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Rape Is about Sex

I remember first becoming informed that rape was not about sex around 1970. This was back in the days when the typical bookstore would carry numerous books written by Freud, of which I had read about a dozen.  As we all know, Freud argued that owing to the role of the unconscious in determining behavior, our motives are often hidden from us.  We think we know why we did something, but it turns out the real reason was something else, something we never suspected.  And, owing to the large role that sex played in Freud’s theories, the motive hidden in the unconscious often turned out to be a repressed sexual desire.  The theory that rape is not about sex certainly followed Freud, in that an unconscious motive is attributed to the rapist.  But it was a complete reversal of the usual Freudian formula:  instead of sex being the unconscious motive for something else, something else was asserted to be the unconscious motive for sex.

In general, I was a little skeptical of all the claims being bandied about in those days regarding the unconscious, whether by Freud or any other psychoanalyst, and so I merely noted this peculiar notion that rape was not about sex with indifference.  A couple of years later, I saw Frenzy (1972), a film by Alfred Hitchcock.  It is about a “necktie strangler” who rapes and murders women.  At some point during the movie, the detective tells a sergeant that most men like him are impotent.  The sergeant expresses surprise at this remark, and rightly so, I thought to myself.  That was carrying the rape-is-not-about-sex theory to an extreme.  After all, impotence is the failure to be able to perform sexually, owing to the inability to get an erection. In any event, the detective goes on to say that it is not the sex that gratifies the rapist.

The detective speaks with an authoritative voice in the movie, and so we know we are supposed to believe him.  But aside from squaring impotence with rape, there is the incongruity between his words and the rape that took place in the movie thirty minutes before.  In the history of mainstream cinema, no movie, made before or since, has depicted sex, consensual or coerced, in which anyone, male or female, experiences greater heights of sexual ecstasy than the necktie strangler in Frenzy.

What is remarkable about this movie is that, in discussing it with others, I have noticed that most people accept the pronouncements of the detective, notwithstanding their apparent inconsistency with the rape scene.  This is in part due to the authoritative voice of the detective, and in part due to the widespread acceptance of the rape-is-not-about-sex theory at that time.  I have seen people twist themselves into a pretzel trying to argue that the rapist never really got it up, let alone gratified himself sexually.  I suspect that this was Hitchcock’s idea of a joke.  He purposely put this contradiction into the movie between the words of the pompous detective and the scene of sexual passion, as his way of making fun of that theory.

This movie aside, I have heard this rape-is-not-about-sex theory discussed many times.  I have never known one woman to disagree with it.  And while a lot of men will also agree with it, I have noticed that a lot of men grow silent, particularly in mixed company.  Though a man may disagree with this theory, yet he will quickly realize how inadvisable it would be for him to say so. Imagine a man, upon hearing it declared that rape is not about sex, saying, “Oh no!  Rape is all about sex.  I mean, sometimes you want it so bad, you feel like holding them down to get what you want.” Any man that would say something like that, especially with women present, would be a fool. By the time that story got around, no woman would ever go out with him again.  And so, the theory largely goes unchallenged.

People often use force to get what they want.  Wars are fought for territory or natural resources, revolutions are fought to wrest power away from others, and criminals rob and steal to get money.  Given how much men want sex, why they should not use force to get that too is a mystery.  Alternatively, if we are willing to say rape is not about sex, why not say that robbery is not about money? Granted, there are cases where robbery does have an additional motive.  A gangster may be angry at society, or maybe he enjoys dominating his victims. But mostly, robbery is about money; and mostly, rape is about sex.

I have heard it said that there are two primary types of rapists, anger rapists and power rapists.  The former are motivated by “resentment and a general hostility towards women.”  But how do we make sense of this resentment and hostility unless it has a sexual origin?  It has only been recently that women have had anything other than sex about which men would be resentful. For millennia women have been denied status, property, power, rights, or anything else that might inspire resentment, and yet rape has been going on since caveman days.  Is it not more likely that the hostility toward women arises out of sexual frustration or rejection?

The power rapist, it is said, is motivated by his need to control and dominate his victim, and inversely, to avoid being controlled by her.  But if a man had no sexual desire for women, he would not likely bother with them at all.  How do we make sense out of this threat of being controlled by her, unless that threat be sexual?  In any event, the main reason a man would want to control and dominate a woman is for sexual purposes.  Sex is the end; dominance and control are but the means.  Without the former, there is no point to the latter.

