issue 21 // volume 43

Porn can ruin your life

> A very belated film review of ‘Don Jon’

Jan Prchal
Contributor

 

on Jon (2013) is certainly not the

best-executed romantic comedy of
the last few years, but its finest moments
derive from its treatment of the subject of
pornography and porn addiction, facets
of modern day life—particularly affecting
men—that are not honestly discussed
often enough in film or television.

The film centres on Joseph Gordon-
Levitt’s character, Jon, whom his friends
refer to as the “Don” because of his ability
to seduce attractive girls when he goes out
with them. Despite his apparent success
with women, Jon finds himself perennially
unsatisfied in comparison to the pleasures
he gets from watching pornography.

He ruins his relationship with
Scarlett Johannsen’s character, Barbara,

a woman more beautiful than any he
has seduced before, because of his

inability to stop watching pornography.
Ironically, the reason for this is Jon’s
techno-backwardness and his inability
to realize that his porn viewing is
logged in his browser history. Jon’s porn
addiction then takes over his life, and
he becomes isolated, dependant, and
unable to form lasting intimate romantic
relationships because of pornography.
The characters in the film are one
of its stronger aspects. Jon, Barbara, and
Jon’s friends and family all form quite
a colourful cast that fleshes out the
romance and the comedy in the film.
Jon’s sister, who spends the entire film
texting and looking bored, only speaks
one line near the end of the film. It turns
out to be a poignant reminder to her
brother that the girlfriend he thought
he was in love with was shallow and
controlling, combining both heart and
comic effect into one line of dialogue.
Most of the film’s best moments lie
in the first half with the film’s colourful

main characters. The second half of
the movie focuses on Jon trying to put
his life back together with the help of
Julianne Moore's character, Esther, who
teaches Jon to be more caring in his
relationships. The film tries to show how
porn addiction can be healed, but the
cinematic aspects are not handled with
the same comic deft as the first half of the
film, and perhaps positive changes are
not as funny to watch as negative ones.
Another mishandled part of the
film is the connection it tries to make
between the unrealistic expectations
of sex that porn sets for men and the
unrealistic expectations of courtship and
love that romantic movies set for women.
In brief, the film represents a
unique and earnest effort at using
pornography and porn addiction as
the driving plot elements of a romantic
comedy, with some strong moments,
though plenty of mediocre ones.

An ambitious series with
realistic, flawed characters

> ‘Gone’ series review

Lauren Kelly
Editor-in-Chief

 

kek

hat would you do if one

day everyone over the age
of 15 disappeared? Just vanished
into thin air? Gone?

Well, I guess we'd be gone
too, actually. But for the age 14
and younger characters in Michael
Grant’s Gone series, this is the start
of something incredibly sinister and
traumatic—something that we would
be incredibly lucky to be gone for.

The plot of the first book, Gone,
revolves heavily around this. When all of
the adults in Perdido Beach disappear,
the town’s panicked children rally behind
Sam Temple, the primary protagonist and
reluctant chosen leader. He and his crush
Astrid the Genius take it upon themselves
to learn more about their predicament.

Through further investigation, they
discover that they’ve been trapped under
a 20-mile diameter opaque dome. One
kid comes up with a nickname for their
new home—the FAYZ, or Fallout Alley
Youth Zone, so named for their town’s
reputation after their nuclear power plant
was hit with a meteor 15 years prior.

If all of this wasn't enough for these
kids, some of them begin mutating
powers, including Sam’s ability to
create balls and beams of light.

Up the hill from Perdido Beach is
Coates Academy, a school for difficult
children. Caine Soren, Coates’ self-
appointed leader and another mutant,
sees the FAYZ as an opportunity to stage a
take-over of Perdido Beach. And behind
the scenes of this all, there is a more
sinister power at play—the Darkness.

Michael Grant’s Gone series was
published between 2008-2013 and spans

six books: Gone, Hunger, Lies, Plaque,
Fear, and Light. The books deal with the
interpersonal struggles of the characters
as they jockey for power, create their own
places in the FAYZ, or just attempt to
stay under the radar. However, none of
this proves to be too easy, as without any
authority figures around to keep order,
the town falls apart. Each of the books’
plots follows the theme of the title—for
example, a large portion of Hunger follows
the children’s struggles with starvation
and setting up a consistent food system.
The chapters of each book begin with
a countdown that shows you how much
time is left until the book’s climax. It’s an
interesting strategy, and one that kept me
anxious as I watched the action unfold,
wondering just what was going to happen
when the countdown reached zero. Each
book contains major revelations, and very
rarely seems predictable. The character
development is superb, and even minor
characters are very well fleshed out.
Another interesting tactic is that
the books constantly change perspective,
often in the same chapter, so you always
have an idea of what’s going on inside the
major and minor characters’ heads. Many

NO ADULTS NO RULES | NO ESCAPE

 

of the characters are under immense
amounts of pressure, such as Mary,
who runs the daycare and takes care of
the littles, and Dahra, the “nurse” who
handles everyone's injuries and illnesses
with an old medical textbook. Others see
the FAYZ as an opportunity, like Albert,
a neglected youngest-sibling who begins
running Perdido Beach’s abandoned
McDonald’s, with aspirations to do more.

I guess I’ve been out of the YA lit
sphere for awhile, but I was consistently
surprised at how dark and brutal
these books are, and they only became
more so as the series went on. There is
omnipresent and very detailed violence
and death, but also kids struggling
with alcoholism, depression, bulimia,
self-loathing, and racism. I appreciated
Grant’s boldness at killing or hurting
his characters, most of whom were
lovingly written and developed. Maybe
I shouldn’t have been too shocked,
though—Grant co-wrote the Animorphs
series, which is known for its surprisingly
dark themes and gruesome battles.

The series is incredibly diverse,
which I was pleasantly surprised by. Not
only that, but it depicted discrimination

 

arts // no. 7

Image via www.impawards.com

Image via www. michaelgrantbooks.co.uk

against these characters realistically. Many
of the strongest mutants are women,
including Brianna (“The Breeze”), who
has super speed; Dekka, who can cancel
gravity; Taylor, who can teleport; and
Lana, who can heal. Racially, the series

is diverse as well. Taylor is East Asian;
Albert, Dahra, and Dekka are all black,
with Dahra being from Ghana; and Edilio,
one of Sam’s closest friends in the FAYZ,
is Honduran. Also, Dekka is a lesbian,
and a few other characters discover

their sexuality throughout the series.

All in all, this series consistently
impressed me. I wasn’t sure what to expect
when I got into them, but I really fell for
the books and cared about the characters.
There were a few things that didn’t work
as well for me—mostly involving the
Darkness and Astrid’s brother, Little
Petey—but Grant’s story overall was told
superbly. I would easily recommend this
series to any fan of YA Lit, the Animorphs,
or Stephen King, whose influence is felt
on the pages. Now is the perfect time to
pick it up, as Grant recently announced
book seven of the series, Monster,
which will be released October 17.