Boogie Normal

Not much going on. Things are pretty much same old, same old here. Work. Not work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

Finally saw Boogie Nights the other day. Glad I didn't see it in the theater with others. I imagine that, like Pulp Fiction, it would have been the case of a lot of people laughing at things that I thought were either disturbing or sad.

I enjoyed the movie well enough. I just wish they had gone more into ... the reasons and motivations that people have to get into a business that is so socially aberrant. Then again, maybe I'm assuming too much. I mean I assume that most of the women around me would be appauled at being publically nude, and yet there are things like Mardi Gras and other social events where public nudity is a ritual part. Perhaps it is just the humilation that is appauling, humiliation that is negated in an environment where exposure is the norm. Take your average soccer mom and place her in an African village where the women walk around topless all the time. Would SM feel overdressed? Probably not. Probably she'd be able to "other-ize" the Africans enough to just feel culturally isolated and pressured to conform. Okay, well put her on a Mediterranean beach or in a nudist camp. Would the social cues around her lead her to think that she would be more comfortable naked than clothed?

Regardless, it's got to be a different thing for someone to conform to the surrounding social norms than for that someone to stand before society, against society and be naked, much less to have sex. It's very interesting to me, their relation to us, our relation to them. ... I'm sorry. I sort of fell into "thinking out loud." I don't really have a point here.