The intensity with which some people defend this theory that rape is not about sex naturally makes one suspicious.  One cannot help but wonder if the purpose of the theory is to demean the rapist. We deny him the sexual motive, which he may regard as manly, something he can be proud of, and assert that he has anger issues and a need to dominate.  In other words, this thesis is an act of revenge against the rapist, undermining his masculinity by insisting that he acts out of insecurity and weakness.

In the end, the claim that rape is not about sex is speculative, almost metaphysical.  It is not the sort of thing that one can verify simply through observation.  Even if we could observe rapes, as we do in movies like Frenzy, all we would see is the use of force and violence in combination with sex.  We cannot observe the motive.  The best that can be done is to interview the rapist. But the whole rape-is-not-about-sex theory is premised on the idea that things are not what they seem, not even to the rapist himself; so his own assessment of his motives is not to be trusted, even granted that he is being sincere, which is a big assumption right there.  Such interviews may reveal the anger and power motives referred to above, but that gets us right back to the whole question of which is cause and which is effect.  The prima facie case is that sex is the cause of rape.  The theory that it is just the effect, an insignificant epiphenomenon of anger and power, is counterintuitive and unverifiable.

Consensual Sex and the Double Standard

In 2014, California enacted a law requiring college students to get consent before they have sex.  The language is couched in gender-neutral terms, so that technically the law applies to men and women, either gay or straight.  But the primary intent of the law is directed toward heterosexual couples, and it is only the consent of the woman that is of concern.  In other words, the law is written in such a way that it appears to grant equal protection under the law to both sexes, even though we all know that a double standard will and ought to be applied in its implementation.

It is women that need protection against rape, even in the case where force is not used.  This is for several reasons:  First, men are bigger and stronger than women.  Not only is this true on average, but men and women tend to select each other on the basis of size as well.  Although the law is not intended to cover cases where force is used, for that is already illegal and does not need additional legislation, the size and strength of a man compared to a woman can be a factor in cases where consent is ambiguous. That is, a man can simply wear a woman out physically, until she becomes too tired to resist.

Second, it is the woman that can become pregnant.  This puts her at a severe disadvantage compared to the man.  Though birth control may make pregnancy unlikely, and abortion may be available to terminate it, yet it is a big problem for women nevertheless.  And while the man may find himself forced to pay child support if she has the baby, she will still have the greater burden in caring for it and raising it.

Third, a woman is more likely to feel violated by a man than a man would feel violated by a woman.  A major reason for this difference is penetration.  Though a woman may be disgusted by the unwanted kisses of a man, or by his groping her, nothing can compare to being penetrated.  Furthermore, an erection is prima facie evidence of consent regarding the man, thereby undermining his ability to claim that he was similarly violated.  Apart from this, there may be psychological differences as well. Some men think of sex as a matter of conquest.  And it is part of nature of sexual conquest to have a “love ’em and leave ’em” attitude, resulting in one night stands, which can make a woman who surrenders to such a man feel betrayed, especially if he whispered words of love as part of the seduction.  In fact, whether a rape has occurred may depend in part on the subsequent behavior of the man.  If a man refuses to have anything to do with a woman after they have sex, and possibly even insults her, she may feel violated; if he calls her up the next day and asks to see her again, thereby beginning a long-term relationship, that is another thing altogether. In other words, whether a rape has occurred may have as much to do with the subsequent behavior of the man as it does with what happened just before and during sex.

Fourth, alcohol has one legal implication for women and a different implication for men.  People drink, in part, simply because it feels good.  But they also drink in order to get carried away.  I once had a girlfriend who, by her own admission, had been quite promiscuous in college.  During some pillow talk one night, she told me about all the one night stands she had when she was young, and I expressed amazement.  “I don’t think I could have a one night stand,” I said.  “In fact, I don’t think I would want to.  I would have to get to know a woman first before I would feel comfortable having sex.” Without the slightest hesitation, and through half-closed eyelids, she said, “That’s because you don’t drink, John.  Standing there cold sober, no one could do it.  But when you drink, you feel like you’re in love.  And it’s easy to have sex with someone you love.”

Alcohol not only lowers our inhibitions, it also gives us cover for inappropriate behavior. Drinking gives us a license for license.  We are more likely to misbehave if we know that others will excuse this misbehavior as being the result of intoxication. Therefore, a lot of people drink knowing it will not only make it easier to have sex, but also will be a prophylactic against shame the next morning.

