to enter therapy where they're taught to feel ashamed of their actions, desires, and fantasies."
The attempt to demonise and pathologise male sexuality is, Solomon continues, "not only detrimental to the psychic health and physical well-being of men, but it has negative consequences also for those women who love them." For as Marcuse points out, the continual repression of man's instinctual life and the frustration of his most active forces - what Nietzsche terms the taming of man - ultimately has the effect of weakening the latter and thus ensuring their becoming-reactive.
As William Blake wrote: He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence ...
Well, maybe ... but maybe not.
One might alternatively suggest that rather than see this as a sort of high-end form of gunning intended to embarrass, humiliate, or terrify women, maybe we can view it as a joyful and innocent expression of male libido once the latter has been freed from all the usual constraints placed upon it due to the privileged position enjoyed by these very successful and talented men.
Push comes to shove, I tend to agree with the poet and cultural critic Simon Solomon, who calls for a new narrative "if only to break this dangerous and disturbing cycle of women publicly recounting tales of fleeting sexual encounters months - or even years - after the alleged incidents took place, and of men accused of conduct deemed to be improper being obliged to enter therapy where they're taught to feel ashamed of their actions, desires, and fantasies."
The attempt to demonise and pathologise male sexuality is, Solomon continues, "not only detrimental to the psychic health and physical well-being of men, but it has negative consequences also for those women who love them." For as Marcuse points out, the continual repression of man's instinctual life and the frustration of his most active forces - what Nietzsche terms the taming of man - ultimately has the effect of weakening the latter and thus ensuring their becoming-reactive.
As William Blake wrote: He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence ...
Notes
Click here to watch a clip from the Seinfeld episode discussed above.
Click here to watch Jerry Seinfeld asked by Dana Weiss for his view of the Louis CK case.
The lines attributed to Simon Solomon are paraphrased (with the author's permission) from an email sent on 2 March, 2018.
See: William Blake, 'Proverbs from Hell', The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93).
For a follow-up post to this one, with further thoughts on male sexual display etc., click here.
If masturbation is, by definition, an act of manual auto-affection rather than an invasive sexual assault, it appears dubious at best to construe it a priori as a vehicle of men's aggression, let alone 'violence', against the implicit sexual purity of women and their supposed right not to be disturbed by such transgressive masculine excesses. (Of course, if any of the complainants did try to leave LCK’s House of Shame and were really prevented from doing so, false imprisonment might legitimately be added to the comic’s charge sheet.) But it's far from clear how 'sex with someone you love' – as another vilified and accused man in this domain, Woody Allen, memorably put it – should be seen as intrinsically traumatogenic. If a young lady invited me over and confronted me with her libidinous need to get herself off without so much as a prior invitation or by your leave, I might feel a little embarrassed for her (or enjoyably soiled and aroused at the same time) but – call me old-fashioned – I'm not sure why I'd feel the need to join a Twitter group, call the cops, or destroy her career.
ReplyDeleteFor those of a pagan persuasion, James Hillman has written excitingly (in the interest of restoring the compulsion's psychic autonomy) on reconnecting phallic self-pleasure to the goat-god Pan - whose name also, of course, gives itself to 'panic' in a way that might shed archetypal light on the reported agitation of the ladies chez Louis. Hillman is concerned to understand the self-legislating passion of the drive in a way that also arguably helps to reclaim it for men. In his classic monograph ‘Pan and the Nightmare’, he writes:
'. . . masturbation may be understood in its own right and from within its own archetypal pattern, condemned neither as substitute behaviour for prisoners and shepherds, as regressive behaviour for adolescents, as recurrence of Oedipal fixations, nor as a senseless compulsion of physiology to be inhibited by the opposite prohibitions of personal relations, religion and society. As masturbation connects us with Pan as goat, it also connects us with his other half, the partie supérieure of the instinctual function: self-consciousness. [. . .].’
Liberated from sex’s ties to civilisation and procreation, Hillman affirms (contra the anti-onanism of D H Lawrence) how the pleasures of self-abuse can also be a source of ‘internal culture’. By ‘intensifying interiority with joy’, condensing conflict and shame and ‘vivifying fantasy and guilt , masturbation ‘confirms the powerful reality of the introverted psyche’, returning complex (and complexed) nature to the opus contra naturam of Shelleyan soul-making.
Louis CK as lonely, life-affirming (and literally fucked-up) shepherd of his soul, Pan-piping his own tune? Or vile violator of women, beating them down with his rhythm stick? Either way, he doesn’t seem to have quite pulled it off.
Many thanks Simon for this brilliant (and brilliantly comic) afterword; readers will understand why I wanted you to write the post in the first place.
DeleteThose who say this topic is nothing to joke about, need to appreciate that, ultimately, everything's funny (as Larry David informs fellow comic Richard Lewis in a recent episode of Curb).
Interesting to see how you veer the conversation towards Hillman and relate masturbation to the task of soul making etc. Personally, if I'd continued the post, I would have spoken of natural history and evolutionary biology (animal courtship display, etc.) - see the upcoming post on the male peacock spider. I suppose where you think anima, I think animal.
Anyway, thanks again for the thoughtful and thought-provoking comment.
My pleasure, Stephen.
ReplyDeleteRe 'anima' and 'animal', I'd just add they are of course both etymologically cognate and psychically intervolved - and certainly so for Hillman. (Interested parties might well wish to read two of his books, 'Anima' and 'Dream Animals', alongside each other.)
it's the DISPLAYING that's aggressive. it's not complicated.
ReplyDeletesigned, Dr. of Social Psychology who specializes in *Gender.* wake up you guys.
ReplyDelete