Spanking the Monkey (1994)
American Oedipus goes nuts for Mummy’s pie
Contains incestual spoilers
To come across the title and take a peek at the poster for David O. Russell’s debut feature, Spanking the Monkey, you’d be forgiven for writing it off as your typical 90s flick like American Pie or Road Trip, despite it being released half a decade earlier. A silly bit of fun with a touch of heart, involving cringe sex between virgins and a whole lot of fapping off throughout a standard 90 minute run. You’d probably even dismiss it over such initial impressions, unless you were in the mood for some mindless, masturbation focused indulgence. With such a base title and cocky looking twat on the cheaply slapped together poster, what else would one think?
Whatever led to these fuckups, Spanking the Monkey deserved a whole lot better. Bar a couple of issues more related to its low budget, indie flick status than anything else, the biggest flaw of the film is in its woeful representation. It’s like a psychologically scarred and traumatised young man, dressed in the clothes of a horned up teenager after just discovering the hub. Even then, you wouldn’t assume he was searching for mummy teaches son how to poon vids just yet. Unless, of course, you also just so happened to already be subscribed to g.c. fucking mckay. (wink)
The monkey to be spanked, the gherkin begging for a jerkin’ or the slug looking for a tug is found between the legs of Raymond, a promising young medical student at MIT. Believing he’s soon to be joining a prestigious internship, Raymond travels back home with his combative father for what he believes will only be a couple of days, where he’ll play nurse to his poor mummy, bedridden after having recently broken her leg. During the ride, however, it becomes clear that Raymond ain’t going nowhere anytime soon, since daddy, a travelling salesman, vamooses as soon as they arrive. As mummy can’t make do alone, Raymond finds himself stuck looking after her and his dad’s dog, all while the opportunity of his lifetime slowly slips through his, shall we say, attentive fingers. Trying his best to make do with a shit situation, Raymond gets friendly with the cutie next door, only for mummy to say she’s too young for him. At first, this seems like standard, motherly concern… until things start to get a little weird. Ray not only carries his mother to the bathroom, he stands by as she showers as well, then scrubs her back on occasion and gets a glimpse of her breasts on others. For some reason, there’s a delay with getting her crutches, so what’s a good, if not awkward, doting son to do? How else is a mother expected to keep fresh and clean? They’re just a very close mother and son. A little too close, perhaps, but there’s nothing technically wrong with it. Things get stranger when the application of moisturiser lotions and consumption of massive vodka tonics get thrown into the mix. Could it be that mummy was only concerned about the age of the girl next door because she felt threatened or even jealous?
With his stoner loser pals all saying his mum’s a bonafide milf, and every other male barring his father confirming her sexual attractiveness, the ever anxious Ray, though stressed by her troubled, alarming behaviour, and against his better judgement and will, starts to realise he wouldn’t mind a bit of mummy for himself.
Hence the confusion of the title and marketing campaign. The Raymond depicted on the poster is in no way the Raymond we meet on screen. For one thing, he’s got nothing to be smirking about. His life is one of discomfort, to say the least, toppled only by humiliation at every turn. From the get go it’s clear his daddy’s a selfish fucknut who bullies and emotionally blackmails him. Likewise his mother, whose sultry gaze and inquisitions into her son’s sex life feel as awkward as they sound. The virginal girl next door teases him about being gay when he isn’t dominant enough and then rapey when he takes charge. Even the dog cockblocks him from choking the chicken by squealing and scratching at the bathroom door. And his stoner friends only appear to play a part in the film to remind Ray they think of him as nothing but a pussy wet bitch.
Whilst the tagline on the poster reads ‘a gripping comedy about letting go’ in a crude, Freudian pun akin to its title, Spanking the Monkey’s greatest achievement is how it takes Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, tinges it with Shakespearean tragicomedy and tucks it neatly within the bedsheets of 90s suburban America, where dreams and illicit fantasises become the stuff of living nightmares. Instead of a teen-sex comedy romp of little consequence, Spanking the Monkey is a story of familial dysfunction at its core, where the mismatched roles of its members are all the more jarring and disturbing, precisely because you can see how an incestuous relationship could come into fruition. It’s awkward, unnerving, inappropriate and eerily erotic, not out of embellishing the concept of consensual incest but because it makes it so easy to conceive of, too understandable for the general comfort of the human condition. In essence, it tickles the balls of truth. Like many a taboo for many a person, Spanking the Monkey hits a little too close to home.
And it’s precisely for this reason you should fucking watch it.
Oh, and in case you wondered where you’ve seen Jeremy Davies, the leading actor before, he was in Saving Private Ryan. The Upham guy, running around shitting himself, translating German. The dude who didn’t know the meaning of FUBAR until near the end of the flick. After finishing Spanking the Monkey, I had a similar sentiment.
