The series “Masters of Sex”, which tells about the pioneers of sexology in the United States, has gained popularity among the domestic public even without being shown on TV – thanks to streaming video services such as the increasingly popular more.tv. After watching a fascinating melodrama, sometimes turning into a thriller, it’s time to get acquainted with the literary source – quite, as it turns out, serious, despite the frivolity of the topic. The critic Lydia Maslova did just that and presents the book of the week especially for Izvestia.
Table Of Contents
Thomas Mayer
“Masters of Sex”. The Real Story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America to Love
Moscow, Livebook, 2020. – Per. from English. D. Ivanovskaya. – 624 p.
The marketing joke that the combination of the names Masters and Johnson in the 1970s “took root in people’s heads like Procter and Gamble” appears only in the last, fourth part of Thomas Mayer’s biopic about the founders of American sexology. True, the book is divided not into parts, but into phases, like sexual intercourse – just such a structure (arousal – plateau – orgasm – refractory stage) became the first and most sensational discovery of infertility specialist, obstetrician William Masters and his assistant Virginia Johnson, who dared in the late 1950s to study the physiological aspects of sex. Their works shocked American society with their decency, which did not in any way resemble the terrible pictures of incessant vice, painted (more often allegorically, so that there was no temptation) by Soviet propaganda. Suffice it to say that back in the early 1950s, in the liberated beatnik New York, a decent woman could not enter a decent man’s room in a decent hotel, with whom she was not legally married.
Thomas Meyer, a seasoned biographer with good reason to consider himself a specialist in “Typically American” stories, draws a parallel between his previous hero, educational guru Benjamin Spock, who taught the nation what to do with children, and Masters and Johnson, who took on a more delicate task. : “Americans were willing to listen to Dr. Spock teaching how to raise children, but they didn’t want to know where these children originally came from.” Not that the Americans did not know this at all, but in them, almost like in the USSR, it was considered good form to pretend that it was a secret, and besides, it was not entirely decent. AND “The mystery inevitably leads to neuroses,” as the hero of the Emmy-winning television series based on Mayer’s book, released in 2013 and withstood four seasons, rightly notes.
Photo: thomasmaierbooks.com
Thanks to actor Michael Sheen, who endowed Bill Masters with the finest mental organization, the doctor evokes much more sympathy in the series than his real prototype from the photographs in the book. When looking at them for a long time You can feel a kind of reptilian charm and courageous inflexibility emanating from Masters, but the first thing that comes to mind is the word “cracker”, in the lexicon of which, as in his books, the word “love” is inappropriate, at least purely stylistically.
Of course, it is possible that if Dr. Masters could get drunk properly, he would open up at the bar: “I am Einstein in love!” In the series, the Masters, it is true, kisses a glass almost every evening to relieve stress, but there is no evidence in the book that the buttoned-up doctor, who adored his Dobermans much more wives and children, has at least once in 85 years of his life managed to really open up, frankly revealing his inner essence.
The provocative word “love” is included in the epigraph of the book, quoting Cole Porter’s song: “So what is called love?” But it seems that Mayer does this only in order to more effectively lead the reader to a sad philosophical conclusion: love is simply the most reliable, proven verbal aphrodisiac, allowing one to manipulate each other more effectively. This understanding is especially sad to read in the last, “refractory” phase of the book, against which fans of the series should be warned who do not want to be disappointed in their characters, who appear on the screen in an overly romantic light – like people who carried their mutual love through the years and obstacles from the first look.
Photo: Livebook
What Masters and Johnson have truly carried through decades is a calm, sober calculation and understanding of the mutual benefit that has benefited many of their patients. Sure, Masters and Johnson deserve a big human thanks for helping to shift the conversation about sexual malfunction from the sphere of shy whispering to the sphere of cold-blooded medical analysis. However, their altruism should not be exaggerated – they were guided primarily by their own ambitions and complexes. And in private life, they were quite selfish people, absorbed in solving their psychological problems. This is noticeable even in the beautiful-minded series, smoothing out all the rough edges, and the book only aggravates this impression.
The bitter irony of fate is read in it: Masters and Johnson devoted themselves to the struggle for freedom (even if, in someone’s opinion, not God knows how important), but at the same time their own private life was not much different from the life of an ordinary person enveloped in prejudices: the same hypocritical system of silences, rituals and saving lies. For example, when Masters’ wife coos with his almost official mistress and convinces herself that she sincerely has friendly feelings for her. Although, most likely, she was simply forced to put on a good face, realizing that she could not pull a war with an impudent and unprincipled rival, and she had no other life besides family.
This is only in a modern series, the goal of which is that no one leaves offended, the pretty blonde Mrs. Masters, left to herself, enjoys great success with men, every now and then going all out and getting the opportunity to take revenge on her cheating husband. AND in the reality of that time, both members of the star couple and their various partners, who were entangled under their feet on the way to the emancipation of mankind, remained offended, wounded and lacked love.