Also, it's absurd to think that your audience would want to escape into something that's conceivably worse than their actual lives. Call it, I don't know, 'gritty cinema verite', but not 'escapist comedy'. Don't try to sell a story about a sociopath working a crappy job, in which there are multiple sexual assaults as a hilarious comedy. Making something horrible into straight comedy- not even black comedy, but, like, slap-stick- serves, in part, to normalize the behavior. Presentation is important: there's a difference between laughing at something despite how horrible it is- or because of how horrible it is, because if you don't laugh, you'll cry- and laughing at something horrible because you've been told that the horror is actually the funny part.
That's what irks me about Rogan's Taxi Driver comparison: Martin Scorsese never intended the audience to identify with Travis Bickle, or to think that he just needed the love of a good woman or that his actions were anything but beyond the pale. Nothing in Taxi Driver is normalized; the whole point of the movie is that the city of New York is collapsing under the weight of its own misery and indifference to human life, and that such an environment will inevitably produce only the most emotionally-void people. I know it's sort of weird to pick on that bit, of all the offensive crap that comes out of that guy, but it's sort of pathetic that he can't even get his own apologist arguments right. ...
Maybe I should write a comedy. I'd call it "Read and Type", about a female blogger who gets her jollies writing humorless feminist reviews of misogynist movies she hasn't even seen. When her readers reply to her posts with, variously, "You just don't get what he's trying to say", or "Lighten up, bitch", she copy-pastes the replies back at the posters until they get frustrated and leave. And then she laughs. Oh, how she laughs. ...
If "Observe and Report" had been, say, a harrowing peek into the secret, quietly desperate world of a man driven to emotional numbness and horrifying displays of 'masculinity' by a society that neither understands nor particularly likes people of either sex, it might have been a good movie. Hell, if it had been an honest look at what a dysfunctional, unhappy, desperate character its protagonist had become instead of laughing off both his stupidity and his violence as 'just the way guys are- jeez, what are you, some kind of girl?', it could have been great.
But it's not, so it's just another cinematic toilet.
belmanoir responded to another commenter at her journal:
I love Holocaust humor, for example. I love "The Great Dictator" and "The Producers" and Vonnegut's "Mother Night" and so on. But that is very different from, like, a wacky sitcom set in Auschwitz with a lovable commandant and his nagging wife, and the hijinx that ensue when he has to repair one of the ovens even though he's bad with tools. You know what I mean? A black comedy about date rape might be difficult to watch, it might not turn out to be my thing, but at least I could feel okay about its existence.
I, um. Wow. Don't really have any reaction to this except: squirm. And perhaps a gratuitous "yuck".
The sad thing, of course, is that I can see how this might be taken as a joke by some people. A funny one, even. I actually know people who would laugh at it, no further thought needed, and if that's not fucked in the head, I don't know what is.
I suppose they call it rape culture for a reason, don't they?
(subject line taken from a comment by snobographer on a positive review of a film about dudes who can't stand it when their girlfriends are smarter than they are.)
The sad thing, of course, is that I can see how this might be taken as a joke by some people. A funny one, even. I actually know people who would laugh at it, no further thought needed, and if that's not fucked in the head, I don't know what is.
I know people who would, too. there's the "she deserves it!" camp, the "bitch is too 'stupid' to realize it's rape if it is even rape, so who cares?" camp... I wish I didn't know people who've expressed those types of sentiments to my face, but there you go. and I wish I could say they didn't have a face after saying that to me, but violence is wrong and sometimes also a felony, so I have to restrict myself to scathing remarks. I totally sympathize with blackcurrant's hypothetical Read and Type blogger, because that's how I often feel! but with fewer laughs on my part.
I suppose they call it rape culture for a reason, don't they?
oh, and I love this pithy little review (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/05/observe-and-report-rape/print) of O&R, also by tigerbeatdown (a.k.a. Sady Doyle), who hits all the crucial issues in no time at all. note: I have javascript turned off by default, which means I don't see any reader comments after the article, but if they do appear when you look at it, please don't read those comments... the Guardian's "Comment Is Free" notoriously attracts the bottom of the barrel in commenters. I say this because I want to protect your sanity as I would like to protect my own!
Mm. Generally, I tend to avoid things on the bottom of pages, whether they be advertisements, comments, or credits; it's like the ocean. All the crap seems to settle towards the bottom. But thanks for the advance warning.
Generally, I tend to avoid things on the bottom of pages, whether they be advertisements, comments, or credits; it's like the ocean. All the crap seems to settle towards the bottom.
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branchandroot
Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-14 10:02 am (UTC)Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-21 12:08 am (UTC)The sad thing, of course, is that I can see how this might be taken as a joke by some people. A funny one, even. I actually know people who would laugh at it, no further thought needed, and if that's not fucked in the head, I don't know what is.
I suppose they call it rape culture for a reason, don't they?
... the guy who actually cried because I corrected him on the nutritional content of peanut butter.
Date: 2009-05-21 03:36 pm (UTC)The sad thing, of course, is that I can see how this might be taken as a joke by some people. A funny one, even. I actually know people who would laugh at it, no further thought needed, and if that's not fucked in the head, I don't know what is.
I know people who would, too. there's the "she deserves it!" camp, the "bitch is too 'stupid' to realize it's rape if it is even rape, so who cares?" camp... I wish I didn't know people who've expressed those types of sentiments to my face, but there you go. and I wish I could say they didn't have a face after saying that to me, but violence is wrong and sometimes also a felony, so I have to restrict myself to scathing remarks. I totally sympathize with blackcurrant's hypothetical Read and Type blogger, because that's how I often feel! but with fewer laughs on my part.
I suppose they call it rape culture for a reason, don't they?
yeeeeaaah.
Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-21 05:49 pm (UTC)Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-28 10:14 pm (UTC)Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-28 10:52 pm (UTC)a sound philosophy, true!