Dancing With Phallus

Okay, you talked me into it. I see I have no choice. I'm gonna have to discuss Kevin Costner spanking the monkey in Scotland in front of an outraged masseuse.

Here are the facts, according to the AP:

Kevin Costner and his wife stayed at the Old Course Hotel in Fife, Scotland in October, 2004. While there, he received a massage from a masseuse employed by the hotel.

This is what the masseuse alleges, according to a South African website Tonight (http://tonight.co.za):

During the massage, the unnamed woman contends, Costner "kept putting his hand underneath his towel." At a further point in the massage, Costner "grabbed her wrist forcefully, whipped off his towel and exposed himself."

"Even though he was a Hollywood superstar," the masseuse continued, "I couldn't believe he thought he could get away with something like that. He abused me and I considered that a criminal act."

I believe that, technically, he was abusing himself, but we'll let it go.

The woman was fired by the hotel, and she charged them (and not, it is important to note, Costner) with unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination. She has received a settlement and has not been named in the press that I know about.

Kevin Costner has refused to comment on this story. Wise move on his part. According to the AP, Costner's spokesman Paul Bloch said that "This was never about Kevin Costner. It is a dispute between a hotel and an ex-employee." This is technically correct, but wildly unrealistic. If the masseuse had been complaining about some horny executive at Microsoft or CBS, this would not be a story. It's only a story because the guy who was allegedly choking the chicken was a "Hollywood superstar," in the masseuse's words.

The unnamed masseuse might consider what Costner is alleged to have done a "criminal act," but it's worthwhile to remember that Costner has not been charged with anything. I don't know if Scotland has a statute of limitations on jerking off in front of a masseuse, but I doubt it's expired after less than two years.

But just for the sake of the argument, as a "thought experiment," as Bill Bennett would say, let's assume that the Scottish woman's accusations are 100% accurate. What should we think about this arguably sordid story?

Once you scratch the surface, this story is about privilege and entitlement. It's about what the servants are expected to do and put up with. After all, Costner wasn't asking the masseuse to do anything to him (as Prince Charles was alleged to have been routinely wanked by his butler -- a charge that was hushed up in the British press) -- all he apparently wanted her to do was watch.

Public masturbation has a long history. As far back as Ancient Greece, the philosopher Diogenes routinely jerked off in public in the marketplace. When he was upbraided for doing so, he is supposed to have said (according to Diogenes Laertius, whose Lives of the Philosophers is full of juicy tidbits like this) that wouldn't it be wonderful if we could similarly assuage our hunger pangs by merely rubbing our bellies? Even today there is a club in New York City where men (gay, straight and in-between, as Dr. John Money would say) meet once a week to jerk off together.

The problem here is not that Costner wanted to masturbate in front of the masseuse (if that is indeed what he did), but that he didn't bother to ask her if she minded watching. He just seemed to have assumed that: a) she wouldn't mind, and: b) that she wouldn't talk about it. There is a certain sense of droit de seigneur here, that given the fact that he's a movie star she should feel proud that he chose to allow her to get a glimpse of his manly member in motion, as it were.

So it may have been poor judgment on Costner's part to assume that the masseuse wouldn't mind -- if her allegations are true, which they may not be. But even if they are, that's not what I'm going to think about Kevin Costner in the final analysis.

I'm going to think about a whole different story, which has not been given play in the press.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Dances With Wolves, which in my opinion is one of the five worst films ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture*. But there's a story about Costner during the making of that film that most people don't know.

Costner's co-star on that film was a wonderful actress named Mary McDonnell. During the making of the film her mother was gravely ill, and as the film moved through post-production it didn't look like she was going to live long enough to see her daughter's big break. She'd be dead by the time the film opened.

Somehow, Costner found out about this. And though the film wasn't finished, he took a rough cut and a VCR to the hospital so that Mary McDonnell's mother could see her daughter's performance before she died.

I heard this story from someone who heard it from Mary McDonnell herself, and she said that when McDonnell finished telling this story, she had tears in her eyes, and all she could say was, "Kevin Costner is a prince."

That's the Kevin Costner I'll choose to remember.

Tom Moran

* The other four, in case you're wondering, are The Broadway Melody, The Greatest Show on Earth, Gandhi and American Beauty, with Cimarron, Calvacade, Going My Way and Around the World in 80 Days close behind.