The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a musical that documents the real life demise of an establishment that was a Texas institution. In the film Dolly Parton plays the Madame who runs the ranch, Burt Reynolds is the none too bright sheriff who both sleeps with Dolly and protects her, her girls and the town, and Dom DeLuise plays the TV reporter who exposes the secret and shuts down the ranch. As an aside, watching DeLuise literally stuff himself into the suit of the character, but more importantly stuff his outsized persona into the relatively contained role of a Texas loudmouth from New Jersey is good clean fun. And the movie portrays a visit to the whorehouse as being nothing more than good clean fun as well. Indeed, all of the patrons are treated to a soap and water washing before any extracurriculars take place, and the married patrons' wives seem to think that it is nice that their husbands give them a little time off from the chore of sex.
In both of these movies, the repressive forces - the Senator in the Birdcage and the DeLuise character in Best Little Whorehouse - have self interest as a complicating factor in their morality and thus are mildly corrupt in their approach, while the sexually liberated have to be duplicitous to escape legal difficulties or social censure, but ultimately are able to act with integrity because they are genuine and authentic people. Come, be like us, they seem to be saying, or, barring that, admire us - don't ridicule us. We are living the truly moral, truly caring existence and this lifestyle, far from threatening, is a good and wholesome one.
We can see why the Gay world would want to put this message out there - but it is a little less clear how the institution of prostitution is supporting the second movie. Actually I think both movies are promoting a much more universal psychological transition that we have to make. We are told, by and large - sometimes directly, sometimes subtly, that our infantile, pre-adolescent and adolescent sexuality is something to be controlled. Perhaps if we are liberated parents we tell our kids to masturbate as a means of managing their sexual urges. Perhaps if we are less so, we tell them to take cold showers. But we also urge them toward sexuality. If we didn't, how would the species propagate? How would we have any fun? How would we get our children out of our basements?
The not so subtle message in these movies is that you can engage in the "dirty" activity of sex, that you can move beyond seeing sexuality as something that is gross and disgusting to experiencing it as an important part of a life - an integral part of a life - that it can be part of your moral functioning, part of your moral character. The Burt Reynolds character finally grows up enough to have a mature relationship with the Dolly Parton character - he recognizes his sexuality as an important part of a loving relationship. You do not have to be a bad person to have sex.
This is perhaps most poignantly and directly portrayed in the movie Dirty Dancing. Here, the protagonist, Baby, the younger daughter of a traditional New York Jewish family with a physician father, discovers her sexuality at the dawn of the sexual revolution in the 1960s while on a family vacation at a schmaltzy resort in the Catskills. This is a more nuanced film than the other two. Here, too, the sexually awakened are the morally superior, though they are painted by the establishment as danger incarnate and dismissed as immoral. The nuances come through by pointing out that sex is not all rosy, but in fact some of the sexually active are wolves - though these are the Yale and Harvard pre-meds, not the working class kids who run the resort.
Would that it were as easy as these films portray it to be to make the transition to adulthood. Baby acts on her principles, sticks to them (while becoming sexually active), risks the most important relationship in her life, the relationship with her father - loses him for a while, but ultimately regains both the relationship and a new level of respect. This is what is supposed to happen as we mature. Engaging in a forbidden, disowned and morally reprehensible, but necessary activity like sex certainly complicates this process.
We are currently struggling on college campuses to reconcile this process with the ways in which it can be abused. One in four (or five, depending on the study and the ways that we define it) women on college campuses have been raped. For many of them, this has been traumatic. Title IX, most famous for effecting college athletics, is the Federal Law that is being used to oversee colleges' responses to sexual violations. It will be important, as we move forward, to recognize that, for women to be able to say no, and for that to be respected, they first have to be able to say yes, if they choose to. They have to be able to own their own sexuality and to engage in it if they choose. When they can do that, no does not mean yes - no does not mean, I want to but society won't allow me to say that so I have to say no and you have to "seduce" me. Quite the contrary. I am a sexual being. I want to have sex. I want to choose with whom I will have it and when. So when I say yes I mean it, and when I say no I mean it. And "seduction" no longer becomes a veil behind which men can hide their selfish intent.
When we get to the point of being able to honestly engage in conversations about sexuality. When we can own our sexuality as comfortably as is represented in the Birdcage and Best Little Whorehouse, then we can, as men and women, live sexual, but more importantly, moral lives with integrity. Fortunately we can do that, even in difficult times, like the times depicted in Dirty Dancing, the times that occur in all families as the children mature and engage in sexual activity on their own terms. This is a complex process, however. It's not just that it is not as simple as the guys from Harvard are bad guys and the hoods are good guys. In fact, we are all powerful mixtures of both (though, don't get me wrong, there are guys out there who are more consistently bad than not - and they should be identified and stayed away from/separated from the herd/trained in becoming good, depending on the type of relationship and on the power that the people are interacting with them have). But we have different motives that are most surgent at different moments. But I do agree with these films' shared premise that, when sexuality is acknowledged - even celebrated, we are much more likely to lead lives of integrity.
All of the above being said, we should let the Reluctant Wife have the last word on this subject. As we were discussing the Best Little Whorehouse, we debated the role of television in bringing about the demise of the whorehouse. Her position: it couldn't survive as depicted because it was a place where women owned their sexuality and men can't handle that. OK, maybe she shouldn't have the last word. Men should learn to not just tolerate women's sexuality, but to enjoy it - to celebrate it - as something that enhances the lives of all.
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