House of Eratosthenes

Shetty Just as the weathermen are forecasting our first spike of temperature of the year, I came across an interesting piece of news concerning Richard Gere. Now as most Americans are aware, every year when the weather starts to get warm, sometime between that first spike and Memorial Day, you can count on hearing someone, somewhere, indulge in a litte bit of — what else should I call it — putting the hate on good ol’ U.S. of A. They don’t admit to hating America…and of course they’ll snarl (yawn) peevishly at anyone having the big brass ones to say that’s what they’re doing. And they are not — repeat, not — saying anything bad about the country.

They are saying something bad about American culture. And mean to. Entirely.

The snark comes out as something like this…

“Of course, we here in America aren’t as mature about sex as some other countries.”

Or this…

“Of course, we’re a little bit prudish in America compared to the way they do things in other countries.”

Or…

“Of course, there are other countries that are a little more mature about sex and the naked body than we are here in America.”

And these comments are, in my opinion, very poorly thought-out. They are derived, first of all, from factual evidence that must remain undiscussed in order to leave the veneer of legitimacy in place on this idea being tossed around. This is necessary. To formulate an argument, and state for the record why it is you think the things you think — would, in the course of construction, fracture the argument under the force of its own weight.

It would look something like…My litmus test of a sexually mature society is whether that society allows women to talk around topless, and America doesn’t do this so it fails the test. To reconcile this with the available evidence would, at some point, necessitate some kind of study of our indecency laws state-to-state, which would pose all kinds of problems.

And then there’s the matter of the sensibility of the litmus test. Purely a matter of personal taste, of course. But I have difficulty seeing anyone standing behind it, and taking pride in doing so.

But anyway. These “other countries” are, like…although few ever say so out loud…countries in Europe. A few little mud-puddles sprinkled with nudist colonies. And France, which I’m told still considers it tasteful for a cabinet minister to — well, yeah, those who know him understand he has a mistress, but in polite society we don’t discuss it, and you’d better damn sure believe l’press is not allowed to mention it because the country is so damn “mature” about sex. Sexual maturity showing up as double-talk, in other words.

Here in the U.S., we’re juvenile because we figured out somewhere between Camelot and Watergate that this was silly. The President is dorking Marilyn Monroe, or else he isn’t. Not that Lewinskygate was the pinnacle of civilization and good judgment. But at LEAST we evolved to the point where, fer Chrissakes, something either happened or else it didn’t happen. At least people agreed that when something happened, and the Big Guy said it didn’t happen, he was lying. Our silly juvenile argument was over whether it was anybody’s business to begin with and whether the liar deserved a timeout. But our conservatives and liberals all deserve credit over l’Europeans, for treating a fact as a fact.

Meanwhile — recognizing that India is not in Europe — lookee what we have here.

A court issued arrest warrants for Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Thursday, saying their kiss at a public function “transgressed all limits of vulgarity,” media reports said.

Judge Dinesh Gupta issued the warrants in the northwestern city of Jaipur after a local citizen filed a complaint charging that the public display of affection offended local sensibilities, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
:
Such cases against celebrities – often filed by publicity seekers – are common in conservative India. They add to a backlog of legal cases that has nearly crippled the country’s judicial system.

How would you define the characteristics of a prudish, overly-conservative and sexually-immature society? Wouldn’t they have something to do with filing case after case against people embracing in public the wrong way, to the point that the country’s judicial system is “crippled”?

I haven’t heard such a complaint against the U.S.A. or any state within it. Sure there are some brain-dead laws. But from what I’ve seen, before we get to the part about crippling the justice system, we first bump into the problem with laws everyone knows to be stupid and unenforceable — not being enforced. Which is a serious problem I think, but still a different one.

Gere, meanwhile, has apologized.

I just wanted all this bookmarked. Our “America is kind of prudish and immature” people, I can’t help noticing, like to brag about being “worldly.” It’s been my experience that if anyone dares disagree with them, they challenge the opposition with the “how many countries have you been to?” line.

And it just seems to me, if that’s what the discussion is all about, India ought to be worth a mention. They’re part of the world too. And this Gere thing, for reasons on which I’m not clear, and I wouldn’t mind being educated someday, continues to be big news. Because it seems they have “publicity seekers” over there who can’t stand watching a smooch.

Also, I’m gathering the sense that Shetty is in as big a peck of trouble as Gere over the deal, if not more. Even though when you watch the clip, it doesn’t look like she’s entirely into it. This injects at least the flavor of a human-rights issue into things. Among the Americans who view cultural sensibilities along the singular dimension, travelling from primitive-to-sophisticated along a spectrum, one step at a time from, the The Flintstones to the U.S.S. Enterprise, I think we would all have to agree: If a woman can be minding her own business — get groped — and end up facing legal consequences for not fighting the guy off hard enough, that place probably has a ways to go.

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Prudish?Friday, April 27th, 2007

Prudish?
Friday, April 27th, 2007