FINALE

Cassandra Walker
Steph.en Wexler
English: Film & Literature
April 11, 2010

I Want My Mommy
Wrinkly, puffy, thin-skinned baby boy spews from the vortex of a watery and mushy vacuum of love. Straight into the hands of a lab-coated stranger he goes, spanking Baby Boy into a bloody hell of a wail; agony being baby boy’s first Earthly emotion. And then! Like an angel sent from above Allah himself (pretend you didn’t hear the “holy fuck!” spill from her mouth prior to baby boy’s spewage), a spotlighted and sweaty haired mother coos for Baby Boy. “C’mere my darling” she says as she cries a tiny tear for him, gives a tiny kiss to him, nestles her tiny arms for him; everything so irresistibly gentle and warm and gooey it’s hard not to gag a little. So Baby Boy gags. Sweaty Haired Mother finds this “just adorable.” Baby Boy shits. Sweaty Haired Mother turns to Husband and says, “I wish your crap was this cute!” Baby Boy pisses as Husband tries to pick him up. Sweaty Haired Mother giggles, “Oh aren’t you just precious,” she says with a puffy-lipped smooch. Baby Boy nuzzles in awe of this angel, this heaven sent beauty, this savior, this PENIS-LESS CREATURE OF GORGEOUSNESS! And The Oedipus Complex is born. Inescapable and timeless, the syndrome (not to be thought of as sickly), is a resilient theme in coming into adulthood, as well as a catalyst to the birthing of the male ego.



Let us not forget Sigmund Freud and his manifestation of the Psychosexual Stages of Development in which he suggests that there are five key stages to the growth of an adolescent, one in particular being the Phallic stage. The phallic stage is the most fundamental of Freud's model of development. It is thee phase of the genital region. David Stevenson quotes, “As the child becomes more interested in his genitals, and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one.” The term Oedipus complex itself did not appear in Freud's published work until his paper "A Special Type of Object-Choice Made by Men" (1910h, p. 171). Freud's reference to the myth of Oedipus originates much earlier. In a letter dated October 15, 1897, to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, he wrote: "I have found, in my own case too, falling in love with the mother and jealousy of the father, and I now regard it as a universal event of early childhood. . . . If that is so, we can understand the riveting power of Oedipus Rex" (1954 [1887-1902] http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/OedipustheWreck/complex.htm).




Literature and film, being as they are historical documentation, speak widely of this collective truth. Phillip Roth’s character Alex in Portnoy’s Complaint gives prime example of an adolescent boy battling his innate fixation with his mother. The first spark of the novel opens with Alex stating, “[My mother] was so deeply embedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise” (Roth 6). Eloquently, Alex lunges into description of both his mother and father; the contrast being intensely noteworthy. He speaks of his father as consistently constipated, disappointed, disappointing, and bitter, while he speaks of his mother as though she is a shining specimen of superhuman; the dishes always steamed, her appearance always golden. He even explains a time where his father failed at baseball. This tiny tid bit depicting his anger toward his father’s “malfunctioning-parenting-skillz,” or better yet the purest form of his Oedipus Complex. Alex’s view of himself, as the ego eye views the body, spawns directly from this Oedipus relationship. Alex states to his mother, “...let's face it, Ma, I am the smartest and neatest little boy in the history of my school! Teachers ... go home happy to their husbands because of me ...(Roth 67)" Due to the fact that he believes each of his teachers is merely his “mother in disguise,” it is no wonder he feels they too, hold him in such high regard, as though HE is the reason they go home happy; A rumbling of ego splintering his walls of youth.

Portnoys Complaint is not the only fictional story that alludes to such suggestion. In Running with Scissors, the viewer is immediately introduced to Augusten’s narcissistic mother who requires all eye sockets on her when reading a poem she quite obviously deems brilliant. Augusten is sucked into her vortex; her little puppy, another wagging tail. Enamored and very willing of her attention, Augusten is nothing short of a slave to her vanity and dream. He licks her wounds with the same saliva he uses to tame her hair; his father, seemingly non-existent.

