True Filth Is in the Eye of the Beholder : ‘True Lies,’ recommended by Dole as family fare, adds misogyny to the usual mix of violence and vulgarity.

Inspired by Sen. Bob Dole’s indictment of Hollywood for “bombarding our children with destructive messages of casual violence and even more casual sex,” I rushed out to rent “True Lies.” That’s one of the movies that Dole held up as a positive example of films that are “friendly to the family.”

This was going to be good. Families these days need all the friends they can get. What better ally against the forces of darkness than Arnold Schwarzenegger, a committed Republican in real life, playing a CIA agent who reports to Charlton Heston in a movie distributed by another conservative, Rupert Murdoch? I wouldn’t say it turned out to be supportive of any family I would like to be part of, but one cannot deny that the dialogue evokes strong images reminiscent of some traditional male-female relationships. None of that PC stuff here. In this movie, a woman can still routinely be referred to as a female dog. Misogyny is in.

But this traditional guy-talk doesn’t mean that women go unappreciated. In a clear expression of fidelity toward Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays his wife, Schwarzenegger states unambiguously: “Women. Can’t live with them, can’t kill them.”

The movie’s “friendly to the family” message is quite straightforward: Wives, besieged by household responsibilities, are intrinsically boring, and in order to save the marriage, they must learn to act like whores. At first, Curtis is a dowdy working woman, ignored by a husband who never makes it home and despised by a daughter who steals. Understandably, Schwarzenegger looks to more fashionable women for excitement, casually fondling the thighs and other body parts of perfect strangers, their skirts slit to their navels. On a rare occasion when Schwarzenegger is home, Curtis tells him facetiously that she slept with the plumber to get him to knock $100 off the bill. Her husband replies absent-mindedly, “That’s good thinking.”

This indifference to his wife gives way to intense interest when Schwarzenegger meets a man who lusts after her. Suddenly, she is transformed into a perfect sex object as defined by the would-be philanderer: “She’s just like them all--when you get their pilot lit they can suck-start a leaf blower.” What follows is a detailed exposition on Curtis’ anatomy, including an odd favorable comparison to that of a 10-year-old boy, but this being an old-fashioned family newspaper, as opposed to the Murdoch empire, I’ll spare you the details.

Anyway, pedophilia is clearly not promoted by this movie, since the ensuing erotica tends to be decidedly heterosexual adult S&M;, in which Curtis must squirm through an inquisition before she is compelled to become a hooker working for the U.S. government, which evidently goes in for that sort of thing.

Just when you think that Dole has gone off his rocker and that this might not be the best message to be sending to young people, it turns out to be OK. That’s because the guy who is paying for sex is really Schwarzenegger, the husband, only he is in disguise. Get it? Thanks to a highly charged striptease, Schwarzenegger comes to appreciate Curtis’ true potential as a wife and the family stays together--which is the important thing.

But it’s unfair to suggest that “casual sex” is the only concern of this movie. “Casual violence” is equally important. Heads are shoved into urinals, buildings are blown up and motorcycles race through hotel lobbies scattering innocent bystanders with the civilized aplomb that has become Schwarzenegger’s signature. Most of the people who die are Arabs, so we are to assume that there is nothing dehumanizing about riddling them with bullets.

Is this art? If Dole thinks so, who am I to tell him otherwise? Maybe I’m overreacting and this movie is enlightening or entertaining in ways that escape me. That’s how I feel about rap music. Much of it, particularly the fragments of lyrics trotted out by conservative critics, is ugly in just the way that “True Lies” is: hostile to women and in all other ways stupid. But that’s not the way others respond. If the majority leader of the U.S. Senate can find a “friendly to the family” message in “True Lies,” then other decent citizens might find value in the lyrics of 2 Live Crew.

When skeptical reporters asked Dole how he could have seriously championed “True Lies” as an antidote to Hollywood’s fascination with sex and violence, he had the perfect answer. He had not actually seen “True Lies” or the other movies that he praised and damned. He was relying on what others had told him. Much better that way. Judgments about taste are tricky, and an ignorant censor is a happy one.