The Hunger Games -- Movie Review Jiro Ono Dreams of Sushi -- Film Review The Artificial Silk Girl -- Book Review Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami -- Book Review The Science of Orgasm -- Book Review Essay
The Hunger Games
Directed by Gary Ross
I went to this movie expecting not to like it, but I liked it better than I thought I would. I went to it out of curiosity. It is not the type of film I would normally be interested in. But I wanted to try to understand why it is so popular with young people. Why are they flocking to it in such droves? What do they see in it that resonates?
The film is a powerful metaphor for the lives of young people in contemporary American society. It is in the tradition of Network, Falling Down, and Wall Street: films that draw attention to the perversity, excess, and malaise at the core of American life. It is not about the future, by the way, although the film purports to set itself in the future. This film is about the present. Now. The young people are imprisoned in a police state. They are sullen and anxious about their personal futures. The older daughter must assume the responsibility of caring for her younger sister because their mother is self-absorbed, incompetent, and incapable of adequately caring for the young girl -- right away a slam at the traditional American ideal of motherhood. The father has died a long time ago (Isn't that the truth about American life?) Instead the father figure is fragmented into three main parts: Donald Sutherland plays a character that alludes to Donald Trump, who seems to be the supreme leader and the grandmaster of this sadistic competition (akin to his TV show), his younger companion and minion who serves as the ringmaster of the Hunger Games, and the television interviewer, who caricatures television talk programs where guests are subjected to probing, intrusive, hostile questions about their personal lives for the voyeuristic glee of the audience. These ersatz father figures play similar roles as distant, sadistic manipulators -- cold, demanding authority figures who insist on subjecting the young people to sadistic trials which they cannot win, but have no choice but to play out. Woody Harrelson, playing Haymitch, serves as an ancillary support to this conception of the father, but somewhat less distant. A former winner of the Hunger Games, now an alcoholic and still sadistic, he is positioned as a mentor who purports to offer occasional helpful advice, but he very much believes in the institution of the games, and is fully committed to subjecting the young people to its regimen, which he knows will ultimately kill them.
The young people are chosen by their society (which could also be seen as their families) to sacrifice their lives for the greater good, although it is not clear why this annual ritual is necessary. Its chief value seems to be entertainment, similar to our sports culture. Think of Andre Agassi, the NFL, Len Bias, Tiger Woods, Mohammed Ali, among countless other victims at all levels of America's insatiable appetite for athletic heroes. The Hunger Games ratchets this up to the ultimate level where young people are forced to compete until all but one are dead in a murderous game of hide and seek. They come from the lower classes, but are generously rewarded for their willingness to play the game -- just as athletes are -- being permitted to enjoy a brief period of sumptuous affluence and comfort before embarking on their deadly careers as rivals. They prepare themselves by militaristic training in combat and the use of weapons, which mirrors America's obsession with guns and militarization, and our tendency to try to solve every problem with weapons and force.
The way to win in this game is to acquire sponsors: to get people to like you. This is how you get the help you need in killing your rivals. This reflects the values and attitudes of the American corporate class, where genuine friendships are discouraged and always perilous. Relationships are superficial and strictly instrumental serving to promote oneself or one's business and can quickly turn to betrayal when one's interest or fortune shifts. The film spends about a third of itself setting up this macabre circus. This is actually the best part. Once the event is launched the bulk of film is taken up with chase scenes and violent clashes as the participants slowly kill each other off. It becomes a cross between a video game and a "reality" television show with lots of savagery and gore and phony melodrama that gets rather dull. The film is way too long and probably could have been cut by one third with no great loss.
The rules of the game change in midcourse, implying that the game itself is not fair and that the manipulators are actually choosing who the winners and losers are. There is surveillance of everything the kids do in the film, just as there is in their daily lives as students in school, by their parents, and their employers, who now want their Facebook passwords before they can get a job. This prepares them for the pervasive surveillance by the government and private corporations that is steadily encroaching upon the lives of American citizens day by day. The manipulators often intervene on behalf of one participant or against another. This seems to bear out the injunction that gaining sponsors and making alliances for the combat is the key to victory.
A lame romance develops between Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). It is very slow moving, sanitized, and altogether unconvincing, but I liked the scene toward the end where the manipulators sick a small army of vicious dogs on the young lovers that pursue them in a harrowing chase through the forest. This represents the war on intimacy and young love that is being waged throughout American society by the government, the schools, religion, businesses, corporations, the media, and the medical community, as well as families against their own children. A perfect example of this is the recent case of Jordan Powers and James Hooker, the 18 year old student and her 41 year old teacher, who have been publicly torn to shreds by a pack of vicious dogs while the whole country enjoyed the spectacle. Any kind of close personal relationship between children regardless of age is also very much frowned upon and anything that might become sexual is particularly singled out for persecution and suppression. There is no place for friendship in this game. Alliances are only temporary and ad hoc, their basis being mutual protection on the one hand, and to collectively destroy rivals on the other. But they all know that ultimately they will be forced to turn on each other because only one can survive. So what appears to be friendship and mutual support is only superficial. The essential underlying dynamic is hostile and rivalrous. Katniss struggles to preserve a semblance of human friendship in this grotesque environment, but her efforts are always thwarted in one way or another. An incipient same sex relationship between Katniss and Rue, a young black girl who befriends her and helps save her life, is quickly killed off.
