{"id":116,"date":"2003-04-05T15:18:49","date_gmt":"2003-04-05T19:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=116"},"modified":"2009-09-10T22:23:50","modified_gmt":"2009-09-11T02:23:50","slug":"the-vagina-monologues-2002-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"The Vagina Monologues (2002) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Why<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<\/h1>\n
One reason why you don’t see many men frequenting performances of “The Vagina Monologues”<\/dd>\n

Speaking From Her Diaphragm<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n

[xrr rating=1.5\/5]\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Vagina Monologues<\/strong><\/em>. Featuring Eve Ensler, Steven C. Lawrence. Written and directed by Eve Ensler. (HBO\/Warner Home Video, 2002, Color, 76 minutes. MPAA Rating: Unrated.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m in a Holiday Inn in the Boston area, and I turn on the television. Surfing the channels, on HBO I see Moe Howard from the Three Stooges talking about his vagina and some earth-shattering orgasm he\u2019s gotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoe has a vagina?<\/em>\u201d I ask myself in bewilderment, scratching my head. Then, I look closer. \u201cHold on there just one second, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s Moe!\u201d I say to myself. \u201cThis guy\u2019s voice is almost half an octave higher than Moe\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then it hits me: It ain\u2019t a guy at all, but this incredibly<\/em> butch woman.<\/p>\n

Then, like a ray of light gleaming from the reflection off pond scum, it dawns on me: \u201cYou know what? That\u2019s not Moe Howard! That\u2019s Eve Ensler, and this is that Vagina Monologues<\/em> soliloquy I\u2019ve heard so much about!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vagina Monologues<\/em> is the brainchild of said Ms. Ensler, and has captivated women across America during the past few years. Yet, the mystery always remained front-and-center in my brain: Why is this play so exclusively<\/em> popular among women? I mean, I\u2019m a man, and there\u2019s nothing I\u2019d love to do than hear a chick talk about her love hole for two solid hours. The eternal argument goes on among us males: Are you a leg man, or a breast man? And my reply has been, as always: \u201cTo hell with that! I\u2019m a vagina<\/em> man!!!\u201d (The rest is icing on the cake, or rather, pie.)<\/p>\n

So, you\u2019d think I would have been ripe for marketing as the target audience. But, alas, gaining admittance to this show requires all the feminine wiles I\u2019m so sorely lacking: Empathy, telepathy, \u201cgetting\u201d Queer Eye for the Straight Guy<\/em>, and knowing the secret handshake to the \u201cHillary Rodham Clinton Girls Only Treehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, being the sexist Neanderthal male I am, maybe I\u2019d be more appreciative if one of the play\u2019s comelier leading ladies like Phylicia Rashad, Sandra Oh, or Donna Hanover (n\u00e9e Giuliani) were performing, but watching Eve (who could never for a moment be confused with that Biblical temptress of the same name, or Anne Baxter\u2019s defining role) prattle on and on about her vagina, as though she were spouting wisdom from Mount Sinai made me realize that P.T. Barnum was absolutely dead-on when he said, \u201cwhat people want to see most is a freak show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every few minutes, the camera pans or cuts to audience reaction, and there\u2019s a crowd of equally homely, middle-aged, mostly WASP women hootin\u2019 and hollerin\u2019. They\u2019re the target audience of this harangue, all those uptight and upright women for whom Eve is some kind of liberating goddess. (\u201cYes, ladies, you too<\/em> can be comfortable talking about your vaginas because Eve has made it okay!\u201d)<\/p>\n

Hold on just a second there, where did I see this wolfpack before? Oh, my sweet Lord Jesus and Virgin Mary, these skanks are the same crusty old maids and matrons that sat stiffly in my old Methodist Church and taught Sunday school while I was growing up in that Godforsaken hell-hole in West Virginia! Mother of Mercy Almighty, that really ugly one with the Witchy-Poo hair and TV set glasses, wasn\u2019t she the one who told me I\u2019d go to hell if I kept playing footsie with Kelly Rittenauer during confirmation classes?!?<\/p>\n

All the rest of this one-woman(?)-show was more of the same: Eve speaking in hushed tones that build to an (orgasmic) crescendo worthy of Maya Angelou, as though we were hearing Moses reading the Ten Commandments tablets for the first time. I found out a lot of amazing things from this video: Women are sexually different than men. Women are \u201cvictims,\u201d victimized by (you guessed it) men. Women know more about their \u201cneeds\u201d than men do. (Recognize the pattern here? Men bad<\/em>). Despite their physical absence in this screed of a play, Men play the heavy with little subtlety and lots of dangerous testosterone. Imagine Edward G. Robinson or Jimmy Cagney inciting a mob to use a battering ram to bust down Eve Ensler\u2019s…. On second thought, don\u2019t<\/em> imagine it.<\/p>\n

