Sex shy, take two

So last night, I watched the movie Kinsey, figuring that since I had just finished reading the below-reviewed book, I would compare it with another fictionalized version of Prok's life. It should be noted that the movie is told from Kinsey's point of view, whereas the book was from the POV of one of his interviewers.

There were a lot of similarities, but the most striking difference was the portrayal of Kinsey himself. In the movie, Prok is shown as a more compassionate person, laughing, understanding that love is important, struggling with his father, etc. In the book, the opposite was true: Prok was a domineering, overbearing taskmaster who drove his team and all those around him with imperious precision.

I don't know which is true, or if the real man (as is probably often the case) was a combination of both, but one scene that occurs in both the book and movie was very telling: Kinsey having sex with his male researcher. In the book, Kinsey is clearly the aggressor, beginning choreographing, and guiding the affair from the beginning as sort of a "test" to see if indeed the young interviewer will be effective and not "sex shy." However, the movie plays the same scene very differently: Kinsey is hit on by his interviewer, and is shown to go along , albeit somewhat reluctantly, with the young man's advances.

Is it an important distinction? My guess is that there was an actual affair between the two men. However, for the movie version, I'm guessing the producers felt that the idea of their leading man Liam Neeson seducing a younger man may have been too much for the audience? Ironic, given the subject matter and content of the film, and an unfortunately short-sighted decision, given what Kinsey himself was trying to promote.