To my dear Friend:

I know of no Medicine fit to diminish the violent Natural Inclinations you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper remedy. It is the most natural state of Man, and therefore the State in which you are most likely to find solid Happiness. Your Reasons against entering into it at Present appear to me not well founded. The circumstantial Advantages you have in View by postponing it, are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the Thing itself, the being married and settled. It is the Man and Woman united that makes the compleat human being. Separate, she wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her softness, Sensibility, and acute Discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in the State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of scissars. If you get a prudent, healthy Wife, your Industry in your Profession, with her good Economy, will be a Fortune sufficient.

But if you will not take this Counsel and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox and demand my Reasons. They are these:

1. Because they have more Knowledge of the World, and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving, and more lastingly agreeable.

2. Because when Women cease to be handsome they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a thousand Services small & great, and are the most tender and useful of Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a Thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.

3. Because there is no Hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.

4. Because through more Experience they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclined to excuse an old Woman, who would kindly take Care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health & fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.

5. Because in every Animal that walks upright the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part. The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: so that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the girdle, it is impossible of two Women to tell an old one from a young one. And as in the Dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of Corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior; every Knack being, by Practice, capable of Improvement.

6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.

7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflection; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.

8th and lastly. They are so grateful!!!

Thus much for my Paradox. But still I advise you to marry directly; being sincerely


Your Affectionate Friend,
Benjamin Franklin

Labels: Cintv, Lit, NPH, Rom, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 8:43 AM

November 28, 2007

John Williams’ score for Catch Me If You Can as Chapman’s Homer

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez [sic] when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

—John Keats (1816)

I draw the analogy between the Romantic poem and the 2002 film score in the spirit of the revolutionary series of lectures on commerce and culture by Paul Cantor.

But Cantor’s wisely blurred distinctions do not invalidate all standards of taste as such. Perhaps a good working definition of kitsch is any piece of art, craft, or entertainment too stylized, affected, or bland to be recognizably human. By that standard, John Williams has rescued the “lounge” sensibility of today’s music nostalgia from the kitsch ghetto with the musical passage above.

Until that opening theme music, I was annoyed by lounge’s hooker-and-john rituals of pretending to dislike what one likes by finding elaborate ways to say, “It’s so bad that it’s good. Don’t confuse me with a dork because I enjoy this.” Lounge has always had some true, sincere artists working in it, but the irony has usually been too rich for my blood. Williams rounds the sensibility out by adding a natural, believable sense of menace to it. The result is something timelessly hip.

If science is essentially disciplined curiosity, art and art criticism are disciplined hedonism. Don’t snicker. One thing I mean by discipline is integrity about one’s aesthetic pleasures. A sense of irony is a virtue—in moderation.

Labels: ArtEnt, Cintv, Lib, Lit, Mus, OnVi, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 2:33 PM

August 10, 2007

Playboy floozies don’t value my minerals—or my metallic habits

I don’t know what that means, but it’s part of the unsolicited advice I received late last night in an email from fellow blogger Kyle Foley:

think of pornography’s lies. the pornographer would have you believe that the come-hither smile of the naked model is real, that she truly values your mysteries and your minerals, that she will comfort you in times of agonizing club-defeat and will radiafy your health with devotion and sunshine care. in reality, since the pornographer and the stripper aim for silver, she employs her sparklo-smile solely your dollars to gain, your emotions nil, your dreams mute and will then move on to the next lust-sloth once your cash has been taken. another lie that the soft-core pornographer propagates is that the photograph of the naked femme stares only at you, that her bliss-treasures are only for you to enjoy, that she is your prize, your moon, your ocean and your lighthouse, that you have worked hard, purified yourself of metallic habits, have rendered yourself clean and fit for responsibility. is it healthy to engage any entertainment that builds its foundation on the lie? does it truly have your interests at heart? or is it much more likely that it wants only your capital, your finance and your silver?

