Tightly Wound

No Sex, Please--I'm Sick of It!

So last night I was watching a Science Channel special on the Bog People--you know, those amazingly well-preserved bodies that have turned up in bogs around Ireland, England, Denmark (and even Florida!)--and I was happily listening to a woman who may be a little bit insane going on about ancient Celts and human sacrifice and how excited she was to see these boggy folk and think about their lives, when the show cut over to two male bog bodies that were recovered in Denmark. No biggie, right? Wrong. Mixed in with the usual "this is how old the bodies were, how old they were when they died, presumed cause of death" scientific stuff was a sudden treatise on how these men might have been killed because they were lovers, OMG Sexshual OPPRESSION among the VIKINGS!

I spilled my wine in my WTF reaction. Seriously, I expect more than a little supposition in these specials because so little is known about the cultures that produced these bodies, but WHEN exactly did science feel compelled to give a nod to the OC, or Queer as Folk? All the scientists have to go on is two dead male bodies that were placed (or tossed, or disposed of, or staked down in a ritual) in a bog at the same time. That's it. Is the Science Channel so desperate for ratings that they have to paint everything with the Sexay brush? Or is everything so sex-saturated that they merely felt that exploring the possible sexuality of a couple of 2,000 year old corpses was a matter of course?

Maybe I've been over-sensitized to this lately because of Alexander--a movie which manages to mostly ignore the amazing battles and accomplishments of an exceptional historical figure in favor of creating a bi soap opera. And maybe I'm a weirdo, but I'm not exactly emotionally invested in who Alexander the Great or a couple of Bog People were or were not boinking, regardless of how cute Colin Ferrell looks in a blonde weave. Have we always been so reflexively "So, are they doing each other" every time we see two people together on screen, or off screen, or in a history book? I understand prurient interest. I know that the hook history teachers sometimes use when teaching about Catherine the Great involves a horse. But lately it seems that we have Lost. Our. Minds. about the whole "who's doing who" thing. And I'm here to politely request that we just knock it off for a while. Or if we can't knock it off, perhaps we can just keep it to ourselves? Please? Because some of us are trying to eat, here.

As usual, it's All About Me, and I've gotta say I reached my own personal sex-life-supposition Ick Threshold when Liza Minnelli married David Gest. I don't want to know about Paris Hilton's stick-figure-populated one night stand, about Tommy Lee and Pam's Hepatitis-iced honeymoon, or whether Thomas Jefferson was getting busy in the quarters. When everything is all about the sex, sex gets decidedly less interesting and a lot tackier. And then you end up with the boinking bog people of lower Denmarkia, or whatever the hell. I'd say that after that we've got nowhere to go but up, but I know I'd be wrong. And there's not enough wine on the planet to help me deal with whatever's next.