I hadn't seen The Departed and went and rented it after the Academy Awards last night. Besides being numbingly violent, the violence was syncopated with a sex motif. The sex in the show is as callous and unfeeling as the ease with which the characters pull out guns and shoot each other.During a climactic scene one of the characters says to the other, "Is that what this is all about --all that murderin' and fuckin' and no sons." The movie never lets us know what happened to the one son that is conceived -- or even who the father of that son is or if the child is yet another victim, another of the departed.
The sex is sterile.
The one sex scene in the show is serenaded by Van Morrison covering Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb. Being a child of the 70's I knew Comfortably Numb was a drug song, but I always loved the lyrics because numbness was and is an emotion I have aspired to. Life can be painful enough that if death isn't a consummation to be devoutly wished for, numbness is. Until tonight, I'd never tied that song's melancholy emotion to sex. Maybe for that insight alone, The Departed deserved the Oscar.
Hello.Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me.Is there anyone home?
Come on, now.I hear youre feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,Get you on your feet again.
Relax.I need some information first.Just the basic facts:
Can you show me where it hurts?
There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ships smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I cant hear what youre sayin.
When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.
I cant explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.I have become comfortably numb.
Ok.Just a little pinprick. [ping]Therell be no more --aaaaaahhhhh!
But you may feel a little sick.Can you stand up?
I do believe its working. good.
Thatll keep you going for the show.
Come on its time to go.
There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ships smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I cant hear what youre sayin.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
My inner child is grown and gone. Sex more often than not becomes an escape from the twelve hour work days, the pressures of life. For a moment there is no pain. The dream may be gone, but for awhile, hard and inside her, I'm at last pleasantly and comfortably numb. Numb is good, because it hurts pretty much every fucking where.
11 comments:
I love that song. I spent my whole summer before my senior year listening to PF "The Wall" every day for hours. I still love it. I never thought about it in terms of sex (or drugs but I was really naive - didn't really listen to the lyrics). Now I want to hear it.
Sounds like a very interesting movie. Not sure if it's one I could watch right now (just too emotional) but one to keep in mind for the future.
Wow, T! You sound very melancholoy or depressed. But I know kind of what you mean. Usually, when I get close to being in that place, I pick up and move a long ways away, change job or career, and start over where everything is fresh. It works, baby. You know, I don't know it's about numb, I think it's about bored. Shit gets boring. You're a creative guy - you need some new things to spice shit up. That's all. I hope you can find it.
I'm not crazy about that style of movie, by the way. I think Natural Born Killers for instance was an abomination. I was so pissed off in the theater that I almost walked out and demanded my money back. The only thing that kept me from doing so was my friend who would have been highly embarrassed if I had.
Pink Floyd was going constantly in the dorms when I was in college. It was our anthem, I suppose. If you didn't hear it coming out the window of dorm A, you would hear it out the window of dorm B. Sometimes, both. I can still sing all their songs inside my head with the music running in the background, and I'm not all that good with music.
If you're numb while doing THAT, maybe you're using the wrong condom? :0)
On a serious note, I can relate to that desire to feel numb. Another thought; sex is sommething that requires all faculties--mind, body and spirit. Isn't it possible that you search not for the experience of being 'numb' but for an all-encompassing feeling that envelopes the senses--almost like a meditation, a transcendence? Numb is feeing nothing--sex, when it's done right, is feeling EVERYTHING in that moment.
Frankly, I thought The Departed was a good, tense movie, but I was disappointed by the ending. Not that I wanted 'happily ever after'. But maybe some sense of justice that didn't include everyone's head being squirted apart by bullets.
That's one of my favorite songs and definitely my favorite Pink Floyd song. So of course I have my own ideas about it, and my interpretation doesn't have anything to do with being numbed by senseless violence. However, the "when I was a child..." segments -- grasping at shadows of memories -- could perhaps be seen as foreshadowing the regret of death.
Or maybe I just have that ultimate subject on the brain since it's been floating around the atheist blogs lately and I'm preparing my post about it for later this week...
Ok, so I was a little melancholic, better than alcoholic I suppose. Seems everyone has an affinity for that song however. I guess it applies to the melancholic in all of us. I'm taking twenty seconds to comment in the middle of my hectic day to spice things up a little and to give me a little relief from the grind.
I guess you can get numb from work, too. (not just drugs and sex). LB don't watch The Departed if you are in the least disturbed emotionally by violence.
Steve, as for Natural Born Killers I love that movie, for the same reason I'm lukewarm about the current Oscar winner. Violence just for violence sake disturbs me. I thought NBK used the violence as irony and commentary on American society and hit it right on the head. The disturbing difference in the two would be that in the years since NBK, it's prophesy has come true and The Departed simply shows how violent and unfeeling we are as a culture engulfed in blood and war.
JA, intense feelings of one sort are often used to blot out other intense emotion. Sex, religion or drugs can lead to transcendence, but another aspect is that they can lead to numbness and escape. I felt compelled and emotionally situated to comment on a less positive aspect of sex.
And finally c.l., I, too agree that the song has a lot of depth, as evidenced by my new experience of it last night. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the song. Death and sex go hand in hand, flip sides of the same coin. Haven't spent a ton of time on athiest blogs, but doesn't death float around and permeate everything?
Check out cover that Scissor Sisters did to "Comfortably Numb." You'll either love it or hate it.
I've never equated the song or feelings with sex - only to those moments after when you lay back exhausted, wondering why the hell you were with them when your heart had no feelings for them in the first place.
Sideon,
I liked the Scissor Sister's version -- adding disco classics like Staying Alive and Relax had an odd effect. The thing I liked the most is that our attempts at achieving numbness can be as varied as our music styles.
I think I'm talking about the emotional anesthesia sex that allows you to become exhausted and sweaty without any real feeling -- sex lets you be comfortable -- and numb.
My own forté is excess... emotional numbness from physical excessiveness.
To each their own poison, eh?
I hope this finds you in a better space than what your original post implied.
I cannot imagine sex and comfortably numb being in the same sentence...unless one is trying to be numb to prevent premature ejaculation...then I suppose it's ok?
Re: I'd like to hear your thoughts on the song. Death and sex go hand in hand, flip sides of the same coin.
Have you read my sex vs. death post?
I'm waiting to read MORE! You've gotten me addicted so get on with it and write more more more...please? btw, If you haven't seen it yet, I did a totally horribe review of vibes the other day...think I scared a bunch of people off...oops.
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