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.
