House of Cards Season 5: The SSL Review
House of Cards Season 5
I really enjoy House of Cards. I love Frank and Claire's relationship. The meticulous chess games are fun to watch, but to be honest, I wonder if it's run its course. I will continue to watch it. I'm not a quitter (except with Twin Peaks - I don't care what anyone says, David Lynch ain't no genius....and oh I don't know...maybe he gets a bit too much ass-licking??). Anyway, I just finished season 5 of House of Cards. I really felt like the show should have been wrapping up, but it didn't. Don't get me wrong. I would love to see the show focused more on Claire - which may be the way the next season goes. She's a way better character than Frank. I actually thought I would really hate this show when I started because over the years I have grown to have a general distaste for Kevin Spacey's acting. But, I liked him in this. It's like the character finally fit him. So, I don't know. Maybe the next season will pick up.
Enough of that though. Let's get to the SSL Review, which, as most of you already know, is a critique specifically of a depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or masturbation and/or the clit. I look toward realism (for instance, were the physical things happening to that women while she orgasmed things that could realistically cause orgasm for a woman?), and I also look at what the depiction/discussion reflect from and add to the larger cultural discussion around lady-gasms and female sexuality. A show could be good with a bad SSL review or vice versa, and I really try to keep an SSL review to the SSL reviewable scenes, but if I feel like it, I can talk about anything I want to - because it's my blog.
You can see all the SSL TV Reviews HERE (and as always you can find all the movie SSL Reviews HERE).
Season 5 Episode 4 - Clean, pretty, blonde Republicans having clean, pretty sex
We've got that attractive political couple (I will not give any spoilers here) doing it again. Them banging on a bathroom counter was a also the lone SSL review from season 4. This is a very similar review except there was more ambiguity about where hands were this time and this time she was on top of him cowgirl style. It was a very quick scene. The camera moves up from below mattress level as we hear her breathing with short intakes of breath as if she's about to come. As her upper torso then head move into the shot, we see her eyes close and head tilt back as she lets out some final breaths indicating that she just orgasmsed. The camera, as it moves up is aslo tilted up, so we see very little of what's going on. We don't see the man laying underneath her until she smiles and flops forward on him after she comes. We don't see below her elbows really. What we do see is that she is positioned mostly upright with a slight tilt towards the bed and is moving up and down with her body as one would if they were bouncing on a dick. Her hands are down in front of her. They are not completly still, there is some movement, but it's nothing clearly rhythmic or clearly like she's rubbing her clit, but I can't really rule that out. It looks more like she's steadying herself with her hands on his torso, and those said hands move slightly as she comes and then leans in toward him.
One way would be awesome and one way would be status quo. I mean, if that actress and that director decided to have here rubbing one out while she was riding him, well, I just wouldn't be able to contain my joy. That's all I ever wanted from depictions of ladies orgasming during intercourse. If they got all bold like that, I do wish they would have shown it better.
However, if she just had her hands on him, well, that's what I would expect to be happening. That's usually what these scenes look like. I can't be mad since it's so normal to depict a woman orgasming during intercourse with no additional clit/vulva stimulation (and her body's angle against hime wasn't close enough to get the clit stim from grinding it against his pelvis). I mean, there's no physical scientific evidence that a woman can orgasm from stimulation only to the inside of the vagina in all of scientific literature, but sure, have your female characters come hard with nothing but a dick moving in her to. Why not? It makes sense, I guess, that 90% of women depicted in TV and movie can orgasm this way, right? Who needs actual clitoral stimulation. It's only the female organ of sexual pleasure, but whateves.
Vulva Rating
So, I can't completely confidently poo-poo this depiction as unrealistic because there is a slight chance that she could have been rubbing one out, which would be exactly the way a woman could come in this situation. I will poo-poo it a little though because that's probably not the case, and even if that is exactly what the actress here was performing, the director chose not to show it. So, in the end, I think most people will passively take in this scene as one of hundreds or thousands they've seen that basically says, "when women get some dick, they come!...unless their emotions or relationship problems get in the way :(" Overall, that feeling in our culture that when women have intercourse they should orgasm as much and as easily as men is just wrong, and each new insinuation that this is true layers another blanket over the fact that women need clitoral stimulation in order to orgasm. Women need that as much as men need penile stimulation, but largely women don't get that and men do.
This scene gets a 2 1/2 vulva rating
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