You can blame puritanical, evangelist America and its aversion to any sexual expression but that of white, cis-het men for this, of course. It took 20 years to get from Cameron Diaz unknowingly using Ben Stiller\u2019s semen as hair gel in There\u2019s Something About Mary<\/em> to Juliette Binoche writhing herself to completion in the fuck box of Claire Denis\u2019s High Life<\/em>. Moments of female pleasure were so long frowned upon<\/a> by the Motion Picture Association of America\u2019s ratings system that filmmaker Derek Cianfrance had to fight the organization in October 2010 on its initial NC-17 designation for Blue Valentine<\/em>, caused by a scene in which Ryan Gosling\u2019s Dean performs oral sex on Michelle Williams\u2019s Cindy. Two months later, the MPAA blinked<\/a>, and the film received an R rating without Cianfrance having to make any cuts. Meanwhile, primarily male-driven sex comedies like Porky\u2019s<\/em>, American Pie<\/em>, and Hall Pass<\/em> had no problem securing R ratings. (Meaning, as the New York Times<\/em> discussed in an anxious piece about Porky\u2019s<\/em> in 1982<\/a>, that children under 17 years old could still see the films in theaters with adult supervision, an accommodation that NC-17 ratings do not allow.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this is to say: It still feels special to watch a movie in which a woman\u2019s orgasm is given narrative primacy. Why is why 1996\u2019s Fear<\/em>, inarguably a Very Bad Movie, is also<\/em> inarguably a Very Perfect Movie in one respect: that roller coaster sex scene. Reese Witherspoon\u2019s breathy sighs! Mark Wahlberg\u2019s smug smile! The very thoughtful use of The Sundays\u2019 cover of the Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201cWild Horses\u201d (three years before Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em> used the song in season three episode \u201cThe Prom\u201d)! Those diffused neon carnival lights, and that extremely on-the-nose plummet down the coaster track, and director James Foley\u2019s return, over and over again, to Witherspoon\u2019s and Wahlberg\u2019s fingers entwined together under her miniskirt. \u201cI definitely never felt it before,\u201d Witherspoon\u2019s Nicole says afterward to her friend Gary (Todd Caldecott), who Wahlberg\u2019s David will eventually kill in a fit of explosive, unhinged jealousy. I\u2019ll have what she\u2019s having,<\/em> except for, you know, the whole lying-and-murder-and-cheating-and-home-invasion thing. One orgasm, please!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fear<\/em> hit theaters in 1996, at a time when Hollywood was committed to the sexy thriller, and the genre itself was committed to inadvertent campiness. There was Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s 1990 film Blue Steel<\/em><\/a>, in which Jamie Lee Curtis\u2019s cop protagonist Megan Turner chases a serial killer she\u2019s actually unknowingly dating, the Gordon Gekko type Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver). There was Paul Verhoeven\u2019s Basic Instinct<\/em>, and the Wachowskis\u2019s 1996 directorial debut, the neo-noir Bound<\/em>. And there was a mini-trend, too, in which female teen protagonists experienced their sexual awakening and became unrecognizable either to themselves or others around them. Katt Shea\u2019s Poison Ivy<\/em>, with Drew Barrymore as a low-brow young woman trying to ingratiate herself with Sara Gilbert\u2019s wealthy family; Alan Shapiro\u2019s The Crush<\/em>, with Alicia Silverstone in her feature film debut as a Lolita-like teen obsessed with her neighbor; and John McNaughton\u2019s Wild Things<\/em> starring Neve Campbell and Denise Richards, which Roger Ebert so accurately described as \u201clurid trash.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Foley\u2019s Fear<\/em>, despite also centering a teen girl, is practically the inverse of Poison Ivy<\/em>, The Crush<\/em>, and Wild Things<\/em>, in which duplicitous, lecherous, and lewd young women were the focus. Instead, you can\u2019t get more all-American, na\u00efve, or virginal than Witherspoon as 16-year-old Nicole Walker, a character who Foley and screenwriter Christopher Crowe sexualize, but never patronize. We see Nicole in steamy showers inside her family\u2019s privately guarded wood-and-stone mansion, and we see her underwear peeking out from underneath too-short minis, and we see her in a frilly floral dress complete with white bobby socks and patent-leather Mary Janes. Nicole is fully in charge of how she presents herself, though, refusing to acquiesce to either her father Steven\u2019s (William Petersen) babying or her stepmother Laura\u2019s (Amy Brenneman) shaming, and also not entirely willing to go full bad girl like best friend Margo (Alyssa Milano, all midriff). (In Nicole\u2019s bursts of