Karen Black in Portnoy’s Complaint (1972)
A mid-level bureaucrat in the New York City mayor’s office, thirty-something Alexander Portnoy would probably admit that his life since puberty has focused on sex, thoughts of which and of everything in life shaped by his Jewish upbringing and the guilt associated with it leading to he being a bundle of neuroses. He blames the way he turned out largely on his overbearing parents, especially his mother, Sophie Portnoy. He has been able to turn almost every situation into one centered on thoughts of sex, which has required a sexual release in some form or another, often through masturbation. Because of those neuroses, he regularly attends private therapy sessions, his story which is told in one of those sessions. While he touches on all these issues during this session, he focuses on his sexual relationships and/or encounters with women, three in particular. The first is Italian-American Bubbles Girardi when he was a late teen, his want to do it with her tempered by his fear of catching a sexually transmitted disease. The second is Mary Jane Reid, who, long before she met Alex, given the nickname of The Monkey, it with a sexual connotation. The Monkey is the manifestation of all of Alex’s sexual fantasies, and while she being a “shiksa” i.e. gentile may outwardly be the issue in he introducing her especially to his family, it is another aspect of her being which may be the hindrance in being able to form a long term relationship with her. The third is Jewish Naomi, who he may consider his intellectual equal which in and of itself is not enough to sustain what he wants with her. His neuroses at this point in his life are manifested in his constant visions of The Monkey falling out of the sky to the ground in front of him.
