Misunderstanding Relationships in Boogie Nights Essay

The film Boogie Nights provides an interesting case study of the unique nature of human relationships, specifically love and friendship. It presents a crisscrossing mash-up of various combinations of traditional love categories: friendly (plutonic or nonsexual) love, family love, lust, master/servant or apprentice/teacher love, etc. Besides being entertaining, Boogie Nights presents these combinations to provoke an insight on our part into the nature of love. This insight is exemplified in Jack’s notion of the ideal pornographic film. His ideal film also serves to echo the same flaws found in Plato’s ideal forms. Boogie Nights attempts to demonstrate the false nature of a definite, meaningful love by disrupting its categorization and†¦show more content†¦Yet, despite this it is clear in their behavior and dialogue that they love each other as a family, and this establishes a paradox. Familial love and erotic love cannot coexist by definition. There are several other relationships that serve as secondary examples of unusual, often paradoxal love combinations: Scotty J interprets friendly love as erotic love in his relationship with Eddie. Little Bill’s love for the idea of his wife is at the same time matched by his hatred of his actual wife. Buck settles for, loves, and marries the first person who pays attention to him. These examples emphasize the point that the traditional definition of love as a divisible, categorical entity is untenable. Love is far too fluid and individual to be categorized in any useful way beyond casual assumption. In theory, the types of love should exist, if only due to empirical fact. For example, traditionally mothers don’t have an erotic attraction to their children. In reality, love can only exist as a general concept; as a name for a feeling. It is probably acceptable to assume that a mother won’t have sex with her son, but this is not because she possesses a specific kind of love. It is because she possesses a specific value (in this case against mother-son sexual relationships) that prevents her action. The language of love is inaccurate and improperly directed if described as, forShow MoreRelatedLangston Hughes Research Paper25309 Words   |  102 PagesHe sat in the pew and waited. Auntie Reed knelt by his side, praying earnestly. Desperate to please her, Langston finally knelt at the altar and accepted Christ as his savior, but in his heart, he knew that he had not experienced salvation. That night in bed, Langston wept and admitted to God that he had lied, that he had waited for Jesus and he hadnt come. He felt unworthy of love. Not only had he been abandoned by his parents, but Jesus had not transformed his soul and saved him from sin. Many