A very good friend tells me that children living in kibbutzim showered, boys and girls all together, until they reached a certain age. There was nothing sexual in soaping each others' backs, either, but it had sexual implication: when these children reached marriageable age, they tended not to choose partners they'd showered with. I suspect it would have been too much like some kind of incest, even though most of the children sharing communal showers were not related by blood or marriage.lombano wrote:Could you elaborate?sauvin wrote: I saw sexual implication in the LTROI bedroom scene, but no sex or sexuality.
I didn't see anything sexual in either bed scene - even though when Abby and Owen go out together I saw two adolescents dating, while when Oskar and Eli go out together I saw two children playing.
In the US, children do not do this. I don't remember ever sharing a shower, tub or bed with my sister (five years younger), although I understand that in other families, it's common for toddlers and tots. Once having reached a certain age, maybe seven or eight, children bathe separately and sleep alone. The American bed is thoroughly sexualised, and people beyond a certain age sharing a bed are often presumed to be sharing something beyond a few snores.
When the bedroom scene is shown in an American theater or living room, it'll be seen through the lenses of American culture, particular with respect to taboos. A twelve year old girl stripping down to nothing and jumping into the sack with a twelve year old boy who's wearing only briefs is just about as scandalous an image as an American can sustain without boiling over with indignation. Swedish forum members' assuring us that this kind of thing is fairly common - and "innocent" - in Sweden wouldn't mean anything to an American audience.
It might have been interesting to get impressions from representatives of other major cultural spheres around the world - how do Chinese people, for example, see such a girl jumping into bed with such a boy? Eastern European? African?
We can tell Americans to shut up, sit still and let the movie keep rolling during the bedroom scene right up until Oskar asks if he has a chance with her, and she props herself up on an elbow with - what? Alarm? Concern? It's really hard to say, precisely, but it's not hard to guess what the first thought to cross her might might have been. Now, we have outright sexual implication, even if only by indirect allusion.
The statement that the kids are too young to Go There (tm) is probabilistic at best. I offer my own bad self as a case in point, having been Going There and having to hide some of the laundry since no later than the fourth grade (say, eight or nine), and have heard some of the other guys admitting to something similar. Oskar may or may not be too young to know there's a There to Go to, and may or may not be too young to have already taken that trip a few hundred times. He's certainly not too young to have a peek at his girlfriend's body as she's changing into something clean.
The statement that the kids are too young to Go There (tm) in Eli's case seems not probabilistic at all. Her reaction was immediate, and her Three Questions were very pointed. What saved the scene, and very likely the whole story, is Oskar's innocently being concerned with something else. He wasn't concerned with Going There, at least not primarily, so much as wanting some kind of assurance that he'd have somebody to go places with. Eli's very pointy questions very strongly imply she's Gone There (or, as seems more likely, Been Taken There) at least once in the past, and doesn't particularly relish the prospect.
After Oskar has gotten the promise he wanted (a frank statement of friendship and alliance) and drifted back off to sleep, Eli shows a very definite capacity for simple physical affection. She strokes his shoulder and arm, working her way down to his hand, which she grasps and holds. After Lacke's death, she encircles him with her arms, puts her head on his shoulder and thanks him for her life. These scenes betray the wooden alien Oskar hugged behind the kiosk and in his living room: Eli has a very human understanding of simple physical affection.
It can be argued that Eli has no understanding of sensuality, since she has nothing to be sensual with in a sexual sense. Granted, she may very well on occasion experience a Sybaritic pleasure in guzzling down a fresh, hot meal when she's gone too long without eating, and one can certainly hope she can appreciate a long, hot shower the way we do, but if the kids continue to snuggle as shown in the bedroom scene as Oskar continues to grow physically, the physical affection Oskar gives or returns almost certainly will have a component to it that "transcends" simple affection.
And so, yes, I saw sexual implication, even if I saw no sex or sexuality, and some of the implication I saw is conflict.