The question is will Liberator's SpeediCath Self-Lubricating Catheter bring happiness in the golden years? If you tune into CNN on a typical Sunday morning you will find a plethora of commercials geared to graying panthers. A recent commercial for a popular PDE5 inhibitor featured two couples, one black and one white. The curious thing is that neither looked a day past forty. The black man was built like a lineman and wore a shirt that read "football." His white counterpart did have a bit of gray in his sideburns, but he had the sturdy build of the veteran actor in television commercials. The idea that the PDE5 inhibitor commercial was trying get across was that you wanted to be ready when the time came and not impeded be by circulatory problems. However, these kinds of commercials fail to show what sex is really like between older couples who have been together for years. Everyone has that little kink that turns them on and some times they even have code names for it--just like D- Day was called Operation Overlord. If there's a little bit of larceny, there is also an a little bit of perversion in all of us. A more truthful version of the PDE5 inhibitor commercial would feature crosscuts to Pasolini's Salo in which elderly fascists attempt to be stimulated by viewing acts of coprophilia. But while drug companies will do almost anything to market their wares, they fail to show the big picture--which is that getting an erection is only half the battle. You have to be turned on to begin with.
{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}