I’m traveling this week so there will be very few posts. Here is the piece I wrote for the Women’s Media Center on the date-rape controversy surrounding Observe and Report.
Rarely does a film incite responses as diametrically opposed as the new “dark comedy” starring Seth Rogen and Anna Faris, Observe and Report. The controversy stems from a date-rape scene included provocatively in the trailer, which exposed a cultural nerve and got the film noticed, to say the least.
Despite the old adage of all press is good press, the controversy looks like it might have had a negative affect on the box office in this instance. Recent Seth Rogen comedies have done well, including last summer’s Pineapple Express, which opened at $23 million, and 2007′s Superbad and Knocked Up, opening at $33 million and $30 million respectively. But Observe and Report, which got mixed and polarizing reviews, opened at just $11 million and decreased 62 percent in its second weekend.
Read full piece here: Reflections on the Observe and Report Date-Rape Controversy
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I think people are getting sick of Seth Rogen…
similar to the street performers who often position themselves on the island across the street and pose as famous icons such as the Statue of Liberty
I only heard about this controversial scene a few minutes before the film started when my girlfriend mentioned it.
I am a man, of course, so I don’t suppose my contention that the ‘why are you stopping mfer’ line mitigated the impact of it for me. I leave that up to others to decide.
However, what I find disturbing about this controversy, and what I find also to be a bad reflection on current feminist ideas, is this: only one scene, in a film full of horrifying and disturbing images and dynamics, has seemed to generate any controversy at all.
For one, the scenes with the Arab or Indian looking character. We learn that the white security guard has tried to frame this character, racially profiles him, spews uncontested racial slurs at him. At the end of the film, the Rogen character’s catharsis is found in committing a completely gratuitous act of violence against this character specifically.
Then, of course, the Latino drug dealer played by a white comedian.
Then, of course, we have the disturbing acts of violence. Shooting an unarmed naked man for a petty misdemeanor, seriously assaulting minors with skateboards, etc.
I am really quite surprised that violence against women generates controversy, but hate crimes against people of color, beating children and shooting defenseless people generates absolutely zero.
Let’s be real for a moment here. The character is portrayed as mentally disturbed. The writers, performers and director never flinch from this portrayal, and there is no magical healing at the end that undoes the mental illness. He is simply enabled in the end, to be the best mentally and violently disturbed sociopath that he can be. The film is in the genre of ‘tragi-comedy’, which was pioneered by the Farrelly brothers. The whole point of these films is to present truly and unrepentantly bad or maladjusted people who learn nothing through the film. The comedy is not for everyone; some however would call it subversive, in that it takes the tropes of the modern film narrative, and turns them upside down to reflect what most of us see in the real world.
In any case, if one is shocked at the date rape scene, one some some serious explaining to do if nothing else about the film shocked.
Cecil,
I agree with your point (why focus in on the rape scene) but have a diferent take. These movies are designed to offend as many people as possible, and that’s not always bad. That’s what comedy is often about to some degree. So I am fine with that.
I’d have an issue if all of the comedy in the movie was tame and then they had a ridiculously racist or sexist scene out of nowehere before returning to normal comedy.
That would denote a film that was specifically attacking women or a particular race.
I film like this attacks everyone and there is a certain balance to its insults that makesa lot of otherise ridiculous stuff OK.
As a black man,should my policy be that you can never poke fun at slavery or jim crow for example? That can’t be rightbecause I loved when Dave Chappelle did it.
But Dave Chappelle skewered everyone and that made it OK to some degree.
I may not be explaining this correctly, but I think that there is an important distinction here that people miss. They should see a scene they don’t like and are off to the races. It seems more complex than that to me.
Thanks HBG,
I wrote that pretty fast so I was surprised anyone understood it. I’m an Arab, of muslim ancestry, and I could have chosen to be offended by those scenes I mentioned. But there’s a difference between this and something along the lines of an American Pie with such content–where male audience members are welcomed to identify with and be empowered by the main characters. Its obvious that the Rogen character is meant to be repulsive and I would imagine that most young men would be running as far away from identifying with such a character as possible.
However, I will say that the movie could have done without that scene and a few others. In the end, the only thing you can say about that movie is that it is bizarre and extremely violent and somehow also enthralling.
Shew! A calm conversation. :) Thanks guys. I read the previous one, but it became way too polarized for anything healthy to evolve, or to really talk about the issues. That’s the reason why I didn’t like the WMC piece. The writing is on point as usual. :) But what I was hoping for was a more balanced view of things. And even one of the last lines of the piece that seems to point towards a more balanced POV doesn’t. Now everyone’s entitled to their opinion obviously, but then we all can’t have a conversation about it, if all we (the generic) want to do is dig in and yell our opinion from the loudest rooftops. So was the point to really have a conversation, or just to lecture a point?
I’m playing the other side of this, 1) because well, hey what good is a conversation without a counterpoint? :p But really, because I do think we need to have a conversation about some of this stuff, and I see some disturbing trends that look like they are helping, but I think may really be hurting women in general.