Rue's death, however, precipitates a rebellion in her hometown, led presumably by her enraged father against the police state responsible for her death. There are riots and mayhem in the streets that are finally brutally crushed by the police state with the community thoroughly devastated in its wake. However, this could harbinger a coming revolt of the American people against the militaristic policies of the American government that seems to be on a worldwide rampage over the last decade sending young people off to senseless, futile wars around the world, without declarations of Congress, under irresponsible political leadership that uses lies and misinformation to manufacture public support for the ventures, and then expects the soldiers to go on fighting in endless tours of duty, moving from one war to the next, until they are either killed or disabled or they snap like Robert Bales, embarrassing their slave drivers in acts of spectacular rebellion. Americans are slowly growing weary of this and there could be a collision coming over it which the film foreshadows.
The producers seem unable to settle on how they wanted to end this film. At first it was billed as a last man or woman standing with Katniss set up to be the battered survivor. But then they infused this weak romance into the mix, so what to do about that? They decided to change the rules in the late stages with the game nearing its conclusion so that the two of them could share the winning honors. But that seemed a little too merciful and humane for this film, so at the very end after the two had won together fair and square through cooperation, the joint victory is revoked and the original concept forcing them to fight one another to the death is reinstated. The two young lovers, however, reject this condemnation, and were about to opt for a Romeo and Juliet ending of mutual suicide -- which I liked and thought fitting. But then again, in another bout of confusion at the top, this was remanded and once again they were both allowed to live. The ending they settled on is kind of sappy and doesn't fit with the gruesomeness and heartlessness of the rest of the film. I think Romeo and Juliet would have been much more apt and underlined the villainy of the manipulators.
Jennifer Lawrence, playing Katniss, is a beautiful young girl who is riveting throughout the film. Her captivating beauty and physical presence really carry the film, which could have been extremely dull without her. Donald Sutherland is also very strong as the incarnation of Donald Trump, who is the supreme representation of the ruthless corporate values of success at all cost and the merciless stomping of all rivals.
Although the title of this film is The Hunger Games, hunger is not an issue in the film. No one starves to death, no one is losing weight, in fact, what imagery there is of food is pretty sumptuous. The hunger in this film is emotional and psychological. What these kids are hungry for is warmth, sympathetic understanding, a comforting, nurturing environment, relationships that are supportive and empathic and founded on genuine good will. Their efforts to create such relationships in the hostile world of the film are beleaguered and beset by intractable obstacles. The film poignantly encapsulates the predicament and the prospects middle class young people in the high stress, every-man-for-himself-and-get-out-of-my-way American society. Too numbed and overwhelmed to fight back, they grimly soldier on participating in the game they are forced to play against their will, and are unable to opt out of. They seem incapable of organizing themselves to fight the system that is forcing them to kill one another for the sadistic entertainment of the masses. They think about challenging it, but they sense their powerlessness and futility. It is a biting, caustic comment on American society and its values of competition, sadism, ruthlessness, brutality, and violence, and the crushing toll it takes on the personal lives of American youth.
Jiro Ono Dreams of Sushi
Directed by David Gelb
This is a very interesting documentary about an 85 year old workaholic Japanese sushi chef, who is at the top of his game, and is perhaps the best of his kind in the world. He runs a small restaurant in Tokyo that seats ten people. Reservations are a must for lunch or dinner. They must be made a month in advance and the cheapest thing on the menu is about $350 and it goes up from there. They have no appetizers and no other dishes except sushi. There's no to-go menu and I don't think they deliver. He's been doing it since he was ten years old. His parents abandoned him at age 9 to fend for himself, and he has. He seems to have no other interests. His life and his work are fused into one. He has two grown sons who have followed him in the business. The older, Yoshikazu, expects to succeed his father eventually, while the younger has started a restaurant of his own. Ono said something that encapsulated what I found essential in this film and that is that a person has to have a palate that is developed and sophisticated and attuned to the nuances and subtleties of this cuisine before one can fully appreciate the time, the scrupulousness, the extraordinary fastidiousness, that is expended on these sushi dishes. Selecting the fish, the rice, and every ingredient, preparing it, marinating it, slicing it, bringing it to the right consistency, cooking it to perfection, etc., are all done with an obsessive perfectionism. In order to fully appreciate the value of all of that intricate, precise preparation, one must have experience in this food and be able to discriminate the small differences that distinguish preparations of the highest quality. I am not a fan of sushi. I don't eat much fish, so I am afraid all of this artistic excellence would be wasted on an uncouth pizza eater like me. It is not my place to comment on food, but I can tell you that if you do like sushi, or if you are a person who is discriminating in food and dining, or if you are a person who is interested in the Japanese and their culture, then you should not miss this film. It is very comprehensive in the many aspects of the restaurant and the sushi preparation. The scenes in the Tokyo fish market stay with me particularly. However, it goes beyond just the food and the restaurant shows us some of the personal story of the man and how he developed as a sushi chef, as well as his sons and their paths into his footsteps. One gets a sense of the conservatism of Japanese society and how people get locked into their professions which seem to merge with their personal identities. A high degree of excellence can be attained through this hard, narrow dedication to perfecting a single skill, but it does not foster innovation and change. These sushi dishes and their preparation techniques seem to be passed down from generation to generation. One feels a certain rigidity in it that is almost a kind of ancestor worship. One telling moment in the film was when Ono and his son visited the grave of his parents. They watered the flowers that were withering on the grave and he made the comment, "I don't know why I come here and do this; my parents never cared for me." Yet he still persists in the ritual reverence for them. The whole sushi culture that he represents seems to me to reflect a static, but uneasy, stability throughout the society and in the personal lives of individuals, that often runs counter to emotional and psychological realities. This is a culture that maintains form and appearance, even though everyone knows that the truth is different. One glaring omission in the film is Jiro Ono's presumed wife. I say "presumed" because she is not mentioned once in the entire film; even her existence is only implied by the fact that Jiro Ono has two sons, and he mentioned at one point that when they were small he was not a good father to them because he was never around, being totally absorbed in his profession. Presumably then, he must have had a wife who attended to the growing boys and managed the household. But she is a ghost in this film. It would have been interesting to hear her perspective on this unusual man and his total dedication to creating the perfect sushi and how this attainment of unsurpassed excellence affected his marriage and his family. Generally this film is a thought provoking window into Japanese culture through the life of a person who exemplifies some of its essential character and brings one aspect of it to the pinnacle of perfection. Dig in.