The problem lies in judging when someone has consumed enough alcohol to get carried away, but not so much as to no longer be able to consent to sex.  And here the double standard may strike some people as unfair.  If the woman is drunk, her saying “yes” to sex does not constitute consent, but if the man has sex with her, he cannot use the fact that he was drunk as a legal justification against a charge of rape.   So we end up with the situation in which if a man and woman who are equally drunk have sex, she can claim to have been raped, because the legal implications of being drunk are different for men and women.

But even if the woman is sober and only the man is drunk, their having sex will not be construed as her raping him.  No one has ever watched The Way We Were (1973), and thought that Katie (Barbara Streisand) deserved to go to prison for raping Hubbell (Robert Redford), even though she had sex with him while he was too passed-out drunk to know what he was doing.

The double standard here regarding alcohol, not holding a drunk woman responsible for saying “yes,” while holding a drunk man responsible not realizing that she was too drunk to consent, is justified on account of the reasons given previously:  the size and strength of the man, the possibility of pregnancy, and the difference in the male and female psyches.

It is peculiar that the law seems to apply only to college students.  Although I support a double standard for men and women when it comes to sex, I hope we do not have a double standard for college students and all other adults. Presumably, women who are not in college are not fair game, and the “yes means yes” standard applies to them too.  It is only on account of the unique circumstance of young women living away from home and under the protection of a university that special legislation for coeds has been enacted.

Unfortunately, a double standard is a two-edged sword.  In affirming a double standard for sexual activity, we run the risk of having that double standard leach out into areas where it is inappropriate, such as in the workplace.  By saying men are more responsible for their drunken behavior than women, by saying women are psychologically more likely to feel violated and be traumatized by sex than men are, we run the risk of suggesting that women cannot be trusted with responsibility in the workplace, and that they are psychologically weaker than men.  It is partly for this reason that the law is stated in gender-neutral terms.  Although gender-neutral language allows the law to apply to gay couples too, I suspect that this gender-neutral language would still be there anyway, as if to suggest that a man has the same protection against being violated by a woman, and could thus bring charges of rape against her.  So, to keep from having a double standard for men and women in the workplace and in other contexts where sex should not matter, we pretend not to have a double standard for men and women in the matter of sexual activity.  I don’t doubt that someday a man will bring rape charges against a woman, saying he was too drunk to consent.  In anticipation of this event, allow me to smirk preemptively at such a claim.

This is our dilemma:  either we deny the existence of a double standard in matters of sex as being repugnant to egalitarian principles, and end up being forced to accept conclusions that are absurd or paradoxical; or we admit to the need to have a double standard in matters of sex, which leaves an opening for those who want a reason to discriminate against women elsewhere.

A Passage to India (1984)

When we speak of Freudian interpretations of drama, we must distinguish those works created with no thought of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory from those that were created with Freud’s theory in mind.  Plays written before Freud can safely be assumed to fall into the first category, as when Hamlet is interpreted in terms of the Oedipus complex.  There is less certainty regarding dramatic forms created after Freud’s theory had become well known, for there is always the possibility that an artist purposely decided to spice things up by putting a little Freudian symbolism in his story.  In the case of Forbidden Planet (1956), the Freudian element is explicit, the monster being finally explained as a material manifestation of the id.  In the case of this latter type of movie, we are forced to interpret it in Freudian terms even if we do not care one whit for Freud’s theory.  That being said, it is with some confidence that I place A Passage to India into this latter category.  And so, while I am not especially prone to interpret drama in Freudian terms, this movie appears to have been influenced by Freud’s theory to a degree that references to that theory are unavoidable.

But first things first.  Based on the novel of the same name, published in 1924, the story is set in India in the 1920s, when India was still a part of the British Empire.  However much the novel may have expressed criticism of British colonialism, the movie itself was produced in 1984, in a postcolonial world, where the collective judgment is that colonialism was simply wrong.  In fact, it is regarded as so wrong that little room is left for subtlety or nuance.  The Indians are all portrayed as good in one form or another—religious, moral, polite, kind, etc. —while the British are all portrayed as bad in one form or another—rude, snobbish, arrogant, bigoted, etc. —with only three exceptions:  Adela (Judy Davis), Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft), and Fielding (James Fox).  Adela and Mrs. Moore are just setting out for India at the beginning of the movie, so they do not share the prejudices of the British that have been in India for a while.  Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee) makes this explicitly clear when, after almost being run over by an automobile full of British citizens, he says to his friend that all Englishmen become unpleasant within two years of coming to India, while he gives Englishwomen only six months.

