June 17th 2011
I have always maintained that television is more entertaining than the cinema and last night handed me yet more proof. Back in 2004 Liam Neeson starred on the big screen as Alfred Kinsey, and American biologist who battled prudery and prejudice to publish a groundbreaking report on human sexual behaviour.
Interesting subject but not the world’s most interesting film. A more gripping take was recounted in THE SEX RESEARCHERS (C4) of Masters and Johnson, whose own careers had all the elements for a Hollywood smash.
Sex research went back a lot further then this pair, perhaps as far as a 17th-century Italian priest called Spallanzani who made miniature trousers for male frogs to stop them getting lady frogs in the tadpole way.
In the 19th century a Parisian doctor by the name of Charcot demonstrated quirks of human biology using attractive female models in lecture halls packed out with curious male doctors.
However, sex research really took off in Fifties America. While that time and place is associated with strait-laced attitudes and political witchhunts a few scientists were thinking and doing the unthinkable.
At the University of Washington in Missouri gynaecologist Bill Masters asked his secretary Virginia Johnson to find him female subjects for his investigations. Under conditions of immense secrecy the volunteers who came forward made love in a laboratory while their vital signs were measured.
The secrecy and perhaps nature of the work meant it wasn’t long before Johnson and the married Masters started doing their own research together after hours.
When the authorities wised up to what was going in, the pair set up their own research facility funded partly by a perfume company hoping the secret of human sex scents might be revealed.
Tired of being the eternal mistress, Johnson began an an affair with a businessman. Fearing for the future of the Masters and Johnson brand Masters divorced his wife and persuaded Johnson to marry him. Which perhaps proves that you can know a great deal about sex but still not understand love.
All this made me recall an episode of the Twilight Zone in which an unhappy gambler was suddenly given the ability to win at everything. As a result he began to feel less and less satisfied every time he hit the jackpot, proving I suppose that the losses in an ordinary life are what make the wins worthwhile.