The Artificial Silk Girl (Das Kunstseidene Mädchen)
By Irmgard Keun, translated by Kathie von Ankum. ([1932] 2002) New York: Other Press. pp. 194.
I read most of this on a plane from San Francisco to Newark. It is a good book to take on a plane, because it is light and engaging; it doesn't require sustained concentration -- you can pick it up and put it down without losing the thread -- and it has substance. It is a young girl's view of German society during the closing years of the Weimar Republic, around 1930, before the Nazi takeover in 1933. The Nazis actually banned this book. For the first 38 pages I couldn't figure out why on earth they would see this immature young girl as a threat to the Wehrmacht, but in a paragraph starting on page 37 she casts the hypocrisy, racism, and anti-Semitism that was quite rampant in German society by that time in a decidedly unflattering light. Keun has a generally bleak view of German society, "Times are horrible. Nobody has any money and there is an immoral spirit in the air." (p. 21) "The city isn't good and the city isn't happy and the city is sick" (p. 103) Most of the men do not come off very well throughout the book. Her father is out of work, lazy, loudmouthed and hypocritical. Doris, the protagonist, does not show a strong work ethic, "I'll do anything at all, but I won't work." (p. 164). The book is generally apolitical and Doris tells us she does not understand newspapers and finds them boring (p. 61), but I concluded by the end that there are any number of reasons why the Nazis might have banned this book, including the bureaucratic instinct not to take any chances.
The book's appeal, however, is not confined this era from which it originated. Many modern girls should be able to relate very easily to the issues in young Doris's life. It is written in the form of a diary that is at the same time a narrative. It is a young girl's struggle to find her way in a society that is deteriorating socially and economically against the backdrop of an adverse family atmosphere, and an especially negative relationship with her father. Doris does not analyze the big picture, that is, how her problems relate to larger issues in the economy and German society. She alludes to widespread unemployment, poverty, people losing jobs and businesses, and so forth, but she is not a sociologist or social critic, except in an indirect way. This is the Weimar Republic at the level of the street. She's a very acute observer and you can see from her experiences and the people she meets that this is a society in turmoil, but her lack of preoccupation with the broad issues is actually what gives the book a reach beyond its own time and circumstances. Doris concentrates on herself and the people she comes in contact with. But the problems Doris faces in relating to men and finding her niche in society are not dissimilar to those faced by girls in any modern, urban, industrialized society. The issues Keun is writing about are not peculiarly German and not peculiarly 1930s.
I disagree with translator Kathie von Ankum's understanding of Doris as the "quintessential material girl." (p. viii)
"The historical and cultural parameters may have changed. However, the basic message remains the same: women have entered the professional world. They are expected to stand on their own two feet. But their standard of living continues to depend on a husband's income, and hence they and the world around them continue to measure their success by their ability to get a man to commit. This requires a serious investment in personal appearance, the ability to "play stupid" when necessary, and a willingness to deny their own emotional needs -- all in an effort to acquire a relationship that will assure the life that is held out by the media is the only one worth living." (p. ix)
This rather confused paragraph does not describe Doris's mindset. Doris rejects the professional world quite emphatically. She rejects work. She embraces the concept of living off of the income and largesse of men, and throughout the book she is sorting out the best way to accomplish this. From the beginning Doris always sees men as the solution. "I'm still sitting here with 80 marks and without a new source of income and I ask you, 'Where is my man for this emergency?'" (p. 21) If a woman takes that approach to life: seeing men as the key to economic security and emotional satisfaction, naturally she will emphasize the things that make a woman pleasing and attractive to men: clothes, style, physical beauty, and sexual skill. While these accoutrements take on an importance of their own, at bottom, Doris has her eye on the ball, which is the needs of her inner self and a feeling of relatedness to other people, particularly men. Doris does not need to deny her own emotional needs to achieve these ends. She is very much in touch with who she is and she how she feels. She throws men away left and right who rub her the wrong way. This is further echoed in the letter of Hanne to her estranged husband Ernst, with whom Doris is living in the later part of the book, "The most stupid thing you can do when you're married [is] to keep your mouth shut to avoid hurting the other person. That always goes wrong. Too much accumulates." (p. 167) There is no pattern of Doris stifling her feelings to preserve a bad relationship simply for economic security. In the early pages of the book she loves a man named Hubert, who treats her badly and finally rejects her to marry a virgin chosen for him by his family in Munich. Doris says she could be understanding if he was marrying for money, with his heart still with her, but he told her that he wanted a virgin for marriage, and having slept with her over 300 times she wasn't decent enough to be his wife. She slapped him in the face in the midst of a crowded restaurant. (p. 14-15) I see Doris's promiscuity and emotional shallowness in the early part of the book as a defensive reaction to this debacle with Hubert. It is a way of salving the pain of this disappointment and his stinging, hypocritical insult. At the beginning she comes off as a shallow, immature girl who is experimenting with sex in non-constructive ways, which sometimes get her into trouble. She comes on to her boss for whom she is working as a secretary. He responds and makes a move on her, and then she turns and rejects his advance -- which results in her getting fired. (p. 16-19) But as the book progresses, Doris returns to her original goal, which is love and devotion to a single man. First she has an affair with a neighbor, Herr Brenner, who is blind, married, and about to go into a nursing home. When his wife is away working, she visits him, sitting on his kitchen table in front of him letting him rest his head between her thighs while he masturbates. She doesn't love him, but she feels a warm, nurturing compassion for him and they share good companionship. It was a first step in her inner healing. Doris decisively rejects commercial sex as a lifestyle (Hulla), but is not above drawing upon it for contingencies. "Sleeping with a stranger you don't care about makes a woman bad. You have to know what you're doing it for. Money or love." (p. 53) Both are perfectly legitimate reasons from Doris's point of view, but she ultimately seeks love. She's a harsh critic of German double standards and hypocrisy on matters of sex, money, and love, "If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has a pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch." (p. 73) In the end Doris embraces the traditional middle class values of marriage, female domesticity, and dependence on a man. "Where can I find love and something that doesn't fall apart right away?" (p. 104) This is the longing of her heart and the driving force behind her search throughout the book. What is the feminist angle on that? "Professionalism" and female independence are decisively repudiated. Hanne, the wife of Ernst, after leaving him to pursue a career in dance, returns to him after a long struggle in the world of theater, which forces Doris back toward Karl, who offered her a simple life: "Food, drink, sleep, a nice girl, a good mood -- that's my ambition . . . Will you come with me? Well then, don't. You can kiss my ass with your ambition." (p. 131) To which Doris responded, "Your butt isn't too bad either." Initially she turned Karl down for the sake of ambition, but by the end of the book, she is resolved to return to him.
