I didn’t realise that Hollywood was no longer a West Coast outlet of Sodom and Gomorrah but is instead being run by my grandma. Although it does explain both why she’s been quiet for so long – it must be quite a job, especially when you’ve been dead since 2002 – and why the dream factory has been putting out such crap films for the last few years.
Still, if I have understood the latest utterance from one of its most enduring, if etiolated, stars aright, it makes sense. In her most recent interview with Vogue magazine, Nicole Kidman made headlines with the pronouncement that “Sex is…still, a lot of times, taboo and it shouldn’t be.”
I’m sorry? Sex is still what, now? And it whatn’t be? Babe, we need to talk. Possibly have a sandwich too, but I understand I’m not going to be able to undo decades of carb-aversion in a single sitting, so we can put that on hold for the moment.
But seriously? Sex is still taboo? Nicole. Nic. You, like your name, kid, do you not? Out here in the real world, we wish sex was still taboo. Instead, it’s everywhere. It’s on television quite a lot – sometimes in the stuff you’re in, sometimes elsewhere. I don’t know if you’ve heard of The White Lotus? That’s been pushing some envelopes over its three series. In the last one, the envelope turned out to be inscribed “brother-on-brother incest after a mixed-sex threesome because that wasn’t enough”. And Gen V for the younger demographic is breaking new ground with its embrace of full-frontal male nudity (which at least allows the opportunity for a quick extempore disquisition on the difference between “sex” and “sexy”, or “erotica” and “reminder to get a chicken for Sunday” before the horrified 14-year-old watching it next to you leaves a teen-shaped hole in the wall behind him as he makes his escape).
I understand that a limousine-led life means stars are probably not aware of some revolutions in social practice that have taken place outside their bubble in recent years. For instance, the quick visual sweep it is now necessary to do before you sit down on a train, bus or Tube to ensure that your new neighbour is not watching porn on his phone before – uh – getting off at Bank. This is a charming modern development that looks like it has taken up permanent residence on ladies’ to-do lists whenever we have the temerity to go out in public during the hours of daylight or darkness. Well done, fellas. I’m glad you found a way round the even the lightest incursion on your unprecedented freedom to access any and every possible form of intercourse with the click of a button. If there is anything else we can do to facilitate your round-the-clock erections, please don’t let us know.
And then there are the stories from recently-divorced friends of a certain age absolutely boggling at the things that are on the first date table. Not necessarily horrified, you understand, just…boggling. Sometimes this gives way to intrigue, embrace and enjoyment. Other times it does not. The point is that rarely is their response: “I am glad to have been given this information and these options so early and openly! I am glad to have had the process of discovery, flirtation, growing intimacy destroyed in favour of this barren emotional wasteland set about instead only with the monoliths of purely sexual proclivity. I am glad I booked an expensive restaurant and a babysitter for this.”
Overall, given the choice between the current world that insists on no taboos and the one I remember, which preserved some (but still appalled my grandma and grandmas generally), I prefer the latter. The use of sex to sell everything, to stiffen an otherwise flaccid drama, to increase follower numbers, is exhausting. The cultural insistence that everything be considered Normal! Mainstream! De rigueur! every goddamn minute of every goddamn day is not just deadening to actual desire but increasingly dangerous too.
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We lose something, you know, with this mindless push towards publicity, openness and normalisation. Sometimes what are called taboos are actually boundaries, and are there for good reason. Often it is to keep certain matters private and special and interesting, none of which is synonymous with “shameful”, whatever detractors claim. More often and more importantly, especially at a collective level, it is to keep children or the young, or in some other way vulnerable people protected. Back in the day – and here’s some warmly nostalgic memories for us all! – the local pervert was known and identifiable because he said inappropriate things to kids or to women and you could effectively throw a cordon round him. (See also Scout masters and uncles who were not really uncles at all. Also, some uncles.) If nothing counts as inappropriate any more – or at the very least, if there is no largely agreed upon set of definitions about what constitutes inappropriateness and in what contexts – then a large, fantastically tough and effective webby mass of protections are lost.
It is not automatically anti-progressive to want to retain taboos. It is not even lightly fascistic to hanker after a world that retains space for yearning, delicious anticipation, wondering, imagining – these are delicate arts easily lost, not relics of a darker, unenlightened age. There is no shame in keeping some things to yourself. And there is a lot of safety for others in it too.
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