You’re absolutely right, Kyle. We need a zero-tolerance policy towards illusion in entertainment. I’m suing a local movie theater because its “motion picture” was actually a rapid succession of still pictures. How did they get away with defrauding us for so long?

Seriously, Kyle, how dumb do you think I am as the sort of man who reads Playboy?

I’ll purify myself of metallic habits right after you clean up your precious bodily fluids, General Ripper.

Labels: AesthEth, ArtEnt, BlaSla, Cintv, MorPa, OthBlo, Rom, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:11 AM

March 8, 2007

The Notorious Bettie Page takes no cheap shots

In her “20 Questions” interview for the February Playboy, Bettie Page, Miss January 1955, gives a mostly negative review of the 2005 film version of her life. But actress Gretchen Mol, director and co-writer Mary Harron, and co-writer Guinevere Turner interpret the pinup legend as a woman of remarkable courage and dignity. By refusing to take a side in any “culture war,” they avoid condescension towards the recent past. American sexuality in the 1950s is recognized as the first cousin of American sexuality in the 2000s: painfully aware of its own cruelty, yet managing to find some degree of grace. The religious implications of the word grace fit, because Page’s spirituality is taken as seriously as her sexuality. More people should view American social history through a lens so finely cut.

Labels: ArtPic, Cintv, NPH, PM, RS, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 10:14 AM

February 21, 2007

When economists are obsessed with masturbation

Sure, ’tis nothing at all like the morn in spring. (Finish the song parody yourself.) “Pornography may lead to masturbation much as a novel or film may lead to tears or laughter,” says the Feminists for Free Expression website. Of course, FFE intends this analogy as part of a political defense of pornography. But I’ve found another, ahem, use for it: to help understand the economics (and aesthetics) of pornography.

I don’t have the background in economics to answer the question of journalist Brian Doherty and economist Tyler Cowen, “Why is there (still) a market for porn?,” in the language of that discipline. But I’ll point out that porn doesn’t fuel masturbation in the exact sense that gasoline fuels a car. Comedies, tearjerkers, romantic narratives, and dirty pictures earn fans by having socially complex but agreeable effects on consumers’ nervous systems. (Remember that all solitary behavior has social implications, because all secrets are fragile.)

If economists still can’t rid their heads of the admittedly hilarious image of millions of Glenn Quagmires beating off surreptitiously in their bachelor pads, I invite them to replace that image with the implied, off-screen female masturbation scene about 35 minutes into I Wanna Hold Your Hand, an underappreciated 1978 farce that does for the psychology of fandom what Dr. Strangelove does for the psychology of war. In a moment of solitude and moral weakness, Nancy Allen’s character falls under the spell of the Beatles’ early romantic narratives.

There now, isn’t that image more fascinating economically?

Labels: ArtEnt, Cintv, Fant, Femi, Lib, Mus, NPH, OthBlo, Sc, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:52 PM

March 9, 2006

Hooray! Roe v. Wade for men is finally here

I wish Matt Dubay of Saginaw, Michigan, all the luck—and all the publicity—in the world in his lawsuit against the double standard in reproductive choice.

Paternity suits oppress men in the same way that laws against abortion oppress women. An unscrupulous woman can use the family law courts to pick a man’s pocket in order to raise his offspring, even if the man did not freely choose to assume the responsibilities of fatherhood. If a woman can refuse to become a parent even after the fact of pregnancy, a man should be able to do the same. And don’t tell me a guy just needs to keep it in his pants if he doesn’t want to pay child support. That’s like saying that women should keep their legs together if they don’t want to have babies.

If you’re anti-choice for both men and women, then I can at least credit you with consistency. But for the second time in a day, I’ve had to publish a post about liberal-left hypocrisy in matters of personal choice.

I tip my hat to men’s activist Fredric Hayward, whose article in the April 1994 issue of Playboy made me aware of this injustice.

