The Surprising History of Sex and Love (2002)
The Surprising History of Sex and Love is a documentary presented by Terry Jones, looking at the different and surprising attitudes to sex and love throughout history. The documentary traces the story of changing social and religious attitudes to sex through a broad swathe of history. Starting with the place of ’sacred sex’ in the ancient world and ending with a discussion of the contemporary relationship between sex, marketing and prurience, the film offers some kind of map of how we got from there to here, and indicates that changes in sexual attitudes are connected with issues of power and control.
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Fresh and Exciting
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
This is actually a history of attitudes toward sex and love, particularly religious and political attitudes. Terry Jones does it in an entertaining and engaging way. ACCORDING TO TERRY JONES, attitudes change as follows:Prehistory: Gods & goddesses create, and yearly re-create the world sexually. Sex an expression of divinity.Iron age: ensuring fertility less important than military supremacy. Male-female balance gives way to male domination.c. 650 BCE Hebrews, at war with Assyrians, expunge "foreign" gods, including their Canaanite goddess Ashura. Now one, male, god. Eve story is written: "woman is man's downfall." Christianity creates the idea of sin; that sex is sinful and cuts you off from the love of God; and that priests can forgive confessed sins. Christianity is "the anti-paganism;" its priests control attitudes toward sex, gain power.12th century CE: Marriage until now has been a contract between families, not involving the church. Suddenly the Pope declares sinful any marriage between couples "within 11 degrees of consanguinuity"--you can't marry anyone with whom you share a great great great grandparent-- without the church's permission--which comes at a price. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consanguinity1495: Syphilis appears in Naples, Italy. By 1497, to Scotland. By 1498, to India. By 1505, to Canton, China.Mid-16th century: Church finally declares marriage a sacrament, that must be performed by a priest.
I'm a long time Terry Jones fan, but a couple of minutes into this and I realized it wasn't a documentary so much as it was a hatchet job against Christianity. And I was really surprised he did such a sloppy job of it. For example, he said the book of Genesis was written around 600 B.C., that Judaism originally had a female goddess, and he says over and over in different ways that the world was a happy place full of freewheeling sex until those mean old Christians showed up and invented shame and guilt.There's some interesting material on Egyptian fertility rituals, and if you've never seen the sexual artifacts of ancient Greece and Rome, you might find that interesting. Terry is absolutely gleeful about a Roman garden sculpture of Pan having sex with a goat, and he states, without any evidence, that such a thing was normal in Rome and perfectly acceptable, which I don't believe. And he goes on at length about how the age of consent was raised in America from nine or ten up to sixteen and then eighteen. He is so scornful and mocking of this change of the age of consent, I wondered if he was sympathetic with NAMBLO (an organization that wants to legalize pedophilia) and perhaps a bit wistful towards the good old days.Anyway, his points are good about the busy body control freaks who try to regulate every aspect of life, including sex, but mostly he's just shooting his mouth off in this poorly researched, agenda-driven show.