Today’s newsletter explores themes from tomorrow’s Film Night. The movie we’re studying together is Shame, and you can sign up for the round-table call here.

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So if you love this week’s film as a model of seduction, you’ve got a few problems to explain.

First: why’s the movie called Shame?

Second: how do you explain the second half of the story, where the smoothest guy in New York loses his skills, then seems to totally unravel?

Third: explain why roughly 10% of the film’s images are of Brandon seducing or having sex, but the other 90% of the runtime sees him fighting with his sister, feverishly jacking off, or looking lonely in the night or in the rain.

Fourth: what the hell happened with Marianne? If you remember, halfway through their lovemaking Brandon walks away and hangs his head in a corner… while she leaves the hotel suite, and his life.

Fifth: what about his face as he makes ‘love’… is this enjoyment? If you remember the final sex-scene, a threesome with two whores in golden light, it seems more like an exorcism than ‘pleasure shared’.

I could think of more problems, but this is enough!

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The Story of Men Today

A few minutes into the presentation tomorrow, I will pause the movie, and ask you what you notice about the colour: the palette, the textures used, the shades of Brandon’s clothes. Everything in shot, in almost every scene, is tainted teal or grey. Even New York City—a shock for the senses of most visitors—contains no radiance. Everything here is sallow, ghostlike.

The movie itself is the colour of shame.

How does this relate to the Amorati, to men today? Well, you might want the skills of a seducer. But your insides might feel grey. You may have an extaordinary night where you clutch a girl from beneath the claws of some richer, more handsome friend, and giggle together as you hide in some alley, fondling. Yet beyond that, 90%+ of the scenes of your life can feel grey.

In my late twenties—a year before joining the Ars Amorata—I had returned to England to work a couple of apprenticeships in the coaching field. I was poorly paid, and always on public transport. I remember catching my reflection one night in the window of a London bus: everything I wore—scarf, hat, coat, trousers, complexion—was a different shade of grey. Both my designer and my new-age girlfriends say the same: what a man wears reflects his internal mind.

The reason many of you feel an ongoing icky feeling with seduction is not that you think flirtation, attraction, and sex are bad. We all love the phrasing in Zan’s book; most of us have glimpsed a few days of relative freedom, where you walked through the world, winking and insinuating with ease and delight.

But seduction—certainly in English-speaking (and most rational or religious) cultures, is entangled with what Brandon shows here. Compulsion, loneliness, self-avoidance, self-disgust. The equation is this: if you are trying to seduce, and you feel some sense of incompleteness, and you’re reaching out to her to fill a sort of hole—to stave away the pain—no matter how smooth you are in the act of it, there’s simply an ickiness to that. And if you don’t feel it, someone else will.

Why is there any ickiness to that? Because it’s actually indirect, a manipulation. You might be bold in your invitation to take her to bed: honest about the surface play of things. But if your real motivation is I want to feel good about myself by scoring your body, rather than I feel great in your company and want to share with you my delight, you’re using her to fill that inner need. While she might be using you, too.

What is that (mostly secret, mostly blind-to-us) inner need? In Brandon’s story, of course, it’s shame.

The movie is an unraveling, downward-spiralling descent into Brandon’s humiliation, and his pervasive, unconscious ocean of inner shame.

Psychologically, it’s brilliantly written. And I look forward to going through it with you.

Why? Again, because this is the story of many Amorati. Years lost in bootcamps, in youtube, in newsletters like this one, trying to up our skills, when 90% of the leverage for having a soulful, life-giving relationship to women… comes from healing our shame.

It’s simply a happy coincidence that the other effect of such healing is that, when we’re not with women, we start enjoying the other 90% of the frames of our lives, too.

The sky may even taint a different colour.

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Brandon is Lucky the Way Many of us Aren’t

How does Brandon’s addiction (his ego defense) unravel, and how does he heal the ‘broken child’ beneath?

Two words: Terror and Grace.

—> Sissy, the representation of his inner feminine—the split-off other side of his familial trauma—gets too close to him to ignore;

—> Humiliated by his boss on multiple fronts, Brandon loses the safety of his detached identity, and feels further reduced in his work;

—> Marianne: God forbid we ever run into an actual adult woman who offers us intimacy and sex at the same time! This is often too much for an unhealed man to deal with: it was this double-impact that melted me open, too.

—> Encountering Death. Or at least the abject terror that it might have happened.

Brandon experiences a journey of ‘healing through life’. I wouldn’t say he’s lucky, actually—the experience clobbers him pretty hard. And as he sits on the subway in the final frame, he might have no language to make sense of what he’s been through.

But think about David, the boss character. That’s an ego structure set to perpetuate a lot more pain and suffering, at least for the time being.

Anyway, more tomorrow, where I’ll talk you through what I see in Shame, and respond to your insights and questions.

Register here if you haven’t already. You’ve got a day to watch the movie to be part of this live.

~ Jordan

P.S. I produced something really special this summer: it was called The Hidden Sides of Seduction, Season #1.

What you’re getting this week is a taste of that. 

And, there’s more coming this winter. A deep dive into the subtleties of the most crucial aspects of seduction, intimacy, and relationship.

I’ll help you cultivate an awareness of sub-communication, of those invisible relationship dynamics, that will open up entire worlds. Experience freedom and leadership in opening up to the reality of women. All through an adventure in the world of cinema.

Enroll today. You’ll get immediate access to everything from Season #1, and you will secure your spot for Season #2, starting December 1st.

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