Someone once told me that much of media’s appeal—news, shows, movies—was that it gave the middle and lower classes a window onto how the richest live. The prole and cubicle drone hordes being endlessly interested in the ways of the rich. This is what Californication has to offer.
For men, Hank Moody (David Duchovney’s character) is a sort of male antihero we could almost imagine exists; who, if we’re smart, we could almost imagine being. A good-looking, high-functioning Charles Bukowski, Hank inhabits a Los Angeles that certainly doesn’t exist anymore, at least for those with sub eight-figure incomes. A white LA, where Porsches are mundane, houses are sprawling and hopelessly chic, where entertainment industry scum snort cocaine at boisterous parties filled with attractive 30 and 40somethings.
Hank is, in almost every way, the perfect badboy lead. Given his lesser-fame, free time, social savvy and David Duchovney looks, his effortless sexual access to LA’s “top shelf pussy” isn’t hard to believe. With more fame, effort and sociopathy, this is how a Charlie Sheen, Gene Simmons or Simon Cowell-level notch count are reached.
Fornication is a compellingly honest depiction of male/female sexual relations. Karen, Hank’s former commonlaw wife and baby-mama is engaged to an ultra-rich higher beta—Bill. Throughout the first season the higher beta occasionally deviates from Karen’s 972-point check list (HT Heartiste), such as suggesting that Karen and Hank’s shockingly reasonable and unspoiled 12 year old bastard daughter and her band not play a Warren Zevon cover at his upcoming wedding to her mother, but instead play his favorite Brown Eyed Girl. How dare he.
The chode, to use Krauser’s term of art, is self destructively thoughtful in his dealings with his gorgeous Blue State fiancé. Recalling how his betrothed had once mentioned how she loved her dorm room view at NYU, Bill the Chode has a black and white photo taken from the same room, giving the photo to her when he comes back from a long business trip to Manhattan. Unbeknownst to Bill though, Karen has slept with Hank while Bill was away. Although Karen strives to hold back the sea of emotions she feels for Hank, she’s swept out with the tide by season’s end, jumping into the back of Hank’s two seat convertible on the wedding night of her marriage to Greater Beta Bill.
Poor, unsympathetically-portrayed Bill, who’s lost his first wife to illness, who’s thrown perhaps a million dollars into Karen’s lavish, middle-aged princess fantasy wedding, attended to her every need and offered her a chance at self-actualization by subsidizing her career, is left standing in the road watching Hank’s Porsche speed off with his future. It is implied that the aborted marriage is hard on Bill, as the first episode of the second season shows his house derelict, overrun by his slut-daughter’s scum-of-the-earth rich kid friends. The message is clear though, Bill isn’t sexy like Hank, so fuck Bill.
It’s hard to say how realistic this particular story line is. Would Karen, a rapidly aging Ten, cast aside a marriage to a man of such means? Bill is by no means a push over, despite his fundamental betaness. Yet, given Hank’s effortless and respectable financial resources, massive preselection (Karen affects outrage and disgust at his sundry high-quality lays) and past sexual bonding to Hank, it is at least plausible. More importantly though, Californication’s first season shows us some basic mechanisms that underlie male-female sexual relations:
- Hypergamy, women are always looking to trade up.
- Preselection, Hank’s writing fame and reputation as a lady killer build a virtuous cycle wherein 9s and 10s (albeit some of them well into their 30s) fall into his lap.
- Good looks and lifestyle matter, Hank has a sexy nonjob identity as a potty-mouthed writer. He drives a 911 but it’s beaten up and filthy. While he is in his core a good man, Hank constantly shows hard dominance, physically confronting and escalating situations which most men in his class would seek to calm. He’s fucking interesting.
In closing
I have to confess, that unlike some NRx folks, I don’t personally want to go back to pre-sexual-revolution/modern economy norms. I enjoy meaningless sex. I get bored with places and enjoy a rootless existence, migrating to the highest bidder’s city. I was quite drawn to most of the world that Californication portays. Many NRxers won’t be.