What I liked about the book is that it shows growth and maturation in Doris. She starts out in adverse circumstances: a negative family atmosphere and bad relationship with a lover who callously and contemptuously dumps her. She gets herself fired from her mediocre job, precipitating her leaving home for Berlin where she experiments, learns from her experiences, and slowly strengthens inwardly and clarifies her own priorities. She is smart and savvy and an astute observer. Hulla and Rannowsky are dismissed, decisively rejecting the dead end of commercial sex. "It's not always the face that makes a whore . . . it's the way they walk, as if their heart had gone to sleep." (p. 125) But she also rejects careerism and striving for financial independence from men. On the contrary, Doris takes it for granted that she has to deal with men and that financial security and personal fulfillment depend on her ability to relate successfully to a man. Naturally, this means making herself physically appealing and cooperating with the man's desires. But this should not be grounds for dismissing her as a "material girl," one who sidesteps the quest for intimacy and personal relatedness in favor of a preoccupation with the accumulation of things and status. Doris likes finery, but ultimately a quest for inner fulfillment trumps this allure of the material world. A man who treats her kindly but has no sexual desire for her (Ernst) is also inadequate and ultimately rejected. To feel a man's desire is to feel his need for her, and Doris wants to feel needed and desired. She instinctively recognizes the power of the sexual bond between a man and a woman. So Doris is on the right track throughout the book. She takes some chances and they do not always turn out well. Nevertheless she learns from her experiences and slowly gains skill in sifting and selecting from her many options. She starts to see men more clearly and is beginning to understand that her dependence is actually in interdependence. "I never used to think about where men get their money from. I always had the impression that they just have it, from transactions and things like that. And then you don't care. But when you know how someone makes his money and you watch him get up early in the morning and all that, that gives you some consideration." (p. 180-81) This book ultimately carries a very positive message for young girls. It shows them that despite adversity and many possible hazards, hope is justified, satisfaction is possible, and persistence can pay off. So keep trying girls. Don't give up.
Norwegian Wood
By Haruki Murakami. New York: Vintage Books/Random House. 2000
This is an analysis that will reveal details and the ending which you may not wish to know if you haven't read the book. If that is the case, read it first, and then come back to this review. I do recommend reading it, but read it with fresh eyes and then look at my review and see if the book impressed you in the same way.
Haruki Murakami is a very gifted writer who has extraordinary acuity for observing and describing the small details of life in both the physical surroundings and in people. Mannerisms, dress, personal style, and subtleties in behavior are sensitively and effectively used to create vivid portrayals of his characters. I would compare him to an artist who can craft the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in the most exquisite detail, but when he assembles them, the picture that results doesn’t quite make sense. His ability to create atmosphere and mood in the setting gives his writing a strong feeling of authenticity; however, on the other side I often found his characters unconvincing in the way their personalities were drawn as well as in some of their behavior.
The protagonist, Watanabe, I did not like. He is probably the most well drawn character in the book, but he is a rather colorless, bland personality lacking in drive and direction. He has numerous attractive women who practically throw themselves at him, but he has a hard time bringing himself to engage them sexually, even though they make their willingness obvious, if not blatant. However, he is able to come forth sexually when he accompanies his friend Nagasawa, a Don Juan type character, on pick up excursions to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. Nagasawa, however, is not well drawn and in my opinion Murakami does not understand this type of person. These sex adventures with Nagasawa don’t really make sense and don’t seem to fit with Watanabe’s rather listless personality.
The character of Naoko is developed in some detail, though not in as much detail as I would like. She is a troubled young woman who appears to be on her way to schizophrenia. Murakami portrays her as a very gentle, almost angelic figure. However, this very placid, pastoral picture of Naoko is betrayed by the very striking symptom of painful sexual intercourse lacking a physical cause. This indicates intense ambivalence toward her partners and perhaps a rejection of sexuality altogether. I would expect to see other manifestations of her inner turmoil in her behavior and in her relationships, but we don’t see it. She comes across as a sweetheart, but my feeling is that she should be more of a bitch. She sort of reminds me of The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. However, the way Murakami draws her is not convincing.