Fielding is a special case.  He has been in India for some time, and yet he retains his good qualities, being friendly with Indians and treating them with respect.  That is so we have someone to identify with.  You see, we all like to flatter ourselves that had we lived in some other time and place, we would somehow still have our American, twenty-first century values and sensibilities, and that we would have been moral heroes, refusing to go along with the norms and mores of that place and time.  So, had we lived in the antebellum South, we would, of course, have freed all of our slaves.  Had we come of age in Nazi Germany and been ordered to be a guard at Auschwitz, we would, of course, have refused, choosing to be executed rather than participate in the holocaust.  And had we been a British subject assigned to a post in India in the early twentieth century, we would, of course, have been just like Fielding, refusing to go along with his white countrymen in their condemnation of an Indian (Dr. Aziz) who has been charged with attempted rape of a white woman (Adela).  Without Fielding to identify with, the white reader of the novel and, later, the white audience of the movie might have been adrift.  White people might have tried identifying with some Indian in the movie, but most white people really prefer to identify with a character that is also white.  It is one thing to ask people to identify with a white person who has no prejudices against people of color, but asking them to identify with the people of color themselves might have been asking too much, certainly when the novel was published, but probably today as well.

Adela goes bicycle riding by herself, and she decides to explore a seldom used path.  It takes her to an abandoned building adorned by sculptures of men and women making love.  This arouses repressed sexual desires that distress her greatly.  Then she notices a bunch of monkeys looking at her.  Agitated, they start to chase her and she runs away.  The monkeys represent her animal passions, and what she is really running away from is her own lust.  On a previous evening, she had broken off her engagement with her fiancé, but upon returning, she tells him she has changed her mind and wants to get married.  In other words, even though she no longer loves him, she figures it is better to marry than burn.  Other Freudian symbolism consists of Aziz having a fever and the sweltering heat of the sun, all of which are suggestive of sexual passion.

When Adela and Mrs. Moore, Adela’s prospective mother-in-law, first arrived in India, they wanted to meet some Indians socially.  They got no help in this regard from the British people that lived in India, who were appalled at the idea, but Aziz accidentally made the acquaintance of Mrs. Moore and through her Adela.  He is so enamored of them that he invites them to a picnic in which they can visit some mysterious caves.  Through one incredible coincidence after another, one by one, many of the people who were invited are eliminated—Fielding arrives too late, a chaperon arranged by Adela’s fiancé is dismissed by her, and Mrs. Moore becomes fatigued and remains behind—so that only Aziz, Adela, and a guide arrive at some caves.

Aziz runs off to smoke a cigarette.  This is nothing but a contrivance, the movie’s way of allowing Adela to be alone.  She enters a cave by herself.  The cave, of course, represents her unconscious.  When Aziz finishes his cigarette, he goes looking for her.  He stands at the entrance to the cave as if about to enter.  Now the cave represents her vagina.  She becomes overwhelmed with her forbidden lust for Aziz and bolts, eventually falling down the hillside into some cactus.  Just as she was really running from her sexual desires when she ran from the monkeys, so too here she runs from her desire for Aziz and not from Aziz himself.  Being hysterical, she so vividly imagines being ravished by Aziz that she believes he actually assaulted her.  As a result, charges are brought against Aziz.

Every white person thinks Aziz is guilty except Mrs. Moore, who says there is nothing she can do and returns to England (dying on the way), and Fielding, who asserts Aziz’s innocence.  Adela’s fiancé is a judge, but he has to recuse himself.  He is replaced by an Indian judge.  During the trial, much is made of the fact that Aziz is a widower and therefore deprived of a sexual outlet, except for his occasional visits to brothels or his collection of girlie magazines.  Needless to say, nothing similar is said about Adela’s being a maiden who is also deprived of a sexual outlet.  When Adela is put on the witness stand, she recants her previous testimony, and Aziz is acquitted.  At this point, we realize why the judge had to be an Indian.  If Aziz had gotten a fair trial from a white judge, this would have been out of keeping with the movie’s simplistic formulation:  Indians good; British bad.

So, as often happens in movies in which a man of color is accused of raping a white woman, he turns out to be innocent because the woman is to blame somehow:  either the woman lied, was hysterical, or behaved in provocative manner.  I covered this subject at greater length in my essay, “Rape and Race in the Movies.”

Consensual Sex and the Double Standard

Back in September of 2014, California enacted a law requiring college students to get consent before they have sex.  The language is couched in gender-neutral terms, so that technically the law applies to men and women, either gay or straight.  But the primary intent of the law is directed toward heterosexual couples, and it is only the consent of the woman that is of concern.  In other words, the law is written in such a way that it appears to grant equal protection under the law to both sexes, even though we all know that a double standard will and ought to be applied in its implementation.

