I often find book and movie recommendations on social media. Unfortunately by the time I take up the suggestions, I can never remember who made them. Therefore I can never thank or curse that person later. Right now, I’d like to unfriend the person who recommended the movie The Boy Next Door. It’s a thriller starring J.Lo as a recently separated woman named Claire. She has one night of passion with Noah, the titular boy-next-door, and quickly regrets it. He becomes an obsessive stalker who keeps escalating his efforts to win over Claire.
You may thinking, Oh come on, Mel. What did you expect from a movie whose trailer has such deathless lines as Noah leering and saying, “It got pretty wet here this weekend.” Well, I expected a campy, sexy thriller not a horrifying bloodbath. I had to fast-forward through the movie once Noah began to reveal his stabby side. So I missed a lot, including this joke:
As a follow-up, I listened to the podcast, How Did This Get Made? which has an episode on The Boy Next Door. I enjoy this podcast, but I’ve seldom seen the movies they review since life is too short to watch crappy movies. So, this was my big chance.
Outside of the huge plot holes in this movie, one of the hosts spent a lot of time discussing the big sex scene. He was taken aback by the amount of time Noah spent fingering Claire and going down on her. The host summarized by saying that all Noah wants is to give her pleasure, which never happens in mainstream movies.
Well, that’s another thing I never noticed. Nothing about their sex scene surprised me except the random thought that J.Lo is such a big star and she still does nude scenes.
My theory is that reading romances has skewed my perspective on “mainstream media.” I see nothing unusual in a guy wanting to bring a woman to orgasm first, it happens in most romances I read. In fact, selfish sexual performance is the hallmark of a villain—-an ex, an egotistical about-to-be-ex, or the loser in a love triangle. A hero can be fumbling or virginal, but he still has to be invested in the heroine’s pleasure.
Is this another way that romance heroes differ from real life men? Or is it evidence that romance world is a a better world than the one mainstream media presents?