Reiko is the most appealing character in the book, but her life revolves around an incident that does not make sense, namely, a seduction attempt by a thirteen year old piano student (female), which Reiko violently rejects with a hard slap in the face after it had progressed to the point where they are both naked in her bed. I felt my penis stirring as I read it, but I don’t really buy this tale as Reiko tells it. It’s not that children do not attempt to seduce adults. They do it all the time. But Reiko presents herself as being helplessly swept away by the girl’s advances. I don’t think so. I think there was a strong mutual attraction, which Reiko admits, but there must have been precursors to it that convinced the girl that Reiko could be had. The fact that she almost succeeded illustrates Reiko’s cooperation and probable encouragement. The girl’s aggressiveness, that approximates the determination of an adult man, is not credible, nor is Reiko’s violent rejection of the girl. What’s more likely is that Reiko encouraged the girl and participated willingly in the sex. I don’t know why Murakami shies away from it. He doesn’t seem to be comfortable with it. Or maybe the publisher thought it wouldn't sell. He just can’t accept that a thirteen year old girl and a thirty one year old woman could be sexually attracted to each other. But this incident kicks off a series of events that leads to Reiko’s divorce and her eventual admission to this rehab institution where she meets Naoko. This one abortive seduction becomes the pivotal moment in her life. Again I do not find this scenario convincing. There are also strong sexual undercurrents between Reiko and Naoko that Murakami does not develop, but which under these circumstances I think would have been very natural to carry forward. Generally, I didn’t like any of the characters portrayed in this book, with the exception of Reiko, and none of the characters were developed in a way that made their behavior seem consistent and comprehensible in light of their personalities. Reiko’s development and struggles as a musician did sound very informed and authentic. Throughout the book there are references to music, both classical and popular, which do convince me that the author knows something about music and musicians.
There is a lot of death and a lot of grief in this book. There are four major suicides and none of them really make sense. They appear to come out of nowhere, but this is not credible. If more information were available their possibility could have been foreseen. Naoko’s should have been foreseeable, especially by Reiko. If their relationship had had the intimacy that was portrayed, Reiko surely should have known of its possibility.
The book ends on a decisively positive note in the private funeral for Naoko shared by Reiko and Watanabe. It consisted of a long, sensuous evening of music and drinking and impassioned sex. Sex counteracts death. Sex repudiates death. Sex assuages grief. In spending the night in bed in unrestrained sex Reiko and Watanabe affirm their engagement in the human world and their commitment to life. They repudiate Naoko’s choice of death. They enable themselves to move forward with decision and purpose and even enthusiasm. It is a good message. It is echoed in Midori’s private funeral for her deceased father, where she stands before his photograph at the family altar stark naked displaying her private parts. “See, Daddy, these are my tits; this is my cunt. I came from your sperm, so why shouldn’t you see me this way.” She, too, affirms her sexuality as a bulwark against grief and death.
I think this book would appeal to young people because it is beautifully written and deals with the issues they are interested in: sex, relationships, finding ones way, and suicide. Psychologically I’m not sure they will learn much from it, but if they take away this affirmation of sexuality as the crux of human engagement in life and as a force for the healing of grief and as a repudiation of death, then I think it will leave them with a positive impact.
The Science of Orgasm
By Barry. R. Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores, & Beverly Whipple. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. 359 pp.
Orgasm is understudied and not well understood. This book is a nice digest of the scientific literature on orgasm offering a broad overview of its physiology and biochemistry in rather considerable detail. I would hesitate to recommend this for the general reader. Much of it is highly technical. There are few drawings or illustrations to ease the pain and the ones there are, aren't very good. If you are a medical professional or have a strong background in biochemistry or pharmacology you will likely be able to appreciate this book more. If you have some knowledge of anatomy and physiology and are able to persevere in the face of the dry, academic style in which this is written, it contains a wealth of information about sex, reproduction, and the biochemistry of desire that I think not too many people are aware of, even among professional physicians and pharmacists. This book explains a lot and at the same time makes clear how much is not known and not well understood about something as basic and ordinary as sexual response. When you see how complex the whole matter is, and how many things can affect it, and how many things can go wrong with it, it is a wonder that it works as well as it does.
One of the more salient indicators of scientific inattention to this subject is the lack of consensus on how orgasm should be conceptualized or defined. In a 2001 paper that provides an overview of the literature attempting to define orgasm, Mah and Binik (2001) point out two dichotomizations that occur in this literature: on the one hand between biochemical and psychological conceptualizations, and on the other between male and female orgasm, which are assumed to be different. Mah and Binik present a table listing 25 different definitions of orgasm from a wide spectrum of viewpoints (pp 824-25). This reflects the lack of scientific consensus on the most basic conceptualization of orgasm and its fundamental nature. Most research on orgasm has focused on genitopelvic phenomena: muscle contractions, elevated blood pressure, tachycardia, dilation of pupils, expulsion of semen, etc., rather than on the subjective experience of orgasm.
One conceptual distinction Mah and Binik suggest for males is between "orgasm" and "ejaculation." They are commonly equated, but there are reasons for understanding ejaculation as simply one aspect of male orgasm and not to be equated with the entire experience. Komisaruk et al. echo this distinction pointing out that some men with spinal cord injuries are able to ejaculate without feeling the orgasm (pp. 12, also 28-29).
