Letting the rich and famous do our philandering for us has its advantages
The Age
Friday December 18, 2009
REMEMBER Zeus? In Greek mythology he was god among gods, living it swell on Mount Olympus with his wife and consort, Hera (also his sister). Zeus had a spectacular case of roving eye; no pretty mortal maiden ever escaped his lordly lust. Consequently, Hera spent her time furiously swooping down from Mount Olympus to punish her husband and the maiden. She had a taste for punishing maidens. One of her nastiest was transforming the exquisite Io into a black-and-white heifer.Tiger Wood's wife, Elin Nordegren, can't transform women into heifers but she has taken off her wedding ring and moved out of her Florida Olympus while she does the mandatory soul-searching. This should cover the psychological implications of why most of the women her husband had sex with look like her and the meaning of fidelity in her situation. Meanwhile, TW remains steady in the headlines and wobbly in his income.Adultery has always been a tease of histrionic drama and fabulous theatre. The groovy Old Testament is full of it, and didn't Joseph have some doubts about Mary's story? We all know about Henry VIII refashioning the church to suit his appetites and Charles II refashioning the concept of wenching, and the mind-bending sexual range of various French nobility. Our eyes widen as our brains compute over JFK and Bill Clinton, and lately we have been able to snigger at both Silvio Berlusconi. Even the adorable David Beckham wasn't faithful to his spicy girl. Rumour has it that Victoria is counselling Elin. Hillary too?Yet there's something more than theatrical prurience here. Former US president and current Christian Jimmy Carter skewered it when he said that while he hadn't actually followed through, he had "committed adultery in my heart many times". Ain't that the truth.Adultery is paradox. Love makes us aspire to the ideal of fidelity; lust makes us aspire to the idea of adultery. What's the mathematical equation? We're as aspirational about adultery, or infidelity, or fornication €” whatever you call that flip in your heart and nip in your loins €” as we are about money, food, class and love. Desire enlivens us as nothing else does. Recent polls suggest that well over half the population has been unfaithful within a declared monogamous relationship. It gives substance to Oscar Wilde's witticism that: "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary to both parties".Beneath this civilised surface of love and commitment there's another, more secret world that's a hangover from prehistoric days when surviving was about spreading your seed widely and indiscriminately for men and mating with those most likely to survive for women. We know about it, but we haven't always been eager to acknowledge it. The Eyes Wide Shut syndrome. It makes for great fetishes €” ask the Victorians.We've always wanted to read about it. There is an entire genre called the novel of adultery, the most celebrated featuring Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary and Lady Chatterley. But the world speeds along and electronic communication shrinks us into the global village, so although we still like reading modern versions of adultery, and more (the novels of Michel Houellebecq), reading isn't enough. Other parts of the village seem more appealing than our own well-worn territory. If we want we can be in a constant state of newly minted desire. Desire, fused with the ordinariness of travel €” something we also used to aspire to but rarely managed to achieve €” means that adultery is smarter. Travel and adultery become a package. If you are far from home, you're less likely to be sprung.Unless you are famous. And isn't this the puzzling thing about Tiger Woods, not the fact that he likes serial sex with blonde women who resemble his wife? Did he think that his sexual partners would assume he was a Tiger Woods impersonator? Did he take "transports of delight" literally and think sex happened in a parallel universe? His thinking-through certainly doesn't match his follow-through; how could he not expect that these women would want to talk, or shout, about their conquest? (If you'd had sex with Tiger Woods, you'd be unnatural if you didn't want to tell your 10 best friends). Fame has acquired a new and less noble meaning since John Milton wrote: "Fame is the spur." It now means "celebrity". For a few of these women, sex with this particular Tiger meant exactly that. Probably more than the cash.The jaw-dropping saga of Charles and Diana marked the divergence between what was known and what could be told. Journalists have always known details of private lives, but there have been unwritten codes. Before Charles and Diana those who broke the codes and wrote what they shouldn't were looked down upon within the trade. When the Charles and Diana story broke, what story in the paper did we read first? The one about the politicians, or the starving children in Africa, or the one about the bedroom behaviour of the rich and famous? Adultery, from the safety, and maybe boredom, of that historical and increasingly theoretical ideal, marital fidelity, looks fascinating.And alarming.It's OK for the rich and famous to do it but what if, like them, we all actually acted on what Jimmy Carter observed in his heart? Society wouldn't be society. Fidelity and monogamy are flimsy enough ideals for humans (frail things) to build a society upon, but no one has come up with anything better. Utopias never work. Adultery is complicated. Letting the rich and famous do our philandering for us means that not only can we look on with vicarious awe and occasional envy, but we can also have a quick stab of malicious delight when those who live on Mount Olympus are caught.Tragically, transgressors can't be turned into trees, or heifers, or reduced to echoes but they must at least pretend penance. For a time. Money must have no meaning at this point to Tiger Woods, so he has nothing to lose but his reputation, that old-fashioned thing now called "branding". Still, Tiger's reputation was as dull as Steve Fielding's so he might be keen to embrace something fresh in Wikipedia: famous adulterer €” and great golfer, perhaps? Maybe there is no puzzle. Maybe Tiger wanted to be caught. It must get mighty dull being good, especially when you don't have to be. As Zeus knew, the gods always play without mortal rules. Just don't try to imitate them.
© 2009 The Age
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