Pornified: Part 2, Hollywood

(Warning: The following contains spoilers and occasional graphic language)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt got me through my first break-up. In retrospect, that might be why I now apply Matthew 15:14 to most people who fashion themselves as leaders. “They are blind guides of the blind. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” Levitt starred in 500 Days of Summer, a break-up movie which opened the day I first heard the words: “I think we should just be friends.” Levitt’s character, when I watch the film now, displays all of the virtues I detest and none of the vices I admire. He is a self-indulgent, whiny hipster, who spends the entire film listening to the Smiths and bemoaning his state as a greeting card writer. His relationship with Summer is, looking at the film now, equally problematic. Together they watch porn and she comments; “That looks do-able.” Their attempt is played for laughs, as they end up destroying a shower curtain. The sole virtue of the film is the scene following the break-up, where Levitt’s character compulsively smashes every plate in his pantry. It’s hysterical and when I first saw that scene, I knew exactly how he felt.

Levitt has now broken into the writing and directing world with his own break-up comedy, Don Jon. In the trailers and in the film, Levitt’s character Jon explicitly tells us that this film is different than others of the genre. “There’s only a few things I really care about: my body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls…my porn.” The whole film is about porn. In case the viewing audience is unfamiliar with porn, Levitt has stuffed the film with porno clips to ensure that we get exactly what Jon is talking about. The porn is tied to everything Jon cares about. His body feels good when he watches porn. His pad gives him a private place to watch porn. His car lets him live the macho fantasy cultivated with porn. His family doesn’t know about the porn. His church doesn’t care about the porn. His boys also like porn. His girls don’t compare to the porn.

Jon spends hours per day working out. Jon’s modest apartment is meticulously clean. A priest I know insists that a clean house in indicative of a clean soul. This film provides the counter example. Jon cleans with an attention to detail usually found among people suffering from OCD. Jon’s car, like his pad is meticulously maintained. A black and red muscle car with racing tires and leather seats, it not so subtly suggests that Jon needs everything in his life, from his porn to his parties to be high-octane.

The best thing that can be said about John’s relationship with his family is that it is consistent. Every week they go to Mass and have dinner together. His Italian family however, puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional. His father (played by Tony Danza) constantly watches football on TV. Even while having dinner, and sharing an expletive-filled conversation with his son, he will break off in mid-sentence to yell at the TV. Jon’s mother puts up with this until the very end, when she screams that she will “kill” her husband if he turns the TV on again. The mother though is not all virtue. She tells Jon “I just want you to be happy. I want you to find some girl, get married and have some kids.” The very first thing we hear her say, while at dinner, is “Jonny, one day I just know we’re gonna be sitting here and you’ll say, ‘Mom, I found her.'” She never even considers that her son may be called to the priesthood. Her Catholic faith ought to include an Ignatian openness to God and his calling. Instead, she pressures him to get married because she “already looks like a grandmother.”

Ironically, and perhaps admirably for Levitt as a film maker, Jon and his family go to Mass  at St. Anthony of Padua (the patron Saint of lost articles and amputees). Everyone we meet there is lost and lacking a heart, even the priest. Every week Jon stops for a mandatory confession. He sits down, cheekily lists the number of times he masturbated in the past week (averaging about 20 times), and then the priest gives him absolution. This all happens without a hint of remorse from Jon, or a hint of concern from the priest. Like the sex Jon watches in porn, his confessions are meaningless, empty and consist of two people going through the motions without any corresponding spiritual intimacy.

While opposites may attract, friendships are usually based on similarities. Jon’s friends in the film are just as shallow as he is. They ogle at women. They compare their breast-size preference (in very graphic language). They steal each other’s girls. One night when Jon arrives, his shorter Latino friend points out a woman in pink and calls “dibs”. As a sign of the nature of their friendship, Jon locks eyes with the girl, and in a series of jump cuts: buys her a drink, dances with her, makes out with her and beds her. All of this (save for the final encounter) happens with Jon’s friend on the edge of the frame, trying desperately to cut it.

