Observe and Rape
I should have posted this on Tuesday, when it was published in the treeware edition, but it kept falling to the bottom of the pile. Now I can just copy and paste the whole thing. The magic of recycling. Linky freshness added.
Oh and just before I do? The trailer is cleaned up. You should see the original. It contains the offending scene and more f-words than you'd think possible. But I can't link to it because this is a family newspaper blog.
No wonder critics are deeply divided over Observe and Report.
Written and directed by Jody Hill, this pitch-black-comedy-with-aspirations-to-satire digs so deep under the beer belly of working class America that even Sarah Palin's family circus comes out looking classy by comparison.
Relentlessly violent, and so profane that half a dozen editors are standing by armed with blue pencils as I type this, it follows Seth Rogen's sociopathic mall cop Ronnie Barnhardt on his patrols through what have become the central structures of our society – the food courts, chain stores and parking lots that define everyday life.
So familiar are they that they rarely get the Hollywood studio flick treatment.
Hill's mall crawl is definitely creepy, and yet, so simultaneously banal, and Canada's Rogen is perfectly cast as the security guard with dreams of greater "You talking to me?'' glory.
Which is why, the movie, which I confess I liked, is so unsettling.
Like with Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, you keep waiting for it to go all Travis Bickle, all Columbine, or all Virginia Tech.
It's clear off the top that this is no ordinary gross-out comedy, despite Rogen's rep for playing a lovable loser shlub who inexplicably gets the gorgeous Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up). You know this because not a single store name, soft drink brand or fast food joint is recognizable.
And who could blame the usual product placement types for not wanting to get mixed up with a movie that not only sanctions rape, but plays it for laughs?
Especially now, when magazines such as Cosmopolitan warn young women that "date rape" falls into the "grey rape" zone if they party too hearty?
And so the critics fall into two camps.
The first, most of them men, who have no problem with the "sex scene,'' and the second, which includes the Star's Peter Howell, who understand that, as Ronnie unintentionally warns the object of his unwanted affection (Anna Faris) early in the film, "Everyone thinks they're fine until somebody puts something in them they don't want in them.''
Indeed.
Virtually shanghaied into a dinner date with Ronnie, Faris's underdressed and over-refreshed cosmetics saleswoman Brandi ends up taking advantage of the pathetic lug's eagerness to please. She helps herself to all the cocktails, shots and the brain-relaxing clonazepam he eagerly provides as he stares at her, all googly-eyed and adoring.
By the time he gets her home, she can't walk, can't talk, and even barfs on herself.
Cut to his pumping away on her comatose half-naked body, vomit dripping off her pillow.
Rape, right?
Oh but wait.
The thing is Ronnie is so sad, so sick and so delusional that it makes sense he would take advantage of the situation. As a result, the audience should have no problem with it – from a character and plot development point of view, that is. It's the least of his many sins, really.
"I wanted to do something where like the main guy makes bad decisions and he's kind of an asshole," director Hill told critics last month when Observe and Report had its world premiere at the South by Southwest festival.
So why does Hill inexplicably need absolution for his character?
Why does he give him permission to rape Brandi?
Here's how: Just as Ronnie takes a breather from his jackhammer routine, the wasted Brandi stirs and slurs, "Did I tell you to stop, motherf----r?"
New York magazine's culture Vulture blog called that line "explosively funny.''
But retroactive consent is not consent.
And a rape scene is not a "sex scene'' – or even "a shocking sex scene'' – as some very major league critics described it.
The unspoken message here is that, Brandi deserves it because (1) she's a "bitch," (2) she has sex with (other) guys in cars and (3) she was too trashed to say no or, more to the point, to say yes before Ronnie assaulted her.
It's the one place where the script stumbles, and inexplicably so.
Needless to say, my sister feminist bloggers have unleashed a tsunami of online outrage.
As the ladies of Feministing.com, Jezebel.com, abyss2hope and others point out, this is the kind of movie that will tell men that it's okay to rape their dates if they're too drunk or unconscious to protest.
Observe and Report lets women know that they are asking for it.
Blame the victims.
As Rogen himself put it in an interview with a Washington paper, "When we're having sex and she's unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the f--k are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theatre in the next 30 seconds?
"And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay ...''
Uh, no it doesn't.
There's no okay in rape.
Faris herself has been public – retroactively – with her own discomfort.