Alfred Hitchcock dabbles in this theme quite often with his characters Roger O. Thornhill (played by Cary Grant) of North by Northwest, and Mitch Brenner (played by Rod Taylor) of The Birds. In North by Northwest, there is clear indication that Thornhill is a “momma’s boy.”After getting arrested for drunk driving, he meets his mother for lunch in an attempt to prove his innocence. She is the one that calls after he gets caught, suggesting there is no other woman of high importance in his life. Hitchcock’s films tend to encompass a plot that includes a male lead who is dependent upon his strong-minded mother. The male’s bond with his mother is shown to affect the attitude placed on women in passing. The men in his films representing this tend to be bachelors straight into their adulthood.
Federman from The Buffalo Journal states,
“My complex surfaces when my mother gave me the last bath
I ever got from her. I was nine….My body was pale skinny
shivering in spite of the heat, but proud of the budding black hair
slready curling above my little reddish penis…my mother kept
saying arête de bouger, et arête de glousser comme ca. After she
wiped me with the big towel, she gave me a gentle tap on the derriere.
That day when I got my last bath from my mother, my father was
at the race track betting the week’s groceries on the wrong horse…
she said if she had the courage, she would kill him. For a moment I
almost felt like doing what my mother said she didn’t have the courage
to do“ (http://epc.buffalojournal.edu/authors/federman/shoes/oedipus.html).

Though to the naked eye the term Oedipus Complex may seem dated, it does show up quite boldly in pop culture today. Junkyard Junkie Kid Rock wrote a song in 2002 titled, “My Oedipus Complex” where he states, “And I believe it stems down from my family situation
I never liked my old man I couldn't stand to be around him, sometimes I sit all alone just staring at his picture My heart turns to stone and I think of this.” He goes onto state, “You never loved me you never held me tight instead you shook me like a beast to wake me up at night you tried to make me think that your ways were best when all I was, was an outlet for all your stress.” Clearly, the theme stands true through time, making it universally resilient.

Woody Allen also shows the concept some love in his film Oedipus Wrecks; a story about a New York Lawyer who is under the reign of his hyper-critical Jewish mother. A lot of Woody Allen’s movies tend to be based around his relationships with women, and essentially their downfalls.


Bond films also don’t fall far from the tree. Though not necessarily intentional, The Oedipus Complex is most definitely found on a sub textual level. Looking closer at the Bond films we find that most of the Bond villains are older than Bond representing angst for the “father figure,” and hence giving reason as to why pre-teen and teen boys find them so appealing. Many older Bond fans eventually feel severed from the connection they once had and claim that the films just stopped working. The films didn’t stop working; the matured mind-set watching is to blame. The fans grow up, out of the oedipal stage, and move on.



Goldfinger is a prime example of Oedipal subtext. The film begins with Bond telling the cabaret dancer Bonita, “I have a slight inferiority complex.” By stating this, the filmmakers launch the reality of psychological complexes in the land of The Bond. At the root of every male inferiority complex lays an Oedipal complex. Auris Goldfinger stands to be a father figure; Bond clearly taking the role of son. The base of the Oedipal drama is in this father/son relationship when stepping into his father’s sexual power, or, going for his “gold.” Bond eventually sleeps with Goldfinger’s woman (mommy dearest) when he is suddenly knocked unconscious by a “mysterious hand” (Daddy, is that you?), and when he awakes, Jill (Goldfinger’s woman) has been killed. She is smothered by Goldfinger’s Gold, and turned into a ceaseless object. Goldfinger sends an authoritative message here stating that is my woman.

The Bond and Goldfinger relationship plays into somewhat a strange but civil dance; like a seditious teen who sits at his father’s dinner table, secretly wanting to stab him, and the father who takes in his son’s murderous intent simply because he knows that his son isn’t man enough to take him on (www.commanderbnd.net).

Let us recall the laser table; or better stated, the castration device. Here, Goldfinger is going straight for the Bond “power” just as Bond had gone for his. Strangely enough, Bond does not escape. Instead, Goldfinger ends up sparing him proving that Goldfinger holds control the entire time and it is he who turns the laser power off. Bond’s sexual supremacy sits in the hands of Daddy; a gift from daddy, daddy’s love.

Later, after Bond makes a deal with his father, he awakens to find himself rewarded with a prostitute who states, “My name is Pussy Galore.” Real creative title. The filmmakers go out of their way to show that Pussy is not Goldfinger’s lover, but rather that he can’t have her. Once Bond realized that Pussy isn’t Goldfinger’s sexual “employee,” he chases her aggressively intending to establish himself as a man by conquering something that his father can’t obtain. He forces himself onto her, and wins her over.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill represents the impact of unresolved Oedipal conflicts on “bourgeois” families. The character Edmund engages in a power struggly with his father. He yells at his father stating, “You’ve never given (my mother) anything that would help her want to stay off morphine!...Jesus, when I think of it, I hate your guts!” and Tyrone (his father) responds, “How dare you talk to your father like that, you insolent young cub!”

