The Ontological War

In Sex, Lies, and Videotape Cynthia goes over to Graham’s apartment, partly to meet him and partly to find out what “spooked” Ann during her last visit. Soon after Cynthia arrives Graham asks her if she would like to make a videotape, she agrees, and by her own choice she masturbates on film during the interview.

After the filming Cynthia goes home and calls John at his office:

I want to see you.

John: Ah. When?

Cynthia: Right now.

John: I don’t know if I can do that. I got a client waiting. I’ve already rescheduled him once. I’d have to do some heavy-duty juggling.

Cynthia: Then get those balls in the air and get your butt over here.

John goes over to Cynthia’s place, they have very passionate sex, and immediately after they finish John says

You’re on fire today.

to which Cynthia harshly replies

Yes. … You can go now.

Ontologically, the interesting part about all of this is that Cynthia becomes more her realself during the filming, which brings up two important questions: Why did she become more her realself during the filming and Why did that make her more lustful?

As noted earlier, sex is a realself event, and so people become more their realselves when they become sexually aroused or have sex, whether they are conscious of their ontological change or not. Graham is being much more his realself than Cynthia is being hers, and so just by the way he talks to her about sex—the tone of voice he uses, his choice of words, his body language, the self he is being while talking to her—all of these contribute to his reaching her realself and to his helping her become as much of her realself as she is able to be at the time.

Cynthia is very lustful—she is “on fire”—after the filming because her conversation with Graham has made her become more her realself; because of this when she has sex with John she is being much more realself than her socialself; and this shift to greater ontological authenticity explains her greater sexual passion and intensity and her greater desire for it. Sex is much better for a person when the person is the one who is having the sex, as compared to when the person is acting as someone else who is having the sex.

As a side note, Cynthia’s character doesn’t appear to be as accurately drawn ontologically as Graham’s, Ann’s, and John’s characters. Most of what Graham, Ann, and John say and do rings true for the degree of realself they are each being, but Cynthia sometimes says and does things that seem to represent a much greater degree of realself than she is being at the time. For example, she becomes more her realself during the filming, and this greatly increases her desire to have sex. But an important part of her desire to have sex in this circumstance would be to have realself-to-realself sex and not the realself-to-socialself she knows she will have with John.

Cynthia isn’t an increasing realself person; rather, she is someone who appears to have innate ontological sensitivity and insight, but who hasn’t started increasing her degree of realself. If she is looked at in this way, her character makes more sense: she may be a socialself person within whom her realself is just starting to wake up; it is just starting to make her aware of realself thoughts and emotions; and she hasn’t started to reconcile all of her socialself and realself thoughts and emotions.

Number 13 in the Sex, Lies, and Videotape series. All the posts in this series are listed in the All the Series’ Posts page.