"I'm so grateful I was cast, but when I read the script, I thought, `Well, this is Warner Brothers. This is a studio movie, so this is all gonna be softened up. It's a comedy, right?'" she told the online AVClub. "So when we were shooting it, even the date-rape scene – or as I refer to it, "The Tender Love-Making Scene" – I just thought, `We'll shoot it, but it's not gonna be in the movie. I don't have to worry about that one.'
"And yet there it is."
It's not because the scene made it to the final cut that's the problem.
Ronnie is just the kind of jerk to do that kind of thing.
It's because Hill tried to take the "rape" out of "date-rape."
There's nothing funny about it.
Written and directed by Jody Hill, this pitch-black-comedy-with-aspirations-to-satire digs so deep under the beer belly of working class America that even Sarah Palin's family circus comes out looking classy by comparison.
Relentlessly violent, and so profane that half a dozen editors are standing by armed with blue pencils as I type this, it follows Seth Rogen's sociopathic mall cop Ronnie Barnhardt on his patrols through what have become the central structures of our society – the food courts, chain stores and parking lots that define everyday life.
So familiar are they that they rarely get the Hollywood studio flick treatment.
Hill's mall crawl is definitely creepy, and yet, so simultaneously banal, and Canada's Rogen is perfectly cast as the security guard with dreams of greater "You talking to me?'' glory.
Which is why, the movie, which I confess I liked, is so unsettling.
Like with Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, you keep waiting for it to go all Travis Bickle, all Columbine, or all Virginia Tech.
It's clear off the top that this is no ordinary gross-out comedy, despite Rogen's rep for playing a lovable loser shlub who inexplicably gets the gorgeous Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up). You know this because not a single store name, soft drink brand or fast food joint is recognizable.
And who could blame the usual product placement types for not wanting to get mixed up with a movie that not only sanctions rape, but plays it for laughs?
Especially now, when magazines such as Cosmopolitan warn young women that "date rape" falls into the "grey rape" zone if they party too hearty?
And so the critics fall into two camps.
The first, most of them men, who have no problem with the "sex scene,'' and the second, which includes the Star's Peter Howell, who understand that, as Ronnie unintentionally warns the object of his unwanted affection (Anna Faris) early in the film, "Everyone thinks they're fine until somebody puts something in them they don't want in them.''
Indeed.
Virtually shanghaied into a dinner date with Ronnie, Faris's underdressed and over-refreshed cosmetics saleswoman Brandi ends up taking advantage of the pathetic lug's eagerness to please. She helps herself to all the cocktails, shots and the brain-relaxing clonazepam he eagerly provides as he stares at her, all googly-eyed and adoring.
By the time he gets her home, she can't walk, can't talk, and even barfs on herself.
Rape, right?
Oh but wait.
The thing is Ronnie is so sad, so sick and so delusional that it makes sense he would take advantage of the situation. As a result, the audience should have no problem with it – from a character and plot development point of view, that is. It's the least of his many sins, really.
"I wanted to do something where like the main guy makes bad decisions and he's kind of an asshole," director Hill told critics last month when Observe and Report had its world premiere at the South by Southwest festival.
So why does Hill inexplicably need absolution for his character?
Why does he give him permission to rape Brandi?
Here's how: Just as Ronnie takes a breather from his jackhammer routine, the wasted Brandi stirs and slurs, "Did I tell you to stop, motherf----r?"
New York magazine's culture Vulture blog called that line "explosively funny.''
But retroactive consent is not consent.
And a rape scene is not a "sex scene'' – or even "a shocking sex scene'' – as some very major league critics described it.
The unspoken message here is that, Brandi deserves it because (1) she's a "bitch," (2) she has sex with (other) guys in cars and (3) she was too trashed to say no or, more to the point, to say yes before Ronnie assaulted her.
It's the one place where the script stumbles, and inexplicably so.
Needless to say, my sister feminist bloggers have unleashed a tsunami of online outrage.
As the ladies of Feministing.com, Jezebel.com, abyss2hope and others point out, this is the kind of movie that will tell men that it's okay to rape their dates if they're too drunk or unconscious to protest.
Observe and Report lets women know that they are asking for it.
Blame the victims.
As Rogen himself put it in an interview with a Washington paper, "When we're having sex and she's unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the f--k are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theatre in the next 30 seconds?
"And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay ...''
Uh, no it doesn't.
There's no okay in rape.
Faris herself has been public – retroactively – with her own discomfort.
