TV Tuesdays 7: Porn for women
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Welcome to the seventh TV Tuesday!
Yep, still on Ginny & Georgia. Today I want to kind of expand on last week’s post about how much I like how the show depicts sex.
G&G is porn for women because it depicts sex as labies (People with labia. I don’t care what you think I’m going with it) tend to enjoy it.
But it’s so much more than that. It’s porn for women in that it’s wish fulfillment/fantasy for women in ways that go far beyond sex.
In G&G’s world, Marcus isn’t a selfish person who treats women like objects. He just feels far more strongly for Ginny than his ex Padma, and treats her better. He gives Ginny thoughtful, effortful gifts. Marcus doesn’t judge Ginny for self-harming but simply wants to support her and encourage her to get help. Wish fulfillment.
Ginny’s dad is a smokeshow who works the Bechdel Test into conversation. Wish fulfillment.
But the porniest part of the show, by far, for me anyway, is the LONGING. God, so much longing.
I know I’m not alone in this. Why did The Office get boring after Pam and Jim got together? Why does every rom com end when the two leads get together? Because we want tension. We want desire. We want a struggle. To have is fine. To deeply, intensely want… that shit is divine.
G&G does this well. Even after Marcus and Ginny profess their love for each other and make it official, the writers maintain the tension. Which is very true to life.
In most relationships, most of the time, there’s a pursuer and a pursued. Ideally, partners switch off on a regular basis. A relationship that can’t maintain some kind of unmet desire is unspeakably boring. The basis of eros is never being fully satiated. It’s always wanting more. It’s coming to the same well over and over again because you continue to want another taste.
It’s easy to write a character denying someone else or giving them what they desire. But then they, and the audience, are done. It’s more difficult to establish and maintain an ongoing connection that never offers full satisfaction. But when characters continue to desire, sometimes getting more, sometimes getting less, we as viewers are also hooked.
It reminds me of the finding in psychology that people find games with variable rewards far more addicting than games they know they’ll win. As loss-averse as the human brain is, it still prefers to end up with less winnings and more surprises than more winnings but a known outcome. Researchers hypothesize that this applies to relationships as well. We’re more enthralled by someone who is unpredictably mean to us sometimes than someone who’s always nice.
In real life, the kind of longing depicted in G&G is difficult to maintain. At least for me. Before long, I usually either get to know the object of my affection well enough that the shine wears off or I get enough of them to fully satiate my desire.
That’s the fantasy. That there could be someone in my life who my unmet desire for could grow over months or even years. Or whose desire for me could do the same. In real life, that seems kind of distracting and annoying. And I pity the people I know in real life who unrequitedly pine for one person over years.
In real life, I think I want variable rewards and for one or a few people to switch off with me. Sometimes them pining more for me. Sometimes me pining more for them. Or maybe more realistically me pining for a certain kind of affection or intimacy with them and them pining for a different kind with me. But it changing over time.
But that’s the difference between porn and real life. It’s bigger and more intense than you’d necessarily really want to experience. That’s what makes it fun.
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