Sex and the Single-Minded: A ‘History’

The History Channel begins a five-part documentary tonight tracing sex through the ages. Showtime recently aired a documentary on sex this century, HBO’s “Sex and the City” comedy is nominated for an Emmy, the new MTV series “Undressed” is largely about the same topic, and last month UPN presented its “Teen Files: The Truth About Sex.”

The truth about sex is that it remains just about everywhere in the cosmos. For example, observe:

Her ample breasts, so full, so firm, so sexy, press against the wisp of fabric, inviting one to fantasize about what’s behind the ivory lace.

Her smooth, silky panties are high cut, the delicate material rising provocatively toward her slender waist to display the panorama of her satiny thighs.

There’s a hint of wildness in the blond hair swept back from her lovely neck, and with an adventurous smile and soft, dark eyes, she beckons all admirers, as do the other barely clad, nubile young females flanking her. One can almost hear them saying:

Take us, take all of us, we’re yours.

Yes, just another underwear ad in your friendly newspaper.

A staple of newspapers almost since the creation of modern lingerie, these ads are intended to invite bra-and-panty sales, not lust. Yet candor intervenes here, for if you find nothing erotic about them, either your eyesight or embalming fluid is failing.

Sex is a subtext, whether it’s females believing what they see is what they will be if they buy what these models are wearing, or other readers (present company excepted, of course) being titillated by this showcase of gorgeous flesh.

Not that one needs either 20/20 eyesight or a raging libido to detect the pervasive, ever increasing patina of sex in our culture. One of TV’s most successful mainstream sitcoms, NBC’s “Seinfeld,” was preoccupied with sex--one of its most famous episodes being about masturbation, another about the sponge contraceptive, and another about a woman whose name rhymed with a female organ. And “Sex and the City” recently had its sisterhood of singles debate the carnal merits of circumcision (“Uncut men are the best. They try harder”).

In other words, despite escalating protests from those repulsed by what they see and hear, George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” taboo has been supplanted by about 70 that can be said on TV.

Nor were the sex, lies and videotape of Bill Clinton a wake-up call. We hardly needed awakening, even though revelations about his Oval Office visits from Monica Lewinsky made oral sex--once taboo to mention in much of the United States--as casual a topic as oral hygiene.

Even beyond propagation and pleasure, sex is ingrained in our history. One instance is the erotica and glamour once attached to cigarettes, thanks to tobacco industry propaganda and romantic images of smokers perpetuated by movies and TV--purple prose being sexier and better box office than purple lungs.

And now, ironically, sex is being used against smoking in humorous TV spots by the California Department of Health Services, the ones associating tobacco with impotence by having cigarettes in male mouths go droopy when females approach. The limp noodle metaphor also drives ads by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that claim eating meat can cause impotence. Just as men who do have that problem are being told in TV ads fronted by Bob Dole that Viagra will restart them.

From one millennium to another, some basics of living endure.

Sex has been on our minds “from that fateful moment” when the first couple did it, notes narrator Peter Coyote in tonight’s premiere of “The History of Sex.”

In most cases, sex is like humor: Once you analyze it, it ceases being fun. Yet this documentary series does manage to be flat-out fun while providing a respectful perspective spanning centuries, one punctuated at commercial breaks by such droll factoids as: “Rumors that Julius Caesar lost his virginity to the king of Bithynia in Asia Minor led to his political foes calling him the queen of Bithynia.”

Bithynians notwithstanding, we also learn tonight that ancient Greece gave us not only Plato but also the dildo. And that one of the birth control measures used by early Romans was to have women “get out of bed, squat down and sneeze.” And that St. Augustine, prior to conversion to Christianity, was “a horny young man.”

Relying on interviews with scholars, seamless reenactments and old photos and drawings (some bordering on pornographic), “The History of Sex” is a thoughtful, entertaining balance of impressive research and witty speculation that manages not to trivialize such dark issues as sexual repression while keeping lighthearted about legend. As in Queen Victoria replying to her daughter’s question about having sex this way: “Close your eyes and think of England.”

The series does a fine job of tracing the sexual threads that cross generations. What it doesn’t do, unfortunately, is examine the origins and use of such sexual language as the “F” word and expressions describing intimate human anatomy that came to be regarded as coarse in polite society.

Its concluding segment is weakest. Much less interesting than the Middle Ages, for example, is this account of 1920s flappers flapping and moral gatekeepers stretching their symbolic condoms across the flood waters of sex, all of it having a familiar resonance. As does the ensuing look at Hugh Hefner, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, gay rights, AIDS and cybersex that takes us directly to the doorstep of Clinton-Lewinsky.

But not the Wonderbra. For that, peruse your newspaper.

* “The History of Sex” airs tonight through Friday at 7 and 11 p.m. on the History Channel.