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Kinsey takes on natural instincts

by Molly Kincaid

How many times a day do you think about sex? When did you lose your virginity? How often do you masturbate? Is this making you uncomfortable yet?

Alfred Kinsey, zoologist turned sexologist who shook up the world in the ‘40s and ‘50s with his studies of human sexuality, asked questions such as these to millions of people throughout his life during his notorious “sex history interviews.” Ultimately, he asked the world a question that, considering that people have protested the film for its touchy subject matter, is still relevant today: “Why are people so afraid to talk about sex?”

The biographical film, Kinsey, directed by Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters), puts the same question to viewers with a stark portrayal of human sexuality and the man who sought to understand it. Liam Neeson stars as Kinsey, portraying him as a man of both relentless determination and realistic weaknesses.

Kinsey’s pious childhood and young adulthood seem an unlikely precursor to a life dedicated to the taboo subject of sexuality. His father, played by John Lithgow, was an engineer and zealous Sunday school preacher who proselytized feverishly against the evils of masturbation, which was widely rumored at that time to be debilitating to the mind and even pathological. Though he didn’t exactly rebel in adolescence, the film hints that Kinsey felt homosexual tendencies and often engaged in, ahem, pleasuring himself, despite Dad’s threats.

Perhaps Kinsey’s most rebellious act is to forgo engineering school, opting rather to study zoology at Harvard, acting on his longtime fascination with the organic world and leaving his father aghast with disappointment. He goes on to teach biology at Indiana University, where he immerses himself in the study of gaul wasps.

Soon, one of Kinsey’s students, Clara, played by a vivacious Laura Linney, manages to pry him from his work long enough to romance him. A clumsy courtship leads to marriage. Though both virgins prior to an excruciating wedding night, their sex life soon becomes prolific and experimental, prompting Kinsey to become obsessed with the variation of human sexuality.

Students begin coming to Kinsey for sex advice, and he realizes, during a hilarious scene in which one married couple has no clue as to what oral sex is, that human sexuality is the most misunderstudied subject in the natural world, shrouded by misconception and bound by social restraints.

Kinsey soon manages to persuade the school to let him teach a sex course to married students. Though the course is a raging success, Kinsey’s ulterior motive is to compile data for his own study. He enlists the help of a student named Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard) in getting “sex histories” through interviews.

Martin and Kinsey begin to travel to other cities, attempting to amass a wide variety of sexual preferences, seeking out homosexuality in particular. Sarsgaard’s Martin is brooding and sensuous, and eventually, he tempts Kinsey into exploring his own homosexual leanings, with a gripping, hungry kiss that leads to an ongoing affair.

Kinsey’s 1948 book, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, is an instant bestseller, capturing America’s attention as a forbidden expose on hush-hush topics. However, the era of McCarthyism soon casts a spell of paranoia over the country, and Kinsey is once again scorned for allegedly peddling smut, a theme that looms over the remainder of the film as well as Kinsey’s life.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of both the film and Kinsey’s methodology is in the sex interviews themselves. Ranging from candid to sordid to humorous to tragic, the interviews serve to purvey the idea that sexual convention is just a widespread delusion—that so-called aberrance is surprisingly more prevalent than the supposed norm. During one poignant interview, a gay man shamefully displays a scar from a branding he had received on his chest during adolescence as punishment from his friends who caught him in a homosexual act.

Kinsey’s story is painfully human at times, and the actors pull off a seemingly effortless portrayal of raw emotion. Sarsgaard’s perpetually narrowed and scrutinous eyes and smug sexiness lure the audience into the same trance he has over Kinsey. Neeson plays Kinsey brilliantly, nailing his inner conflict between human compassion and detached scientific curiosity.

Kinsey’s weakness is that he’s willing to sacrifice the former for the latter, often hurting those around him. His paradoxical question is, if sex is supposedly the ultimate act of love, then why does it occur in so many forms—often not sanctioned by love? Kinsey tends to explain it biologically, saying, “diversity becomes life’s irreversible fact.” One may be tempted to think this is just rationalization for his adulterous ways, but there is a sense that he is merely a scientific onlooker, documenting human sexuality for what it is, disregarding the why and how.

December 16, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 51 © 2004 Metro Pulse