Remember the older Hollywood love scenes?
A man and woman are wrapped in each other’s arms in front of gently billowing curtains and moonlight as they tenderly and lovingly kiss and caress each other–beautiful music playing in the background–for what seems like hours of intimate bliss.
Today, we might laugh at such a romanticized picture of lovemaking and object that the reality is much different. We might note that in real life sex is less graceful, more sweaty, and seemingly related more to the animal than the angelic.
Of course, humans share with animals the same mechanics of sex. In that respect it’s true that those love scenes are not very true to life. But this is taking these scenes too literally. They express an intuition about sex that is not only true, but is in danger of being lost.
Sex Really Can be “Making Love”
Those romanticized love scenes are not supposed to be realistic depictions of sex, but metaphors of making love. They turn the lovers inside out so that we don’t get misled by the external details–which obscure the inner truth–but show us the reality of what is being expressed by the lovers.
The qualitative difference between making love and plain old sex isn’t visible to the voyeuristic eye of a camera focused on the externals of sex. Depicting only the outer shell of sex is the domain of pornography. Porn is a lie precisely because it is too literal. Its emphasis on the flesh (the external) makes it impossible to see the work of the spirit (the interior). It presents nothing but the animal and the lustful. The onlooker can’t see how the soul turns sex into a language for speaking the poetry of love to its mate.
Is it Love; Or Is it Nasty?
Interestingly, the tendency in movies these days is to show sex more literally and realistically. Does this trend correspond to a loss of the experience of sex as making love? Does it reflect a lack of meaning in the experience of sex? If sex is not making love, then there’s no difference between the outer and inner reality. The outer reality is the inner reality. If that’s the case, then we can just as well describe sex the same way the materialist philosopher Hobbes described human life: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Indeed, isn’t one of the less flattering contemporary manners of speaking of sex: “doing the nasty“? If we can’t link sex to love, then yeah, sex is just an animal activity; one that is solitary (sex can be solitary no matter how many people are involved), nasty, brutish and short. And that’s what sex looks like when it is portrayed ultra-realistically (The Sopranos is a good example of this kind of sex scene).
The Making of Love
But if sex is animal in its mechanics, it should never be animal in execution. For sex doesn’t become love automatically, that’s why we call it making love. We must make it love and we must make it anew at every moment from beginning to end. What wells up from below us must be made to serve what in us is higher. Only the spirit can take the wild and impulsive force of sex and transform it into a strong and clear ink with which to write beautiful verse. But if we only experience sex as an embarrassing capitulation to the merely animal, then something is wrong. It shouldn’t be that way.
When sex is spiritually harnessed however, the mechanics of it cease to be a spiritual liability and become instead a means for its expression. Only then does the outer and inner, the external and internal, and the physical and spiritual, become a harmony of love. But this music can only be heard with an inner ear, it can’t be seen.
That embrace in the moonlight with the billowing curtains is not a lie, it is a real possibility and an invitation to participate in the making of love, not just doing something nasty.
I really love the second section of this post — the explanation that “depicting only the outer shell of sex is the domain of pornography” and that “Porn is a lie precisely because it is too literal.” Great way of putting it. As usual, excellent work.
Yes, Kathleen is right, that is a great way of putting it. And that is the difference. Making love is exciting, exhilarating, sweaty, a bit animal on the outside AND a work of the spiritual, romantic, billowing curtains in the moonlight on the inside. It’s the subjective experience inside that makes the difference and the essence that isn’t captured in porn. That’s what makes porn what it is isn’t it? The separation of the physical act from the subjective experience of the person and their self-donation of love. Very profound!