I can wrap all my little points into 1 large viewpoint: I think rape has become a kind of golden calf that needs to be put to death.
One thing I found particularly disturbing was the idea that so many people disagreed with it because it triggered something that they didn’t want to revisit in a social setting. I can completely understand that! And because of the gender discrimination et al in society, that turns into a much larger group than many (hopefully most) would like. But people suffer from all kinds of traumas that are probably re-enacted on the screen all the time from murders to muggings, to car accidents, to catastrophes of all types. It could be something as banal as a squirrel attack which has totally messed up someone who experienced their own attack with tragic results. I would always advocate people being safe, which is why I completely agree with all those lists of movies that have rape so people can avoid them if necessary. But to seemingly demand that something not be made because of your own personal issues?
And so many people (cecil most recently – but correct me if I have it wrong) have said it before, but I believe it is worth repeating. There was so much terrible stuff in O&R, but the film doesn’t seem to make him out to be some hero, but an all around jerk. So why the uproar over this? When I watched both trailers (because the one I usually saw didn’t have the date rape scene), I saw so MANY offensive things, from the ethnic discrimination running rampant, to the overall sexism having nothing to do with that particular scene. What, was it ok to shoot innocent people but not ok to date rape? Why aren’t both those not ok?
And I can’t argue this fully because I’m not a guy, but I would find it insulting the innuendos that are being made that guys will imitate this behavior as if they have no brain. I have a sinking feeling that I’ll be proven wrong when a story comes up in the news on this. But so many people have imitated the most ridiculous things that you would think they wouldn’t- so it’s definitely possible. But isn’t this film R? At a certain point you have to trust adults to be adults.
Oh, and you want to know a film I wouldn’t have minded getting boycotted? Taken. Love Liam, but this film trots out every stereotype you’ve seen in action films: the virginal girl who must be protected, the foreign enemy who must be stopped from corrupting said virgin, the non-virgin girl who is basically punished for her promiscuity, the all encompassing violence that is inflicted, even when it is against innocent victim(s). Even the shrew wife who hates the father’s line of work, until it’s used to go after her daughter, and then she is grateful. Yeesh. Sounds like O&R, only instead of making the violence and uber-masculinity garish and ugly, it makes it just and justifiable. Seth, while being the protag still looks bad, while Liam is touted as the hero. If anyone would be emulated it would be Liam’s character.
But to finish up, rape, from the different opinions I’ve heard (not just here) seems to be made to be worse than death – but how could anything be worse than death? Getting over rape could take decades. But addicts of all sorts sometimes spend their whole lives fighting, but no one would say that that is worse than death.
At the heart of this I fear lies this idea that women’s virginity and sexuality is somehow more special, more treasured, and more desired than men’s. That is the only way it could make sense that rape is worse than death (which I’ve heard people say), and that death is constantly used for humor but rape shouldn’t ever. But when we as a society do that, one, we cause a rift between men and women (cause it must suck to have your sexuality devalued), and two, by making women’s sexuality just a little more precious, you make promiscuous women just a little more sullied. It’s like you have to make rape worse, because you are kind of agreeing that the female is a bit of damaged goods.
I want a woman to eventually be able to shrug off a rape as if she was mugged (both of which have varying degrees of intensity). When we can all do that, then we show that a woman’s worth is not her purified or purer state, but in who she is as a person. People may not consciously do it, but it gives an unhealthy fodder to those who would like to judge a woman based on that. There should only be shame for the attacker. But I fear discussions like these only prove them right – that somehow it is especially shameful for a woman.
On a completely different note – I agree with death indian muslim anarchist – maybe people want to see less of Seth Rogan, like they have with Jude Law and Antonio Banderas when both actors had the misfortune to have a bunch of their films released very close to one another.
thanks.
I think the above response is sick, plain and simple. I don’t even want to engage what is an interminably long and not very compelling or consistent argument, so I will say this: rape is political. It is a part of a political and SYSTEMIC attack on a certain women in America (and girls). That is not true of car accidents, muggings, etc. That happens to EVERYBODY. There is no specific attack on someone when they get into a car, or when they get robbed on the street.
Sorry, your assertion that rape survivors equating rape with death is somehow part of a thought process which pedastalizes women and commodifies and degrades their sexuality is absurd. It is just the opposite: the commodification of women is what cause the pandemic of rape in America. Highlighting the truth of what rape is humanizes girls and women. You have it totally backwards.
There is no class of black people in America, nor of any group but females. The poor are absolutely predominantly female in the US, that is an FBI statistic. So the men ‘of color’ on here who somehow claim that focusing on the rape in the movie are claiming victimization in a context where everyone is getting treated equally is not the conrete reality in America. There are a spectrum and a whole diverse map of experiences of oppression, and that includes and intersects with a whole range of women, but the reality is the people who are a total sub-category of human beings in the system are a class and group of girls and womem, period. They are the official and most oppressed scapegoats of the class system, and violence is the pivot of that oppression and systemic attack.
Very nice , thanks a sharing..