After a sweaty, booze-powered session of love making (the film uses a far more vulgar term) Jon slips away from the now slumbering girl to watch porn. His explanation of this seemingly backward preference goes like this: in porn, the “best parts” of a woman, her breasts and butt, are always visible and accessible thanks to the bizarre positions typical to most porn. “Real girls never want to do that shit.” Every girl Jon beds in the film wants to make love in the missionary position. “So they can look at you“, Jon adds with a sneer. The problem with this is that Jon can’t even touch his conquest’s butt, while her breasts “lie flat.” In case the point wasn’t clear Jon asks the viewing audience, “What’s better? This (cut to a porn clip beyond the possibility of polite description) or this (cut to Jon lying and grunting on top of a faceless girl)?

The crisis driving all of this is Jon’s existential angst. Early on, we learn why Jon loves porn. It is the only way he can “lose himself”. In a direct address to the audience, Jon talks about how even the sound of a computer turning on can get him sexually aroused. Through still pictures and “the perfect (video) clip” he can eventually “forget all the bullshit”. In their review of the film, Christianity Today correctly tied this desire to lose oneself with the viral video of Louis CK and his phrase “forever empty”. According to the comedian, “life is incredibly sad” and most people would rather just be content with their products than be either “really happy or really sad”. Louis thinks this is why people text and drive. “Sending ‘hi’ to fifty people” or jerking off is better than sitting alone with the part of you that is never satisfied. 

With all due respect to the usually cussing comedian, Saint Augustine made the point first, and better, with his Confessions. “You have made us for your self Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Saint Augustine tried to calm his heart with a mistress, Jon tries to fill the hole with porn and then with a steady girlfriend named Barbara (played by Scarlett Johansen). She illustrates that women are equally susceptible to porn-like fantasies, though they have a different content than the fare Jon’s character prefers. Barbara (whom we find out has a poster of the film Titanic in her room) takes Jon to a romance film. In what amounts to emotional pornography, she stares at the screen, indulging in the fantasy of the perfect man who will do whatever she wants and complete her. After discovering Jon’s numerous secret indulgences in internet pornography, Barbara goes on a rant.

“How you watch that shit?!” she screams.

“How do you watch all the stupid movies that you watch?!”- Jon fires back.

“Movies and porno are different Jon. They give awards for movies…”

“They give awards for porn too.”

There was a time when a distinct line could be drawn between pornography and mainstream movies, but thanks to the copious amounts of graphic footage in the movie, it is hard to say whether Don Jon is a movie or a porno. Regarding “awards for movies” versus “awards for porn”, the Palm D’Or at this years Cannes Film Festival went to a lesbian romance featuring a full 12 minutes of very explicit sexual acts which prompted some audience members to walk out. They do give awards for movies and they do give awards for porn, but now we have seen the highest award in international cinema go to both.

At the end of the film, Jon draws a distinction between the real love he has found and the fake love of the family. In Jon’s real love, he has amazing, all-consuming, I-lose-myself-completely-in-her-and-she-loses-herself-completely-in-me sex. This doesn’t happen with Barbara, but with another older woman who recently lost her husband and son. Jon’s mother’s wish for him to get married and “be happy” is rejected in favor of this more “meaningful” sexual relationship. After all, Jon’s mother is married and she is miserable. Her husband gawks at and comments on the sex appeal of Barbara. Marriage as a sacred conjugal bond is not even considered. In the film, marriage is just another example of sexual frustration.

The film may not propose a reasonable answer to the problem of the “forever empty” but it at least shows that porn isn’t it. The reason porn is becoming more mainstream and blurring into cinema, is because the need Jon feels is a universal one. We sit at our computers or on our phones to avoid being alone. Sexual intimacy, real sexual intimacy, is as close to another human being as we can get. We all long for it, but most of us will settle for an imitation.