What is Don Jon Saying About our Society?

Don Jon, a film by Joseph Gordon Levitt, is currently in theaters and is about the man Jon Martello who “objectifies everything in his life: his apartment, his car, his family, his church, and, of course, women. His buddies even call him Don Jon because of his ability to pull “10s” every weekend without fail. Yet even the finest flings don’t compare to the transcendent bliss he achieves alone in front of the computer watching pornography. Dissatisfied, he embarks on a journey to find a more gratifying sex life, but ends up learning larger lessons of life and love through relationships with two very different women” (“Don Jon”, 2013). The film itself is anti-porn, commenting on the power of relationships and the growing disillusionment and renewal of Jon Martello. However, I believe that there is more to be learned from this film than just its anti-porn perspective. The film is a cultural statement, and a powerful one at that. Problems in our society are shown through the ignorance and addictions of Don Jon, and we need to heed its warnings.

            Jon Martello finds himself dissatisfied with the women in his life and finds pleasure in porn instead. The digital sex is better than in real life because you “lose yourself in it”. However, after meeting a beautiful woman, played by Scarlett Johansson, he gets into a serious relationship and has to promise to stop watching porn. Unfortunately, he can’t, and it eventually interferes with his relationship and he has to try and cope with his addiction or else lose the one girl he thought he loved. The film is about Jon’s attempt to satisfy his needs through human intimacy rather than the Internet, and how he has become so lost to the world of porn that it is difficult for him to truly enjoy human interaction. His friendship with his pals is real, but their conversations based around women. His family (namely his father) is too busy watching the football game on the television to pay attention to Jon’s conversation, and his sister is always texting and never paying attention. His girlfriend, also, has a fantasized ideal of relationships that came from film and movies, while Jon’s comes from pornographic material.

            Sound familiar? The problems the many characters face in the film that contributes to the overall dysfunctionality of their relationships. These issues are present in our society, and Don Jon is making a statement. With media being displayed on screens more and more, and texting replacing human interaction, and our fantasized ideals taking place online and in movies, we are losing our independence from media. The increasing popularity of smart phones, tablets, laptops, and the everyday use of the Internet has resulted in a generation of young adults and children who identify more with their screens than with their friends. All printed media is slowly shifting towards the internet. Not only is there a media problem where we are constantly bombarded with content to read, watch, listen to, etc. but there is also a digitalization problem that is drawing us away from physical interaction.

            Don Jon does a fantastic job of showing this issue and presenting it in a way that will draw the attention of a massive audience. While many people ignore the hypercommercialism around them (or at least try to), and spend their free time online, and text each other rather than calling (which within itself is already a step down from face to face interaction), we as a society are becoming more and more individualized and isolated. Just as Don Jon had an addiction to Internet pornography, which was getting in the way of his relationships, our society too has an addiction to media and the Internet. Our increasing presence online is a slippery slope, and this film by Joseph Gordon Levitt warns us about the pitfalls of getting too deeply involved with media. Physical newspapers are dying in place of online news sites. We are ignoring the hypercommercialism around us, but are looking directly at Internet ads as we scroll through our web browsers. Books, CDs, DVDs even, are being placed online in order to cut down costs of production. This addiction to the digitalization of our lives makes our critical analysis of media even harder. At what point do we become too reliant on the media around us? The media is a reflection of our society, and if the society is becoming even more dependent on the Internet and more isolated, it won’t help draw us back together, but will help individualize us even more (as seen with magazines having to reach to a more segmented audience). While there are advantages to this shift in our society, there are many problems that we don’t easily notice, and Don Jon has done a fantastic job of reminding me of the importance of physical human interaction. We need to all fight the slippery slope of digital media consumption—a big thanks to Don Jon for pushing the issue back into the limelight.  

 

 

References

 

Don Jon. (2013). Retrieved October 20, 2013, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2229499/