Spank That Monkey

Hey, you better stop doing that or you'll get hairy palms

like this guy.

"Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love."

Sure, Woody Allen talked about it in Annie Hall, but thank god we didn't have to watch him do it. The same cannot be said for certain actors in certain scenes of certain movies, all conveniently collected into The AV Club's appropriately titled list of "14 Tragic Movie Masturbation Scenes".

Ah, masturbation. We all do it, yet nobody wants to talk about it, let alone see it in a movie (well, OK, a non-naughty movie). And when a moment of self pleasure does make it onto the screen, it is usually played for laughs (poor Judge Reinhold in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) or shock value (poor, poor Linda Blair in The Exorcist), or it's there to show how pathetic and/or depraved a character is (poor, poor, poor us for having to watch Harvey Keitel in The Bad Lieutenant).

Interestingly enough, four entries (Parenthood, Happiness, The Squid and the Whale, Babel) deal with prepubescent preoccupation with the practice, while only two (Mulholland Drive, Junebug) feature women giving themselves some attention. Which may lead to the conclusion that, at least in the movies, one group is really really good at it, and the other is really really bad at it. I believe that answer is -- tragically -- clear.

Another intriguing aspect of this list is how many characters don't finish the task at hand. They're either interrupted by a spouse (American Beauty) or parent (Spanking the Monkey) or leave the job undone in unfulfilled frustration (Your Friends and Neighbors). These are the cinematic equivalents of your mother screaming at you from the other side of a locked bathroom door to "stop that or you'll go blind".

Little Children has the ignominious distinction of having not one, but two actors, each in their own, separate "tragic masturbation" sequence. Combined, these two scenes pretty much sum up the whole lamentable lot. Which would you rather be: caught red-handed with panties on your head, or stuck in a station wagon with the worst blind date ever playing pocket pool in the passenger seat?

With examples like these, it is no wonder that wacking off is so often written off as "bad for you". That is, all but one on the list: there is absolutely nothing tragic with what Paul Dawson does to himself in Shortbus. Hell, if all us men could do that, we would never leave the house.

Links via AVClub.com.