Columnist slams the arts claiming heterosexuality is now marginalised
Theo Hobson claims the arts now scorns any hetero couples in TV and movies
By Steve Brown
A columnist has gone on a whiney rant about how “heterosexuality is marginalised by our liberal arts culture”.
Theo Hobson – a columnist for The Spectator – has slammed the arts culture claiming it “scorns” heterosexual coupling in TV and movies in his recent post.
In his piece he writes about how he watched a BBC4 series called Snatches which focused on a woman who discovers the joys of an orgasm but through another woman rather than a “dull old man”.
He writes: “It was a female colleague who initiated her. It was well written, well acted, and I make no complaint about the soft-porn content.
“But it did make me think: our culture has gone a bit weird. It seems that its liberal creative wing no longer finds sex sexy unless it is grinding an edgy political axe.
“If it lacks this edge, it is crass, banal at best, oppressive at worst. Sex in which men play a role now feels… inappropriate, dirty.”
It’s not only on TV where Hobson believes there has been a change but claims cinema also follows suit and dubbed it a “major cultural problem”.
He continues: “In cinema too, it is gay love that has an aura of depth and mystery (Call Me By Your Name is one of a long list).
“You might say: well, there’s more drama in love (or plain sex) that’s edgy and forbidden, but that’s not really good enough: art should be able to find the drama in the mainstream.
“I think this is a major cultural problem. There is something unhealthy about a culture that cannot celebrate what is mainstream, for fear of seeming crude or oppressive.
“We have slipped back into seeing most sex as dirty, shameful – now on the grounds that male semi-violence is involved.”