‘All the Boys Love Mandy Lane’ Cannibalizes Its Feminist Message

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane manages to convey that toxic rape culture narrative in subtle ways, like when she’s alone with a boy who says, “Can I hold your hand? Can I kiss you?” and she turns her head to let him kiss her cheek. I felt my stomach turn during this scene; she was alone with a boy who clearly had sexual intentions, and Mandy Lane’s cheek move seemed like an appeasement, like a way to delay any unwanted sexual contact without making him angry. Unfortunately, it’s also a move that men often read as coy, as “teasing” … and it puts women in another double bind: she doesn’t want to piss him off and risk him potentially hurting her, but she also doesn’t want to do anything sexual with him. This kind of behavior gets women labeled “teases” all the time, and it’s a way to take responsibility away from men who believe, incorrectly, that the slightest amount of sexual contact—kissing, hand holding—means a woman automatically wants to take things further.

All-the-Boys-Love-Mandy-Lane

Written (with spoilers) by Stephanie Rogers.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane attempts to send a feminist message. Unfortunately, that message spontaneously combusts at the end of the film. It gets so much right, though, especially in its depiction of sexual harassment, catcalling, stalking, and society’s obsession with women who embrace virginity versus women who embrace their sexuality. In fact, all these boys love Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) because they see her as a conquest, a beautiful, “pure” teenage girl who functions as a prize, a trophy. In essence, they believe that the boy who finally gets to sleep with Mandy Lane will also get those coveted bragging rights, a boost to his masculinity cred—and patriarchy loves nothing more than requiring men to constantly reaffirm their manhood to their bros. For instance, when they talk about Mandy Lane, they say things like, “I’ve got first dibs,” which effectively mimics the locker room talk we’ve lately come to associate with fraternity emails showcasing sexual assault tips.

Another viewer could easily dismiss all this as harmless “joking,” but thankfully, the film allows us to experience things through Mandy’s viewpoint. We see her pull away from boys who try to kiss her, who pull the strap of her shirt down, who put their hands in her hair. We watch her spin around when she realizes someone outside her window is watching her change her clothes. She appears uncomfortable most of the time, as if she feels somewhat responsible for the actions of the boys around her. I imagine many women can identify too closely with Mandy Lane, asking themselves, “Am I dressing too provocatively? Is this harassment entirely my fault?” It’s the narrative of rape culture, one that both men and women have come to internalize: if a woman doesn’t want to be noticed, then she shouldn’t walk around looking so hot all the time.

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All the Boys Love Mandy Lane manages to convey that toxic rape culture narrative in subtle ways, like when she’s alone with a boy who says, “Can I hold your hand? Can I kiss you?” and she turns her head to let him kiss her cheek. I felt my stomach turn during this scene; she was alone with a boy who clearly had sexual intentions, and Mandy Lane’s cheek move seemed like an appeasement, like a way to delay any unwanted sexual contact without making him angry. Unfortunately, it’s also a move that men often read as coy, as “teasing” … and it puts women in another double bind: she doesn’t want to piss him off and risk him potentially hurting her, but she also doesn’t want to do anything sexual with him. This kind of behavior gets women labeled “teases” all the time, and it’s a way to take responsibility away from men who believe, incorrectly, that the slightest amount of sexual contact—kissing, hand holding—means a woman automatically wants to take things further.

The director (Jonathan Levine) balances Mandy Lane-as-Madonna by including two sexually active high school girls-as-Whores: Marlin (Melissa Price) and Chloe (Whitney Able), who’ve both had some sort of sexual contact with the three boys in their clique—Bird, Red, and Jake—at least enough to point out who has the smallest penis in the group. Marlin, Chloe, and the three bros decide to spend a weekend at Red’s ranch, and they invite Mandy along. For some reason, Mandy agrees to go (under the guise of making new friends), but it isn’t clear until the end of the film why Mandy truly accepts the invitation. For whatever reason, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane turns into a lightweight home invasion massacre out of nowhere, but it still makes some thoughtful commentary on bodysnarking and teen sexuality before ruining itself with conventional horror movie tropes.

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Interestingly, the only locker room talk happens with the women after their respective cheerleading practice (Marlin and Chloe) and track workout (Mandy Lane, who literally runs away from a boy during her run, her former friend Emmet). Chloe calls Marlin “chubby” when Marlin shows off her new bellybutton ring to which Marlin responds, “I’m not fat.” Mandy watches these interactions almost always in silence as if making a mental note for herself. The bodysnarking happens again between Chloe and Marlin, once they’re ranch bound, during a trip to the bathroom at a rest stop; Marlin says to Chloe, “You really need to trim that. It’s like Sherwood’s Forest down there.” Chloe gives her a “whatever” look, but later, we find Chloe trimming her pubic hair on the toilet at the ranch. Again, Mandy Lane never participates in the bodysnarking but listens and watches quietly instead.

Once they hit the ranch, though, the film begins to unravel. It goes way too far in its Virgin/Whore depiction, painting both Chloe and Marlin as sex-crazed and shallow. (Marlin gives a hand job and a blowjob in the span of 20 minutes but not without flashing her breasts to a man at the rest stop, too, and Chloe won’t stop talking about banging the local ranch hand, Garth.) Mandy Lane, on the other hand, watches quietly, makes no judgments or accusations, and appears Madonna-esque and mysterious, almost too sticky sweet. We know something isn’t right here, and I thought at first Mandy Lane represented the virginal, Say No to Drugs, Final Girl from conventional horror films.

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When one of the boys steals a fuse and shuts off all the lights at the ranch, Mandy Lane gets stuck fending off another boy in the dark, this time Jake, who leans in repeatedly to kiss her. Interestingly, Mandy Lane almost never says “no,” but her body language communicates how little she wants to do with Jake. This narrative suggests, importantly, that some men and boys think nothing of continuing to push and push until a woman fiercely says “no.” Again, that rape culture narrative plays out here, and because the film operates from Mandy Lane’s perspective, the audience feels bad for her and (hopefully) feels less bad for, and even angry with, the boys for making her feel so unsafe.

Honestly, the film could’ve ended for me somewhere around there as an astute commentary on how rape culture impacts the actions of both men and women. It could’ve ended as an astute commentary on how bullying and bodysnarking (especially by other women) impacts a woman’s self-esteem. But the writer (Jacob Forman) and director decided to take All the Boys Love Mandy Lane in a boring direction that tried way too hard for a shock ending. The body count racks up. Both the men and the women die, taking away any potential interpretation that the killer is merely punishing the men for their actions toward the women. Instead, the deaths of Chloe and Marlin—the Whores—suggest that anyone with a sexual appetite at all deserves punishment.

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Other viewers might not need their fun horror films to carry A Message, but this one went, for me, from an epic feminist masterpiece to mundane, sloppy, and forced. Ultimately, Mandy Lane turns out to be way less innocent than she appears, and the film makes the audience hate her. And when a film makes the audience hate the character who represents the film’s important themes—the insidiousness of rape culture, for instance—then that film fails tremendously to say much of anything.

 


Stephanie Rogers lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she sometimes watches entire seasons of television in one sitting. 

 

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Consent Issues (Seasons 1-2)

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers

Written by Lady T 

A year ago, I began writing a series called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Consent Issues,” looking at specific episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that included a major plot point related to consent, rape culture, and sexual violence.

What I found was illuminating. The show explored sexual violence, misogyny, and rape culture in a number of episodes. Some of these episodes shone a light on problematic aspects of our society, while others perpetuated rape culture–and some managed to do both at the same time.

Here is a roundup of the posts analyzing specific episodes from seasons one and two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Episode 1.06, “The Pack”: Xander, possessed by the spirit of a predatory animal, attempts to rape Buffy. 

Xander (Nicholas Brendon) attacks Buffy while possessed

“Xander isn’t accountable for what he said or did under the hyena possession. I think unintentional, accidental possession by demonic spirits is about as extenuating a circumstance you can get …
I do, however, think that the attempted assault scene reveals something less than pleasant about Xander’s character. No, he would never attack Buffy when he was in his right mind, but he does believe that she’s attracted to dangerous men–that if he were dangerous and mean, she would be attracted to him.”
Episode 2.05, “Reptile Boy”: Buffy and Cordelia are offered as human sacrifices in part of a college fraternity’s ritual. 

Buffy and Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) wait in terror for the frat boy demon to arise

“Even before this scene, we knew that Richard was a bad guy and that the Delta Zeta Kappa guys were up to no good, but we were also led to believe that Buffy’s date, Tom, was the nice guy of the group. We think he’s the only good one of a group of potential rapists, and when he pulls Richard off of Buffy’s unconscious body, our initial inference is confirmed–until we see that Tom is just as bad as the rest, if not worst of all. He was only pretending to be nice to make Buffy trust him. The message is clear: even guys who pretend to be nice and unassuming can be dangerous, and you can’t assume that a self-deprecating ‘nice’ guy is actually a good guy.”
Episode 2.07, “Lie to Me,” and Episode 2.10, “What’s My Line? Part 2”: Angel admits to his former torture of Drusilla, and she takes revenge on him. 

Drusilla (Juliet Landau) begins her torture of Angel (David Boreanaz)
 
“I’ve often thought that Drusilla is the most tragic character on Buffy, and that’s largely because of her relationship with Angel. I think her obsession with Angel is a commentary on molestation and Stockholm Syndrome. I’m not sure how old she was when Angel and Darla turned her into a vampire, but these episodes and a few flashbacks on Angel indicate that she was pretty young, maybe on the verge of turning eighteen. However old she was, the point is that she was ‘pure, sweet, and chaste’–qualities that made Angel obsessed with her, made him want to corrupt her innocence.”
Episode 2.13, “Surprise”: Buffy and Angel have sex, even though Buffy is still under the age of consent.

Buffy and Angel, shortly after escaping death and before sleeping together


“Even though Buffy and Angel sleeping together is wrong from a legal perspective, I have a hard time categorizing this incident as rape. Defining it as rape would rob Buffy of her agency in making that choice to sleep with Angel. She knew exactly what she was doing in the heat of the moment. She wasn’t under the influence of anything, she wasn’t hesitating for a second, and she wanted it to happen … At the same time, Buffy is barely seventeen, and Angel is two hundred and forty. Angel having sex with Buffy at her age and her level of experience is … well, it’s a little gross.”

Episode 2.16, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”: Xander casts a love spell on Cordelia to get back at her for breaking up with him, but the spell affects every woman in town except Cordelia.

Xander walks down the hallway with every girl in Sunnydale High ogling him
 
“Xander temporarily making Cordelia fall in love with him just so he can break her heart is gross, cruel, and inexcusable (even though I do empathize with his hurt feelings). But imagine if he had wanted Cordelia to love him forever, if the love spell had worked and was permanent, that he slept with her, married her, spent his life with her, all while her feelings for him weren’t real.
A temporary love spell for the purpose of revenge is stupid and malicious, but a permanent love spell inspired by ‘pure’ intentions is a much, much bigger violation of consent and autonomy. Yet the second of the two would be considered more ‘romantic’ in our society.”
Episode 2.20, “Go Fish”: Buffy is offered as a “prize” to the members of the school’s swim team. 

Buffy worries more for her reputation than her safety

“This episode has a lot of victim-blaming and slut-shaming. Buffy is the one who is attacked, but she’s blamed for dressing inappropriately. She defended herself–something that assault victims are always encouraged to do–but only further incriminates herself in the process. Sure, Cameron does have a broken nose, and Buffy doesn’t appear to be injured, but his word is automatically taken over hers. He’s worth more to the school administration. He’s a successful athlete who brings acclaim and honor to the school, and she’s a violent troublemaker. Buffy’s not the ‘right’ kind of victim.”
After analyzing this batch of episodes from the first two seasons, I noticed a few common threads.

1. In two cases, Xander is an “accidental” predator. The circumstances in “The Pack” were truly not Xander’s fault, as he never intended to become possessed by a hyena. The love spell in “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” on the other hand, was entirely his doing, even though he did not intend to use the spell to violate anyone’s physical consent. 

2. Buffy was a victim or intended victim in most of the episodes. She was a target of Xander’s hyena-possessed lust, chosen to be a human sacrifice, offered up to the swim team as a prize, and the first girl to fall under Xander’s love spell. The strongest girl in the world still faces victimization whenever she turns around.

What are the implications when one of the main male characters (and one of Buffy’s best friends) is shown to be an “accidental” predator? And what are the implications when our protagonist, a butt-kicking young woman, is a common target for misogynistic attacks? 

(Hint: these questions are open-ended for a reason, kids. Give your answers in the comments. Extra credit to those who show their work!)  



Lady T is a writer with two novels, a screenplay, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com. 

‘Sixteen Candles,’ Rape Culture, and the Anti-Woman Politics of 2013

Movie posters for Sixteen Candles

Written by Stephanie Rogers (but not in time for Wedding Week).

