Word: prudishly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...area the film makers were curiously prudish. Except for one scene, where Caligula evenhandedly deflowers both a bride and her bridegroom, their Caligula, unlike Vidal's, is as straight as the Appian Way. Says McDowell: "Historically, there is nothing to show that Caligula was in any way homosexual." That is a bit of instant scholarship that would no doubt surprise Gibbon, not to mention Suetonius...
...gruesome details are always treated as if they were unquestionably monstrous. But in City of the Dead the world is regarded as an autopsy table. Humanity is meat, whether dead or alive. To feel queasy in the presence of this book - and the tendency it embodies - is not necessarily prudish or cowardly...
Because Joys of a Woman is soft-core porn, slated for more general consumption than, say, The Devil and Miss Jones, there are no scenes of sexual acts that could shock any but the most prudish. The cinematography, like the bodies, is beautiful; the exotic backgrounds are topped off by the soft, sentimental music that swells up to a climax each time the actors reach orgasm. This is soft-core pornography, after all, and while hard-core isn't much more appealing, at least it doesn't try to ignore the warts. This, perhaps, is the ultimate in mass culture...
...phony eloquence into spent lethargy more convincingly. Sarah McClusky plays a Virgin Mary who seems to have nothing better to do than buff her nails while listening with annoyance to stories that stop short of raciness with the double entendre that "love grows stronger in proportion as hope diminishes." Prudish as she is, she can still bring off a line about "making it worth your while" with the right swagger...
Shaw said that Mrs. Warren was written for women "to draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness," but by economic injustice. Though a passionate Fabian Socialist, Shaw was prudish. Hence Vivie Warren, Mrs. W's feminist daughter raised in innocence about her mother's livelihood, can still speak to contemporary women about financial independence and job prejudice. But she has nothing to say about female sexual needs...