Edmund also speaks of his fixated interest in his mother when he says, “If she’d had to take care of me all by herself, and had that to occupy her mind, maybe she’d have been able..” Here he displays his deep desire to have his mother to himself, giving his father the title of destroyer. Mary, Edmund’s mother, also notes, “All you need is your mother to nurse you.” Throughout the piece, Edmund and Mary are the only characters that consistently give signs of physical affection towards one another.

More times than not, our first true embrace is from our mothers. Our first sip, is from our mother. If we break it down psychologically, the theory has logic. A mother’s care tends to be gentle, comforting, and un-wavering; stereotypically speaking of course. A father on the other hand, tends to be less affectionate and affirming, leading to resentment from the son. Whether it be sexual or not, it becomes obvious that a son should gravitate to his mother, especially since the mother has “things” that the son, does not. It is the old repeated tale of the masculine competitiveness; the super-ego that buds from the male form. It is Tarzan batting his chest for Jane, and the ex-husband who tells you, “When you meet mom, make sure and wear something nice.” It is not a distant notion, it is all around us; the mother-son bond…

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX.

FINAL MIDTERM

I Want My Mommy
Wrinkly, puffy, thin-skinned baby boy spews from the vortex of a watery and mushy vacuum of love. Straight into the hands of a lab-coated stranger he goes, spanking Baby Boy into a bloody hell of a wail; agony being baby boy’s first Earthly emotion. And then! Like an angel sent from above Allah himself (pretend you didn’t hear the “holy fuck!” spill from her mouth prior to baby boy’s spewage), a spotlighted and sweaty haired mother coos for Baby Boy. “C’mere my darling” she says as she cries a tiny tear for him, gives a tiny kiss to him, nestles her tiny arms for him; everything so irresistibly gentle and warm and gooey it’s hard not to gag a little. So Baby Boy gags. Sweaty Haired Mother finds this “just adorable.” Baby Boy shits. Sweaty Haired Mother turns to Husband and says, “I wish your crap was this cute!” Baby Boy pisses as Husband tries to pick him up. Sweaty Haired Mother giggles, “Oh aren’t you just precious,” she says with a puffy-lipped smooch. Baby Boy nuzzles in awe of this angel, this heaven sent beauty, this savior, this PENIS-LESS CREATURE OF GORGEOUSNESS! And The Oedipus Complex is born. Inescapable and timeless, the syndrome (not to be thought of as sickly), is a resilient and universal theme in coming into adulthood, as well as a catalyst to the birthing of the male ego.

Let us not forget Sigmund Freud and his manifestation of the Psychosexual Stages of Development in which he suggests that there are five key stages to the growth of an adolescent, one in particular being the Phallic stage. The phallic stage is the most fundamental of Freud's model of development. It is thee phase of the genital region. David Stevenson quotes, “As the child becomes more interested in his genitals, and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one.” The term Oedipus complex itself did not appear in Freud's published work until his paper "A Special Type of Object-Choice Made by Men" (1910h, p. 171). Freud's reference to the myth of Oedipus originates much earlier. In a letter dated October 15, 1897, to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, he wrote: "I have found, in my own case too, falling in love with the mother and jealousy of the father, and I now regard it as a universal event of early childhood. . . . If that is so, we can understand the riveting power of Oedipus Rex" (1954 [1887-1902] http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/OedipustheWreck/complex.htm).

Literature and film, being as they are historical documentation, speak widely of this collective truth. Phillip Roth’s character Alex in Portnoy’s Complaint gives prime example of an adolescent boy battling his innate fixation with his mother. The first spark of the novel opens with Alex stating, “[My mother] was so deeply embedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise” (Roth 6). Eloquently, Alex lunges into description of both his mother and father; the contrast being intensely noteworthy. He speaks of his father as consistently constipated, disappointed, disappointing, and bitter, while he speaks of his mother as though she is a shining specimen of superhuman; the dishes always steamed, her appearance always golden. He even explains a time where his father failed at baseball. This tiny tid bit depicting his anger toward his father’s “malfunctioning-parenting-skillz,” or better yet the purest form of his Oedipus Complex. Alex’s view of himself, as the ego eye views the body, spawns directly from this Oedipus relationship. Alex states to his mother, “...let's face it, Ma, I am the smartest and neatest little boy in the history of my school! Teachers ... go home happy to their husbands because of me ...(Roth 67)" Due to the fact that he believes each of his teachers is merely his “mother in disguise,” it is no wonder he feels they too, hold him in such high regard, as though HE is the reason they go home happy; A rumbling of ego splintering his walls of youth.

