Observe and Report, Where Date Rape=Edgy Comedy

I don't see a lot of movies, and I particularly don't see too many comedies unless it's well established that they're not totally juvenile. Therefore, I've missed most of the recent breed of movies that tend to have pathetic men finding ways to get hot women into bed. Actually, I had the misfortune of seeing Superbad, sort of by accident, and I was at a friend's house, and I just tried not to think too much about the incredibly narrow portrayal of women in the film. Although I did have to say something about how annoying I found the whole menstrual blood scene, where a scrawny teenaged boy dirty dances with hot a 20-something menstruating women and somehow manages to get blood smeared on his pants. First of all, I don't see this happening in real life; I guess it's possible, but it seems pretty unlikely. Secondly, c'mon, it's a little bloodstain on the guy's pants. The guy has a terror reaction, like he's just seen someone get killed or something.

Anyway, I started tuning into to all the blogging activity around Observe and Report, the new Seth Rogen film. Rogen plays a pathetic and inept mall security guard who is in love with Brandi, a cosmetics counter clerk played by Anna Farris. Brandi is portrayed as a really awful, shallow, mean, and stupid woman who takes too many drugs and drinks heavily. The big money scene in the movie is when Rogen's character date rapes Farris' character while she is passed out drunk, with vomit on the pillow next to her. Mid-rape, Rogen begins to look a little concerned, when she suddenly comes to just long enough to say, "why are you stopping, mother f-er."

The best discussions of this scene and movie are here and here. But just type "observe and report date rape" into a search engine and you'll find plenty of debate. It's grotesque to watch reviewer after reviewer talk about this movie being "gutsy" and "a step forward for comedy" (Mick LaSalle in the SF Chronicle) while making no mention of rape played for comedy. Maybe Mick himself is a little unclear on whether a passed-out drunk woman can consent to sex. Michael Phillips reviewing in the Chicago Tribune is apparently wholly unclear on the rape concept: "The best, riskiest bit in "Observe and Report" involves Faris, with wee vomitous spillage drying on the pillow by her slack jaw, underneath Rogen, who cannot believe the dolt of his fondest desires is trashed enough to give him a toss." Manohla Dargis writing here in the New York Times is a definite exception; her review begins: "If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot then you might love “Observe and Report”"

Most of what you need to know about this movie is summed up by the two lead actors talking about it. I'm quoting Karen Valby's article from Entertainment Weekly...

In the theater, where I first watched the movie, the tense audience gave a collective sigh of relief, followed by a wheeze of nervous laughter, when Faris’ character rouses and barks at him to keep at it already. "I think people are laughing because I'm not being full on date-raped," says Faris. "I'm not sure it makes things much better," she says, with an earnest grimace, "but we don't need to go down that road."

The sex scene was always in the script, but because it is a big studio movie, Faris says she "really thought they would weed stuff out. And they did some, but not a whole lot. And I'm proud of that, actually. But at the time when we were shooting that scene, it was like, 'Really? We're going to do this? Vomit down the side of my face? Really?'" Rogen says nobody at the studio ever asked them to alter or excise the scene. "There were some arguments with the studio," he says. "That wasn't one of them. Shockingly." (Warner Brothers chose not to comment on the matter.)

There you have it. Some cynical, woman-hating creep (Jody Hill, in this case,) writes a piece of garbage movie with a date rape-for-laughs, and Corporate America says, sure thing. We'll make your funny little rape movie and we'll pay millions of dollars to advertise and distribute it. We have no problem with producing something that increases the confusion in society about what really constitutes rape or promotes the idea that women are objects whose purpose is to be acted on by men. We're happy to make a movie that portrays a working-class woman as so worthless that she deserves to get raped. We like promoting movies where manhood=power=sexual control of women, and where a man who doesn't have those things is laughable. These are the kinds of ideas that increase divisions in society, that mightily contribute to the horrific mass shootings in which 53 people lost their lives last month, that influence those who commit sexual assault. Anyone who wants to should be able to make a movie, but someone decides which movies will be shown in the most theaters, and that someone should not be Corporate America.