Friends with Benefits is Hollywood's second installment of 2011 on substituting casual sex for a real love relationship. A Screen Gems issue scheduled to hit theatres on 22 July, the film stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. The movie comes on the coat tails of Paramount's No Strings Attached starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher released in January. In increasing to the two movies, a new Nbc sitcom Friends with Benefits is scheduled to premiere on August 5. Is Hollywood trying to proclaim 2011 as the year that America finally comes to grips with the sexual revolution? It has been over forty years since the "summer of love", yet this year's Hollywood propagated casual sex theme seems vaguely familiar. Maybe Timothy Leary and the rock opera Hair were on to something in the sixties. Not!
The term "friends with benefits" was coined ten years ago, nearby the turn of the century. It originally referred to college and high school teenagers practicing casual sex without the commitment of a love relationship. Often applied to oral sex acts in the middle of teenagers of the day, the phrase also carried a generational rebel yell in response to the cultural pressure to institution safe sex. Although the term may be trendy, coming of age young adults have explored their sexuality since we donned the first loincloths, so the idea is any thing but new.
In the context of the movie, the casual partners are adults not sexual neophytes studying about the difficulty of sex; and therein lies the lie. When applied to sane, sober adults Friends with Benefits is naturally not desirable. It is a good bet that one of the partners is lying about their emotional and intellectual disconnection, and secretly desires something more. It is impossible for the average human to isolate the instinctual level of mind from their perceptual and conceptual levels and participate in repetitive, mechanical sex with the same partner without developing emotional and/or intellectual ties. I would like to meet the adult woman and man who could share carnal knowledge on a regular basis where neither develops a true love fantasy about the other. In a random poll of 50 men and 50 women in the middle of the ages of 21 and 40, not one someone stated that they would prefer a "friends with benefits" association over true love. Giving the devil his due, the contrived, predictable plot line of the movie reflects reality as the casual sexual partners finally form feelings for each other.
