[Salacious]

Mjmills

9 min read

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Jan 31, 2026

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The last decade of American life has seemed a tad obsessed with the topic of sex. This is not a new phenomenon, even as a child I was aware that the rich and famous were getting into scandalous business up to their eyeballs, but the last ten years things have felt particularly pointed in a particularly stupid way. Whether it be scandals (or non-scandals?) that encompass everyone from our elected leaders, our technological leaders, or just self-styled leaders, everyone seems to be caught up in some nonsense or another. Folks just can’t seem to keep their business in appropriate spaces. Is this an inevitable part of being human? A byproduct of the excesses of a post-industrial society? The result of a moral compromise we have collectively bargained with? Maybe a bit of all of it which, topically, is what Todd Haynes’ 2023 film May December is about. But, because this is me and I cannot help myself from tying all of this back together into my field (getting a Ph.D. just means you have a hyperfixation problem and someone is willing to pay you for it), the main question I came away from May December with was not “why is our culture so stupid horny all the time?” but “what does justice look like in a case like this?”

May December is a film about sex in the same way Mouthwashing is a game about working on a cargo ship. It’s there, omnipresent in the background of its character’s lives, a focal point in what ties them inexorably together, but it is only a symptom of the underlying disease. Gracie, the titular December, is a woman married to Joe, the May in this marriage. Joe was a minimum wage earning thirteen-year-old when the married with children thirty-six-year-old Gracie raped him in the back of a petshop. It was a scandal in 1992, but it is now 2015 and the scandal has dissipated as Gracie and Joe have remained happily(?) married for the last 23 years. Some individuals still harbor contempt for the disjointed couple, sending packages of excrement to express their dissatisfaction, but for the most part their respective lives have moved into a stable middle and late-age. However, the arrival of Elizabeth, a television actress hell-bent on capturing a real performance out of Gracie and Joe’s story, dredges up uncomfortable conversations for all involved.

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May December is not a movie particularly interested in the criminal justice response to cases like that of Mary Kay Letourneau (the real-world case May December takes its cues from). Whether Gracie spent any extended period of time in jail for sexually assaulting a thirteen-year-old is not addressed and only cursory attention is paid to the illegality of her behavior. That is not to say Haynes and writer Samy Burch present this story with a glossy, passive veneer — far from it — but the focus is on the interpersonal conflict that stems from such breaches of innocence more so than the criminal justice apparatus’ interdictions. I prattled on about this on my overly verbose Letterboxd write-up, but in an era where sex is an omnipresent fixation in this American life, sex that, depending on where you fall on the class divide, can carry very few genuine consequences, what might justice look like in this (fictional) case?

Looking at the Mary Kay Letourneau case, justice looked like seven and a half years in prison and lifetime registration as a sex offender. Setting aside the dubious effectiveness of sex offender registries, it would seem that Letourneau paid her dues to society and should have been free to pursue a life post-incarceration. However, that is not what happened: post-incarceration Letourneau reunited with her victim and after petitioning the court to lift a no-contact order between them, married the then 21-year-old. This, justifiably, draws some suspicion about how effective the criminal justice system has been in meting out justice in this case. There was a clear lack of remorse on the part of the offender, the victim, while a legal adult by that point, was further victimized by the perpetrator, and, in a rather annoying quirk of modern media vernacular, a clear instance of predatory sexual assault came to be defined in such nebulous terms as “forbidden romance” or a “strange love affair.” The perpetrator served their time and was discharged, but is it real justice if the perpetrator is freed to immediately continue engaging in a cycle of abuse that we collectively shrug at as just another “forbidden” curiosity?

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From a very young age I was aware that a notable elected leader had engaged in inappropriate behavior with a much younger woman. As I watched movies growing up, I became aware of the known but unspoken reality that powerful people in media spaces would use their positions of authority to take advantage of those with less autonomy. It was known, even to my childhood self, if one was wealthy enough, draped their homes in gold, they could get away with actions any other person would be arrested, tried, and convicted for. When you’re a star they let you do it. But what about those of us on earth? If the rich and powerful were simply fondling one another at their invite-only parties I do not know that I would concern myself with their conduct. It seemed, even then, that individuals who reached the “let them eat cake” echelon were just favored and would, inevitably, be free from the consequences the rest of us might face in similar circumstances. But this conduct seemed to inevitably spill into the daily minutia of us plebes and, as in cases involving fellow plebes like Mary Kay Letourneau, suddenly demanded consideration beyond slackjawed gawking.