It is women that need protection against rape, even in the case where force is not used.  This is for several reasons:  First, men are bigger and stronger than women.  Not only is this true on average, but men and women tend to select each other on the basis of size as well.  Although the law is not intended to cover cases where force is used, for that is already illegal and does not need additional legislation, the size and strength of a man compared to a woman can be a factor in cases where consent is ambiguous. That is, a man can simply wear a woman out physically, until she becomes too tired to resist.

Second, it is the woman that can become pregnant.  This puts her at a severe disadvantage compared to the man.  Though birth control may make pregnancy unlikely, and abortion may be available to terminate it, yet it is a big problem for women nevertheless.  And while the man may find himself forced to pay child support if she has the baby, she will still have the greater burden in caring for it and raising it.

Third, a woman is more likely to feel violated by a man than a man would feel violated by a woman.  A major reason for this difference is penetration. Though a woman may be disgusted by the unwanted kisses of a man, or by his groping her, nothing can compare to being penetrated.  Furthermore, an erection is prima facie evidence of consent regarding the man, thereby undermining his ability to claim that he was similarly violated.  Apart from this, there may be psychological differences as well.  Some men think of sex as a matter of conquest.  And it is part of nature of sexual conquest to have a “love ’em and leave ’em” attitude, resulting in one night stands, which can make a woman who surrenders to such a man feel betrayed, especially if he whispered words of love as part of the seduction.  In fact, whether a rape has occurred may depend in part on the subsequent behavior of the man.  If a man refuses to have anything to do with a woman after they have sex, and possibly even insults her, she may feel violated; if he calls her up the next day and asks to see her again, thereby beginning a long-term relationship, that is another thing altogether.  In other words, whether a rape has occurred may have as much to do with the subsequent behavior of the man as it does with what happened just before and during sex.

Fourth, alcohol has one legal implication for women and a different implication for men.  People drink, in part, simply because it feels good.  But they also drink in order to get carried away.  I once had a girlfriend who, by her own admission, had been quite promiscuous in college.  During some pillow talk one night, she told me about all the one night stands she had when she was young, and I expressed amazement.  “I don’t think I could have a one night stand,” I said.  “In fact, I don’t think I would want to.  I have to get to know a woman first before I would feel comfortable having sex.”  Without the slightest hesitation, and through half-closed eyelids, she said, “That’s because you don’t drink, John.  Standing there cold sober, no one could do it. But when you drink, you feel like you’re in love.  And it’s easy to have sex with someone you love.”

Alcohol not only lowers our inhibitions, it also gives us cover for inappropriate behavior. Drinking gives us a license for license.  We are more likely to misbehave if we know that others will excuse this misbehavior as being the result of intoxication.  Therefore, a lot of people drink knowing it will not only make it easier to have sex, but also will be a prophylactic against shame the next morning.

The problem lies in judging when someone has consumed enough alcohol to get carried away, but not so much as to no longer be able to consent to sex. And here the double standard may strike some people as unfair.  If the woman is drunk, her saying “yes” to sex does not constitute consent, but if the man has sex with her, he cannot use the fact that he was drunk as a legal justification against a charge of rape.   So we end up with the situation in which if a man and woman who are equally drunk have sex, she can claim to have been raped, because the legal implications of being drunk are different for men and women.

But even if the woman is sober and only the man is drunk, their having sex will not be construed as her raping him.  No one has ever watched The Way We Were (1973), and thought that Katie (Barbara Streisand) deserved to go to prison for raping Hubbell (Robert Redford), even though she had sex with him while he was too passed-out drunk to know what he was doing.

The double standard here regarding alcohol, not holding a drunk woman responsible for saying “yes,” while holding a drunk man responsible for not realizing that she was too drunk to consent, is justified on account of the reasons given previously:  the size and strength of the man, the possibility of pregnancy, and the difference in the male and female psyches.

It is peculiar that the law seems to apply only to college students.  Although I support a double standard for men and women when it comes to sex, I hope we do not have a double standard for college students and all other adults. Presumably, women who are not in college are not fair game, and the “yes means yes” standard applies to them too.  It is only on account of the unique circumstance of young women living away from home and under the protection of a university that special legislation for coeds has been enacted.

