It’s been a week, but hopefully you remember the pleasure paradox: Although we think we prefer to know, we actually derive more pleasure from not really knowing. Once we know it all, the truth of porn reveals itself mercilessly: revealing everything means seeing nothing.

Popular culture is filled with examples of the impact and joy of uncertainty. Packed enough for an the-alluring-almost-week. And Basic Instinct is a nice start.

If you have seen it, I am sure you remember it. And if you haven’t seen it, you most likely have heard of it; the movie that became Sharon Stone’s claim to fame. And though she has done a lot since then (most notably a critically acclaimed performance in the movie Casino), that movie is still pretty much the reason why she can call herself a movie star. Or actually, it’s one particular scene that resounded her name throughout the world. One tiny little scene made a movie star. What’s so great to see in that scene that it attracted the world’s attention? It’s rather what there was not to see. True to the truth of porn, not revealing everything kept people wondering, speculating, for years.

Sharon Stone’s interrogation scene is definitely an oldie, not a product of the Expectations society, but the fact that it lives on in the world of any, where there are better movies anywhere, and raunchier scenes in any movie, pretty much says it all. If people had known what actually happened in that scene, it would have been forgotten as soon as those better movies and raunchier scenes saw daylight. But we did not, do not, know. And so it lives on. In hundreds of copies just on youtube.