Then we come to the play\u2019s greatest revelation. Dear readers, I want you all to stop whatever distracting activity you\u2019re engaged in and give me your undivided attention. That\u2019s right: Put out that cigar, put down that rolling pin, and glue your eyes to this page, \u2018cause I\u2019m only going to tell you this once.<\/p>\n

Get this: We come into the world by coming out of a woman\u2019s ……….vagina<\/em>! Really, folks, I\u2019m not making this up!<\/p>\n

My favorite bit was when Eve was getting really deep and philosophical, with her secret girl talk about how all women have needs, despite the taboos society place upon women. About how, in our youth culture, it\u2019s thought of as imprudent and gross to talk about, say, old ladies\u2019 vaginas, you know, like your great aunt\u2019s. As an antidote to this stiff prudery, Ensler recommends talking openly with the graying matriarchs in your family about their vaginas and \u201cneeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen: It\u2019s scary enough thinking about my parents<\/em> having sex without having to hypothesize about what it would be like if my grandparents were doing the dirty deed.<\/p>\n

I can just imagine myself regressing back to those halcyon days of my youth. I\u2019m nine years old again, and visiting my grandma\u2019s house:<\/p>\n

\u201cHi grandma, what\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n

She pats me on the head, and leads me over to the kitchen windowsill, where a blackberry cobbler is cooling. \u201cI\u2019m just fine, hon\u2019,\u201d she says, warm as the cobbler. \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I guess I\u2019m alright…. Grandma, just because I care about you so much, how\u2019s your vagina doing?”<\/p>\n

\u201cI beg your pardon<\/em>, young man?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Grandma, how\u2019s your vagina<\/em> been doing?\u2019 Is Grandpa taking care to give your little kitty the TLC and foreplay you still need to feel like a woman?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?!?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, really, grandma, I just wanted you to feel empowered<\/em> to talk openly and freely about you vag\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, I envision her chasing after me with a switch, and hauling my ass over to the bathroom sink to wash my mouth out with soap. I can see my mom and dad giving me the third degree and sending me to some head-shrinker to find out why<\/em>, in the name of all that is Decent and Right and Holy, that I am not only talking to one of my elders about her vagina, but even thinking<\/em> about it.<\/p>\n

But, even that\u2019s one of this video\u2019s lesser flaws.<\/p>\n

The one major problem with it is this: It stars Eve Ensler.<\/em><\/p>\n

By dint of that fact, the audience is confined to the narrow demographic of naive schoolmarms, frustrated librarians, Planned Parenthood volunteers, Wiccan broom riders, Lileth Faire groupies, Frida Kahlo wannabes, and NOW members.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Being a guy, and a photographer by trade, I tend to pre-visualize things in my mind, using the Ansel Adams method. And, if I might add, watching and listening to Eve Ensler go on and on about her vagina forms these images in my head of….<\/p>\n

\u2028….what Eve Ensler\u2019s vagina must look like.<\/em><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t proceed down this road better not taken any further. Suffice it to say that this video is enough to drive even the most vagina-obsessed satyr to homosexuality.<\/p>\n

If there is one moral to this bizarre gabfest, it is this: Clam up all the talk about your clams, ladies! Come on, I mean, really<\/em> now. Apparently, Ms. Ensler\u2019s \u201cplay\u201d is being performed at college campuses across the United States, and earlier this year was staged in a high school<\/em> in Amherst, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

I know that we live in an age of \u201cdiversity\u201d and \u201ctolerance,\u201d but am I the only one out there who thinks the adults who encouraged and let this play be produced in a high school by minors<\/em> are sick, disgusting perverts whom any parent with half a brain would shield their children from?<\/p>\n

\u201cLadies,\u201d here\u2019s a little advice from a man who\u2019s been around: When you take the mystery out of sex by wearing buttons that say \u201cI Love My Vagina\u201d in public, you are not attractive, sexy, or profound. You come off as disturbed<\/em>, narcissistic<\/em> and incredibly shallow<\/em>. If you really think about it, Paris Hilton is just Eve Ensler with a lower I.Q.<\/p>\n

Leave porn to the professionals. And, for God’s sake, please return the theatre to the masters of the craft, such as Chekhov, Ibsen and Mel Brooks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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