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Coo-coo-ca-choo, Mary Kay Letourneau
The Bible, that perennial favorite, deserves more credit as a pop icon. Not only did the Word top the best-seller charts for centuries longer than any John Grisham novel, it also provided modern pop culture with one of its most cherished (and thus, most painfully overused) themes—the seduction of Adam by Eve. Watch Silk Stalkings once and you'll realize that the religious undertones of this tale got lost somewhere in the transition from Paradise Lost to USA Up All Night—but the basic pattern still remains. A woman, covetous of some sinful reward (what does the apple really stand for—sex? power?), gets involved in shady dealings. Choosing some man as accomplice (or just desiring to drag him down with her), she exercises her feminine guile. Cut to a scene of, as Milton put it, "Carnal desire inflaming," and it's all downhill from there.After watching this unfold a couple hundred times, the suspense starts to wane. Yet the pattern still persists, as we must watch The Graduate, Jules and Jim, and that guy from Disclosure all fall victim to their respective Eves. Attempts to bring the novelty back to the tired tale have become almost absurd in the last few years: Dawson's new girlfriend, for example, recently tempted the innocent young lad with what she filched from Princeton Review (ah, that modern Tree of Knowledge)—a preview copy of the PSAT. The WB, foregoing subtlety along with its good taste, even called this seductress Eve before allowing us to scoff at her fallen ways.
FOX was at least a little more creative in naming its temptress Valerie when it assigned her the chore of introducing sin into the world of 90210, and NBC more quirky when it decided that Bayside's own femme fatale should be after the forbidden fruit of Screech's Spaghetti Sauce. Still, the theme has relapsed more times than winter colds on Old Campus, and I get that same dull headache the more I'm exposed to it. What keeps this ball rolling, anyway? Mary Kay Letourneau aside, how many women really have corrupted innocent young men?
More than anything, the quasi-vilification of Mrs. Robinson and Co. seems an outlet for some not-so- well-hidden male fantasy. I mean, it's not like these guys shouldn't be able to figure out what's happening— the same thing's been happening since the Biblical dawn of man, for God's sake! Pop culture, as usual, is catering to some apparently endless craving that guys have to be seduced and ravished by a woman of experience and devilish license. To give in just that once. To experience the savagery. To taste the forbidden. Which is all very nice and titillating, but a little boring once you've seen it reenacted in every medium from Maxim to Shakespeare. Yet, like every other male fantasy, it promises to keep springing up in popular culture. Little, I suppose, can be done. So, I guess the next time I hear some pop sensation tell his love that "I don't care who you are, or where you're from, don't care what you did, as long as you love me," I'll just roll my eyes and wait for the next album to come out, when the boys can bitch about how far they've fallen.
—Lisa Marshall
All materials © 2000 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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