An Educational Video Meets A Midnight Movie - Finally, We've Given You a Box for Science, Sex and the Ladies!

We have another Review - at Rogue Cinema. Check it out HERE. (*note from 9 years later in 2024 - this review doesn’t exist on the internet that I can find anymore…sorry about that). Thanks to Misty Layne for taking the time to watch and write about it. It's a great review, but I'll be honest. It says something we hear about this movie more than I'd like - "I'm not sure who the audience for this documentary is." I've heard it before, and it always feels like an unnecessary questions to me.

I always want to say something like - Did you like it? Then you are the audience. However, I have learned since making this movie, that it does matter to people. Categorizing a movie, and thus categorizing the audience who might watch the movie, makes a big difference, and we probably should have done a better job filling in the details for what box people should fit SSL into with our marketing. We should be telling them, so they don't have to spend any precious time worrying about it. So, I'll address that a little - in my own way, here.

My Long Train-of-Thought Explanation (scroll down for the slightly more succinct answer how to catagorize this movie)

I always knew the movie was hard to categorize. It's a non-fiction movie, but documentary doesn't quite describe it. It's really off-beat with lots of cheese, but not quite the kind of cheese people are used to seeing in their documentaries. It is not the wink and nod to the innocence of the 50's with some cheesy b-roll of a black and white educational film reel featuring shiny happy housewives doing something that seems quaint and silly or with men in suits talking directly to the camera.

those silly ol' 50's housewives! What were those 50's people thinking?! 

Crazy ol' educational video narrators! So ridiculous, huh?!

You know what i mean, right? - the kind of b-roll featured in all kinds of docs, but especially Micheal Moore docs and all the other docs styled like Micheal Moore docs. Anyway, it's not that SSL doesn't have some 50's Housewives and dudes in suits talking directly to the camera. We definitely do. It's just that ours is not random B-roll, thrown in here and there. It's our actual movie. We are not just laughing at such silly stylings. We use those styles...but kinda different. And we're definitely not laughing at the idea of how things used to be...in fact, we're pointing out that thinking things have changed much is the real thing we should be laughing about.

That silly ol' dichotomy between "wife-types" and "whore-types" - too bad that dichotomy didn't actually stay in the 50's! 

That crazy ol' SSL narrator talking about the 60's/70's sexual revolution not actually being much of a sexual revolution for the female orgasm!

So, I think the cheese in SSL is an unexpected type of cheese. It's not familiar in the documentary genre. It's also just less like the familiar cheese of say, the Simpsons, and tends more towards something much stranger like Tim and Eric Awesome Show  - Great Job!

Who doesn't enjoy the cheese of Troy McClure?

Tim and Eric, on the other hand, can get a little weird for some tastes

This is during a musical number called "Petite Feet" which involves..well just google it.

It's not exactly Tim and Eric styling either though. Yes, we have some rainbow unicorns and other weird, cheesy shit, but we certainly don't take anything as far as they do, and the the big difference is the movie itself is not played as a joke in the way cheesy, weird stuff like Tim and Eric or midnight movies are.

Science, Sex and the Ladies is a serious movie. The actual information that is being presented is an accurate, cited, well thought-out, and often densely packed argument. It's just there's this very not-serious element in the visual presentation. So, there's a particular mix of the serious and the silly that clearly doesn't fit a mold.

Science, Sex and the Ladies making a point about sprirtual/emotional/non-orgasmic physical pleasure being maybe great and maybe even climactic, but yet still different than an orgasm

The Funbunch! in SSL talking about "Why Ladies Don't Masturbate as Much?"

The other thing that I think worries people with the categorization is that it's kinda sex-ed like, so people immediately start thinking it's for young people. I get that sex ed is something we think of as a teen sort of thing, and I get that adults always tend to think they are already educated, so it wouldn't occur to them that something sex edish is meant for them too. However, the main point in SSL is that we all need to be re-educated. Our whole sexual culture is misinformed about the basics of female sexual release. That means, with all likelihood and to some degree, you are miseducated, I am miseducated, and the expert we read about sexual matters from is too. We all are. So the movie is aimed at sexual researchers, sexual education experts, and grown-ass married people who've had lots of sex and relationships as much, if not more than, it's aimed at teens. So, it includes some sex ed, but it really isn't aimed at kids...this is also very, very confusing to people.

So, let me now lay out how this movie should be categorized

Science, Sex, and the Ladies is an educational video mixed with a midnight movie. I fully realize that these two genres maybe aren't supposed to be mixed, and the description might not create a satisfactory enough box, but it is at least satisfactory to me...for the moment at least.

Because one cannot decide on an audience for a movie until the movie is appropriately categorized, we can now get back to that question. "Who is the audience for this movie?"  At first glance this genre mix doesn't help us answer that question in an easily understandable way. Who watches educational videos? Kids. Who watches midnight movies? Cynical adults who tend toward blue comedy. They simply don't mix! 

I see it differently though. An education video is for anyone who wants to learn something..anyone who likes a really good doc...so that's hopefully most people. Plus, as I described above, SSL is meant to re-educate everyone who has been immersed in our current sexual culture - which is, again, most people. I take a lighter view of the midnight movie crowd too. Yes, there is lots of sex and violence and really weird shit and ironic watching, but I think all those things come together because they make a fun experience. The way I see it, midnight movies are for anyone who likes going to the movies and simply having a fun, somewhat raucous, communal experience. To me that's exactly the mix that is SSL - it's a movie that is fun as shit to watch, and the more people you watch with, the more fun it is. It creates a communal feeling in the audience - like everyone just went on a weird-ass journey together, but it's more than just fun midnight movie fluff. It is informative and thoughtful, and leaves the viewer with more knowledge and understanding of the world than when they came in. 

So there you go. If I must give you a particular "type" of audience for Science, Sex and the Ladies, it is people who would go to a screening of The Room, or Rocky Horror, or Grindhouse, but would also rent informative docs like The Corporation or Bigger, Faster, Stronger 

 (Although, honestly, my real answer is a completely and utterly unacceptable one - I think this movie is for everyone).