Sincere and Serene

“The Enchantress” a.k.a. “The Witch”

Richard Earlom (1743–1822) after David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690)

I was thinking about Disco Elysium's Moralism while trying to explain this post to someone, and of course about "Kingdom of Conscience", and it occurred to me (and I know this isn't an original thought) that centrists have a very hostile relationship to desire. It's not just beliefs and convictions that must be "put away immediately, and the child reprimanded," it's the wordless desires that lie under those beliefs and convictions. Desire is by definition unfulfilled: all desire is the desire for things to be different, which is the opposite of what centrists want.

What I'm saying here is that the lack of sex, and of sexiness, in Nolan movies (and Marvel movies and other contemporary blockbusters) has a direct connection to their political messaging. It's not solely American puritanism or risk-averse PG-13 corporate conservatism - although it is those - it's also this desire thing. These movies don't just lack sex, they lack eroticism in the broadest sense of the term. They lack frisson. Even when there is sex or nudity, there's still no eroticism!