Unfortunately, a double standard is a two-edged sword.  In affirming a double standard for sexual activity, we run the risk of having that double standard leach out into areas where it is inappropriate, such as in the workplace.  By saying men are more responsible for their drunken behavior than women, by saying women are psychologically more likely to feel violated and be traumatized by sex than men are, we run the risk of suggesting that women cannot be trusted with responsibility in the workplace, and that they are psychologically weaker than men.  It is partly for this reason that the law is stated in gender-neutral terms.  Although gender-neutral language allows the law to apply to gay couples too, I suspect that this gender-neutral language would still be there anyway, as if to suggest that a man has the same protection against being violated by a woman, and could thus bring charges of rape against her.  So, to keep from having a double standard for men and women in the workplace and in other contexts where sex should not matter, we pretend not to have a double standard for men and women in the matter of sexual activity.  I don’t doubt that someday a man will bring rape charges against a woman, saying he was too drunk to consent.  In anticipation of this event, allow me to smirk preemptively at such a claim.

This is our dilemma:  either we deny the existence of a double standard in matters of sex as being repugnant to egalitarian principles, and end up being forced to accept conclusions that are absurd or paradoxical; or we admit to the need to have a double standard in matters of sex, which leaves an opening for those who want a reason to discriminate against women elsewhere.

Blaming the Victim or Counseling Prudence?

John Kasich, when asked by a female college student what policies he would promote as president that would help her “feel safer and more secure regarding sexual violence, harassment and rape,” made some general remarks about confidential reporting and rape kits, but then ended with this:  “I’d also give you one bit of advice. Don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol. OK?”  As a result, he was accused of blaming the victim.

Just prior to making that remark, Kasich made reference to his two sixteen-year-old daughters.  The idea was to show that he had empathy for young women like the one that asked him the question.  But that was undoubtedly what led him astray.  He was thinking about the advice he likely has already given his daughters regarding parties they are invited to in high school, and it is only charitable to imagine that in giving that advice he is counseling prudence, not blaming his daughters in advance if they are raped.  So, part of Kasich’s problem lies in confusing his role as a politician hoping to become president of the United States with his role as a father trying to protect his daughters.

In like manner, President Obama confused his roles regarding the Morning-After Pill.  Although his administration eventually quit blocking the sale of that pill to minors without a prescription, his administration resisted for some time, as noted in an article in The New York Times:

Mr. Obama had expressed personal concern about making the drug more broadly available last year and offered support to Kathleen Sebelius, his secretary of health and human services, when she blocked a decision by the F.D.A. that would have cleared the way for nonprescription distribution to all girls and women regardless of age. He said that as the father of two young girls, the idea of making the drug available to them without a prescription made him uncomfortable.

I never was sure what to make of that.  Did Obama expect his daughters to come to him and say, “I had sex last night without a rubber.  Could we go to the doctor and get a prescription for the Morning-After Pill?”  Let’s face it.  It was not the availability of the drug that made Obama uncomfortable, but the thought of his daughters having sex.  And this brings us back to Kasich, who said, “I have two 16-year-old daughters and I don’t even like to think about it.”  Of course, Kasich was thinking about his two daughters being raped, not merely having consensual sex, which is what bothered Obama.  But they had this in common:  they were both confusing their roles as fathers with their roles as president.

Another thing they had in common was voluntarily bringing their families into the subject of public policy.  Sometimes consideration of a politician’s family will be forced upon him in the context of a discussion about public policy, as when Bernard Shaw, the moderator in a presidential debate in 1988, asked Michael Dukakis if he would favor the death penalty for a man who raped and murdered his wife Kitty.  Unlike Obama, who allowed his personal feelings about his daughters having sex to influence his public policy regarding the Morning-After Pill, Dukakis made the opposite blunder of insisting that even the rape and murder of his own wife would not change his feelings about the death penalty.  With the wisdom that comes from hindsight, most people believe that Dukakis should have first said how he would have felt personally in such a case, perhaps saying that though he would want to avenge his wife’s rape and murder by killing the man who did it, yet the death penalty is still a bad idea as a matter of public policy.  It is part of the social contract that the individual gives up the right to revenge in exchange for which the state takes on the responsibility to see that justice is done.

Separating one’s personal feelings from what would make for good public policy is not always easy.  I sometimes suspect that if Moses had been a bachelor, there would have been no commandment to honor one’s mother and father, and in its place would have been something like, “Thou shalt treat thy children with respect.”  After all, bachelors do not know what it is like to lose control of their willful children, but they do have painful memories of being mistreated by their parents.  In fact, it may have been Moses’s exasperation with his two sons that caused him to send them and their mother Zipporah back to her father (What a great return policy!).  On the other hand, had Jesus been married to a nagging wife who was always after him to get a job, he might have had more liberal views on divorce.