Holy fuck this movie. I started watching it like OH YEAH MY CHILDHOOD MOLLY RINGWALD ADOLESCENCE IS SO HARD and after two scenes, I put that shit on pause like, WHEN DID SOMEONE WRITE ALL THESE RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY PARTS THAT WEREN’T HERE BEFORE I WOULD’VE REMEMBERED THEM.

Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.
I wanted to write about all the wonderful things I thought I remembered about Sixteen Candles: a sympathetic and complex female protagonist, the awkwardness of adolescence, the embarrassing interactions with parents and grandparents who JUST DON’T GET IT, crushing hard on older boys—and yes, all that stuff is still there. And of course, there’s that absolutely fantastic final wedding scene in which a woman consents to marry a dude while under the influence of a fuckload of muscle relaxers. OH WAIT WHUT.
Ginny Baker getting married while super high

 

Turns out, that shit ain’t so funny once feminism becomes a thing in your life.
The kind of adorable premise of Sixteen Candles is that Molly Ringwald (Samantha Baker) wakes up one morning as a sixteen-year-old woman who still hasn’t yet grown the breasts she wants. Her family, however, forgets her birthday because of the chaos surrounding her older sister Ginny’s upcoming wedding; relatives drive into town, future in-laws set up dinner dates, and poor Samantha gets the cold shoulder. It reminded me of the time my parents handed me an unwrapped Stephen King novel on my sixteenth birthday like a couple of emotionally neglectful and shitty assholes, but, you know, at least they REMEMBERED it.
Anyway, she rides the bus to school (with all the LOSERS), and in her Independent Study “class” the hot senior she likes, Jake Ryan, intercepts a note meant for her friend Randy. And—wouldn’t you know it—the note says, I WOULD TOTALLY DO IT WITH JAKE RYAN BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW I’M ALIVE. Well he sure as fuck knows NOW, Samantha.
Samantha and Randy, totally grossed out, ride the bus to school

 

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”
Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.
The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.
Long Duk Dong falls out of a tree (BONSAI) after a drunken night at the homecoming dance
The first few scenes do a decent job of showing the forgotten-birthday slash upcoming-wedding fiasco occurring in the Baker household. Sam stands in front of her bedroom mirror before school, analyzing her brand new sixteen-year-old self and says, “You need four inches of bod and a great birthday.” I can get behind that idea; growing up comes with all kinds of stresses and confusion, especially for women in high school who’ve begun to feel even more insecure about their bodies (having had sufficient time to fully absorb the toxic beauty culture).
“Chronologically, you’re 16 today. Physically? You’re still 15.” –Samantha Baker, looking in the mirror

 

While Samantha laments the lack of changes in her physical appearance, her little brother Mike pretends to almost-punch their younger sister. When he gets in trouble for it, he says, “Dad, I didn’t hit her. I’d like to very much and probably will later, but give me a break. You know my method. I don’t hit her when you’re just down the hall.” It’s easy to laugh this off—I chuckled when I first heard it. But after five seconds of thinking about my reaction, I realized my brain gave Mike a pass because of that whole “boys will be boys” thing, and then I got pissed at myself.
The problem with eye-rolling away the “harmless” offenses of young boys is that it gives boys (and later, men) a license to act like fuckers with no actual repercussions. The “boys will be boys” mantra is one of the most insidious manifestations of rape culture because it conditions both boys and girls at a young age to believe boys just can’t help themselves; violence in boys is inherent and not worth trying to control. And people today—including political “leaders”—often use that excuse to justify the violent actions of men toward women.
Mike Baker explains to his dad that he hasn’t hit his younger sister … yet

 

Unfortunately, Sixteen Candles continues to reinforce this idea throughout the film.
The Geek, aka Farmer Ted—a freshman who’s obsessed with Samantha—represents this more than any other character. The film presents his stalking behavior as endearing, which means that all his interactions with Samantha (and with the popular kids at school) end with a silent, “Poor guy!” exclamation. Things just really aren’t going his way! And look how hard he’s trying! (Poor guy.) He first appears on the bus home from school and sits next to Samantha, even though she makes it quite clear—with a bunch of comments about getting dudes to kick his ass who “lust wimp blood”—that she wants him to leave her alone. Then this interaction takes place:

Ted: You know, I’m getting input here that I’m reading as relatively hostile.

Samantha: Go to hell.

Ted: Come on, what’s the problem here? I’m a boy, you’re a girl. Is there anything wrong with me trying to put together some kind of relationship between us?

[The bus stops.]

Ted: Look, I know you have to go. Just answer one question.

Samantha: Yes, you’re a total fag.

Ted: That’s not the question … Am I turning you on?

[Samantha rolls her eyes and exits the bus.]

POOR GUY! Also homophobia. Like, all over the place in this movie. The words “fag” and “faggot” flood the script and always refer to men who lack conventional masculine traits or who haven’t yet “bagged a babe.” And the emphasis on “Man-Up Already!” puts women in harm’s way more than once.
Samantha looks irritated when her stalker, Farmer Ted, refuses to leave her alone. Also Joan Cusack for no reason.

 

The most terrifying instance of this happens toward the end of the film when Ted ends up at Jake’s party after the school homecoming dance, and the two of them bond by objectifying women together (and subsequently creating a nice little movie template to last for generations). The atrocities involve a very drunk, passed-out Caroline (which reminded me so much of what happened in Steubenville that I had to turn off the movie for a while and regroup) and a pair of Samantha’s underwear.
This is how we get to that point: After Jake snags Samantha’s unintentional declaration of love during Independent Study, he becomes interested in her. He tells a jock friend of his (while they do chin-ups together in gym class), “It’s kinda cool, the way she’s always looking at me.” His friend responds—amid all that hot testosterone—that “maybe she’s retarded.” (This statement sounds even worse within the context of a film that includes a possibly disabled character, played by Joan Cusack, who lacks mobility and “hilariously” spends five minutes trying to drink from a water fountain. Her role exists as nothing more than a punch line; she literally says nothing.)
Joan Cusack drinking water (queue laughter)
Joan Cusack drinking a beer (queue laughter)
Jake’s girlfriend, Caroline, picks up on his waning interest in her and says to him at the school dance, “You’ve been acting weird all night. Are you screwing around?” He immediately gaslights her with, “Me? Are you crazy?” to which she responds, “I don’t know, Jake. I’m getting strange signals.” Yup, Caroline—IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD NOT REALLY.
Meanwhile, in an abandoned car somewhere on school premises (perhaps a shop lab/classroom), Samantha sits alone, lamenting Jake’s probable hatred of her after their interaction in the gym where he said, “Hi!” and she freaked out and ran away. Farmer Ted stalk-finds her and climbs into the passenger seat. Some words happen, blah blah blah, and a potentially interesting commentary on the culture of masculinity gets undercut by Ted asking Samantha (who Ted referred to lovingly as “fully-aged sophomore meat” to his dude-bros earlier in the film) if he can borrow her underwear to use as proof that they banged. Of course she gives her underwear to him because.
Ted holds up Samantha’s underwear to a group of dude-bros who each paid a buck to see them

 

Cut to Jake’s after-party: everyone is finally gone; his house is a mess; Caroline is passed out drunk as fuck in his bedroom; and he finds Ted trapped inside a glass coffee table (a product of bullying). Then, at last, after Jake confesses to Ted that he thinks Samantha hates him (because she ran away from him in the gym), we’re treated to a true Male Bonding Moment:

Ted: You see, [girls] know guys are, like, in perpetual heat, right? They know this shit. And they enjoy pumping us up. It’s pure power politics, I’m telling you … You know how many times a week I go without lunch because some bitch borrows my lunch money? Any halfway decent girl can rob me blind because I’m too torqued up to say no.

Jake: I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. Shit, I got Caroline in my bedroom right now, passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to.

Ted: What are you waiting for?

C’MON JAKE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR GO RAPE YOUR GIRLFRIEND. Or wait, no, maybe let’s let Ted rape her?

Jake: I’ll make a deal with you. Let me keep these [Samantha’s underwear, duh]. I’ll let you take Caroline home … She’s so blitzed she won’t know the difference.

Ted carrying a drunk Caroline to the car

And then Ted throws a passed-out Caroline over his shoulder and puts her in the passenger seat of a convertible. This scene took me immediately back to the horrific images of two men carrying around a drunk woman in Steubenville who they later raped—and were convicted of raping (thanks largely to social media). This scene, undoubtedly “funny” in the 80s and certainly still funny to people who like to claim this shit is harmless, helped lay the groundwork for Steubenville, and for Cleveland, and for Richmond, where as many as 20 witnesses watched men beat and gang rape a woman for over two hours without reporting it. On their high school campus. During their homecoming dance.

Jake and Ted talk about how to fool Caroline

People who claim to believe films and TV and pop culture moments like this are somehow disconnected from perpetuating rape need to take a step back and really think about the message this sends. I refuse to accept that a person could watch this scene from an iconic John Hughes film—where, after a party, a drunk woman is literally passed around by two men and photographed—and not see the connection between the Steubenville rape—where, after a party, a woman was literally passed around by two men and photographed.

Caroline looks drunk and confused while Ted’s friends take a photo as proof that he hooked up with her

 

And it only gets worse. Caroline wakes up out of nowhere and puts a birth control pill in Ted’s mouth. Once he realizes what he’s swallowed, he says, “You have any idea what that’ll do to a guy my age?” Caroline responds, “I know exactly what it’ll do to a girl my age. It makes it okay to be really super careless!”
It makes it okay to be really super careless. 
IT MAKES IT OKAY TO BE REALLY SUPER CARELESS.
So I guess the current anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-woman Republicans found a John Hughes screenplay from 30 years ago and decided to use this cautionary tale as their entire fucking platform. See what happens when women have access to birth control? It makes it okay to be really super careless! And get drunk! And allow dudes to rape them!
Of course, believing that Caroline is raped in Sixteen Candles requires believing that a woman can’t consent to sex when she’s too “blitzed to know the difference” between her actual boyfriend and a random freshman geek. I mean, there’s forcible rape, and there’s not-really rape, right? And this obviously isn’t REAL rape since Ted and Caroline actually have THIS FUCKING CONVERSATION when they wake up in a church parking lot the next morning:

Ted: Did we, uh …

Caroline: Yeah. I’m pretty sure.

Ted: Of course I enjoyed it … uh … did you?

Caroline: Hmmm. You know, I have this weird feeling I did … You were pretty crazy … you know what I like best? Waking up in your arms.

Fuck you, John Hughes.
Caroline wakes up, unsure of who Ted is, but very sexually satisfied
And so many more problems exist in this film that I can’t fully get into in the space of one already long review, but the fact that Ginny (Sam’s sister) starts her period and therefore needs to take FOUR muscle relaxers to dull the pain also illustrates major problems with consent; her father at one point appears to pick her up and drag her down the aisle on her wedding day. (And, congratulations for understanding, John Hughes, that when women bleed every month, it requires a borderline drug overdose to contain the horror.)
Ginny’s dad drags her down the aisle on her wedding day
The racism, too, blows my mind. Long Duk Dong, a foreign exchange student living with Samantha’s grandparents, speaks in played-for-laughs broken English during the following monologue over dinner: “Very clever dinner. Appetizing food fit neatly into interesting round pie … I love, uh, visiting with Grandma and Grandpa … and writing letters to parents … and pushing lawn-mowing machine … so Grandpa’s hyena don’t get disturbed,” accompanied by such sentences as, “The Donger need food.” (I also love it, not really, when Samantha’s best friend Randy mishears Sam and thinks she’s interested in a Black guy. “A BLACK guy?!?!” Randy exclaims … then sighs with relief once she realizes the misunderstanding.)
Long Duk Dong talks to the Baker family over dinner
And I haven’t even touched on the problematic issues with class happening in Sixteen Candles. (Hughes does class relations a tiny bit better in Pretty in Pink.)
Basically, it freaks me out—as it should—when I watch movies or television shows from 30 years ago and see how closely the politics resemble today’s anti-woman agenda. Phrases like “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” shouldn’t exist in 2013. In 2013, politicians like Wendy Davis shouldn’t have to stand up and speak for 13 hours—with no food, water, or restroom breaks—in order to stop a bill from passing in Texas that would virtually shut down access to safe and legal abortions in the entire state. Women should be able to walk down the street for contraception in 2013, whether it’s for condoms or for the morning after pill. The US political landscape in 2013 should NOT include talking points lifted directly from a 1984 film about teenagers.
I know John Hughes is a national fucking treasure, but please tell me our government officials aren’t using his screenplays as legislative blueprints for the future of American politics.

