"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Mar 24, 2011

...and now for a break from learning that "anarchist" means "US Air Force..."

I just watched a trailer for the "steampunk" movie, Suckerpunch, directed by the guy who ruined Watchmen and the story of Thermopylae.

The quoted review described the movie as "sexy."

Since it appears to feature up and coming (that is, still look like  fourteen year olds) actresses making faces at FX dragons while dressed as patrons of the Blue Oyster, I guess what the reviewer - and the movie's producer - is trying to communicate is, "Hey, nerds, u 2 can haz kewpie dolls."

I propose a thought experiment. Let's treat the word "sexy" is if it's automatically replaceable with its more profane cognate.

Anytime you read "sexy," what the user is trying to tell you is, "fucky."

So, if you see the word "sexy," maybe it's worth it to try reading it as "fucky."

Let's try it out:

1. That sure was one fucky romantic comedy. But was it as good as the smart, fucky thriller starring the fucky Ms. Jolie?

2. You look fucky in that dress.

3. She's not as fucky as she was before she had a kid.

4. I think Jessica is fuckier than Brittany.

5. Why don't you try to be more fucky? Maybe you could curl your bangs, or put on some lipstick? That would make you look more fucky.

6. I feel so fucky when you look at me like you'd like to use me to masturbate that.

7. He could be fucky, if only his nose was smaller.

8. That's a fucky pair of pumps. They make your legs look fucky.

9. When she's asleep and snoring I don't find her all that fucky.

10. This is a fucky little skirt for you to dress your six year old in...

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is hilarious. I love your headline too.

I don't always agree with you, -though I often do - but reading you is always a treat.

I do it almost daily.

Jack Crow said...

Thank you, Anon. I'm obliged to you.

fish said...

The US might be a better place if we could talk like this. Setting aside the pornification issues, recognizing a primary driver in our behavior and accepting it, would make most people much happier.
It's the making it profane that is the problem in my mind.

senecal said...

Weak, JC. Sexy has a wide spectrum of connotations. Fucky just has one. Life would be dull indeed without coyness, insinuation, suggestiveness, indirection, salaciousness. OK, the latter might be dispensable.

Maybe it's an age thing.

Anonymous said...

Was I foolish to see humor in this? i just like the way some of them read. I like the word fucky.

I suppose senecal has a point, though fucky and sexy could co-exist. Fucky would cover the one connotation and sexy would cover the others.

David K Wayne said...

That was fucky funny.

Jack Crow said...

Senecal,

When a movie starring six sixteen year oldish girls dressed like Victorian-Viking whores describes itself as "sexy," its producers are not looking to establish indirect suggestiveness. It's as blatant, dull and hamfisted as a Sousa march. They aren't being coy. They're drilling the point home, with all the creative innovation of a frat boy pounding away at himself to Fred Durst and a twelve pack of Natty Light.

When a movie starring Angelina Jolie running around in pumps and red face paint, being shot at by men who want to put her in a cage or murder her under cover of law, is described as a "smart, sexy thriller" the producers and marketing fuckwads are not trying to make a subtle point about the interplay of tender affections between two lovers. They are hammering away openly with an incredibly resilient cultural coding at their disposal, namely one which has women as exchangeable playtools which men may dispose of as they please.

When a nattering Botox death mask tells you about the latest "sexy" trends on the styles segment of some humorless morning national broadcast, she is not revealing hidden depths to human sexual play. She is stating, in overt marketing terms, that spending a certain percentage of your dwindling paycheck on getting friends and strangers to think of you as a fuck object is a preferred and corporate endorsed use of your incredibly brief mortal allotment.

If you think on all the ways "sexy" is used or implied - especially in marketing, pop entertainment, music and film - you will likely discover the opposite of indirect. Nothing could be more banal, or more blatant.

Jack Crow said...

Anon @ 1:30, Wayne -

I was trying to use a little humor, but my reaction to the trailer was fairly sober.

David K Wayne said...

Zak Snyder represents everything wrong with Hollywood right now. As someone who loved Watchmen since 1986, his adaptation was one of the few movies I've ever walked out on, in boredom and irritation. His Dawn of the Dead was dull as fuck and 300 was just fascistic junk.

Jack Crow said...

fish,

I actually agree. The great power that religious, political and corporate honchos have over the American (and other Euro language?) people is the prurient-prudish double bind we're raised to accept as normal.

We're instructed doubly in what later becomes a nearly invisible hypocrisy - to hate any form of body which isn't company approved, to hate on self and sex as if the devil still had believers, but also to see any approved shape (male or female) as so overpowering, desirable and unrelentingly attractive that years of simultaneous training and indoctrination in self-limiting behavior and sexless work-loyalty must be shucked off temporarily...

...in order to purchase a six pack, a pair of shoes, a diamond or a new car.

And I think that's the secret heart of porn. Nah. I know it.

Jack Crow said...

Wayne,

You said it better than I. And while I have an ambiguous moral relationship with historical Lacedaemonia, "300" was just clumsy propaganda for Iran War Next.

Anonymous said...

When a nattering Botox death mask. . .etc

Pure gold.

Randal Graves said...

Heh heh, such commentary on subtlety reminds me of this.

Kratoklastes said...

'Sexy' is 'fucky', sure - and in the rest of the civilised world, when a Murrk'n says 'dating' they are understood to mean 'fucking', no?

Oh, you Murrk'ns with your euphemisms. Collateral damage, enhanced interrogation, kinetic action, dating, enemy combatant... thankfully now that your Empire has assfucked itself we can watch you become Argentina, and go back to using the English language more sensibly.

Cheerio


GT

Jack Crow said...

I guess there's something to that, GT - but, as a minor, minor note in our favor, we neither shag nor snog.