Portnoys Complaint is not the only fictional story that alludes to such suggestion. In Running with Scissors, the viewer is immediately introduced to Augusten’s narcissistic mother who requires all eye sockets on her when reading a poem she quite obviously deems brilliant. Augusten is sucked into her vortex; her little puppy, another wagging tail. Enamored and very willing of her attention, Augusten is nothing short of a slave to her vanity and dream. He licks her wounds with the same saliva he uses to tame her hair; his father, seemingly non-existent.

Alfred Hitchcock dabbles in this theme quite often with his characters Roger O. Thornhill (played by Cary Grant) of North by Northwest, and Mitch Brenner (played by Rod Taylor) of The Birds. In North by Northwest, there is clear indication that Thornhill is a “momma’s boy.”After getting arrested for drunk driving, he meets his mother for lunch in an attempt to prove his innocence. She is the one that calls after he gets caught, suggesting there is no other woman of high importance in his life. Hitchcock’s films tend to encompass a plot that includes a male lead who is dependent upon his strong-minded mother. The male’s bond with his mother is shown to affect the attitude placed on women in passing. The men in his films representing this tend to be bachelors straight into their adulthood.
Federman from The Buffalo Journal states,
“My complex surfaces when my mother gave me the last bath
I ever got from her. I was nine….My body was pale skinny
shivering in spite of the heat, but proud of the budding black hair
slready curling above my little reddish penis…my mother kept
saying arête de bouger, et arête de glousser comme ca. After she
wiped me with the big towel, she gave me a gentle tap on the derriere.
That day when I got my last bath from my mother, my father was
at the race track betting the week’s groceries on the wrong horse…
she said if she had the courage, she would kill him. For a moment I
almost felt like doing what my mother said she didn’t have the courage
to do“ (http://epc.buffalojournal.edu/authors/federman/shoes/oedipus.html).

Though to the naked eye the term Oedipus Complex may seem dated, it does show up quite boldly in pop culture today. Junkyard Junkie Kid Rock wrote a song in 2002 titled, “My Oedipus Complex” where he states, “And I believe it stems down from my family situation
I never liked my old man I couldn't stand to be around him, sometimes I sit all alone just staring at his picture My heart turns to stone and I think of this.” He goes onto state, “You never loved me you never held me tight instead you shook me like a beast to wake me up at night you tried to make me think that your ways were best when all I was, was an outlet for all your stress.” Clearly, the theme stands true through time, making it universally resilient.

Woody Allen also shows the concept some love in his film Oedipus Wrecks; a story about a New York Lawyer who is under the reign of his hyper-critical Jewish mother. A lot of Woody Allen’s movies tend to be based around his relationships with women, and essentially their downfalls.

More times than not, our first true embrace is from our mothers. Our first sip, is from our mother. If we break it down psychologically, the theory has logic. A mother’s care tends to be gentle, comforting, and un-wavering; stereotypically speaking of course. A father on the other hand, tends to be less affectionate and affirming, leading to resentment from the son. Whether it be sexual or not, it becomes obvious that a son should gravitate to his mother, especially since the mother has “things” that the son, does not. It is the old repeated tale of the masculine competitiveness; the super-ego that buds from the male form. It is Tarzan batting his chest for Jane, and the ex-husband who tells you, “When you meet mom, make sure and wear something nice.” It is not a distant notion, it is all around us; the mother-son bond…

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX.

This Side of Paradise.

We live in the world of I. The I that is in the context of the self. And the Eye that perceives the context of the world that surrounds you through the filter of the I that is in the context of the self. If this confuses the hell out of you, allow me to simplify….Ego. Self-indulgence. Preoccupation with the personal human condition, and in turn regurgitating it onto all aspects of life.