A notable element of May December is the way the actress, Elizabeth, inserts herself into various facets of Gracie and Joe’s relationship in the pursuit of something “true.” This is where the film’s touches of black comedy come from (Elizabeth slowly morphing her fashion and vocal intonations to mirror Gracie’s, her insistence on finding a “sexy” thirteen-year-old to play Joe in the film adaptation, etc.), but it is also the element that most clearly critiques our own cultural compulsions. We all rightly condemn the actions of Mary Kay Letourneau (and her fictional proxy, Gracie) since the sexual abuse of children is not something most people will openly dismiss as a non-issue. However, there is a certain point, a level of notoriety, where individuals cross an invisible threshold and egregious breaches of the social contract are no longer a detriment but can, in some ways, be a boon. Much has been made of Jeffrey Epstein’s (deeply tedious) email chains with a host of celebrities and their proxies. Seemingly more has been said attempting to hand wave away the seriousness of Epstein’s misogyny and predation. If one is conciliatory enough (or just straight up denies it was wrong in the first place), such sins can be an uncomfortable blip, not a reckoning with the two-tiered system of justice, punitive for thee but not for me, that has fomented in our collective consciousness. A figure like Gracie transcends from a cultural pariah engaging in one of the most egregious offenses one can to a figure trafficking in the “moral grey.”

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To return to my own field, the problem of what qualifies as “justice” or who warrants restoration and who does not is a difficult one. I acknowledge only half-jokingly that this is why I study the comparatively simple problems of ideological extremism and mental health in carceral settings: at least there one could argue a definitive solution probably exists. However, half-jokes aside, when I bring these discussions of justice to my students, they will frequently touch on the issue of remorse. Individuals like Far Skaldigrimmr Rauskjoldr av Northriki (née Anders Behring Breivik) who waltz into court and immediately make their lack of rehabilitation known do not engender sympathy or instill a sense that restoration is appropriate. Others, like Jason Burkett, who can present a compelling case for the underlying genetic and generational factors that led to their actions, do not necessarily elicit overt sympathy, but do tend to bring out more direct discussions of how justice can be appropriately meted out.

As a final point, I should acknowledge that I do not know many folks outside of the criminological field who spend their time weighing the merits of shame and reintegration as actual practiced policy. That is not to disparage those who have, such approaches hold relevance in discussions of the cultural efficacy of “shaming” and restorative justice, but the process of “shaming” as an actual policy approach has not necessarily broken out of more niche, theoretical criminological discussions. That said, when discussing what justice looks like in practice, is there merit to advocating for shaming as a broader cultural phenomenon? Not shaming for its own sake or divorced from a deliberate process of restoration, but shaming targeting breaches of social order or acts of deliberate harm that undercut that social order. Are such processes worth consideration or have we lost our collective stomach for shouldering the burden of holding one another accountable? Is overt remorse, some kind of objective reasonableness standard for contrition, something that we can codify as formal criminal justice policy? Or, at the very least, something that can be effectively utilized as an informal social control?

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Perhaps this is too orthodox an approach — un-American even. One of the highest moral standards we have here in the United States of America is the freedom to do and say whatever we want and however we see fit. In 2026 it certainly seems that the freedom to act without fear of pushback or remorse is a bipartisan point of agreement, particularly as it relates to sex. Granted, there appear to be fairly vehement disagreements about where that freedom must end, but that returns us to the foundational question here: what does justice look like in the (still fictional) case of Gracie and Joe? Can justice be found in a case like this for all involved or are certain breaches of the social contract, of the innocence of children, so egregious that we have to just take the least offensive outcome as the best we can hope for?

With the recent deluge of information (finally) coming out about the late Jeffrey Epstein, I have found myself returning to this piece. The question of what justice looks like in a case as egregious as Epstein’s is an important one in the tumultuous times we live. How do we hold those who would use and abuse the most vulnerable amongst us accountable? Epstein cannot speak for himself, he’s gone, but what about those who aided and abetted him? Celebrated their shared secrets? What can we do as individuals within a varied, pluralistic society to ensure that justice is done in cases that many of us, particularly those implicated in the injustices done, would prefer to simply quietly move past? Maybe there isn’t a sufficient answer, maybe true justice isn’t something we can find in this life, but I believe fighting for it, talking about it, is still important. Particularly if there are people who would prefer we simply stopped.

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I highly recommend Mouthwashing as an experience.