The awkward and inappropriate rape discussion…
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cambridgejohnny — 9 years ago(January 09, 2017 06:56 AM)
And then there are the films that use the N word many, many times like Pulp Fiction. I don't remember anyone putting up a stink about that. But really, I don't understand the whole concept of political correctness anyway. People go to these films, and also watch them at home all the time, and they scream bloody murder if something happens that's politically incorrect. Yet, in many of the same films people are being shot, tortured, stabbed, strangled, etc, etc, etc, and nobody says much about all the violence. Nice world we live in. You can murder your ex-wife and her friend, who you never even met, and get away with it scot free; but if you're a witness at the same trial, and it's rumored that you said the N word at a party ten years before the trial, you'll be fired from your job in disgrace and your life will be ruined! Unbelievable.
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PurpleProseOfCairo — 15 years ago(April 28, 2010 12:52 PM)
Stadler and Heezgawn are right - it was a different time and a different climate.
I remember being shocked at a clip from a (British) sketch show of the Sixties, a black and white show re-shown recently where a girl is running from door to door in fast motion shouting "Rape!" at each door. It just wasn't viewed in the same light in those days, rightly or wrongly. -
Mikurtis — 15 years ago(June 18, 2010 08:38 PM)
The only time rape is funny a gay friend and I were watching something about Timothy McVeigh years ago. My friend said, "I'd love to go to prison just so I could rape his ass evil as he is, he's still hot and deserves to be raped."
A moment of politically incorrect zen -
lisajohn-4 — 10 years ago(September 24, 2015 08:36 PM)
You are remembering a feature film called "The Knack, and How to Get It" (1965). It is British, but not a sketch show. I agree that it is shocking to hear today, but either it was not seen in the same light back then, or perhaps they were making a social comment? Perhaps I am reaching, but I think that the film makers intended it for a reasonwhat do your think? Did they include this as a parody or social comment or what? Perhaps it was not thought out? Just thrown in for shock value? Talk among yourselves.
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megArnold — 15 years ago(June 21, 2010 08:55 AM)
Don't forget the highly inappropriate joke about
suicide
in the museum. This destroyed the movie much more for me. A lot of people commit suicide every day and blah blah blah blah
I'm with another poster on this thread. Nowadays people proactively search for reasons to be offended. It's a national sport. Professional offendees. Seriously, if a forty-years-old politically incorrect joke in a movie causes so much grief for you, how can you live with the knowledge that ten thousands of people suffer from an oil spill in the Gulf, that in the middle east hundreds of thousands of people are killed, raped, displaced etc.
People nowadays have no real problems or causes of real grief any more, so they seek out grief and offence wherever they can find it. And wallow in it. Makes them feel alive, I suppose. -
Balthazar Bee — 15 years ago(June 25, 2010 11:03 AM)
Well put. I remember a professor, whom I liked and otherwise respected, using this portion of the script as an object lesson about artistic insensitivity, shifting social mores, or some such. I don't think more than a handful of us had been previously exposed to the movie, and I felt genuinely sorry for the unfornate majority.
I hate to be the guy to mention this film to one of these folks in subsequent years.
"Isn't that the one that tries to joke about rape?" Oy. Might as well spray paint "Culture Ignoramus" on your forehead, if you can make it fit.
"I was nowhere
near
Oakland!" -
card53 — 15 years ago(July 21, 2010 02:38 PM)
Political correctness has rendered laughter an inappropriate coping mechanism for life's ugliness. No, there was never anything funny about real-life rape, child molestation, spousal abuse, etc. But I think it was a healthier time when we could laugh at the inherent absurdity of such matters and could make fools of the nutcases who would commit such crimes. Even a film such as ARTHUR is culturally obsolete. Try making a film about a funny alcoholic today.
Yet it still seems acceptable to make drug jokes in contemporary films. For those who object to the rape joke in PIAS, keep in mind that such a joke would have been no more offensive at the time than "stoner dude" humor is today.
Sorry, but you can't demand that the past conform to today's standards and morals. -
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ShroudOfFrost — 15 years ago(October 02, 2010 08:29 AM)
Obviously you just watch mainstream movies, or are just talking about mainstream cinema couldn't handle something life Love at First Bite. However, filmmakers like Noah Baumbach and Charlie Kaufman still take audiences to places that big time Hollywood refuses to go. Or another great example is David Lynch. A lot of people didn't know how to take the comedy in Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart (and Wild at Heart had a light hearted rape scene).
hitrecord.org -
megArnold — 13 years ago(December 07, 2012 04:25 AM)
Allen: "What are you doing on Saturday?"
Girl: "Committing suicide."
Allen: "How about Friday?"
You apparently mean something different.
Grammar:
The difference between knowing your sh**
and knowing you're sh**. -
LightningLad — 14 years ago(August 24, 2011 10:53 AM)
Our culture's mentality will eventually shift, and one day it may seem very strange and even offensive that joking about rape would be considered almost as awful as actual rape. There is something a bit odd about how speech is put on the same level as actual atrocities. I've never found this scene offensive, and I'm someone who really can't stand watching scenes in movies that depict rape. I'll avoid a movie for the rest of my life if I know it has a rape scene, but a the second poster said, it's realistic for the purposes the movie because people often joke about taboo subjects, quite often because of an actual fear. The other thing is just that I never watch a Woody Allen movie from the perspective of believing the characters are supposed to be role models.
Reason is a pursuit, not a conclusion. -
paudie — 14 years ago(September 20, 2011 05:41 AM)
That conversation made me feel a bit uncomfortable but as someone said good friends could easily have a humourous conversation on such a subject.
However there is no way that a odern mainstream movie would include such a discussion.
You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill -
rpniew — 14 years ago(March 15, 2012 08:45 AM)
I agree the "rape" discussion is obsolete. Rape is not funny. I'm currently directing a community theatre version of the play and have excised the whole section. I am sure that, given the opportunity, Allen would have rewritten it. The idea is to find a way to bring discussion of sex into to conversation and for the Allan character to be confused about the signals Linda is sending. However, there are better ways to get into the convesation.
I don't quite agree with the earlier poster about the "committing suicide" line. I never get the idea, as stonefaced as the girl is, that she is really contemplating suicide. I see it as a way to blow off Allan. -
megArnold — 13 years ago(December 07, 2012 04:26 AM)
The discussion isn't abouth whether rape is funny, but whether joking about it is funny.
Death isn't funny either, but joking about death is.
Grammar:
The difference between knowing your sh**
and knowing you're sh**.