Amory's vanity and narcissism is more than a character trait; it is an emblem of the theme of "egotism" that pervades Fitzgerald's novel. When Amory says that he is an egotist, he does not simply mean that he is self-absorbed; he is revealing an essential philosophical trait of the novel, which is that the self is all-important. He best expresses this idea in the final chapter of the novel, "The Egotist Becomes a Personage," with statements such as, "This selfishness is not only part of me. It is the most living part." Like many people in his generation feeling cut off from tradition and drastically changed after World War I, Amory comes to think that his self is, in a sense, all that he has.

This idea, which is common in other important modernist texts (such as Ezra Pound's famous magazine, the Egoist), is influenced by Freudian psychology, by the modernist generation's dis-avowal of past traditions, and by the individualism that was important to many writers of the time. Often, however, Fitzgerald is also critical and satirical of Amory's egotism, and he certainly mocks its more superficial form of vanity, a trait that characterizes Amory's youth as well as his first love, Isabelle. The egotism and snobbishness of many aristocrats in the novel is also something that Fitzgerald alternatively ridicules and admires. By the end of the novel, it is not necessarily clear whether Amory fully embraces egotism, although he does seem to recognize its valuable artistic and intellectual aspects.

Fight thee ego.

There is truth...

to every joke.

As the clock ticks, the validity of this statement becomes solid. I believe Freud touches on this in his theories regarding dark comedy and its inner workings.

Dark humor was fueled by the writings of Sigmund Freud whose works accelerated the decentralization of the individual. Freud's emphasis on the once-taboo subject of sexuality and the unconscious provide a solid foundation for black comedy. He was fascinated by this genre. For Freud, dark comedy was a defense mechanism against the inevitability of death.

Dark comedy keeps the viewer off balance with shock effects that are visual, such as the leg protruding from the wood shredder in Fargo and/or auditory, as in Malcolm McDowell's warbling of Gene Kelly's beloved standard "Singin' in the Rain" as he stomps people to death in A Clockwork Orange. Black humor is the only film genre (comic or otherwise) that uses a musical score at cross purposes to the visual. This genre offers conflicting cues to the viewer instead of simply reinforcing the status quo (as for example, violin music would in a romantic comedy).

More controversial is how black humor treats institutions of the establishment such as psychiatry, religion, and the military, which routinely insist that this is a rational world.

Comedy is often used to break down concepts that plague or have plagued mankind. By taking uncomfortable topics and approaching them through means of humor, we are able to gain widespread acceptance of truth.

Group Presentation

Uhm. I just wrote an entire blog and this darn thing deleted it. GRRRR!

I don't know if I have the stamina to trudge my toes through another one. But. Here I am, like a mule, for your reading pleasure.

Group Presenation. Not looking forward to it. Not that I dread public speaking, just that I uhm, don't really like this book. I probably should have sucked it up and gone for Portnoy's Complaint. I was really into it; gritty, raw, vulgar, volumptuous. All those good adjectives swimming in the soup of my brain. I could have spoken for hours on the thang. But instead, I took the safe route. THE THIRD DATED PRESENTATION. What a lamb.

What I AM finding is that all the texts read in class are easily compareable to the film "Running With Scissors." This film gets around. It's absurd enough to relate to all these LOONY READS. I like loony. It's a good color.

I'm really finding my a.d.d to be a nuisance right now, and everytime I sit down to write in my blog. Where's my dangon' meds people?!?

Uhm. This class is neat-o. I'm really diggin' Woody and his dry, narcissistic, analytical, pessimistic humor.

The end for now.

Mass Market Monster (Art?)

Alright. Art. What defines it? Is there really SUCH a fine line, or is it so bold of a wall that we'd just rather not see it? We can quite obviously find a ginormous difference between artist and painter, player and musician, but what exactly IS it that makes them so different?

An artist paints, draws, chalks with their soul; with the valves that open to the light that flows and filters through their body and onto the canvas, boundless and free. A painter paints what is aesthetically pleasing, what they feel will mindfully appeal to the masses.

One is empty. One is full.

Mass marketing clouds the beauty that is art and redefines it as an advertisement; something that sells show, not truth. It is empty, easily tweaked, and just as easily re-produced. Adorno mentions this "assembly line-character of the culture industry, the synthetic, planned method of turning out its products," in his conversation with Benjamin.

