I'm not sure what is more disturbing... David Edelstein using someone who has not seen the film as the standard for moral outrage over Observe & Report OR David Edelstein oversimplifying both the argument that the date rape in the film is offensive and the argument that it is acceptable as an artistic choice ("I hope I also wouldn’t harass a Muslim co-worker, use a Taser on a man who parks next to a loading dock, break into a mall and assault policemen, or triumphantly shoot an unarmed criminal. Although I adore Lolita, I hope I am never tempted to lay a finger on a prepubescent girl. Although I grew up watching the Three Stooges, I shall endeavor never to jam two fingers into someone's eyes or yank anyone by the nose with a ball-peen hammer.")
This is, really, Clinton territory. What are the moral standards if you either love or hate the person/film being examined?
I can say, unequivocally, that someone liking O&R does not disqualify them morally in my eyes, for the date rape scene or any other politically incorrect scene.
But it is all too easy to lazily dismiss cruelty because it is either funny to us or because it abuses a group that we do not respect.
The three women who sleep with Javier Bardem in Vicky Cristina Barcelona are worse for the grape, disregard other relationships, and make excuses for what some would say is slutty behavior. Yet none of the three ever seem objectified in anything close to the way the character in O&R is.
Much of what Edelstein argues are "mitigating factors" in the controversial scene in Observe & Report are textbook examples of power inequities that define the somewhat blurry concept of date rape. In other words, if the woman sleeps around and gets herself loaded, a man who has to carry her - literally - into her home should feel free to mount her seemingly unconscious body – “Live and learn—or don’t and pay the consequences.” – so long as at some point, he recognizes that she is not moving at all and may need medical attention, which inspires her, in her inebriated state, to demand that he keep pumping along. After all, according to Edelstein, she is, “apparently enjoying herself.”
Let’s use the basic standard. If your family member was profoundly broken, on a bender, not saying “no,” but clearly out of it, would you think it was funny for some guy – who btw, added to the haze by giving her his prescription drugs – to have sex with her? Would you laugh out loud?
And when she shows no further interest the next day, would you think she deserved what she got and had enjoyed herself?
No, I don’t think it makes you a jerk not to think about all of that like I just laid it out. It is a movie… just like The Three Stooges.
But it doesn’t make you a tight ass to be unamused by a movie making light of date rape either… especially when part of the reason it’s “funny” is that it is white trash being screwed… just the way momma’s fall-down drinking is a hoot. Ha ha.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/04/date_rape_redux.html