 

Not Peggy Olson: Rape Culture in ‘Top of the Lake’

Jacqueline Joe as Tui and Elisabeth Moss as Robin Griffin in Top of the Lake
This guest post by Lauren C. Byrd previously appeared at her blog Love Her, Love Her Shoes and is cross-posted with permission.
You know there’s a Maori legend about this lake… that there’s a demon’s heart at the bottom of it; the beats makes the lake rise and fall every five minutes.

A young girl bikes away from her home, heading through beautiful scenery until she reaches the edge of a large lake. She wades in up to her shoulders. Cut to two shirtless men, muscled and tattooed. Immediately, the feminine: the girl; water is compared to the masculine: men, muscles, tattoos.
These gender-based opening images of the Sundance Channel series, Top of the Lake, set the scene and the ongoing conflict for the New Zealand-based show. Jane Campion, a director known for her feminist take on period dramas (The Piano, Bright Star), injects a feminist element into a police drama, a genre known for viewing women as victims. With Campion at the helm, the series does not shy away from uncomfortable issues, such as the frustrations of living in a patriarchal rape culture.
In the first episode, Tui (Jacqueline Joe), the 12-year-old girl who waded deep into the lake, is discovered to be pregnant. Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) is called in by child services to participate in Tui’s case. Robin grew up in the small town of Laketop, New Zealand but fled the town at an early age and earned her stripes as a detective in a more metropolitan environment.
When Griffin arrives at the local police station to talk to Tui, a cadre of male officers stare at her dumbly while she gives them orders.
Later, Robin fields sexual innuendo and inappropriate questions from her superior, Sargent Detective Al Parker, but instead of objecting, she rolls with the punches, avoiding the questions or changing the subject back to the investigation. It’s a sad reality that she has no other option. She’s an outsider in the local police force, and even if she reported Sargent Detective Parker to someone higher up the food chain, it’s doubtful anything would happen other than word getting back to him. It’s pretty clear the Laketop police is an old boys’ club. Other than Robin, there’s only one female working there, Xena.
When Robin tries to brief the squad about Tui’s case, she is undermined by two of the men on the squad. When she pulls one out into the hall for talking out of turn, the others start to leave before the briefing is finished. Not only do they not respect Robin’s authority on the subject, they don’t care about Tui’s well being.
It’s clear there is a patriarchal order, not only at the police station, which is headed by Sargent Detective Al Parker (David Wenham), but also in the community of Laketop, where Tui’s dad, Matt Mitchum, and his sons, Mark and Luke, reign supreme. 
Top of the Lake‘s “Paradise”–a piece of land where a women’s commune lives
On a piece of land called Paradise, a half dozen women, led by GJ (Holly Hunter) a mother earth type with her long, wispy silver hair, sets up camp. The land is owned by Matt Mitchum, who doesn’t hide his temper from the women upon finding them there. “Who the hell are you?” he asks. Upon seeing GJ he asks, “Is she a she?” One of the women informs Matt she bought the property, but Matt isn’t used to taking no for an answer and throws a hissy fit. “Get out of here, you alpha ass,” another woman calls after him as he storms off the property.
Campion is known for symbolism in her films. Top of the Lake is no exception, starting with the women’s “commune” at Paradise. Paradise is a religious term for a higher place or the holiest place. Paradise also describes the world before it was tainted by evil. Laketop’s Paradise embodies the pastoral, its landscape being made up of large fields which look out over the water. Its leader, GJ, may look like a mother earth type, but her advice to the women is brutally honest. When Tui wanders onto the land, has lunch with the women, and shares her secret about the baby, GJ tells her she has a time bomb inside of her, and it’s going to go off. “Are you ready, kid?” GJ’s advice seems to be for these women to harden themselves emotionally, in a way making themselves more like men. 
Holly Hunter as GJ in Top of the Lake
Another form of symbolism, the lake, around and sometimes in which most of the action takes place, is a mysterious force of nature. The residents of the town often comment on how the water will kill or hurt them, and there’s the sense they don’t mean just the temperature. Maybe they believe it is possessed by the Maori legend (Maoris are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand) of the demon’s heart in it, which Johnno tells Robin:
There’s a Maori legend about this lake that says there’s a demon’s heart at the bottom of it. It beats; it makes the lake rise and fall every five minutes. There was a warrior that rescued a maiden from a giant demon called tipua. And he set fire to the demon’s body while it slept and burnt everything but his heart. And the fat melting from the body formed a trough. And the snow from the mountains ran down to fill it, to form this lake.

Although the legend surrounding the lake features a typical “damsel in distress” tale of a male rescuing a maiden, water is often considered a feminine element. If considered in this way, the patriarchal society of Laketop is surrounded by the feminine: the lake.
Campion may not shy away from a dark look at how patriarchal violence seeps into every corner of life, but the series also offers up hope and possibilities of resistance. As the series unfolds, Robin’s own rape at the age of 15 and subsequent pregnancy is divulged. Although she and Tui’s stories are different, both of them are strong women. Not only is Robin fighting for a resolution to Tui’s case, but she stands up against a group of sexist men in a bar who makes several jokes at her and Tui’s expense. “Are you a feminist?” they ask. “A lesbian? Nobody likes a feminist, except a lesbian.”
Yet another comment in the bar involves victim blaming as the butt of the joke. “Hey, what does it mean if a girl goes around town in tiny shorts? It means she’s hot.”
“Or a slut!” his friend cries out. Robin throws a dart into the shoulder of one of the men. In a later bar scene, one of her former rapists starts flirting with her without realizing who she is. Robin breaks a bottle and stabs him. “Do you remember me now?” she cries.
Upon running away from home, Tui embodies a familiar lone male figure, a cowboy, as she rides into Paradise on her horse, a gun slung over her shoulder. When she disappears from Paradise, Robin fears she has been kidnapped and murdered by whomever assaulted her, but Tui makes a home for herself in the bush and survives on her wits. 
Robin in Top of the Lake
Even among a patriarchal society, there are allies. In Top of the Lake‘s case, it’s men who choose not to be “alpha asses” like Matt Mitchum. Johnno, Robin’s high school sweetheart and Tui’s half-brother, still harbors guilt about the night Robin was attacked. He feels he failed by not standing up for her: “I should have helped you, but I didn’t. I was a coward.” Johnno later attacks one of Robin’s rapists, telling him to leave town. “She was 15!”
Johnno and Robin’s past is marred by painful events, but as Robin continues to work on Tui’s case, they begin to grow close again, and among all the sexual violence, Campion uses the pair to portray the pleasure of a consensual relationship.
Similarly, Tui has a male ally in her life. Her relationship with Jamie is in no way sexual, there are parallels between their relationship and Johnno and Robin’s. Jamie also feels guilt for what happened to Tui, and he literally beats himself up about it in a scene where he slams his head against the doors in his house, only stopping when his mother pulls him away. Jamie brings supplies to Tui while she’s hiding in the bush and plans to help her during the labor.
The series does not wrap up things in a tidy little bow. It may not offer solutions for eradicating sexual assault, but it does more than many previous television series and films: it exposes the truths of a rape culture and violent patriarchal society and how those who live in them choose to survive.

Lauren C. Byrd is a former post-production minion but prefers to spend her days analyzing television and film, rather than working in it. She studied film and television at Syracuse University and writes a blog, Love Her, Love Her Shoes, about under-appreciated women in film, television, and theater. She is currently writing a weekly series about feminism on this season of Mad Men

 

Sex Acts: Generational Patriarchy and Rape Culture in Gurfinkel’s ‘Six Acts’

Written by Rachel Redfern

Jonathon Gurfinkel’s debut film, Six Acts, winner of the TVE Another Look Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival, is premiering in the United States at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. The film is the product of six years of research and filming on the part of newcomers Jonathon Gurfinkel and screenwriter Rona Segal, who spent a substantial amount of time interviewing and speaking with young teenagers, asking about their experiences and stresses.

Six Acts (which can also be heard as ‘sex acts’) is about a young Israeli girl, Gili (Sivian Levy), who has just moved to a new school in an affluent suburb where she begins to engage in sexual activity with a number of her peers, essentially being passed around from boy to boy. While Gili holds the title role and the film is about the things that happen to her, in reality, the film is very much about portraying the generational behaviors of patriarchy and entitlement that allow rape and sexual assault to go unnoticed.

Perversely, Gili is raped again and again during the course of the film; she has just been convinced that she wanted it and that she enjoys being used for sex. These rapes are delicately portrayed in the way that Segal has scripted these scenes: Gili is pressured again and again and her repeated statements of “No” are not directly ignored, but brushed aside as the boys play angry when she refuses, clearly manipulating her. It’s significant that in each scene she is pressured and physically held or pushed until she finally gets quiet and the act is performed ending with kisses and the question, “Baby, did you like that” afterwards. At which point she smiles a little, looks away and tries to convince herself that she did. The two main boys in the film play a deceptive game; the first one, Tomer is quiet and seemingly arrogant; the second boy, Omri, is friendly and charming. Their characters are so finely crafted however, that for most of the movie, you find yourself still intrigued by these boys. Gurfinkel acknowledged the difficulty in filming these scenes saying,

“Some might say that the boys can’t be at fault because Gili seems like she’s actively cooperating, like she might want it. But this touches on the psychological formula of the strong against the weak, and the film shows how people take advantage of the weak, not just in a sexual way.”

Sivian Levy as Gili in Six Acts
Continuing with that goal of displaying the “psychological formula of the strong against the weak,” Omri’s father, his father’s friends, his brothers, and his own friends are all complicit in encouraging their aggressive and disrespectful behaviors. Cleverly, the film does a wonderful job of showcasing how Omri’s father’s conduct has influenced him into believing that such actions are how men should treat women. It’s frustrating to see how this cycle is repeated as Omri passes on his knowledge of exploitation to his much younger brother. It’s indicative to see the way that even Omri’s father’s friends look at Gili as she enters the room; they case her up and down and smile suggestively.

Shockingly, even Omri’s mother shrugs off the fact that her husband discusses his flirtations in front of her and merely closes her office door to her 13-year-old son’s conversation with his friends about how they should “fuck Gili.”

In fact, in many ways, the film is also a huge indictment about modern parenting, since no mother or father seems to take particular care as to where their children are or what activities they are doing, merely serving to enable them in the destructive and violent behavior that happens in their houses even while they’re present.

These scenes offer insight into the troubled lives of teens, specifically those living in Israel, though the film was also intended to tell a universal story. I have little experience with Israel, so it would be interesting to hear whether it’s portrayal of Israeli life is an accurate one.

The film’s setting is then of particular importance; while I expected discussion about religion and regional politics, there were none. The film literally takes place from the self-centered viewpoint of the universally common, affluent, and entitled suburban teenager. None of these issues plays a role because none of the characters care; the only things that matter are cars and poker and sex and money and drugs and sports. Minus the Hebrew being spoken, this film could have taken place in London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, or any other city with a stable middle-class. 

Sivian Levy as Gili in Six Acts
The world of flash, materialism, and ambition exists completely out of sight of the self-aware and moderate, with no such positive characteristics being shown by any character. The drive for the immediate is all that matters, and each of the boys is obviously the product of a family and cultural attitude that enables them to act upon this drive without consequences. In fact, after one of the many assaults enacted upon Gili, the young boy demands a kiss and then offers to buy her fast food on the way to the pharmacy. He then demands that she take a morning after pill, driving her there and giving her two packs just to make sure she’s not pregnant, regardless of the fact that she tried to leave and said she would handle the situation on her own. The fact that she could be pregnant is his only possible consequence, and even in that she is forced to comply with his demands (not that I’m against the morning after pill, just other people telling women when they should and should not take it).

One thing that I think could be potentially problematic in discussing a film like this is of course the trap of blame. In a few of the reviews that I have read so far there have been some people intent on blaming Gili for her actions, or at least pushing her as the impetus for these actions: she sent the boys a photo, she answered the call when they asked her to come over. One reviewer even went so far as to say that there’s “no point in feeling sorry for her” because she is rude to one of the boys before he rapes her. However, Segal’s intentions in writing the film belie such destructive victim blaming, as she states in an interview with regard to Gili’s character, “You can ask anyone and they will recall having a girl in their class who was always known to be ‘loose.’ I wanted to show that her decisions are not so black and white.”

Similarly, during my experience of watching the film, it seemed to me that I was merely watching the sad and terrifying journey of a girl who was too trusting and too naïve to see how terrible her new friends really were, and who lacked any responsible figure willing to step in and protect a minor.

Though Gili’s character is not without its problems: Gili’s desperate need for acceptance and love is painted in broad strokes, and it’s easy to see how easily she gets caught up in self-destructive behavior. The realization that her new friends are no friends at all is, as it is in real life, hard to see in the moment. On a very personal note, it was sad to see some of myself in her, to see the ways she so easily became devalued; it’s unfortunate that so many women will probably feel the same as I did when I watched the movie. 