Update, March 10, 2006, 5:11 p.m.: It doesn’t happen often, but Reason has disappointed me so far with its take on the story. In a glib, anti-intellectual cop-out, Tim Cavanaugh shrugs his shoulders and says, “Life is unfair.” But paternity suits are a mere legal construct, as opposed to an inevitable source of unfairness like the uneven distribution of beauty, brains, and talent. In this instance, therefore, political discourse and political activity could legitimately claim to help make the world a little less unfair.

Update, January 16, 2007, 5:55 p.m.: the outcome of the Dubay case.

Labels: ArtPic, Femi, Lib, MorPa, MR, OthBlo, Rom, UCL, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:57 PM

October 26, 2005

The consumerism of the Renaissance

In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines Bacchus as “[a] convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.” Likewise, Venus has been a convenient excuse for painting and sculpting naked women. One such naked woman, Titian’s Venus of Urbino [not work-safe] , is the starting point of an article by Charles Paul Freund in the June 1998 issue of Reason that examines the very close relationship between art and commerce over the past 500 years in the West. It turns out that the explosion of creativity in Renaissance Italy was made possible in part by an earlier form of what is now hypocritically denounced as “consumerism.” Freund writes:

Commercialization and, worse, “commodification” are considered by the contemporary cultural establishment to be the mortal enemies of art, and the antithesis of its spirit. But the fact is that art’s great historic opportunities have frequently arisen from intensely commercialized periods, and have often been accompanied—if not set in motion—by periods of explosive acquisitiveness. There is an inescapable connection between the rise of an acquisitive public and the expansion of an audience interested in expressive art, and it is out of that nexus that the recognition of the expressive creator as a visionary artist has developed.

Although Freund does not use this analogy, a kind of virgin-whore dichotomy has been set up between art and commerce. The Venuses in Playboy’s centerfolds are presented as nice girls who also happen to be sexy. Why can’t the artifacts of commercial culture be called art?

Labels: ArtEnt, Lib, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 11:53 PM

October 20, 2005

“All women deserve to wear white”

Sifting through my Playboy collection, I see a pictorial in the May 1992 issue that reminds me of what makes Playboy so special. “A Pride of Brides” [not work-safe] shows women provocatively half-dressed in bride and bridesmaid outfits. The most philosophically interesting part of this pictorial is the subtitle on its first page: “All women deserve to wear white.” What an eloquent affirmation of the essential innocence of the women in Playboy—and of the magazine’s male readers, who, by implication, are worthy of tuxedos.

At this point, I anticipate objections from some of my readers. Maxim, Penthouse, and Hustler would never bother to send this superfluous message. They give their readers credit for knowing that sex is healthy, normal, and natural. The younger, hipper men’s magazines don’t insult our intelligence by rehashing the virgin-whore complex. At this stage of the sexual revolution, the only people with this complex are the relatively unsophisticated products of a repressive society that taught them to believe that sex is dirty. At best, Playboy is fighting an old battle that has already been largely won. At worst, it’s cynically exploiting the remnants of this puritanical belief system in order to sell magazines.

My answer to these objections is inspired by the work of Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, one of my intellectual heroes. In his revolutionary 2002 book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Pinker debunks the widespread notion of twentieth-century social science that sexual attitudes are purely the result of social conditioning. For complex evolutionary reasons, humans are generally inclined to regard sex with much ambivalence and anxiety: “In all societies, sex is at least somewhat ‘dirty.’ It is conducted in private, pondered obsessively, regulated by custom and taboo, the subject of gossip and teasing, and a trigger for jealous rage.” (p. 253) If some degree of prudery is an eternal, tragicomic element of the human condition, then Playboy deserves our gratitude as an institution that continually reminds us of the counterintuitive principle that, under appropriate circumstances, sex is beautiful and good.

Let’s not kid ourselves. We do not already know that all women deserve to wear white. We need to be told this over and over again.

This post was modified on November 21, 2005, at 12:15 a.m. I replaced the word fact with the word principle.

Labels: ArtPic, BlaSla, Sc, Theme, VW

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 6:13 PM