[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_59

Social Reproduction Theory, Tithi Bhattacharya, 2017

Marx and Engels raised the theme of social reproduction, which continues to inflame minds, mainly if applied to the female condition and care jobs.

I read with pleasure Bhattacharya’s theory, and I found her interpretation of sexuality through the lens of the capitalistic system fascinating. For her, sexuality under capitalism is a “shadow dance between freedom and repression.” That means if, on the one hand, people who work are free as they own their bodies, on the other one, they are subject to a system that forces them to sell their ability and strength to buy what they need to live. The combination of consent and coercion is the basis of capitalism, but it is also what ends up defining the realities of sexual freedom. Because the terms of capitalism also penetrate our way of constructing concepts, identities, and meanings.

I think this link between freedom and repression is very noticeable in many mainstream American films that talk about money, where free sexuality is seen as a transgression. If you think about movies like “The Great Gatsby” and “Babylon,” you’ll notice that the party scenes are identical. There is a group of people, usually rich and bored, who, at a certain point, start drinking, taking drugs, and having sex with anyone. Usually, there are other characters - that represent the viewer's gaze - who are the outsiders of the situation and find themselves in the middle of the party without wanting to. After the first moment of moralistic refusal, these characters, too, take part in the party in a liberating act as if they could finally grant themselves what had always been denied them. The rest of the modular structure of the party scene predicts naked or semi-undressed women, provocative and full of desire, sitting on men dressed as career people; fine wines uncorked and wasted in castles of glasses; expensive drugs snorted with the help of large denomination banknotes or on gold mirrors; everyone has to seem incredibly entertained and in the right mood: they laugh and joke loudly in unison. Usually, at this point, some not-so-heterosexual scenes are inserted, for example, two women kissing each other before kissing the man holding them. And at the end, lots of confetti and glitter fall from the ceiling.

I think anyone who has attended any college parties knows that you don't have to be a bored millionaire to get high and have fun but, above all, that no real party with sex, drugs, and rock n roll is like these. Usually there is always someone for whom drugs don't have the desired effect. Instead of going wild dancing on the dance floor, they remain staring at the table with their eyes crossed and full of indescribable, colorful nightmares. There is always someone who has overindulged in wine, believing himself to be Superman, and finds himself vomiting up superpowers behind a sofa. Unfortunately, there is always someone who is not too drunk and takes sexual advantage of someone else, calling consent what is drunken unconsciousness.

Watching these pieces of film, you end up thinking that whoever imagined them must necessarily be a highly repressed heterosexual man who objectifies women and flattens their will, who has no idea what fun means outside the frame of Polianna's idyllic happiness, who considers bi- or homosexuality as choices of the moment, who interprets pleasure in terms of exclusivity and elite possession.

Sexual freedom is placed on the same level of excess and transgression, aspects that – for this kind of narrative - only people who have money can afford, at least without consequences.

I find it very curious that this classist and moralistic vision of sex comes out of the same Country that presents itself as the one that makes everyone's dreams come true and the one that has the largest pornographic industry in the world.