Mah and Binik continue that the psychology of orgasm, that is, orgasm as a subjective experience, has been vastly understudied in relation to the amount of study devoted to the physiology of orgasm. Female orgasm seems to be more complicated and more controversial than male, although Mah and Binik seem to suggest that this is due to an oversimplification of the understanding of male orgasm that tends to reduce it to ejaculation. There has been very little study of how the psychological and physiological aspects of orgasm interact and influence one another. Despite great strides that have been made in the last fifty years, orgasm remains a black box of subjective human experience. They point out the inadequacy of language for describing the internal experience of orgasm and how this places limitations on the scientific value of self-reports of the experience. They discuss various typologies that have been proposed for female orgasm. The discussion is informative and worthwhile, but the lack of detailed study and the unreliability of the data on this topic seems to be the most noteworthy conclusion from this discussion.
"in comparison to biologically based typologies, very little research attention has been devoted to possible psychological typologies of orgasm" (p. 840)"In men, testosterone production, sexual desire, penile sensitivity, and erectile capacity tend to decline with age. Latency to erection and to ejaculation increases, ejaculation is typically less forceful, and length of the refractory period becomes extended. However, there is wide variation." (p. 836)
"Frequency of orgasm in older individuals appears to be related to marital satisfaction and previous sexual functioning and adjustment. Overall, the physiological changes seen with aging do not necessarily result in dramatic declines in desire and capacity for orgasm. Psychosocial factors may mediate variability in orgasm functioning in aging individuals." (p. 836)
Davidson (1980) in a nice survey article on the psychobiology of orgasm offers a typology of female orgasms in which he discusses Freud, who distinguished between vaginal and clitoral orgasms, Masters and Johnson, who rejected Freud's distinction and posited a monistic view of orgasm, and Singer, who proposed a tripartite distinction between uterine, vulval, and a blended type between the other two, among many other views on the subject. Although Davidson is heavily influenced by the physiological approach to understanding orgasm, to his credit he does see orgasm as an altered state of consciousness and grapples with conceptualizing the relationship between this special type of conscious experience and the underlying physiology.
Since there is no scientific consensus on the conceptualization of orgasm and such a divergence of views on this topic, I am going to offer my own conceptualization of orgasm here, which is in agreement with Davidson (1980) that orgasm should be seen as a special state of consciousness. We cannot undertake a full discussion of the nature of consciousness, but some exposition is necessary in order to develop this conceptualization of orgasm. Consciousness encompasses awareness and there are systems of nerves within the brain that govern our awareness at any given moment called the reticularis complex. (See my paper, Ferguson (1990) pp. 433-437). Charles T. Tart (1980) wrote an excellent exposition of how consciousness, which we all accept as a given and as "normal," is actually a complex construct that is highly dependent on culture, language, and conditioning, and thus is highly variable within human experience.
"Enculturation . . . builds up large numbers of emotional and cognitive constraints to ensure a reasonable degree of conformity with the values of the consensus reality within the culture. Thus, it never occurs to us to think or have experiences about certain kinds of things, or such thoughts are actively blocked because of conditioned emotional associations." (Tart, p. 248)
Tart lists eleven major subsystems of consciousness, the sources that make up our conscious experience. I would call these subsystems of awareness, because I distinguish between awareness -- what occupies consciousness at any given moment -- and consciousness, which is the continuity of awareness through time. I will explain this more below. Basically, awareness is momentary and consciousness is continuous. The concept of consciousness is related to the concept of the self.
The sources of awareness that Tart lists are : Exteroception (perception of the physical environment), Interoception (perception of internal states of our body), input processing ( a very important subsystem that processes sensory information and delivers it to awareness in recognizable -- and acceptable -- forms), memory, sense of identity, evaluation, subconscious, emotions, space-time sense, motor output (the voluntary control of our body), and latent functions. (pp. 258-260) He then offers a very perceptive analysis of workings of the myriad hypnotic processes that alter consciousness, although he does not call them that.
Hypnotic processes are modes of altering consciousness: that is, techniques that effect a shift in what occupies our awareness, how our attention is focused, as well as what is excluded from consciousness through a given time interval. Awareness is related to perception. When we perceive something, we become aware of it. It occupies our consciousness through some interval of time. Awareness is constantly shifting, but consciousness is the persistence of interconnected awareness through time. Consciousness is the quality of being aware and awareness is the content of consciousness. Reading a book, for example, is a hypnotic process. One's awareness shifts from moment to moment, from one word to the next, from one sentence to the next, from one idea to the next, but one's consciousness is occupied by the continuous experience of this flow of stimulation that tends to exclude other inputs to our awareness. Without a sense of time, that is, a perception of the interconnection between moments of awareness, there could be no consciousness. This becomes an issue in people with certain kinds of brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, where the connection between moments of awareness seems to disintegrate, and the person's self appears to gradually dissolve. In "multiple personality" people report "losing time" between different modes, not only of awareness, but of engagement with the world. The self is fragmented by the lack of a unifying consciousness.
