Kinsey, the documentary

This movie answers questions that were asked in the 1920s as a documentary should, but also points to what has yet to be developed on. It shows how uninformed people were about their own biologies, about what knowing we take for granted today, but also begs questions in today's times about when homosexuality will be accepted. Only last year, after all, our president supported the outrageous Marriage Protection Amendment which attempted to mar the efforts of states like Vermont where gay marriage civil unions have been legalized. I think any amendment that limits as opposed to expands peoples rights is outrageous. But our politics were put to shame when former New Jersey governor James McGreevey resigned after he announced that he was gay. I do understand that this is similar to Clinton's adultery, since McGreevey had an affair with one of his employees, but it remains that as the only publicly gay US governor to date, by resigning he has only made gay people look bad, unfit for politics at least.

Eighty years ago the movie depicts that married couples thought cunnilingus caused cancer. But it also includes the story of a man who was a sexaholic and also a pedophile, suggesting that this man who has had sex with some 600 pre-adolescent boys is pushing the understanding of the man who has been pushing everyone elses'. In this sense, (being slightly biased here), a common morality is addressed that says that because pedophilia includes actions that are against other people's wills, it just isn't acceptable behavior.

But that doesn't mean there is any definition of normal. People Kinsey's team interviews ask,
"do you find my answers typical...am I normal?" We cannot pretend to be the same, putting the ones who are different to shame. No matter how hard you may try to explain outloud that you are not biased, you will fail quickly if you had to answer the questions about your feelings immediately, such as on the IAT. That's understandable, because broadcast networks still find it necessary to enforce ratios in the races we see on tv. There are movies that explicitly mock the idea of the tocken black guy or the stupid fat guy such as Not Another Teen Movie (haven't seen it yet, but the idea is there). But the truth is we are different. Time has an article in the July 4th issue, "Suspicious Minds" by Paul Coates, that presents Centers for Disease Control's findings from Jan 2004 that blacks accounted for about half of new AIDS cases in the US while only representing 13% of the population. That may be a bit random, but it says that yes we cannot be treated for diseases the same way. We are medically different, and it's also common sense to say we are different in all other aspects such as the Kinsey movie's people's individual sexuality.

At one point Kinsey says, '...everyone is different, but people want to be the same and in trying to be part of the group, they are willing to betray their own natures.' This is like suggesting that actions are more powerful when done in groups. If you don't want to stand out, you agree with the general consensus. Even in the movie itself you see how finger votes of only a few (see Law of the few section from Gladwell's Tipping Point) of the Rockefeller Foundation board members quickly convince the remaining members to complete the unanimity. So in real life, when nobody is talking about issues of women who are frigid and can never orgasm (which Kinsey believed was a falsity) or premarital sex, you don't want to even think of suggesting a digression.

I found love to be left open ended in this movie. Kinsey says, 'the only way to study sex...is to strip away everything but its physiological functions,' but then the movie later leaves Kinsey presenting his thoughts about love, saying that though it cannot be measured, but it is very involved in the threads of our relationships, that it is an (aptly) immeasurably significant binding force between people. Make of that what you will yourself, because I saw no good suggestions in the movie. Today orgies or less inhibited multiple partner sex relations are still taboo, but I think Kinsey really was suggesting that monogomy is sexually boring and lovers can still be (note hypocritical word usage) FAITHful to their partners if they love each other. Well, in my mind we are not free chimps, but our society tends to stamp marriage or further, having children, as an action that ends the two partners' freedoms. They are unconditionally bound to their spouses. I don't have a real say in this yet, but I can guess that marriage is a tough decision to make and that's why, Henry VIII worked so hard to separate from the Roman Catholic Church to get divorces legal, I think (although for him it was a royal thing and it was a bit more problematic if you wanted an heir, but thats not the point).

I see, again, the broad aim of this movie to weed out common behaviors among people that aren't so common in the public eye. Sure this movie is about common problems in the bedroom, but when Kinsey says, "everyone's crime is no crime at all," this reaches much farther for me. You cannot be judged as wrong if say such and such number of people believe the fighting in Iraq is not a purely idealistic democratization campaign. More issues later.

I just have to point out a piece of humor in how I think the writers of the movie are mocking current trend of making documentary-style films such as the complain-a-lot variety of the McDonald's Supersize Me film or Moore's Fahrenheit, or the more tributary Ray, Cinderella Man, or the Kinsey movie itself. Kinsey said to reporters in the hallway, when they asked him if he had plans for making his first book into a movie, that it was a very stupid idea. Well I don't think this movie was a stupid idea, and if it spreads his ideas far enough, the real Kinsey probably wouldn't think so either.