Sivian Levy as Gili in Six Acts
The music is lovely but very much a part of the background; the cinematography is bold and engaging, highlighting the harsh situations that Gili has found herself in. Nothing is softened.

Six Acts premiers on April 18, 2013 at the Tribeca Film Festival at a point when sadly, a multitude of rapes and startling attitudes about rape culture have been exposed: incidents such as the Steubenville rape case, the problematic media aftermath, and the brutality of the gang rape in Delhi, just to name a few. While not always an easy movie to watch, I believe that Six Acts could be a very important film for these issues. I truly hope that it will reach a wide audience. 

For information about additional screenings continue on to the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival website.

———-

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection; however, she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism. 

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Tyler Perry’s Rape Problem by Carolyn Edgar

Jessica Chastain, “Roles for Women Have Taken a Step Back” by Sasha Stone via Women and Hollywood

Think ‘The Walking Dead’ Has a Woman Problem? Here’s the Source by Simon Abrams via The Village Voice

Rick Ross, Don Draper, and the Fantasy World of Masculinity by Mychal Denzel Smith via Feministing

From ‘Californication’ To ‘Veep’ The TV Shows That Hired No Women Or Writers Of Color In 2011-2012 by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

Amy Pascal Asks Hollywood to Eliminate Gay Stereotypes from Films by Karensa Cadenas via Women and Hollywood 

In Which I Am Pretty Darn Sure that Most Gamers Are Fine with Female Protagonists by Becky Chambers via The Mary Sue  

‘Game of Thrones’ Is Back and the Prostitutes Rule the Roost by Alex Cranz via FemPop

Rick Ross Thinks Rape Is a Punchline by Jamilah Lemieux via Ebony Magazine

Girls on Film: Hollywood Will Try Anything for a Superhero Movie — Except a Female Director by Monika Bartyzel via The Week 

What Women Want on TV via HuffPost Live

The Wage Gap in the Video Game Industry by Susana Polo via The Mary Sue

Enough with Jon Hamm’s Penis Already! by Flavia Dzodan via Tiger Beatdown

‘Mad Men’ Season 6: It’s 1968 and You Know What That Means by Chris Lombardi via Women’s Voices for Change 

Esquire Editor: We Show ‘Ornamental’ Women in Same Way as Cars by Mark Sweney via The Guardian

Women Film Festivals: Do We Need Them? by Signe Baumane via Women and Hollywood 

It’s Bigger Than Adria Richards by Jamilah King via Colorlines

The ‘Not Buying It’ App: Challenging Sexist Media via IndieGogo 

Three TV Shows that Feature Great Older Women by Jennifer Keishi via Bitch Magazine Blog

What Would Fully-Clothed Female Superheroes Look Like? by Ryan Broderick via Buzzfeed

What’s Behind ‘Downton Abbey’s Huge Popularity? Great Female Characters by Megan Burbank via Bitch Magazine Blog

We Heart John Legend for Being a Fearless Feminist by Liza Baskin via Ms. Magazine Blog 

Half Of 2013’s National Magazine Award Finalists Are Women, For Real, So Let’s Meet Them by Riese via Autostraddle

Jurassic Park Taught Me It Was Okay To Be a Feminist by Alex Cranz via FemPop

What have you been reading or writing this week?? Share in the comments!

Sexual Assault Subtext in Sailor Moon

By Myrna Waldron

I know I tend to gush about this series a lot, but today I’m going to talk about its dark side. I rewatch the episodes on a regular basis, but now approach them from an entirely new viewpoint. When I was a teen, I didn’t really understand feminism that much (beyond disliking Barbies and feeling uncomfortable about sexualisation) so a lot of the stuff I notice now went over my head. In particular, there are four Sailor Moon villains whose behaviour, well…creeps me the hell out. Prince Demando in Sailor Moon R and the Amazon Trio (Hawk’s Eye, Tiger’s Eye, Fisheye) in Sailor Moon SuperS have one thing in common besides being the bad guys – their modus operandi seems to have a distinct tendency towards subtextual sexual assault and attempting physical control of their targets. It’s never overt, and the victims never have any lasting physical damage (emotional/mental damage is never touched upon) but Oh my GOD is it hard to watch. General trigger warning in effect. You can figure out the subject matter from the title, and I’m not going to hold back.

Demando trying to kiss Usagi

In Sailor Moon R, Prince Demando’s story is largely centred around his leadership of the Black Moon Clan, and his obsession with Neo-Queen Serenity. In both the anime and manga, he becomes fascinated with her eyes after she glares at him in defiance. In the manga, he retaliates against her rejection by encasing her in a crystal coffin where she now lies in a coma. In the anime, the coffin is instead created by the four Guardian/Inner Soldiers to protect Neo-Queen Serenity from an attack – but she also falls into a coma. As the second season’s plot is themed around time travel, he instead directs his attention to Neo-Queen Serenity’s younger self – Usagi/Sailor Moon.

Now, first off, Usagi is still 14 years old. Prince Demando is clearly an adult. This is an issue that the anime dances around (seeing as Mamoru was aged up to college aged instead of starting the story at 17) but there’s already some consent problems going on right there. Demando takes it one step further. In both the anime and manga, Demando kidnaps Sailor Moon and then overwhelms her with the power of the Black Crystal, which makes her fall unconscious and undoes her transformation. Usagi wakes up later, on a bed, in an elaborate dress she does not recognize. We do not know how long she was unconscious, and disturbingly, we do not know how Demando changed her clothes. The anime shows that the Black Moon Clan has the ability to magically change their attire, so that is a possible “solution,” but as far as I can remember, this isn’t something that is a demonstrated power in the manga. Regardless, Usagi is temporarily nude when she loses her transformation powers, and the ambiguity of her waking up in unfamiliar clothing has some disturbing implications.

Usagi crying from fright

In both the anime and manga, Demando possesses a magic third eye that can hypnotize its target. He uses this ability to try to force Usagi to declare “love” and “allegiance” to him, as well as to kiss him. In both versions, Usagi is more frightened than she has ever shown to be before, and is ashamed that someone besides Mamoru would be kissing her. In the manga, Demando does kiss her, and she is so upset by this she breaks the hypnosis and slaps him. In the anime, Demando is interrupted before he can kiss her, but his attempt to physically force affection out of her goes on for so much longer, and is somehow even more disturbing. In the manga, Demando temporarily releases Usagi from the hypnosis and allows her to wander around the Nemesis Castle, thinking that the Black Crystal’s influence would overwhelm her powers. He underestimates her resolve, however, and she manages to transform, rescuing herself and the kidnapped Inners. In the anime we instead get a Damsel in Distress situation. Tuxedo Mask is the one who interrupts Demando, and boy howdy do we get some Freudian symbolism going on in this scene. When the hypnosis breaks, Usagi falls backwards onto the bed. Tuxedo Mask extends his cane down to the bed, which she grabs onto. Phallic as hell. And don’t forget that Demando’s name is based on “Diamond”…which is a gem known for its *hardness.*

Demando takes a hit for Sailor Moon

The anime fairly closely follows the manga for the first hypnosis attempt, but deviates once it gets closer to the climax of the story. The Sailor Soldiers enter into the Black Crystal to stop the enemy, and Demando exploits its powers to separate Sailor Moon from her friends once again. He arrogantly repeats the exact same hypnosis attacks. This time, he physically forces her down on her knees (unfortunately making me think of a certain sexual act) and tries to make her kiss his hand in allegiance. She repeatedly breaks out of his spells, and counters his demands for her to “love” him by saying he does not understand the concept. She also manages to convince him that Wiseman has been lying to and manipulating him the entire time. Aaaand then the anime deviates even further in a way that…doesn’t please me.

One of the major themes in the anime is Usagi’s forgiveness, and saintlike willingness to let any villain redeem themselves, no matter what they’ve done. This…is not really a thing in the manga. Sure, there are some villains who become good, but the majority of them get a quick and brutal execution. And they don’t just get a bullet wound or anything like that…they get disintegrated. And that’s what happens to Prince Demando in the manga – after he’s stopped from combining the two Silver Crystals to destroy the space-time continuum, Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask combine their powers to blow him the fuck up. Unfortunately, in the anime, he instead takes an attack from Wiseman that was meant for Sailor Moon, and he gets a long, drawn out death scene. Anime Usagi is apparently so goddamn forgiving that because he did this one act of kindness, she apparently forgets what he’s done, and cries for him. And his last words are “I love you, Sailor Moon.” Give me a BREAK. Yeah, I know he was evil and probably didn’t understand the concept of love yaddayaddayadda, but you know what? If you love someone you don’t try to physically force them to kiss you! His attraction to Usagi was an obsession at best. Not love. I think the worst part about this scene is that it’s encouraged shippers to get off on the idea of Usagi and Demando being together. I’ve already had Tumblr arguments about that (I even got called a feminazi!) but I’m still standing by my opinion of that ship: EUGH.

The Amazon Trio perusing photos of their targets

Moving on to the fourth season, the anime SuperS doesn’t really have much in common with the Dream Arc of the manga. As the anime series went on, it deviated so much from the manga that in the end they told an almost completely different story with the same characters. The villains in the first half of the series are the Amazon Trio; Hawk’s Eye likes older women, Tiger’s Eye likes young women, and Fisheye likes men. Their task is to look in the Dream Mirrors of the people of Tokyo to find where a magical being called Pegasus is hiding. And their methods are even closer to full-on sexual assault than even Prince Demando’s shenanigans.

First, they seem to take pride in trying to seduce their intended victims. All three disguise themselves (Fisheye, who is feminine, crossdresses as a woman) and try to strike up relationships with their targets. Hawk’s Eye tries to appeal to the older women’s kindness, Tiger’s Eye is basically a Pick Up Artist, and Fisheye tends to pick men who are artists or romantics. Yup, the “sexual assault” targets are occasionally men. Tiger’s Eye appears the most often, as most of the cast is comprised of young women. He’s tremendously egotistical, and flies into a rage if his target doesn’t immediately fall head over heels with him. In the episode where he targets Ami, he even calls her a bitch for politely refusing his offer to take her to a private beach. He reminds me a lot of a Nice Guy – it’s always the woman’s fault if she doesn’t love him/want to screw him, and they turn on their romantic targets pretty quickly.

Hawk’s Eye and a restrained Ikuko (Usagi’s mother)

The Amazon Trio’s attempts to gain their victims’ trust before attacking them is bad enough. But the attacks themselves are so goddamn hard to watch. First, the victim is propped against a coffin-shaped board. Then they are physically restrained by their wrists and ankles. And then the Dream Mirrors are magically forced out of the victim’s chest, with them screaming in pain. The Trio then bend over and stick themselves RIGHT IN THE MIRROR, laughing in excitement and enjoying their view of the victims’ privacy while the victim screams in horror and pain. Inevitably Pegasus is not in the Dreams, and the Trio is instructed to kill their victims to prevent Pegasus from hiding in those Mirrors later. Yup, once they’re done assaulting them, it’s time to kill their victims! Such nice guys. It’s usually at this point that the Sailor Soldiers interrupt and go through their stock footage to defeat the monster of the day. Rinse and repeat for about 20 episodes.

In the manga, none of the “looking into Dream Mirror” stuff happens. The Amazon Trio appear once in each act, and are obliterated pretty quickly. They are basically the pawns of the Amazones Quartet, who try to manipulate the Guardian Soldiers into giving up their dreams. Ami and Rei are forced to see nightmarish hallucinations in mirrors, and both Fisheye and Tiger’s Eye try to seduce the girls to make them give up being Sailor Soldiers (This suggests that Fisheye is not gay in this version). Makoto is given an Amazon Ring by Hawk’s Eye (who is the crossdresser this time rather than Fisheye) which makes her blurt out all of her insecurities and ambivalence over her dreams and responsibilities. In each case, the three girls overcome the hallucinations/manipulations, and each Amazon Trio member is killed off quickly. In the anime, the redemption stuff is instead used once again. It’s arguably a little more understandable since it is revealed that the Trio are not humanoid but magically transformed animals, so their understanding of human kindness and, uh, not stalking and assaulting people you’re attracted to, would not have developed.

The Trio get Dream Mirrors

Fisheye’s final target is Mamoru, and he goes out of his way to try to entice Mamoru away from Usagi. He has a bit of an identity crisis after finding out the truth about himself and that he lacks a Dream Mirror, and sadly sits on a bench in the rain. Usagi comes across him and recognizes him as the “girl” who tried to hit on Mamoru. Normally she’s a tremendously jealous girl, but for whatever reason, Usagi the Saint offers kindness to Fisheye and invites him home to warm up. Thus Fisheye naturally learns about the kindness of humans. He even discovers that Chibi-Usa is the true harborer of Pegasus, but decides not to tell Zirconia about this. When Hawk’s Eye attacks Usagi, Fisheye defends her, and convinces his “brothers” to defect. They are then assassinated by the Amazones Quartet, but are given Dream Mirrors by Pegasus, and he brings their spirits to Elysion to rest.