Mass producing a piece of art can also chip away at the soul within the work. There is something to be said about "the undiscovered artist." To come upon something fresh is, well, re-freshing, but once it reaches the machine, it can be spewed out in the millions alongside other painters replicating the same style seen made popular. Monet touches on this. I am jaded by the common replication of his work, and it has made it difficult for my eyeballs to fall into his pieces.

Here. Have a looksy.

Analysis Numero Uno.

Cassandra Walker
Film & Literature 11:00 M/W

You Cannot Kill, What Still Lives In You

A three-dimensional buzzing squared object is placed rigidly before our eyeballs. It is endless, ever-changing, bright, dark, and bright again. It is a rainbow of our weaknesses, a black hole of our desires, a lollipop of wonder. It is our schizophrenic mother, our tulip tasting sister, our drug fiend half cousin from our fathers third “white-bitch” marriage. Our blood lines, our indecent exposure, our blacked out nipples that dance with our angles. We sit before this thing, this antennae-ey button filled THING, and watch our reflection through its buzz. And subconsciously, we are connected to whatever is placed before us, because, well, we are in it. The remote is not our savior, dear friends. Turn it off, and we’re still turned on; our mirrored image still waves back. We are media. We are shock value. We are lab rats, on the tip of my televisions tongue.

There is truth to convulsion, but pain can be pleasure. Writers, like Santa’s, are connoisseurs of the trade. They want you wide-eyed, like Allah just smacked you for all your previous assumptions of culture and the human condition. In order to do this, one must probe. One must spare a lamp to the comfortable shadow that hovers over all of existence. One must dig, too deep, one must breathe too much. And one must take that cable, and shove it down the throat of humanities outlet. Ta-da! And a magic trick of sorts is birthed. A greater truth is revealed, and pigs can fly.
Memoirs hold a certain power, a je ne sais quoi; a story that involves a nodding head, a hand of approval to denote any whispers of “this would never happen!” Primally appalling, and plucking at the mass amount of night-time lids, a massive light awakens. Wide-eyed and drooling, raw, real, and un-cut is born.

Augusten Burroughs does this well in the film titled, “Running With Scissors.”

Mentally tickled, we are brought into a world of chaotic and topical events bursting with sexuality and awkward behavior. Immediately the viewer is introduced to Augusten’s narcissistic mother who requires all eye sockets on her when reading a poem she quite obviously deems brilliant. Augusten is sucked into her vortex; her little puppy, another wagging tail. Enamored and very willing of her attention, Augusten is nothing short of a slave to her vanity and dream. He licks her wounds with the same saliva he uses to tame her hair; his father, seemingly non-existent. This particular mother-son bond is also found feeding on the pages of Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, the opening line stating, “She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seemed to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.”

Our hopeful ideal of what a therapist “does” and “is” is completely smashed with the creation of the character Dr. Finch, who finds it strangely appropriate to dope up and ship out Augusten’s only blood tie. Throughout the course of the movie, we watch her progression of dead head, until she is nothing short of a lifeless delusion wavering before Augusten’s shell shocked eyes. This checked-out nature is found interweaving amongst all of Dr.Finch’s children, as well as his lonely and homely wife. Burroughs creates a cult-like theme; the leader being Finch and his “PSYCHOtherapy,” leaving the viewer to question the true nature of creative counseling.

Both “Running with Scissors” and Portnoy’s Complaint challenge our sexual comfortability with in depth snaps and speaks of masturbation. The “masturbatorium” slivers dryly from Finch’s mouth during a session with Augusten and his mother, leaving them to laugh awkwardly at the absurdity of it, only to find that he is quite serious. He then offers a tour of it, discovering his daughter sleeping in the same bed he jacks off on. Lovely. If that’s not attractively atrocious, I’m not sure what is. Alex, of “Running With Scissors,” is unstoppable in the talk of the wonder of his wang. He is immersed in it; drowning and suffocated by the touch of his c*!k like every naked, moaning woman imaginable dwells inside of it. Alex states, “If only I could cut it down to one hand job a day, or hold the line at two, or even three! But with the prospect of oblivion before me, I actually began to set new records for myself. Before meals. After meals. During meals!”

Both authors tackle similar issues in similar fashion. By breaking down the viewer to their biased and gut-shaken core they are able to feed bits of sadistic humor (and truth) in spoonfuls. Using comedic subtleties and absurd undertones makes for a fluffy safety net, and a smoother swallow.
Gulp up.