Sexual desire, lust, sexual arousal, and orgasm are hypnotic processes. They shift our awareness to special states that mobilize emotional and physical response systems that are normally dormant during everyday experience. Sexual desire, or lust, is the perception of the sexuality of another person. It is looking at another person and feeling the possibility of sexual activity, creating a visualization of the other in a sexual context. It is a conscious awareness of desirable sexual interaction, which is a continuing state. It is different, from simply perceiving a person's existence, or the clothes they are wearing, or their ability to perform some task, or their physical characteristics. What makes it different is that it mobilizes our personal emotional response system and prepares us for sexual arousal in a way that other kinds of perception do not, and therefore it is an altered mode of awareness. Sexual arousal is the next level of intensification. The body becomes mobilized in anticipation of sexual activity. Internal physical sensations become more prominent in our awareness and other considerations that might inhibit sexual arousal tend to be excluded from consciousness. Arousal is intensified through physical stimulation of the genitals and other regions of the body as well as psychic stimuli such as sound, scenario, internal visualization (fantasy), and perhaps smell. At a certain threshold orgasm is triggered. Involuntary physical processes are set in motion accompanied by intense awareness of pleasurable sensation that excludes nearly everything else. Orgasm is a state where physical pleasure overwhelms awareness and obliterates the ability to attend to other inputs to consciousness. Davidson notes this as well and relates it to the "loss of self" reported in some mystical experiences (1980, p. 311) I differ with Davidson a little bit on this. In orgasm the self does not disintegrate. The self remains intact. But normal consciousness, which is ordinarily processes input from numerous internal and external sources simultaneously, becomes overwhelmed during orgasm by internal physical sensations which become extraordinarily dominant. Other modes of perception and awareness are not extinguished. One can still see and hear during orgasm, but, using Tart's schemata, we might say that orgasm is a state where interoception (awareness of the internal state of one's body) is magnified to a unique predominance. This makes it special. One must be able to relax one's external and internal perceptual apparatus in order to orgasm. Ordinarily we are bombarded by sensate experience from the external world as well as from our own internal thought processes. In order to orgasm one must be able to allow those perceptions to recede from consciousness so that the physical pleasure of the orgasm occupies one's awareness to the near exclusion of everything else. This is a hypnotic process. It is not entirely voluntary, but it is conditioned by experience. It is the capability of awareness to shift in a specific way under the conditions of intense sexual stimulation. One does not orgasm from driving a car or vacuuming the carpet. Orgasm is a special type of conscious experience that can only occur under very specialized conditions. In my view, this is the way orgasm should be understood. Komisaruk, et al. argue that orgasm is not a reflex, but rather a perception, (p. 237f.) and I concur with this valuable insight. That is, orgasm is not generated by muscular contractions caused by genital stimulation, which, in turn, lead to a reflexive action in the spinal column. Genital stimulation mobilizes neurons throughout the body sending greater and greater levels of excitation to the brain. The muscular contractions are indeed reflexive and can be elicited in the spinal column even when the spinal cord is severed. But orgasm is not produced unless those muscular contractions are perceived by the brain as sensations. This supports my view that orgasm should be understood as essentially a psychological phenomenon, not simply as a physical process. The physical concomitants of orgasm are, of course, noteworthy and important, but Komisaruk and his collaborators have shown that the physical processes themselves do not constitute orgasm. They can occur without the experience of orgasm, and orgasm can occur independently of physical arousal. Therefore orgasm must be understood as essentially a subjective experience, a particular state of altered awareness, that is usually (although not necessarily) accompanied by specific physiological processes under the conditions of intense sexual arousal.
Komisaruk and his collaborators have drawn upon a wealth of research that was not available to their predecessors. The voluminous bibliography they provide cataloging this literature is a valuable feature of the book. They point out that much of what is known about how the brain produces orgasms is based on studies of epileptic seizures. (p. 214) The reports that epileptic seizures can generate orgasmlike feelings suggest a basic commonality between the two phenomena. (p. 216)
A large portion of the knowledge of sexual response and orgasm has been further derived from the study of people with nerve damage, spinal chord, and/or brain injuries.
"The sensation which accompanies orgasm is not a modality of pain or temperature sense, and certainly not a modality of touch sense. It is probably a specialized sensation, mediated by fibers localized deep toward the center of the cord in the anterolateral column . . . The sensation of orgasm . . . appears to be a special sense, not mediated by the spinothalamic tract." (p. 229)
"In males, the pudendal nerves convey sensory activity from the penile skin and scrotum, and the hypogastric nerves convey sensory activity from the testes. Injury to the pudendal and cavernous nerves leading to symptoms of penile numbness or hypesthesia (lowered sensitivity) and erectile dysfunction was reported in 13 to 22 percent of men participating in a 540 kilometer bicycle race, some symptoms persisting for up to eight months." (p. 227)
"The clitoris has been characterized as the 'most densely innervated part of the human body.'" (p. 231)
Komisaruk et al. spend a lot of time on sexual problems, which are very common and become ever more so with increasing age. One aspect that merits particular credit is their recognition that sexual difficulties are not simply physical or biochemical, but situational, and interpersonal, as well as intrapsychic. Sexual difficulties tend to be highly specific to the individual, although there are things that can be said about them broadly, they always have to be hedged and qualified when applied to a particular person.
Several noteworthy facts are worth lifting out:
One of the most reliable predictors of continuing sex in old age is active sex in middle age.
Sex in old age depends very much on the presence of an "interesting and interested partner."
Prostate cancer is related to the absence of sex and ejaculation.
In 1998 the FDA approved sildenafil (Viagra) to treat male erectile dysfunction. Since then, research into male sexual dysfunction has increased. However, research into female sexual problems has not kept pace even though a significantly higher percentage (43-31) of women than men are affected by sexual problems.
A UK study found that the risk of mortality was 50% lower in men who had frequent orgasms, defined as two or more per week, versus less than once a month.
In women there is a significant correlation between sexual dissatisfaction, "frigidity," and heart attack.
Orgasm seems to reduce the risk of cancer.
Orgasm helps people to go to sleep.
Endometriosis is a condition in women where the cells which line the uterus and are shed every month during menstruation embed and grow in other areas of the woman's body (ovaries, bowel, rectum, bladder, etc.) This causes bleeding and pain. Orgasms seem to have a protective effect against endometriosis.
Sexual activity late in pregnancy seems to ward off premature birth.
Orgasm seems to provide relief from migraine headaches as well as menstrual cramps.
Sexual activity and orgasm have been shown to reduce stress.
In men, a higher frequency of ejaculations over years (four or more per week during the twenties, thirties and forties) correlates with a lower incidence of prostate cancer.