So…once again Usagi has saintlike forgiveness and borderline sexual assaulters get redemption. Maybe I’m too hard, but I think there’s a limit to how much someone should get away with if they do the “Oh, I see the error of my ways now” bit. I should be a good progressive and always support rehabilitation rather than eternal incarceration, but I’m dubious about how effective therapy and education actually is for abusers and rapists. This is a major issue that psychologists and feminists need to work on. Regardless, I think I prefer how the manga handles this situation. For whatever reason, and it might be because the manga is written by a woman and the anime is usually written/directed by men, the sexual assault subtext is far less disturbing and drawn out than it is in the manga. And for me, it’s far more satisfying to see a villain that manipulative and creepy to get blown away than to see them become good guys. But that’s a matter of preference.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

When Dumb Fun Turns Nasty: Sexual Violence in Stupid Movies

Written by Max Thornton.
[content note: explicit discussion of violence and rape]
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Violent media poisoning nation’s soul.
Is it, though? To his credit, LaSalle recognizes that it’s pretty fatuous to blame movie violence for real-life violent crime, but that doesn’t stop him from calling for blanket R ratings for movies with “any violence at all.” I honestly don’t see how that will help. An R rating won’t stop anyone from seeing a film they’re determined to see (hi there, internet!), and it definitely won’t encourage critical thinking (the trouble is, you can’t legislate for that).
Also, you know, Adam Lanza – the motivation for LaSalle’s piece – was 20. He could have seen the most brutal NC-17 movie he wanted.
It’s an old complaint that MPAA ratings are seriously messed up, mired in disturbing double-standards around male and female sexuality, straight and queer sexuality, sex and violence. However, if you happen to believe that violent movies contribute to a “culture of violence,” age-based restrictions don’t accomplish a thing. Except perhaps to make under-seventeens desperate to see movies just because you say they can’t.
I really don’t think the problem with movie violence is that too many superhero flicks are rated PG-13. I don’t even think the problem is the existence of movie violence. I think the problem is the context and presentation of the violence. MPAA ratings, audiences, and filmmakers themselves overwhelmingly fail to distinguish between cartoonish violence and realistic violence, or between sex and sexual violence, and this is what I find truly alarming.
I have a shameful love of really stupid gory movies. I have a dumb but almost limitless enthusiasm for the subgenre lovingly dubbed “splatstick.” Evil Dead II. Peter Jackson’s Braindead. Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd. Appendages being severed in improbable ways, fountains of dyed corn syrup gushing forth, heads and eyeballs rolling all over the place… That stuff cracks me up, and has done ever since I was an eight-year-old at home with septicemia, watching videocassettes of Tom & Jerry and bringing my mother running with every yell of sympathy that quickly dissolved into peals of laughter.
And I respond just like Bart and Lisa Simpson.
 
Realistic movie violence disturbs me, of course, in films like City of God or Irreversible. These are movies intended to confront you with the utter awfulness of the events they depict, with no interest in minimizing or trivializing their horror. They’re hard to watch, and they should be.
Cartoon violence, on the other hand, is outlandish, clownishly over-the-top, and nothing like real life. A scene like the possessed hand scene in Evil Dead II or the zombie baby scene in Braindeadis funny in the way that a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel is funny. It’s an outlet for Schadenfreude in a really goofy setting.
It really, really bothers me when cartoon violence turns sexual.
When a tree rapes a woman in the original Evil Dead. When a tentacled zombie-slug-man rapes a woman in Slither. When a snowman serial killer rapes a woman with his carrot nose in Jack Frost(no, not that Jack Frost). Most recently, when zombie Nazis turn rapey in Nazis at the Center of the Earth.
Goddammit, it’s called Nazis at the Center of the Earth, not Rapists at the Center of the Earth.
 
I’m watching a movie called Nazis at the Center of the Earth because I want to laugh at a lousy special effect of Zombie Josef Mengele ripping a guy’s skin off in one elegant motion. That’s funny to me, because no one in real life gets their skin ripped off by Zombie Josef Mengele, and if they did it wouldn’t look like that. The sudden inclusion of sexual violence is just grim.
We’re all feminists here, so I don’t need to repeat the stats, but here they are again: 1 in 6 women. 1 in 33 men.
Comical beheadings with fountains of unrealistic blood are funny to me in the way that Laurel & Hardy dropping the piano again is funny. Sexual assault IS NOT FUNNY. Jack Frost (again, the killer-snowman one, not the family film or the bizarre Russo-Finnish fairytale that was on MST3K) is rated R for “violence and gore, language and some brief sexuality.” For “brief sexuality.” CALL IT WHAT IT IS, MPAA.
I get that plenty of people don’t find splatstick funny. That makes sense and is valid, and I can respect that opinion. What doesn’t make sense, isn’t valid, and does not merit my respect is thinking that sexual violence belongs in splatstick humor. Contra George Carlin, Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd is not funny to me. Cartoon sexual violence isn’t funny in the way cartoon splatstick can be, because of the whole rape culture thing. The difference is crystallized in the fact that the MPAA doesn’t call a nose-breaking punch “brief face-touching,” but it does call carrot-rape “brief sexuality.”
In the end, what crosses the movie-violence line depends largely on your personal taste. A really cheesy special effect of a sharktopus eating a person makes me laugh; others won’t find that funny. But I don’t think sexual violence is a matter of personal taste. When I sign up for some cheesy splatstick movie fun, I want cheesy splatstick fun, and that does NOT include sexual assault of any kind. What’s so hard to understand about that?

 

If you’re more of a words person, this might help.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

 

2013 Golden Globes Week: ‘Les Miserables,’ Sex Trafficking & Fantine as a Symbol for Women’s Oppression

Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Miserables
Written by Megan Kearns.

Some writers, like professor Stacy Wolf, have enjoyed yet criticized the film adaptation of Les Miserables for not being feminist enough and turning the female characters into “bit players.” While others have lauded its feminism. Sure it irks me yet another film focuses on the journey, salvation and redemption of a man. We clearly have enough of those. But that ignores the importance of women in Les Mis. It ignores how, as Bitch Flicks writer Leigh Kolb astutely points out, a film featuring poverty and class struggles is feminist. 

I have loved Les Miserables for years. After reading it in junior high, the book absorbed me — the horrific tragedy, pain and oppression. The vivid characters and their stories stirred and moved me. I immediately went out and bought the soundtrack, falling under its spell. 5 years later I saw it on Broadway, it mesmerized me. So when I heard a film adaptation of the musical? With Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman? With live singing?? Hearing Samantha Barks as the awesome Eponine belt out “On My Own?” Oh yeah. Saying I was psyched was definitely an understatement.

Sure the numbers 24601 will always be synonymous with Jean Valjean and the cruel incarceration he faced for stealing a loaf of bread. And yes, I love the standoff between Valjean and Inspector Javert or the passion of Enjolras at the barricades. But the person who has haunted me the most throughout the years? It wasn’t any of the men. It was Fantine.

Anne Hathaway embodies the tragic role, giving a phenomenal, powerful and transcendentperformance. She deserves all the hype and accolades she’s received. I’ve always been a fan of Hathaway in anything from Rachel Getting Married to The Devil Wears Prada. But she takes acting to a whole other level in this devastating performance. In “I Dreamed a Dream,” the show-stopping tragic song — which btw, made me weep in ragged sobs in the movie theatre…oh fuck, who am I kidding, even when watching the trailer too — Hathaway pours every emotion, every ounce of herself into the role. She trembles, rages, weeps. Her voice wavering from angelically soft to ragged and hoarse. Her performance alone is reason to watch the entire film. No joke. She’s that outstanding.
Fantine is the archetypal sacrificial mother, giving up everything for her daughter Cosette. But Fantine transcends merely rearticulating tropes and archetypes. Fantine is downtrodden. Life has beaten her down. The tigers at night have torn her hopes apart and crushed her dreams. Hathaway imbues Fantine with a fiery passion balanced with forlorn desperation. She’s angry at her circumstances, angry at her pain, desperate to save her daughter.

Fantine also illustrates the plight of single mothers. Single mothers are 5 times as likely to be in poverty, many working in low-wage jobs without paid sick leave. Fantine struggles to make ends meet to pay for Cossette who lives with the greedy and villanious Thenardiers, at the expense of her own health as she eventually gets ill with tuberculosis.

Fantine works in a factory and is fired after the lecherous foreman discovers through her gossipy coworkers (gee, thanks for the female camaraderie, ladies) that she has a daughter out of wedlock whom she sends money. When she’s thrown out on the streets, Fantine has nowhere to turn. She eventually sells her locket and her prized luscious locks. But then she sells the thing that always makes me shudder. Her teeth. And then, when she has nothing left to sell, she sells her body becoming a prostitute. She sells herself.

Anne Hathaway tried to relate to her character but couldn’t as their lives wildly diverge. But she realized that while Les Mis is a period piece, it parallels the struggles women face today, particularly with Fantine being forced into sexual slavery. Hathaway (who has come out in support of the One Billion Rising campaign to fight violence against women) said:

“There was no way I could relate to what my character was going through. I live a very successful, happy life. I don’t have any children that I’ve had to give up…or keep.  So I tried to get inside the reality of her story as it exists in our world.  And to do that, I read a lot of articles and watched a lot of documentaries and news clips about sexual slavery. And for me, and this particular story, I came to the realization that I had been thinking about Fantine as someone who lived in the past, but she doesn’t. She’s living in New York City right now, probably less than a block away.  This injustice exists in our world.  So every day that I was her, I just thought ‘This isn’t an invention. This isn’t me acting. This is me honoring that this pain lives in this world.’ I hope that in all our lifetimes, we see it end.”

As Ms. Magazine‘s Natalie Wilson points out, the distinction between prostitute and sexual slave is crucial:
“Her framing of Fantine as a sexual slave, NOT a prostitute, is key, as it refuses to glorify or joke about what is so often swept under the rug regarding sex work: that the majority of women do not “choose” it but are forced into it.”

Traditionally, people view the sex industry in two ways. There exists a range of ways to be in it, either by choice, circumstance or coercion, but regardless it’s work and we must make it safe for sex workers and regulate disease. Or the sex industry is a form of violence against women and girls, exploitative and a form of gender-based violence.

Choice is the keystone in the argument. Do people choose sex work? Or are they forced into it via trafficking? Or do they choose it only because they have no other options or means to earn a living, negating its categorization as a “choice?”

In the book Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn “confront theliberal myth that prostitution is a voluntary vocation for women.” As a reproductive justice advocate, I believe a woman’s body should be her legal and personal domain. While some sex workers may choose their profession willingly, too many women – 3 million women and girls – are forced into sex trafficking. Traffickers coerce, beat and rape women into submission. Trafficking is human slavery, a human rights travesty. Numerous women, children and men are savagely sold. Whether people choose sex work willingly or are trafficked, they shouldn’t face criminalization. People who’ve survived trafficking lose jobs or can’t get jobs due to convictions.

Les Mis fuses these two views. It shows that sexual slavery is exploitative and a human rights violation — Fantine enters prostitution for she has no other choice, she has no other way to earn money. But it simultaneously reinforces that we shouldn’t punish sex workers for their circumstances. Les Mis doesn’t devalue, demonize or erase the humanity of those in sex work.

Some assert Les Mis suffers from outdates gender roles and gender stereotypes. Sure it’s set in 1810s-1830s Paris and Victor Hugo wrote it in 1862. But that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t critique Les Mis through a current lens, especially considering the film is current. But I don’t think Les Mis is chained to the past.

Sexual slavery and oppression aren’t merely in history books. Women today face poverty, trafficking, domestic abuse, rape, assault. Even if we don’t personally confront these struggles, we all must deal with binding constrictions of sexism and rape culture, which Les Mis illustrates.

When Anne Hathaway infamously (and awesomely!) shut down Matt Lauer’s douchebaggy slut-shaming on the Today Show after paparazzi took a crotch shot of her, she said:

“Well, it was obviously an unfortunate incident. Um, I think — It kinda made me sad on two accounts. One was that I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and, rather than delete it, and do the decent thing, sells it. And I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants, which brings us back to Les Misbecause that’s what my character is — she is someone who is forced to sell sex to benefit her child, because she has nothing and there’s no social safety net. And I— Yeah, so, um, so let’s get back to Les Mis.”

Hathaway is right, Fantine — and so many other women like her — have no safety net. Without healthcare, education, paid sick leave, adequate day care and social assistance programs, today’s impoverished single mothers have few options.