"I'm so grateful I was cast, but when I read the script, I thought, `Well, this is Warner Brothers. This is a studio movie, so this is all gonna be softened up. It's a comedy, right?'" she told the online AVClub. "So when we were shooting it, even the date-rape scene – or as I refer to it, "The Tender Love-Making Scene" – I just thought, `We'll shoot it, but it's not gonna be in the movie. I don't have to worry about that one.'
"And yet there it is."
It's not because the scene made it to the final cut that's the problem.
Ronnie is just the kind of jerk to do that kind of thing.
It's because Hill tried to take the "rape" out of "date-rape."
There's nothing funny about it.
One quote from Hill I have come up with since the column was publish turns out to be key. The boldface is mine:
Director Jody Hill on the "Observe and Report" rape scene
AVC: In the Times piece, they describe the scene you’re talking about as Seth Rogen’s character forcing himself on Anna Faris. Is that how you perceived that scene?
JH: [Pause.] I dunno. I’ve always kind of liked scenes that you talk about how f----d-up they are. I would have been happy without any dialogue in that scene. I wanted to show them just having sex and her passed out, and I thought that would have been funnier. But I think I have a darker sense of humor than most people.
AVC: In the Times piece, they describe the scene you’re talking about as Seth Rogen’s character forcing himself on Anna Faris. Is that how you perceived that scene?
JH: [Pause.] I dunno. I’ve always kind of liked scenes that you talk about how f----d-up they are. I would have been happy without any dialogue in that scene. I wanted to show them just having sex and her passed out, and I thought that would have been funnier. But I think I have a darker sense of humor than most people.
You know, I would have preferred that. Then there would have been no ''retroactive consent'' and it would have been unambiguously rape from start to finish, instead of from start to middle.
But funnier?
One more thing: I don't want to give too much away but I found that Brandi is totally ''slut-shamed'' in this script, especially at the end, simply because she rejects the psycho loser Ronnie.Makes me angry because the implication is that a healthy young woman shouldn't be having sex,.
But, you know, apart from the misogyny, haha, I thought the movie, while disturbing and provocative, was truly funny in most places. And it has stayed with me, unlike so many others, ever since I watched it.
Definitely not for everybody, and definitely not for impressionable teens.
“And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay ...'' –Seth Rogen
----------
After I walked a very attractive female friend home one night after a party (more like staggered), I ended up virtually comatose at her house --about the same as Brandi in that scene-- and somehow she ended up climbing on to have sex with me. While I regretted that it happened, I can’t say I felt traumatized by the experience, either during or after. And yet, I recognize the very same actions might just as well evoke a feeling of extreme violation *depending on the context in which it was received* -- every bit deserving of the word “rape.”
If I am to take the most charitable explanation of Rogen’s joke autopsy (which may or may not be what he meant), I don’t necessarily get that he is saying "retroactive consent" (that's your characterization) made it “okay” to embark on the informed decision to boink a comatose person. On the other hand, a rape generally requires a victim, and who are we to override Brandi's characterization of her status, either in the moment or the next day? (That is, in fact, what Ms Magazine did in the survey of their readership - the source of the 1 in 4 rape number - the actual question was "unwanted sex", not rape, and all "unwanted sex" responses were counted as "rape" even though the vast majority of their readership said "no" to the followup "have you been raped" followup).
As such, we are left with a scenario in which a character is presented as someone who *would* stoop to rape for sex, and who is damn lucky that his partner turned out to be amenable. To a similar end (though it’s a long stretch of an analogy, granted), consider a cinema car chase in which the hero runs over a baby carriage >beat< which turns out to be full of cans that a homeless person is taking to the recyclers (was something like that in "Speed"?). We don’t think better of the hero for it, but we are relieved that nobody was killed.
Posted by: Paul | April 16, 2009 at 05:39 PM
How typically gutless/Hollywood that Jody Hill says in interviews, "I wanted to show them having sex" as opposed to "I wanted to show him raping her".
Posted by: sooey | April 19, 2009 at 09:20 AM
Rogen is an thoroughly unappealing character who plays thoroughly unappealing characters. Could you imagine a female equivalent? His presence on film, never mind the fact that he is a star, says much about Hollywood's attitudes toward women. Rogen's involvement in the date rape scene says even more about Hollywood, Rogen's attitudes and judgment, and his evolving on-screen persona.
Posted by: Sebastian Stoker | April 20, 2009 at 04:09 PM
"Rogen is an thoroughly unappealing character who plays thoroughly unappealing characters. Could you imagine a female equivalent?"
