Analysis of the Movie “Don Jon”
By Ashley Hardy
I would like to start this post by
giving a brief summary of the movie. Don Jon is about a man named Jon who is
known for having sex with many girls he encounters at clubs. Despite the fact
he can get almost any girl he wants he feels that porn is better than any kind
of sex a woman could give him. Jon masturbates as much as twenty times or more
a week and it is no secret that he is addicted to porn. He eventually meets a
woman who he comes to love and become serious with. But as the relationship
goes on, porn gets in between the two of them and they soon break up. The movie
continues to show Jon’s life and how he progresses without his ex. He meets an
older woman who encourages him to see life without porn every day. This movie
had several scenes that may be inappropriate to young views but it’s actually a
pretty good movie.
While watching this movie I found
several course related themes involved. Gender role is one of the first I
encountered. In the movie, Jon’s current girlfriend, Barbra expects Jon to
cater to all of her needs and wants. When she suggests Jon start taking night
classes, he does. She tells him not to buy Swiffer pads because she refuses to
have him do what a maid can do. She also tells him to stop looking at porn
because it’s disgusting. Jon caters to all of these and more except the porn
idea which virtually causes their breakup. Barbra eventually states that he is
supposed to do all of these things for her because that’s what any man would do
if they love their woman. Gender roles come into play here because society has
its idea of what a man should do for a woman. There is a double standard within
society that has a man going out of his way for the female while the female
just sits back and looks pretty. Gender roles were known in the Colonial Era as
well. The English separated labor differently from Algonquians. The English had
the men working in the fields and the women were to keep inside the house and
discipline the children. The Algonquians however, were slightly different with
the women working in the fields and the men hunting (1).
Another theme I found was the topic of
masturbation. Masturbation was considered disgusting to his girlfriend. His
church also considered masturbation a sin. Jon is Catholic and every Sunday he
confessed his sins to the Father. At one point he confessed that he ha masturbated
over thirty time that week. Each time the Father would give him Hail Mary’s to
recite in order to be forgiven. Jon masturbated so many times a week that I
feel that he unknowingly denounced the masturbation scare of the early 1800’s.
During the scare, people believed that a man only had a limited amount of sperm
and if you kept masturbating you would use all of it and not have any for child
bearing (2).
Overall, Don Jon was a very entertain
movie. I would recommend it to other people. Seeing controversial issues, such
as porn watching, masturbation, and premarital sex take place in an everyday
life combined with the themes I have learned in this class definitely changes
my thought process on some of these touchy subjects.