Les Mis also sheds light on rape culture. After Fantine fights back against a man harassing her, putting snow down her dress, she’s the one punished, not the assailant. Inspector Javert wants to arrest Fantine, reinforcing a victim-blaming rape culture which criminalizes and demonizes women’s behavior and punishes victims/survivors, rather than the perpetrators of abuse and assault. With the global rape epidemic now taking center stage — Steubenville, Jyoti Singh Pandey in India, Notre Dame’s rape cover-up — we must question how we as a society perpetuate and enable violence against women.

Feminism and social justice push us to not only see the world from our own perspective and privilege. But to see it from others’ perspectives and circumstances as well. Now I recognize it’s problematic that Fantine can only achieve salvation and peace in death. Or that she becomes a saintly prostitute, a symbolic Mary Magdalene. But through Fantine’s eyes, we see the horrors of poverty, trafficking, sexism and rape culture. She symbolizes the oppression women combat — throughout history and today.
Fighting oppression, looking at the intersectionality of gender and class, critiquing – these are the core of Les Mis’ message. Isn’t that what feminism is all about?

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Bros Before Hoes, or How Kidnapping Makes for Great Dance Numbers: on ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’

This is a guest review by Jessica Freeman-Slade
When Bitch Flicks first put out the call for a review of the movie musical landscape, this was the first movie that came to mind. It has all the elements of a great movie musical: the hummable ditties of Kiss Me, Kate, the buoyant dance sequences of West Side Story, and the Technicolor treatment of the great Pioneer experience of Oklahoma! But when you add blatant misogyny, barn-raisings and male bravado, and taking women by force as the ultimate romantic gesture, you get Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The 1954 movie, directed by Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain) with music by Saul Chaplin and Gene de Paul and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, with choreography from the great Michael Kidd, is often overlooked when considering the movie musical genre. There are, admittedly, many musicals that enjoy examining the battle of the sexes, and most old-school romantic comedies start with a Dude™ and a Chick™ squabbling over their differences. But very few of those ever let the man be so backwards that he equates courtship and conquering, or has a woman responsible for civilizing and subduing men’s worst impulses. It’s like Lysistrata and The Hangover got together and held a barn dance–a big, beautiful Crayola-colored extravaganza.

In 1821, Oregon Territory, Adam Pontipee (the impossibly rugged Howard Keel) is looking to fetch himself a wife—not for the purposes of high-falutin’ romance, family, and lifelong happiness, no. “I’d like best a widow woman that ain’t afraid to work,” he says, at the general store, where he’d just as quickly pick up a mate as he would 25 pounds of chewing tobacco. “There’s seven of us men, me and my six brothers. Place is like a pigsty, and the food tastes worse….” Adam is out for marriage in the purest economical sense: in this new territory, there are ten men for every woman, and so Adam’s priority is availability, not compatibility.

 

“Bless Yo’ Beautiful Hide,” he booms, and it’s not until he sees Millie (Jane Powell, strong of axe and soft of heart) that he knows he can go out and buy with gusto. She makes great stew, so that’s half the battle, and she is used to tending men in a boarding house, so he considers her the perfect bride.

He offers marriage, she accepts (as she’s fallen for him on first sight), and off they go in his wagon back to his cabin in the mountains, where she meets his six red-bearded, bullish brothers. Millie bristles at caring for her brother-in-laws without some control, and so she withholds a hot breakfast and newly washed clothes until they promise to shave and settle down like gentleman. It seems that what this house has longed for is not an extra hand in the washroom, but a gentle and firm guide to proper etiquette.

What Millie discovers, as she gets to know these boys, is that they long to go out and snatch up girls of their own—which they do, in spectacular fashion, at the town’s barn raising. The brothers Pontipee, all in primary colors, demonstrate through dazzling choreography how dashing and desirable they can be, and sweep the girls off their feet. Just watch how leapfrogging, arm wrestling, log-rolling, and balletic machismo pays off. (This is the most spectacular sequence of the movie, and it’s impossible to watch without a slaphappy grin. Jacques d’Amboise and a very young Russ Tamblyn steal the show as Ephraim and Gideon, defying gravity with every move.)

But of course, the boys get into a fistfight with the girls’ other suitors, and soon they’re back on the farm, suffering through the early days of a long winter. It’s lovely to see these men pining, something so rarely explored outside of the musical theater realm, while maintaining their rugged outdoorsmen personas. (This is, of course, expressed through the delicate art of ax ballet.)
The enlivening force of Seven Brides is male longing, and it makes for great theater. The Pontipee brothers have lived hard, but falling in love is what softens and civilizes them. But all that civilization is for nothing when Adam, modern man that he is, devises a brilliant scheme, pulled straight out of Millie’s copy of Plutarch’s Lives. Why not do like the Romans did with the Sabine women?
And then comes the merriest song about rape ever.
The brothers are shaken out of their depression by the chance to reassert their manhood, and off they go to town, snatching up their girls from backyards and front porches and carrying them off, squealing and crying. An avalanche falls as they are passing through the mountains, preventing the angry families and boyfriends from reaching the Pontipees. Millie, horrified to discover what the boys have done, reasserts her right over the house (the one territory that has become completely hers to control) and sends the boys to the barn for the entire winter, taking the girls inside and keeping them under close watch.

This ends up being a bit of a tease, since the girls get their own dance (about marriage, natch), and Millie discovers she’s pregnant. And though the girls start warming up to the brothers (peeking through windows, running around in their skivvies), the snow that blocks the pass never melts.

Once it does, we get lovely sequences of the girls and boys frolicking together with baby farm animals (no, this movie is not subtle), and Adam stays holed up in his hunting cabin, resentful of Millie’s banishment. But once he learns he has a baby—and at that, a baby girl—Adam breaks down and returns home to be the man he’s supposed to be. Though their families come to retrieve them, and the brothers are ready to set them free, the girls refuse to leave, claiming the newborn as their own. For better or for worse, we get a group marriage of a finale, and a whole bunch of color-coordinated couples once more.
So what do we make of such a strangely backwards story of frontier courtship? For one, that men, without the guiding impulses of a good woman, will behave like savages. Whether they demonstrate that savagery at the breakfast table or at a barn-raising, it’s clear that the Pontipee brothers have impulse control issues, and they just can’t help themselves. Their needs—for food, for dominance, for love—trump almost everything reasonable and refined, and they have been taught, as pioneers of this new and uncharted territory, to take when they can. Though Adam is charming and sexy as hell—seriously, George Clooney and Howard Keel could have a smirk-off—he treats Millie like a servant at best, and property at worst. “It wouldn’t hurt you to learn some manners, too.” she remarks at the barn-raising. “What for?” he counters. “I already got me a wife.”

You can argue that Millie should’ve seen this unfair exchange coming when Adam first walked into her boarding house—and she had no real incentive to get married. Gainfully employed, resourceful, well-liked and respected by her community (especially by the women), Millie could’ve easily stayed on her own in this new country. But she, too, is softened by love, and so she is the one that understands the brothers’ plight, not Adam. You can fault the captured girls a little less than Millie, at least initially—but they too get their attic ballet-in-bloomers about the dream of summer weddings. We are expected, no matter if our house or barn needs tending, to wish for a pairing-off, and the frontier certainly looks less terrifying if you are facing it alone.

But ultimately this is a movie that asks where male compassion comes from—and the last few scenes seem to conclude that it’s when sexual politics are made personal. Holding his newborn baby girl in his arms for the first time, Adam says, “I got to thinking up at the cabin, about the baby. How I’d feel if someone came creeping in and carried her off. I’d string him up the nearest tree. I’d shoot him down as I would a thieving fox.” It’s when Adam has to think about another man out there, treating his daughter like she was property just waiting to be taken, to stir him to a nobler state of mind. Just imagine if a Seven Brides scenario applied to every zealot or backwards politician who questioned a woman’s right to her own body and state of security, if all their wives and girlfriends were subjected to sexual scrutiny. We’ve be living in a very different universe—and this ain’t even Oregon territory.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers can certainly leave you feeling ambivalent, and possibly wondering whether this lovely closing marriage sequence is a symptom of Stockholm syndrome. But what it mostly offers—spectacular dance sequences, memorable songs, and an interesting take on what it means to be “civilized” by love—makes for a rollicking good musical, and an underappreciated classic.
———-
Jessica Freeman-Slade is a writer who has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She works at Random House as a cookbook editor, and lives in Morningside Heights.
    

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Megan‘s Picks:

Haters Need to Shut the Hell Up About Gabby Douglas’ Hair by Dodai Stewart via Jezebel

Gabby Douglas Leads Team USA to the Gold by Crunktastic via Crunk Feminist Collective

Sisters in Cinema: Where Are the Black Female Directors? by Evette Dionne via Women and Hollywood

“It’s Hard to Find Female Leads that Are Flawed and Interesting and Dynamic” by Chloe Angyal via Feministing

Please Submit All Ethnicities: The Tricky Business of Writing Casting Notices by Nina Shen Rastogi via Slate

Gender Matters: The Sight and Sound Top 50 Films of All Time List by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

Woman Moderator Petition: Teen Girls Fight for First Female Moderator for 2012 Presidential Debates via Huffington Post

Tippi Hedren Recalls Alfred Hitchcock’s Harassment for HBO’s The Girl  by Michael O’Connell via The Hollywood Reporter

The Archer Who Trained Jennifer Lawrence for The Hunger Games Competed in the London Olympics Today by Jill Pantozzi via The Mary Sue

Bachorlette and the Toll Weddings take on Female Friendships by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

The XXX Olympics Brings With It a New Tradition: Internet Misogyny Fest 2012 by Molly McCaffrey via I Will Not Diet

Stephanie‘s Picks:

Favorite Women-Empowering Movies of Recent Memory by Juliette Frette via Huffington Post

What Are the Greatest Movies Directed by Women? by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

What’s Wrong With the Media Coverage of Women Olympians? by Sarah J. Jackson via Role/Reboot

Why Only One Female Director Made Sight & Sound‘s Greatest Films List by Alyssa Rosenberg via Slate

TV Tropes Deletes Every Rape Trope; Geek Feminism Wiki Steps In by Aja Romano via The Mary Sue

I’ll Make the Entertainment I Want to See by Sara Koffi via Shakesville

Five Marvel Superheroines Who Would Make for Great ABC Television Shows by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

2012 Olympics Media Needs to Get Over Policing Female Athletes’ Bodies by Katrina Roberto via the Vancouver Observer

Belgium Film on Street Harassment Strikes a Chord Across Europe by Angelique Chrisafis via the Guardian

The Public Shaming of Kristen Stewart by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

Quick Tropes vs Women Project Update by Anita Sarkeesian via Feminist Frequency

Let us know what you’ve been reading!

Daniel Tosh and Rape Culture: The Roundup

Daniel Tosh

Serious Trigger Warning for discussions of rape, rape culture, and sexual assault. 

———-

Last Thursday, Megan wrote a piece about the recent Daniel Tosh clusterfuck–“Dear Daniel Tosh: You Know What’s Even Less Funny Than Rape Jokes? Rape Threats“–in which she discusses “his misogynistic douchebaggery as he verbally attacked a female audience member.”

She writes:

But just in case you haven’t [heard] or if you need a refresher, the woman called Tosh out amidst his performance at The Laugh Factory. Here’s what the woman told her friend who posted it on her blog which has now gone viral:
“So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc. I don’t know why he was so repetitive about it but I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find them funny and never have. So I didnt appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should find them funny. So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”
“I did it because, even though being “disruptive” is against my nature, I felt that sitting there and saying nothing, or leaving quietly, would have been against my values as a person and as a woman. I don’t sit there while someone tells me how I should feel about something as profound and damaging as rape.
“After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…”
Wow. What. The. Fuck. Rape jokes are never funny. Ever. Making a rape joke is bad enough. But attacking an audience member who calls bullshit on said rape joke?? Calling for her to be gang raped?? Horrifying and disgusting.
———-

Pretty much! We’ve written about the perpetuation of rape culture in the past, specifically after the New York Times essentially blamed an eleven-year-old girl for her own gang rape:
And we’ve noticed a few things here and there: rape being played for laughs in Observe and Report; the sexual trafficking of women used as a plot device in Taken; the constant dismemberment of women in movie posters; the damaging caricatures of women as sex objects in Black Snake Moan and The Social Network; and we’ve often pointed to discussions of sexism and misogyny around the net, like the sexual violence in Antichrist and, most recently, the sexualized corpses of women in Kanye West’s Monster video. It barely grazes the surface. I mean, it barely grazes the fucking surface of what a viewer sees during the commercial breaks of a 30-minute sitcom.

Yet, this constant, unchecked barrage of endless and obvious woman-hating undoubtedly contributes to the rape of women and girls.