spiky directness, we see the actress Witherspoon would become; a defiant, leg-askew stance seems like an early version of Madeline Mackenzie\u2019s sarcastic shrug in Big Little Lies<\/em>.) Nicole is sometimes tip-toeing toward adulthood, sometimes sprinting toward it, and the latter method picks up steam when she meets the soft-spoken, hunky David (Wahlberg), who can fill out a black thermal but who also asks Nicole about her feelings<\/em>. He doesn\u2019t seem quite real, and of course, he isn\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Where is the camp in all this? In her seminal 1964 essay, \u201cNotes on \u2018Camp,\u2019\u201d<\/a> writer and filmmaker Susan Sontag described \u201cthe essence of Camp\u201d as \u201cits love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration \u2026 To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.\u201d To view Fear<\/em> through a camp lens, then, is to pinpoint instances where character behaviors are pointedly performative, and where an emphasis on inflated style overtakes narrative particulars. Which is so goddamn often! Crowe\u2019s script literally<\/em> has David say that Nicole<\/em> is the one who seems too good to be true, and the essential quality here is not just the fact that David is lying, but how<\/em> he lies. How Wahlberg\u2019s voice goes an octave or so higher while dropping into a whisper; how his smile always seems a little bit off; how he befriends Nicole\u2019s little brother and her dog and her disapproving stepmother, all in one fell swoop; how he sleeps under a self-made shrine of Nicole, with a picture of her face taped over a portrait of the Virgin Mary; how he beats his fist to his chest in a scene that\u2019s been widely mimicked in a variety of subsequent pop culture, most hilariously in the sitcom It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Conversely, there\u2019s camp in Petersen\u2019s dad character, too. He practically drools over teenage Margo\u2019s ass when she bends over, wordlessly admitting to David that all his money and prestige haven\u2019t wiped away an inherent male skeeziness. His best threat during a fight with David involves ripped-off testicles stuffed into mouths. How passe<\/em>. Stephen\u2019s attempts at masculine posturing are so amateurish as to be embarrassing, and yet he and David serve as two poles of influence for Nicole, with her stuck in the middle between their crossed arms and clenched jaws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is again why that roller-coaster scene is so important: It\u2019s the only moment in Fear<\/em> that is purely about Nicole, what she wants, and what her desire transforms within her. Campiness falls away as Foley presents this carnival date like a gauzy, edgy-meets-romantic dream. \u201cWild Horses\u201d starts to play, David and Nicole are unabashedly making out, and when they climb onto the ride together and David\u2019s hand ends up between her legs, Nicole holds it there. She takes a big gulp of air, closes her eyes, and mimics the action of the roller coaster\u2014up and up and up<\/em> until her whole body is gyrating, she throws her head back, and the car plummets downward. With her eyes closed, Nicole misses David\u2019s reaction (his licked lips, his slight squint), and in that way, the film rejects any reading of her sexual gratification as anything but genuine. David and Stephen are pantomiming versions of \u201cthe good boyfriend\u201d and \u201cthe good dad\u201d in fighting over her, but Nicole is never anything but herself, and her satisfaction is pure and without pretense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As Sontag wrote, \u201cintending to be campy is always harmful,\u201d and the reason Fear<\/em> is still a perfectly watchable bad movie 25 years later is thanks to the appreciable contrast between the sincerity of that roller coaster scene and the unintentional absurdity of so much else. The brief glimpse we see of David\u2019s self-administered \u201cNICOLE 4 EVA\u201d tattoo on those famed Wahlberg abs, or his screaming delivery of \u201cLet me in the fucking house!\u201d into the Walkers\u2019 front-door peephole. Nicole stabbing David in the back with the peace pipe he won for her at the carnival after their roller coaster rendezvous (symbolism!<\/em>), and Stephen defying all rules of physics and gravity to throw David hundreds of feet out of Nicole\u2019s bedroom window to land on a rock formation below. Fear <\/em>envelops its goofy elements with utter seriousness, and that makes it a camp delight; Fear<\/em> gives primacy to a young woman\u2019s sexual awakening, and that makes it a pleasure, no guilt involved.\u00a0 “Fear” is currently streaming on HBO Max<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fear2-1.gif\")
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