on 'asexual hypocrisy'

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2005)

to bolender-1 and others:
I cannot completely agree with you, although after I've read your comment fully I think its more or less compatible with my opinion. But - do you really think that relationship between Alexnader and Hephaistion was purely asexual? You are naive. And it seems homophobic too, because you consider sexual affair between men something 'dirty' (ie. not pure as heterosexual intercourse is supposed to be?) Such obvious use of double standard.. As you mention Aristotles remark on lust, he in fact said this (in the movie at least):
'When men lie together in lust, it is a surrender to the passions, and does nothing for the excellence in us, nor does any other excess, jealousy among them, but when men lie together and knowledge and virtue are pass between them, that is pure, and excellent, when they compete to bring out the good, the best in each other, this is the love between men, that can build the city state and lift us from our frog bottom.'
I don't think this means that 'sex is bad, purity means no sex' as you seem to believe. This is just about a well known fact, that if you became too indulged, it won't result in nothing but vanity. But there is nothing said about sex, in both examples, men do 'lie together' - do you really think that they only play ticktacktoe with each other or what? Or that Alexander was wanking all the way to India, and have sex only once, when he knocked up Roxana? Come on.. sexual affairs among men were common in old Greece, and were not hypocritically condemned as it was later when 'modern' totalitarian religions emerged. In fact even the basis of Greek educational system was based on more or less sexual relationship between an older/mature/wise man ('teacher') and a young one ('student'), the co called 'Pederastic pedagogy'. While now all the bigots would gone crazy just by thinking about this, it was the social norm back then. And the above mentioned Aristotle's citation is a indirect reference to this. Obviously the movie makers didn't dare to show more. And yes, this is the true reason why we don't see any real sex in the movie (except, of course, of some 'acceptable' heterosexual acts) or one(!) innocent kiss. If the movie has depicted the relationships among men more vividly, there simply wouldn't be such a film, because of the censorship!
All in all, I liked this movie very much anyway, it may not be the best historical movie ever, or the most innovative one, but it was definitely entertaining and it really had some 'real' and 'disturbing' feeling in it. And yes, it was way better than the 'Gladiator' or similar fictitious mass-production simplicity.