The sudden idealization of Charlie Sheen as some bad boy to be envied, even though he has a violent history of beating up women, contributes to the rape of women and girls. Bills like H. R. 3 that seek to redefine rape and further the attack on women’s reproductive rights contributes to the rape of women and girls. Supposed liberal media personalities like Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann showing their support for Julian Assange by denigrating Assange’s alleged rape victims contributes to the rape of women and girls. The sexist commercials that advertisers pay millions of dollars to air on Super Bowl Sunday contribute to the rape of women and girls. And blaming Lara Logan for her gang rape by suggesting her attractiveness caused it, or the job was too dangerous for her, or she shouldn’t have been there in the first place, contributes to the rape of women and girls.  

It contributes to rape because it normalizes violence against women. Men rape to control, to overpower, to humiliate, to reinforce the patriarchal structure. And the media, which is vastly controlled by men, participates in reproducing already existing prejudices and inequalities, rather than seeking to transform them.
And it pisses me off.

Allow me to add the Daniel Tosh Rape Threat Controversy to the list. 

Below you’ll find a slew of excerpted articles written by feminists who oppose Tosh’s “joke” … and the controversy doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. Stay tuned for updates, and please leave any links I’ve missed — or links to any pieces you’ve written — in the comments.

———-

Daniel Tosh Is a Rape Culture Enforcer by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville

There isn’t much I can say about this, at least nothing I haven’t already said literally hundreds of times before in every conceivable way I can imagine: Rape jokes are not funny. They potentially trigger survivors, and they uphold the rape culture. They tacitly convey approval of rape to rapists, who do not appreciate “rape irony.” There is no neutral in rape culture, and jokes that diminish or normalize rape empower rapists. Rape jokes are pro-rape.
Shakesville has written extensively about this. You can find more of McEwan’s commentary under the tag Toshgate.

 
Male Comics: Stop Enabling Rape Culture by Molly Jane Knefel via Salon

Indeed, like one of those terrifying millipedes, this controversy gave birth to a thousand little baby controversies once it was opened up. It has led to conversations about if and how rape jokes can ever be funny; it has illuminated Tosh’s history of laughing at violence against women; it has called attention to the horrifying statistic that one in four women has experienced sexual assault, and that those women are in the audiences of comedy shows. It’s made some question whether it is ever right — or only right — for women like Sarah Silverman to make these jokes. It has also prompted comics to defend satire, to defend setups, to explain why interrupting a comic mid-joke is disrespectful and to remember all the terrible things they have said to hecklers to shut them down. But there is one really important controversy that we cannot let get away from the comedians: Why are there so many rape jokes in the first place?
This is about whether comedy, and the world at large really, will allow women to push back against rape culture. This woman felt uncomfortable with Tosh’s rape comments because we live in a world where rape is expected, and she doesn’t find that funny. Tosh’s response, and the responses of his colleagues, aren’t about defending rape jokes—we live in a society where, unfortunately, they don’t need defending—they’re about shutting this woman up. They’re about maintaining the status quo—the one where men are allowed to rape women who talk back, who dress like sluts, who “ask for it”—at all costs, even if it means threatening someone with gang rape. If she tries to fight back then she just doesn’t get it. And if others call out this behavior, then they don’t get it either.
When Rape Jokes Are Never Funny by Meghan O’Keefe via Huffington Post
If this is what Tosh wanted to do artistically, then, well, he has every right as a comedian to do so. The fact that he backpedaled on the joke on twitter however suggests that he doesn’t want to be seen as that kind of comic. Again, Tosh wants to be liked. He wants to be popular, and so we circle back to the fact that the problem isn’t Daniel Tosh. The problem is that our society is still a rape culture where a large percentage of people think that rape’s OK and that a girl in a short skirt is asking for it and that it’s funny to assault someone. Not for the sake of satire, but for one person’s amusement over another person’s real life victimization.
Do You Laugh at Rape Jokes? by Soraya Chemaly via Fem2.0
Culture is why Tosh is just a symptom. He’s simply doing what works to generate a small fortune, capture six million Twitter followers and be a number one rated comedian. That’s why this isn’t a First Amendment problem but one of market demand. The First Amendment gives people the right to make rape jokes and this right is critical and non-negotiable. But, it doesn’t obligate comedians to tell these jokes, nor does it obligate others to pay to hear them because they find them entertaining. That’s a matter of our culture and what is considered the current norm for human decency and empathy. Tosh in this way is no different from Facebook – which chose to keep rape joke pages up (in violation of its own guidelines prohibiting hate speech, if they apply to women) but removed a picture of an asexualized woman walking down the street topless in NY for being obscene. I’m not letting him off the hook, though. He has no (meaningless) corporate guidelines to follow, but he has an ethical choice about the jokes he makes and how he makes them.  Rape jokes aren’t simply R-rated antics.

Yes, many comedians take life’s tragedies and make fun of them; they use humor as a way of coping with the awful things that happen to people. It’s actually similar to my own defense that bringing the funny into feminism and social justice makes it all the more accessible and fun, and can be a way for us to collectively laugh at the injustice that we have to deal with on a daily basis.
What Tosh did was not that.

But would it be funny if this girl got gang raped right this moment, like right now right now? That’s not a joke. It’s an invitation. It’s a celebration of a violent crime, which is itself another violation. It’s not a way to cope. It’s a “this is something we can do and then laugh about it, no big deal.” When you reiterate these half-truths (there are girls in the world getting raped by like five guys right now), they authenticate themselves, as if by magic. To promote the insidious—“rape is hilarious”—is to join the crime at its own filthy level.
Anatomy of a Successful Rape Joke by Jessica Valenti via The Nation
Those supporting Tosh are outraged that anyone would dare tell a comedian how to be funny. (There’s also been a lot of “if you can’t take the heat” sentiment aimed at this woman, given that she heckled Tosh.) Many of his defenders insist that his joke—and other jokes about rape—are simply edgy and controversial, which is what a comedian is supposed to be.
But here’s the thing: threatening women with rape, making light of rape, and suggesting that women who speak up be raped is not edgy or controversial. It’s the norm. This is what women deal with every day. Maintaining the status quo around violence against women isn’t exactly revolutionary.
How to Make a Rape Joke by Lindy West via Jezebel
That said, a comedy club is not some sacred space. It’s a guy with a microphone standing on a stage that’s only one foot above the ground. And the flip-side of that awesome microphone power you have—wow, you can seriously say whatever you want!—is that audiences get to react to your words however we want. The defensive refrains currently echoing around the internet are, “You just don’t get it—comedians need freedom. That’s how comedy gets made. If you don’t want to be offended, then stay out of comedy clubs.” (Search for “comedians,” “freedom,” “offended,” and “comedy clubs” on Twitter if you don’t believe me.) You’re exactly right. That is how comedy gets made. So CONSIDER THIS YOUR FUCKING FEEDBACK. Ninety percent of your rape material is not working, and you can tell it’s not working because your audience is telling you that they hate those jokes. This is the feedback you asked for.

And I know that when it comes to subjects as complex as rape, using exceptions can seem like slippery logic. That if we let one slip, then another, we might end up right back where we started. That “good” jokes and “bad” jokes seem too subjective, too flimsy a compass in which to measure.
But we also forget that anger is not the only response to social injustice. That we are also allowed to–and desperately need–a space of our own to talk back to it, make fun of it, not let it get to us.
I think the point of Lindy West’s article, in the end, is that when it comes to comedy, context is everything. With it, we have the most dangerous and clever kind of power. And without it, we have, well–Tosh.
Many online observers were quick to criticize Tosh’s comments but comedians were just as quick to back him up.
Alex Edelman, a professional stand-up comedian based in New York, told the Guardian: “I find rape to be a really serious topic, but on the other hand I think a comedian should be allowed to say almost whatever he wants and that the audience should be able to manifest their dislike in the form of not laughing at something if they find it offensive.”

Daniel Tosh Jokes About Seeing a Heckler Get Gang Raped by Alyssa Rosenberg via Think Progress
A good comedian is an alchemist who can turn heckling into a transformative extended riff. Here it sounds like Tosh just doubled down on the same points he was making rather than actually responding, or providing an example of a rape joke that his heckler might find funny, undermining her objection. As I’ve written before, I think there is a case to be made that rape jokes that make fun of perpetrators can be very funny. Tosh didn’t go there, though. He just took the quickest route to run his heckler out of the club, and in using an image of her getting raped to mock and intimidate her, kind of made her point instead of his own. If rape was just hilarious and uproarious and trivial, it wouldn’t be a very effective rhetorical or literal weapon. Tosh isn’t just failing at civility here. He’s being a bad comedian.

We’ve had a lot of conversation on this blog about the way Daniel Tosh handled a woman who told him rape jokes weren’t funny at a recent show. There are a lot of threads to parse here—how people handle heckling (and how clubs should handle them)*, whether rape jokes can be funny under any circumstances, why comedians close ranks around their own. But I want to separate those issues out and talk very specifically about another strain of argument. One thread of conversation here has suggested that the woman who related her story was wrong, or oversensitive to feel threatened when Tosh suggested it would be funny if she were gang raped. The idea behind those objections is that no one would ever act based on Tosh’s words, and that because there isn’t a real prospect of her being actually assaulted, there is no impact to his words. This is wrong on two levels.

Comedian Daniel Tosh and the Culture of Rape in America by Beth via Veracity Stew

So, while comedians like Tosh shrug this off and say, It was just a joke, I will say, this isn’t a laughing matter anymore — not that it ever was — especially in a climate where women are being vilified and degraded for standing up for their most basic of rights, and to defend Daniel Tosh and his comments based solely on the fact that he’s a comedian, is unacceptable and inexcusable.
  • 44% of rape victims are under the age of 18
  • 80% are under the age of 30
  • Every two minutes, a person is raped in the U.S.
  • Each year, 207,754 victims are raped
  • 54% of sexual assaults are not reported to police
  • 97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail
These victims are mothers and daughters, sisters and wives, best friends and colleagues…in short, someone you may know and love. And you can rest assured that they probably will not see the “humor” in their plight.
When that woman stood up and said, “No, rape is not funny,” she did not consent to participating in a culture that encourages lax attitudes toward sexual violence and the concerns of women. Rape humor is what encourages a man to feel comfortable tweeting to Daniel Tosh, “the only ppl who are mad at you are the feminist bitches who never get laid and hope they get raped so they can get laid,” which is one of the idiotic, Pavlovian responses a certain kind of person has when women have the nerve to suggest that they don’t find sexual violence amusing. In that man’s universe, women who get properly laid are totally fine with rape humor. A satisfied vagina is a balm in Gilead.
Three Points About Rape Jokes and Rape Culture by Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre via Feministing
These “little” things add up—maybe it’s a rape joke at the comedy club, plus a newspaper op-ed blaming the victim, plus a music video turning women into objects, plus a fellow student saying “that test raped me,” plus movies or TV shows that glamorize the “tough anti-hero taking what he wants without apology,” plus a family culture of silence and shame around sex, plus a police force who just goes through the motions when it comes to investigating or working to prevent sexual assault, plus a million other things—it’s a tsunami of shit. And you can add to it, or you can fight against it.
The “Context” of Daniel Tosh’s Rape Joke by Imran Siddiquee via MissRepresentation
Imagine you’re in a country where people are still consistently assaulted for having dark skin. In this context you suggest that the lighter skinned people in the room whip a brown man into submission after he complains that jokes about darker people being persecuted aren’t funny. Might this make us uncomfortable? Probably, because when the brown man steps out into the real night outside the comedy club, there is a good chance he could actually get beaten and murdered. There’s also a history of this kind of violence actually happening around the world.
Does the “right” to joke about anything trump the realities of the place in which those jokes are being made?
Or imagine you are a heterosexual comedian in present-day Senegal (where being homosexual is illegal and gay men are often killed for being gay), speaking in front of an audience that includes people of various sexual preferences, and you make a joke about how killing gay people is always funny. And then a person in the audience shouts back “I’m gay and I don’t think it’s always funny.” And you proceed to say, hey, what if we beat up that gay guy right now? Wouldn’t that be hilarious?

