Don Jon Disappoints and Misleads
After the recently released and quite good sex addiction themed film Thanks for Sharing, there was a lot of hope that the even more recently released porn addiction themed film Don Jon would be equally accurate and compelling. Unfortunately, it is not.
The film’s main character, Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), is a Jersey Shore wannabe obsessed with his car, his pad, his male friends, his body, his religion, and porn. He masturbates to porn multiple times each day, even though he consistently picks up hot women for casual sex. In fact, he is so successful scoring with “dimes,” as he and his friends call attractive women, that his buddies have nicknamed him “Don Jon.” (Many scenes will be triggering for sex and porn addicts, so the film should be viewed with extreme caution.) Unfortunately, Jon’s in-person sexual encounters are far from mind-blowing, and as soon as whatever woman he is with has fallen asleep, he is out of bed, logging onto his laptop for the fix he finds online. At several points during the film he readily, even gleefully, admits that he prefers porn to the real thing.
Publicity photo courtesy of http://donjonmovie.tumblr.com/
Despite his penchant for porn, Jon eventually meets and falls for Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), another Jersey Shore wannabe. (The film is literally overflowing with negative “Jersey” stereotypes.) Barbara, in addition to being the hottest
thing Jon has ever seen, is addicted to romantic movies, objectifying the men in them the same way that Jon objectifies the women he sees in porn. And both parties expect their real-world partners to live up to what they see onscreen, which of course is totally impossible.
Jon convinces himself he’s in love with Barbara, and he thereafter allows her to control him. He attends night school to appease her, he introduces her to his family and meets her family to appease her, he acts as if he wants to be a husband and father to appease her, and he even says he will never use porn again to appease her (after she catches him masturbating one night after sex).
Of course, Jon is a porn addict and in no way, shape, or form does he quit. Nor in fact does he ever intend to quit. He lies to Barbara and even to his priest in confession, saying that he’s given it up, but he is using it as much as ever. At one point he gets caught looking at porn on his smartphone during his night school class by Esther (Julianne Moore), an older female student. Even though Esther is much older and obviously very troubled – she has crying jags, she gets high before class, she brings a porn video in for Jon to watch – they eventually strike up a tentative friendship that quickly turns sexual.
Eventually Barbara finds out that Jon has not quit porn (by checking his browser history). She storms out and the relationship ends, which, given her many issues and controlling behavior, is not a bad thing. Nevertheless, Jon lies about the breakup to his family because his mother really liked Barbara. However, he tells the truth about what happened to Esther.
Up to this point, the film is relatively accurate in its depiction of porn addiction. From here on out, however, it’s a disaster. After Esther confesses that her husband and son were recently killed in an auto accident, she suggests to Jon that sex is more than just getting off, that it involves a two-way connection. She tells him you have to look into the eyes of and really “be with” the other person. That, of course, is good advice, but not advice that active porn addicts have much hope of absorbing and following with any degree of success – at least not until they’ve done a whole lot of work to establish sobriety and to uncover and address the underlying issues that drive their emotionally disconnected sexual fantasies and behaviors. Nevertheless, Jon looks deeply into Esther’s eyes and they “make love” in a very intimate way. And thereafter Jon somehow manages to stay away from porn, as if all his internal issues simply disappeared with one quick coaching session from an older, drug addicted, deeply troubled woman.
Not only is the ending of Don Jon unrealistic, it is misleading about the path to and effort required for recovery from porn addiction. On top of glorifying porn use and casual sex, with scenes that will probably trigger many sex and porn addicts, the film may actually be counterproductive from a healing perspective because it so seriously misleads viewers about the ways in which porn addiction can effectively be dealt with. This film is not recommended as a tool of recovery.