When Harry Met Sally

Scandalous. Define the word. Literally it means, "containing material damaging to reputation; defamatory" (www.dictionary.com, 2005) but, what does it mean to us in our every day life. It could be the latest gossip about who's going out with who, the latest rumor about a court case, something dramatic in one's life, or just something you wouldn't expect to see in everyday life. When Harry met Sally is clearly defined by that word. Something you wouldn't normally see in everyday life. From the "sex scene" where you see an arm come out from the covers (this being the only clue we have to them actually having sex) to the faking of an orgasm in the middle of a restaurant, the movie steers in the direction of something just...random. To think about this movie now, with today's society, it's almost laughable at the way that sex is portrayed. Everything in this movie just portrays that feel of, "it's so wrong but, it feels so right." I return to the arm exposure because, upon seeing this, I laughed. Was society in 1985 really so jaded to the truth about sex? Were the really so psychopathically cynical to hide sex as if it were something to be scorned and sinful? It baffles me to thing that, in just ten year's time, society has made a complete turnaround in this regard. Why is it so?

In 1985, 20,470 cases of aids were reported. (www.rainbowhistory.com) That's in one year! Society was so worried about aids because they had no idea really how it spread at this point. They knew sex was a big part of it but, they really didn't understand how to protect themselves. Therefore, there is an underlying ideal that, if you don't want aids, you don't have sex. That was a nice concept but, umm, yeah...didn't quite work out all that well. The scientific fact is that men think about sex every ten seconds. Now, using logic here, how prey-tell are you going to completely stop doing something you are thinking about doing every ten seconds? You don't. So, the media in this time period was trying to downplay sex in the media. That's what is truly apparent in this movie. The base line moral was, that, if you slept around, you were bad, sinful, scorned, etc. The concept was to make sure you were doing it for love, not sex.

The orgasm scene was a comical way to "put down" sex. Like "Saturday Night Live" and George Bush