Returning to the present, it is clear that in the case of Obama, his personal feelings about his daughters led to bad policy.  One almost suspects he tried to block the availability of the Morning-After Pill in order to block the idea of his daughters having sex.  In the case of Kasich, however, his giving the same advice to women in general that he gives to his daughters led to a charge of blaming the victim.

Does it make sense to say that private advice given to daughters about how to avoid being raped is counseling prudence, while that same advice given to women in general is victim-blaming?  The difference in our feelings about the two different situations may lie in a presumption of intent.  We assume that a father loves his daughter and thus is only counseling prudence when he advises her on how to avoid being raped, whereas when a politician makes such a remark to women in general, there is no such presumption.

Even when advice on how to avoid rape is offered publicly, however, we can still distinguish that which is clearly victim-blaming, as in, “Don’t wear tight, revealing clothes that might provoke a man’s sexual appetite,” from that which is clearly counseling prudence, as in, “Don’t walk across campus by yourself late at night,” advice recently given out at a university where a young women was murdered, as reported by The Washington Post:

University and law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned students to be careful on campus and be aware of their surroundings. Students should walk in groups, especially at night, officials said. And they should stay vigilant and think twice about focusing on their phones or wearing headphones.

Surely, we wouldn’t want to say that the school officials were blaming the victim.

Part of the problem with Kasich’s advice is that it is not realistic.  A female college student may think she is going to an ordinary party and only later find out that it borders on an orgy.  But once there, she may hate to leave and be thought of as a party pooper.  So, rather than be rude, she figures she will just stick it out.  And in most cases, nothing bad will happen to her.  But what if Kasich had given the woman who asked him the question that same advice as that of the school officials:  “Be aware of your surroundings.  Walk in groups and avoid walking at night or while distracted with cellphones or headphones.”  I suspect he would still have been accused of blaming the victim by those that take an absolutist position in this matter.  One wonders if that advice just sounds better coming from school officials than it would from a politician, especially a pro-life conservative.

Kasich eventually tweeted, “Only one person is at fault in a sexual assault, and that’s the assailant.”  Had he said that to begin with, he would have avoided the mess he got himself in.  However, by insisting that there is no fault on the part of the victim, we may be inadvertently suggesting that there is nothing women should do to try to protect themselves.  If it is legitimate for the school officials to advise women to avoid walking at night, to walk in groups, etc., then does it not follow that a woman who ignores such advice and ends up being assaulted is partly to blame?

Part of the problem in sorting this out is that what one says to a woman who wants to be safe from sexual assault must be distinguished from what one says to a woman that has already been raped.  Once a woman has been raped, it is rude to tell her that she acted imprudently.  It is precisely in that case that we should insist that she is not to blame, in an effort to make her feel better.  After all, she can probably figure out for herself that it was a bad idea to walk across campus at night alone.  Unfortunately, public statements, whether by politicians or school officials, cannot selectively deliver their message only to women that have never been attacked, while sending a more consoling message to those that have.

Ultimately, politicians like Kasich should leave the counsels of prudence to parents and school officials acting in loco parentis, while sticking to public policies that will reduce the likelihood of sexual assault on campus.  Whatever advice they might give their daughters, however wise and caring it may be, that same advice given out publicly to women in general is going sound like blaming the victim.

Has No Always Meant No?

I was in high school in the early 1960s, a hopeless virgin, and thus I was always eager for any advice I could get from some of the guys who seemed to have a way with women.  A common refrain at the time was, “When a girl says No, she means Maybe, and when she says Maybe, she means Yes.”

Well, that advice did me no good.  For one thing, when a girl said No to me, she usually sounded pretty serious.  In fact, a girl could stop me with a glance.  If anything, I needed encouragement.  So, as a practical matter, No meant No to me, regardless of what I was being told by those supposedly in the know.

It was during those high school years that the movie Hud came out, 1963 to be exact.  I expect that most people have seen this movie, but in brief, the title character is played by Paul Newman.  He is a big stud in a small Texas town.  His nephew Lon (Brandon De Wilde) is a virginal teenage boy who admires Hud and wishes he could be like him.  They are both attracted to Alma (Patricia Neal), who is their housekeeper.  Alma admits to being sexually aroused by Hud, especially when he has his shirt off, but she is leery of him, because she thinks he is a “cold-blooded bastard.”  She regards Lon with affection, but she is practically a mother to him, and thus never thinks of him as a lover.