I Know Funny and Rape Jokes Are NOT. by Cristy Cardinal via UpRoot
As we would expect, his defensiveness is couched in “It’s just a joke” and the “I make fun of everyone” and “You’re too sensitive” rhetoric that is the stock in trade of hurtful comedians who want license to tell tired jokes that weren’t funny the first time they were told 100 years ago, but make people slightly uncomfortable so they must be saying something important.  Comedians like Tosh compare themselves to guys like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, who said “offensive” things all the time.  The difference, however, is that Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor were exposing the truth of our culture as wrong and in need of redirection, and comedians like Tosh merely reflect back the worst of us in a bald-faced and uncritical way.  The way Tosh tells a racist joke venerates the racism, the way Pryor talked about racism made us aware that racism hurt people (while making us laugh).  There’s an ocean of difference in that.
Still Here by Cristy Cardinal via UpRoot
Daniel Tosh tried to make joke out of rape, and when someone protested, he shut her down with a threat of rape, which was not a joke but actual violence.  When I, as well as other feminist bloggers, spoke up in support of this woman, we were threatened with rape to shut us down.  It is ironic (and not in the cute hipster irony, but in the real deal kind), that the complaint many of Tosh’s supporters are making is that we are trampling on his creative process or freedom of expression by expecting him to be a decent human being.  And they are using violent and cruel rape rhetoric to try to get us to shut up.  We can’t use our freedom of speech to say, “What Daniel Tosh said crossed the line, and here’s why” but he, and his supporters, can use their freedom of speech to annihilate our humanity.  IRONY!
For Daniel Tosh, Actually Assaulting Women Is Comedy by Angus Johnston via Student Activism
What this confirms is that the whole Tosh thing isn’t about jokes. Tosh isn’t just a guy who tells stories on stage. He’s a guy whose comedy includes actually physically assaulting women, and directing his fans to do the same. And this is the guy who, after a woman challenged his rape jokes, mused aloud about how funny it would be if she “got raped by like, five” of those same fans, right then and there.
“Right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her?”
Damn.
Tosh uses some classic tricks to apologize, without really apologizing.

Trick One: I was misquoted. Tosh seeks to relieve himself of any responsibility, since, hey, he didn’t even say it.

Trick Two: I was the victim. Tosh seeks to undermins his apology by defending the point that started the entire interaction. He did nothing wrong but defend himself of a heinous violation–heckling! This is a weak apology at best and a passive aggressive dig at worst.

Does he really think people will not see the trickery he is employing to NOT apologize but say he is? Well, if he does, he’s right, because the media has reported his non-apology as the real thing.

Dear Comedians, and People Like Me Who Think They’re Comedians: Please Stop by Jonnie Marbles via Anarch*ish*

What made me stop telling rape jokes? I wish it had been what my sister told me, I wish I’d stopped that day instead of spending around a year loftily telling women why words couldn’t hurt them, that they should lighten up and that they didn’t get it. At first I felt I had to keep telling the jokes – had to! – simply because someone didn’t want me to. Otherwise I wasn’t being true to my art. It would be self-censorship. Comedians had to be free to say anything. Most importantly, how could I stay friends with the godawful, cowardly dickheads who told these jokes on a nightly basis if I turned around and said I wouldn’t? Sooner or later, though, I just couldn’t. Perhaps it was the jaw locking, knuckle clenching effect these jokes were having on the friends I brought along to shows. I’d sit next to them in the audience, see their discomfort, their disgust and realise I was doing the exact same thing up there, whether I knew it or not. Perhaps it was realising just how rarely rape is reported, and how making fun of it makes that less likely still.
Calculating by scatx [Note: this post contains discussions of rape culture via Twitter]
What it’s like to be a woman living in rape culture. OR why I tweeted about the Tosh situation for 24 hours.
You can’t watch TV without being subjected to a rape joke. You can’t listen to the radio. You can’t browse Twitter trending topics. You can’t walk down the street without some jackass asking you, “Do I look like a rapist?” through his t-shirt. (And the answer is yes, yes you do.)
People use “rape” to describe how they were ripped off, or talk about “raping” the replay button on YouTube.
And you can’t discuss any of these cultural artifacts without people painting the purveyors of this brand of comedy in a golden, harmless light, while erasing the experiences of millions upon millions of sexual assault survivors—most of whom never report their assaults for fear of not being taken seriously. Hmm, now how can that be?

What Tosh and people supporting him don’t seem to get is that it’s not about freedom of speech or censorship or what’s funny and what’s not. Although I still contend rape jokes aren’t funny. But what’s really at the core of this situation is how we trivialize and disregard people’s pain, trauma and wounds. 1 in 4 women are raped. As I said before, Tosh crossed the line the moment he disregarded that woman’s concerns, asserted his male privilege and tried to humiliate her with a rape threat.
So why am I posting all these negative tweets? Is it just to call people out? Yes. But what’s more important is when we look at them as a collective. Then you begin to see just how prevalent and insidious rape culture truly is.
Tosh, you are currently at an amazing and terrible moment in your career. It’s terrible for (hopefully by now) obvious reasons. It could be amazing because at this moment, you have the opportunity to apologize (in a version that’s longer than 140 characters) and also to make an example of your situation and stop being offensive in your humor. You can show the world and comedians that there are more complex, interesting, and (ultimately) better ways to make someone laugh than by being offensive. And you can do it while people are watching and waiting to hear from you in the fallout of this event.

Good Comedy and Bad Comedy by Lauren Kay Gilmore via The Eternal Sunshine of the Scholastic Mind
Molly Ivins once said “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful… when satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.”

I stand behind that 100%. Humor in the hands of a bully is just much less appealing than humor used to point out how ridiculous the bully is being. It may technically still be humor, and it may still be the Constitutional right of that bully to make those jokes, but thinking that a bully’s jokes aren’t funny doesn’t make me a stick in the mud, it makes me a decent person.

Rape culture is when self-appointed guardians of “traditional values” like Rick Santorum tell rape victims that, yes, rape is horrible, but if your rapist impregnates you, it’s “nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.” Aw, rape victims no doubt think to themselves, an unwanted pregnancy conceived in rape? For me? From God? Awesome! After all, despite the ugliness of rape, says Rick, “We have to make the best out of a bad situation.” As even the most causal readers of this series know, according to Mr. High and Mighty, making the best out of bad situation means passing laws to force women who’ve been raped to carry their rape-babies to term. And a “Gee, thanks, God!” wouldn’t hurt, you ungrateful, selfish bitches. Just because you’ve been raped is no excuse to be thinking about yourself. There are more important considerations than the trauma of your violent assault—like how male politicians feel about your violent assault and how they feel that you should feel about it. That’s rape culture.
15 Rape Jokes That Work by Kate Harding
Not everyone’s going to agree, and some people are going to think I’m a bad feminist, which, what else is new. But I want to be able to link to this post in the future, when this happens again–because it always does–and hordes of young men start screaming–because they always do–that feminists are trying to take all the funny out of comedy AGAIN.

I am a feminist. I have been raped. And I think the following 15 rape jokes are hilarious. So please fuck all the way the fuck off with your “You just don’t understand comedy” bullshit. (Here’s an alternative proposal: Maybe you just don’t understand being a decent human being.)

Here’s what YOU need to understand:

1) Rape is way, WAY more prevalent than you seem to think it is. Are there more than five women in your audience? You do the math, and then you run the little fantasy scenario that I just put together in your head, and you tell me how it feels.

2) I ain’t buying any of that “If I can make jokes about genocide, why can’t I make jokes about rape?” Horseshit, unless you made those genocide jokes during a gig at the Srebrenica Funny Bone. You got away with making a joke about genocide because your odds of having a holocaust survivor’s kid in the audience were pretty fucking low.

And if you did happen to have one in the audience, and he heckled you, walked out, and wrote something nasty on the internet… would you be more likely to be a human being and say “Wow. I can understand why that person’s authentic response to what I was doing was so emotional and negative. Maybe my genocide material just isn’t good enough to justify the pain that it inflicts. Maybe I need more skill in order to pull this off.” Or are you gonna be a lousy piece of shit and say, “Yeah, I apologize, I guess, IF YOU WERE OFFENDED.”

Offended hasn’t got anything to do with it, moron.

I’m not a comedian, and am only occasionally (mostly not on purpose) funny. I’m not here to comment on humor or what passes as a joke these days. However, an unintended conversation on Twitter yesterday, coupled with a story from a friend got me thinking.
Last night I found myself engaged with a comedian who didn’t quite understand why everyone was so up in arms over Tosh’s “joke.” Relax. Take a chill pill. You’re overreacting. You have no sense of humor, etc… I did my best to not engage, but when he verbally attacked a friend of mine, I stepped in. I was rational. I was calm. I made some logical points. And yet…
(I’ve chosen not to share screen caps of our conversation because I don’t need to give this guy any more attention. The bolding/color highlighting are my doing).

Can Rape Jokes Ever Be Funny? by Sarah Seltzer via AlterNet [includes video]
The answer to this bogus claim, of course, is that humor is at its best when it subverts the norm. In a rape culture such as ours, the norm is to pile scorn and disbelief upon victims and excuse perpetrators. So rape jokes that further humiliate victims aren’t edgy, they’re just bullying. But jokes that call attention to rape culture can be funny and even receive the feminist seal of approval.
A number of awesome feminist friends of AlterNet from the Women’s Media Center, PopCulturePirateWomen In Media & News, and Fem2pt0 teamed up this week to create a “supercut” of a variety of rape jokes, including several from Daniel Tosh which in my mind show exactly on which side of the line his particularsense of humor lies. The video, however, makes no overt judgments, but asks audience members to decide for themselves where that line is, what makes them laugh, and what makes them uncomfortable.

It seems that the heart of this incident is the question of whether or not it is appropriate for comedians to joke about rape. It could be argued that in this case, people defending Tosh are arguing it is appropriate to threaten someone with rape in a comedy club (since, if we use their logic, supposedly in the context of a comedy club, this is not meant to be taken seriously since it is just “a joke” that you might not “get”).
But the real heart of this, and the reason it has struck a chord with so many people, is that it is a simple sad illustration of rape culture at work.

Daniel has made jokes about black men, Latino men, and other non-white men raping women because they’re all animals who can’t control their dicks.

When his rape jokes were rooted in racism, no one gave a fuck.

I wonder if this spurt of rape jokes/threats/insults is not as out of the blue as we would all like to think. I see it as starting with prison-rape jokes. No one seemed to bat an eyelash when we used jokes like “don’t drop the soap” or “you’ll end up with a cellmate named Bubba” or even “they have a way of taking care of people who fight dogs/pedophiles/wife-abusers in jail.”
Then along came movies and television shows in which male rape was funny. I was appalled by a scene in Get Him To The Greek in which a male star is anally raped by a woman wielding a large dildo. Then came True Blood in which Jason Stackhouse was gang raped by women. His trauma was minimized and the rape(s) were written as a humorous comeuppance for a serial womanizer.
Daniel Tosh, Rape Jokes and Hecklers by Margaret Lyons via Vulture
First, let’s get a few quick things out of the way: (1) This is totally in keeping with Daniel Tosh’s humor and style. He’s a lousy Reddit thread come to life, which is why he is so popular! (Just ask Jeff Dunham.) (2) Don’t heckle comedians, no matter how offensive and crappy you think their material is. (3) There’s no such thing as off-limits in comedy, and comedians are always — always — entitled to make jokes about whatever they want. But “entitled to” and “obligated to” are not the same thing, and comedy is not immune to criticism.
That’s 30 rape jokes in one segment. One segment in a half-hour show on Comedy Central. That averages one rape joke per minute. I’d love to know the demographics of his viewing audience, but I don’t even have to look to feel confident they skew heavily in the 18-34 range. Which is terrifying to me.
Sure, one can find humor in anything, but I’d like to think that humor is most often found by those who have experienced something. Humor in healing, humor in dealing. Not aggressive, unnecessary and belittling humor that essentially robs the victims (in general as well as those specified) of the fact that they. were. victimized.
When Rape Jokes Aren’t Funny by Julie Burton and Michelle Kinsey Bruns via CNN
Nonetheless, the significant overlap between the gender divide and the rape-joke empathy gap is real, and it seems inevitable when media coverage of rape so often focuses on what a victim should have done differently to try harder not to get raped. Such shoddy framing creates a fictional image that there’s a certain type of woman who gets raped. Women know that’s a lie, because they live the truth, but men may never have occasion to question that image, and so when they laugh at rape jokes, they’re laughing at an abstraction that’s all too real for many women.
Tosh and all those with the privilege to hold a microphone have a responsibility to shine a light on the reality behind the abstraction — not to perpetuate it, and certainly not to silence those who bear its burden.

Nope by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville
UPDATE: I also want to quickly address the argument I’m seeing a lot that Louis CK should be given “credit,” or some variation thereof, for either “evolving” on rape culture and/or speaking about rape culture on a national platform, despite the rest of his objectionable shtick.

First of all, contemplating rape culture for the first time as a 44-year-old man with two daughters, and patting oneself on the back for it instead of framing it as the profoundly regrettable evidence of privilege that is is, isn’t something that ought to be praised—and praising it breathes life into the terrible idea that rape culture is difficult for “men” to understand. That is not accurate. It’s not difficult for lots of male survivors; it’s not difficult for lots of trans* men; it’s not difficult for lots of gay men; it’s not difficult for lots of men who have been incarcerated; it’s not difficult for lots of men who are vulnerable by virtue of physical disability; it’s not difficult for lots of highly privileged men who simply have the willingness to listen to women.

Let us not confuse “difficult to understand” for “easy to ignore by virtue of privilege.”