There has been some study of death during sex in men, but little on women. "According to one medical examiner, 'death in the saddle' follows a pattern in which 'the deceased is usually married; he is with a nonspouse in unfamiliar surroundings after a big meal with alcohol.'" (p. 51)
However, death during sex is a rare occurrence, "and reports of coital death of a middle aged, middle class, male patient with heart disease who engages in sexual activity with his wife of 20 or more years in their own bedroom is even rarer." (p. 52)
The chapter on the biochemistry of neurons was very dense for me. I would not be able to follow this in all of its detail without a lot of illustrations and probably a great deal more exposition. Similarly, the chapters on hormones and their effect on sexual behavior and orgasm were interesting but highly technical. Drawings would help, but there aren't any, which indicates that this book is aimed at specialists rather than general readers.
A considerable portion of the book is devoted to the neurochemistry of various pharmaceuticals and their effect on sexual response and orgasm. Fortunately it is parsed in short chapters which are easy to digest. However the content is highly technical and having an advanced knowledge of neuroanatomy and biochemistry would be helpful. Very useful, detailed information is offered on many widely used pharmaceuticals as well as recreational drugs including anti-psychotic drugs, drugs that treat Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, antidepressants, amphetamines, barbituates, tranquilizers, marijuana, ecstasy, heroin, poppers (amyl Nitrite), and cocaine, among others.
One remark they made about alcohol I think is worth underscoring. " Although alcohol was probably the first psychotropic used by humans and is the most widely used and abused recreational drug, its pharmacology is still poorly understood." (p. 151) Given how ancient and how pervasive this drug is and how much contention there has been over its use in American society, I found this a remarkable statement.
They also make a similar statement about nicotine: "the effects of cigarette smoking or nicotine itself on sexual response and orgasm have not been systematically researched, probably because nicotine does not seem to have a prominent effect. This lack of effect is surprising considering nicotine's potent ability to mimic the action of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine." (p. 148) How can they conclude that nicotine does not have an effect on sexual response when it has not been studied systematically?
There is controversy over the extent to which hysterectomy affects sexual response in women. It seems to be due to the wide variety of relevant circumstances involved in a hysterectomy, such as whether the cervix and/or the ovaries are also removed, the woman's mental state before and after the surgery, the woman's general health, the type of surgery, whether she is pre- or post-menopausal, etc. (p. 233-35)
They provide an interesting summary of experimental surgery done in the 1930s and 40s by James W. Watts and Walter Freeman to "improve" the lives of schizophrenics. Frontal lobotomy is a surgery which severs the prefrontal cortex of the brain to the thalamus. Some 20,000 of these operations were done in the United States by the 1950s. The effectiveness of this surgery is very controversial and it has been replaced in modern medicine by psychotropic drugs, which are also very controversial. However, I do not wish to explore this issue here. The interest it has for me is the impact of this surgery on the sex lives of the patients. Although results vary, there is a marked tendency toward hypersexual behavior as well as inappropriate conduct such as masturbating in public and fondling strange women and crawling into bed with other hospital patients with sexual intent after frontal lobotomy. These findings are further amplified by studies where various sections of the brains of cats, rats, and other animals were removed, as well as studies of humans who underwent brain surgery for the removal of cancerous tumors and other reasons. They summarize,
"Based on all of these cases, we can conclude that the 'higher functions' of the brain, such as the learning of socially acceptable behavior, are a complex process involving finely tuned inhibitions. When the frontal regions are disconnected from the rest of the brain, that complexity is lost and, with it, the fine tuning of social graces. Prominently disinhibited is sexual behavior, along with other complex sociocultural behavior patterns. (p. 249)
A later chapter explains the workings of PET and fMRI technologies that are used to map the brain's functions. These have been applied to sexual arousal and orgasm. The limitation of these technologies, however, is that they work by measuring blood flow that supplies the neurons and brain regions, rather than the activity of the neurons themselves. So it is an indirect measure that does not show exactly what the neurons are doing. For example, the same regions of the brain are activated during both pleasure and pain, but it cannot be concluded that the same neurons are performing different functions or that these two subjective phenomena are somehow physiologically related. (See pp. 265f.) But it has been used very effectively to determine which areas of the brain are active during sexual arousal and orgasm. For example, some women are able to reach orgasm just from thought alone, without bodily stimulation. Orgasms of this type measured no activation of the amygdala, which does fire up during bodily induced orgasms. So it is inferred that the amygdala registers genital sensations and other regions of the brain govern the cognitive aspects of orgasm. (p. 261)
Altogether this is a valuable source on a subject that does not receive much scientific or medical attention despite the fact that it is such a commonplace, everyday occurrence in nearly everyone's life, and has great importance to general health and well being. It is comprehensive, detailed, and very technical discussion that draws upon a vast array of sources, few of them dealing specifically with orgasm, which means the authors had to toil through a diverse technical literature to create this focused digest -- a formidable effort worthy of the highest accolades. Large parts of it can be daunting to read without a medical background, but perseverance will be well rewarded especially in regard to the effects of pharmaceuticals, aging, and spinal or brain injuries on sexuality.
References
Davidson, Julian M. (1980) The Psychobiology of Sexual Experience. In The Psychobiology of Consciousness. Edited by Richard J. Davidson and Julian M. Davidson. New York and London: Plenum Press. pp. 271-332.
Ferguson, Michael (1990) Mirroring Processes, Hypnotic Processes, and Multiple Personality. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought. Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 417-450.
Mah, Kenneth and Binik, Yitzchak M. (2001) The Nature of Human Orgasm: A Critical Review of Major Trends. Clinical Psychology Review, Vol. 21, No. 6,
pp. 823–56.