Sadism...Wait, no, Masochism!

I need to find a freakin' academic support group before I hammer hot awls into my eyes. It's essay grading time again, and it looks like some people are taking the "essay" out of essay (i.e., nobody's "trying" anything). From my self-assured, bright students, I've basically received reports. Which hurts...both me and them would be my guess. Teaching someone to argue is sort of like teaching someone to dance or figure skate. There are only so many ways to talk about the extension of the hand or the artistry of expression to someone who has no heart for the work.

Speaking of "no heart," we went to see The Libertine at the theater yesterday. It's one of those "really good but not really great" movies. The introductory direct addresses by Johnny Depp's John Wilmot (the Earl of Rochester) were great and quite promising. "You will not like me," he asserts. I squirm, and vow not to like him. In truth, though, the film does not paint him as incredibly unlikable though this isn't for lack of trying. Note to directors: he's a libertine—lets see some action, lots of action!

Throughout the movie, Wilmot interacts mainly with two women, his wife and his mistress. His relationship with his wife Elizabeth, played by Rosamund Pike, is effectively depicted, especially the way in which she reenacts his initial abduction and defloweration of her. Their early scene recapitulates this to tremendous effect and is hotter than any of the other sex in the movie. He goes on to treat his wife carelessly or unkindly, and Pike registers these slights well.

As for Samantha Morton's actress, Elizabeth Barry, she gets lost in a hurried crush of narrative including a sex montage, which would have been better served as evidence that Wilmot visits prostitutes. Libertine=remember the prostitutes. Where one sex scene with Pike says volumes about her character's relationship with Wilmot, Morton's sex scenes form the cruelest montage of all, muddling our understanding of what, exactly, Elizabeth Barry means to Wilmot. One assumes that they are a hot item, but the narrative won't indulge this affirmation. Further, when she finally explains herself at the narrative's end, Depp and the director fail to capture the brutality of her gentle proclamation. Ironically, her speech is more cutting than his libertinage or syphillis and holds the potential to unravel Western society. That said, it seems Elizabeth Barry deserved equal status in the film. By the end, I'm much more interested in her.

I guess my criticism of the movie brings me back to something that happened in class. We were discussing Laura Wexler's article "Tender Violence" in which she asserts that though scholars claim that novels of domesticity have formed a sort of masochism for their readers, the forced transmission of a singular type of domesticity to people of other cultures is sadistic as well. At one point, we confused the terms "sadism" (you hurt others) and "masochism" (you do it to yourself). My point here is that it's easy get something wrong—from terms to sex scenes—if you're not comfortable with the proper application of them.