Sex and Politics: Humor and Politics Meeting – December 4, 2014
Our last meeting of 2014 was on the topic of “Sex and Politics” (suggested by one of our members) and we discussed Barry Levinson’s film Wag the Dog and Kurt Vonnegut’s short story Welcome to the Monkey House, with additional readings from Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. We looked at the role of sex scandals in American politics and whether the excessive attention to the private life of politicians is justified. We considered Freud’s theory about civilization and its basis in sexual repression and rechanneling of libido into more productive uses alongside the dystopian future envisioned in Vonnegut’s short story. Both Wag the Dog and Welcome to the Monkey House used humor, yet neither caused us to laugh out loud so much as smile and wink.