Stoker you Smoker,
Don't get me started ...
I won't actually name any, in case I get banned forever, but you get my drift.
Posted by: The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs | April 20, 2009 at 09:18 PM
Stygian,
Go ahead. I fail to see how naming female entertainers one could legitimately consider female equivalents to a Rogen, or a John Belushi, could be offensive enough to get you banned. Sorry I have no idea to whom you could be referring.
I am not talking about physical appearance, so I hope you are not thinking Roseanne or some other comedienne guys would call a "dog". I am talking about a certain unpleasant "in your face?" quality that, yes, one often finds in over-weight male comedians - Jack Black, Rogen, etc. However, one also finds it in other male comedians and actors. Just about every male original cast member of SNL had it, as does David Spade (though he has turned it into parody). These Guys ooze a self-centered meanness, and that meanness is often directed at women (Chevy Chase on SNL News' Point-Counter point: "Jane you ignorant slut..."). Interestingly, sketch comedy has largely banished these guys, but they have found homes in sitcoms and movies. BTW, the only female I know who is comparable is the brilliant Jo Brandt who has an on-stage persona that is a tongue-in-cheek female version of the gross, mean and disgusting Guy.
If you want to open up the "ugly" issue, then lets talk about Rogen, Jason Seigel, Jonah Hill, and many more actors whose female equivalents would have been laughed out of Hollywood before their first auditions.
Posted by: Sebastian Stoker | April 21, 2009 at 12:05 PM
Sorry that was Dan Aykroyd on Point-Counter Point. Chase is notorious for having brushed off the significance of all the original female SNL players.
Posted by: Sebastian Stoker | April 21, 2009 at 02:11 PM
It's a favourite pasttime of some men to opine that women can't be funny (Christopher Hitchens said it was because we have babies, and sometimes our babies die, and lord knows dead baby jokes are a hard sell, as Oscar Wilde found out once upon a quip) when what they really mean to say is: "Mommy drank too much and went to parties and left me alone with Daddy who liked to dress up in women's clothing and sing Rule Britannia to the mirror".
Posted by: sooey | April 21, 2009 at 05:01 PM
Stoker you Smoker,
Beauty, especially female beauty, is a strange thing. At zoos I enjoy the reptile houses, (OK, even if they're all over the shop, as in Toronto, which I quite enjoy as well. There are excellent ones in London and St Louis, OK, I haven't made it either to San Diego or Hamburg, but I will one day ....). The eyes (which are very important, but they have to be seen in the context of the whole) that you see there on certain of the creatures remind me of Julia Roberts .....
or is it the other way around........
who I find a "thoroughly unappealing character who plays thoroughly unappealing characters" ......
she could play the Lady of the Green Kirtle when they get round to filming the Silver Chair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Chair, and when the witch turns into the serpent at the end they could leave the eyes unchanged .....
and if they make a movie of Medusa's Coil (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Medusa's_Coil; which I enjoyed, but the critics don't) she could play Marceline .....
Meanwhile, Sooey Sweetie, Ann Coulter is absolutely hilarious, and spot on, too ...
Posted by: The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs | April 21, 2009 at 10:26 PM
She doesn't have babies. Look, don't try to refute Christopher Hitchens' logic. You'll have a brain aneurism.
Posted by: sooey | April 22, 2009 at 12:57 PM
Cheers Sooey.
Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Chelsea Handler, and most of their peers are proof that:
1 - women are just as funny if not funnier than men. And their humor is usually based on deflating puff-up egos as opposed to kicking someone when he is down, or picking on the defenseless.
2 - sexism has entered a new phase. these women, despite their protests, are Hollywood professional-beautiful, a characteristic few - if any - male comic personalities can claim.
Posted by: Sebastian Stoker | April 22, 2009 at 02:57 PM
Stoker you Smoker,
In her Ann Coulter does a marvellous job of exposing those who pretending to be "defenseless"
Posted by: The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs | April 22, 2009 at 09:35 PM
oops that should have been "in her new book"
Posted by: The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs | April 22, 2009 at 09:36 PM
Sooey Sweetie, Sooey Sweetie
Your total lack of perspective, as illustrated in most of your comments on honour killings, immigration, feminism and Islam, etc., even reaches down into small details. I don't really see that Christopher Hitchens was relevant to my post at all, and in any case, he's not as good a writer as his brother Peter, who should be quoted far more often.
Posted by: The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs | April 22, 2009 at 09:53 PM