One night, when Hud is drunk and angry, he goes to Alma’s cabin, breaks open the door, and starts trying to rape her.  There is a fierce struggle as she tries to fight him off.  Suddenly, Lon bursts in and grabs Hud, pulling him off.  Hud almost bashes Lon’s face in, but stops, lets him go, and leaves the cabin.

I saw this movie with my parents at the drive-in when it first came out.  Both of them said that Alma wanted to be raped and that she was irritated that Lon stopped Hud from giving her what she wanted.  I voiced my reservations, but they dismissed me as being naïve.  I figured that was a losing argument, so I gave up.  A few years later, my girlfriend and I watched the movie, and she also said that Alma wanted to be raped.  I had always wanted to ask a girl if No meant No, but I figured that would lead to the absurdity of the Liar’s Paradox, so I never bothered.  But since this particular girlfriend had already taken my virginity, I guess she felt comfortable telling me that sometimes No means Yes.  Well, technically, Alma never said the word “No,” but her actions clearly implied it.

Having already been dismissed as naïve by my parents, I didn’t even bother expressing my doubts to my girlfriend.  But I never believed for a minute that Alma wanted to be raped.  It was different with an earlier movie that Patricia Neal had been in, The Fountainhead (1949), in which it is clear that her character Dominique wanted to be raped.  Or rather, as the novel on which it is based makes clear, it was because she had been raped that for the first time in her life she experienced sexual ecstasy.  Perhaps this role became part of Patricia Neal’s persona, making it easy for people to believe that she wanted to be raped in Hud as well. As for me, I have seen the movie many times over the years, and I always think about my parents and my girlfriend when the scene with the sexual assault takes place, but I have never seen any reason to change my mind.

But then I bought Pauline Kael’s I Lost It at the Movies.  I have read a lot of books on film criticism, but I have avoided Kael for years, because she seems to spend too much time praising weird foreign films.  Anyway, I finally broke down and bought this book, in which is included an essay on Hud, written in 1964.  In it, she maintains that Alma wanted to be raped, and she gives reasons in support of her position:

Alma obviously wants to go to bed with Hud, but she has been rejecting his propositions because she doesn’t want to be just another casual dame to him; she wants to be treated differently from the others.  If Lon hadn’t rushed in to protect his idealized view of her, chances are that the next morning Hud would have felt guilty and repentant, and Alma would have been grateful to him for having used the violence necessary to break down her resistance, thus proving that she was different.  They might have been celebrating ritual rapes annually on their anniversaries.

One of the objections to this theory is that Alma leaves the next day, but to this, Kael replies:

No doubt in Hud we’re really supposed to believe that Alma is, as Stanley Kaufmann [a film critic] says, “driven off by his [Hud’s] vicious physical assault.”  But in terms of the modernity of the settings and the characters, as well as the age of the protagonists (they’re at least in their middle thirties), it was more probable that Alma left the ranch because a frustrated rape is just too sordid and embarrassing for all concerned—for the drunken Hud who forced himself upon her, for her for defending herself so titanically, for young Lon the innocent who “saved” her.

That makes three women, my mother, my girlfriend, and Pauline Kael, who subscribed to the theory that Alma wanted to be raped.  All three women, however, voiced these opinions in the 1960s, which means their attitudes could have been the same as those who made the movie, all of them sharing what might have been a 1960s Zeitgeist of consensual rape, if you’ll pardon the expression.

In other words, even if they were right, they were right about a movie made in the 1960s.  And this raises the question as to whether there could be a remake of this movie, not that I would want to see one.  That is to say, if producers in Hollywood decided that Hud was old enough to justify a remake, inasmuch as a lot of people like their movies fresh, especially since it could be made in color this time, and if this remake followed the original, especially regarding the sexual assault, how would people react to this movie today?  Surely not the way my parents, girlfriend, and Pauline Kael once did!

Or am I just being naïve again?

Summer of ’42 (1971) and The Way We Were (1973)

The Way We Were begins in 1944. Katie (Barbra Streisand) runs into Hubbell (Robert Redford), a good-looking guy she met in college and whom she had a crush on. But as she is rather homely, her love for him was hopelessly unrequited. She invites him up to her place for a cup of coffee, but he is so drunk that without realizing what he is doing when he comes out of the bathroom, he gets undressed and falls asleep in her bed. She gets naked, slides into bed with him, and encourages him. Without really knowing what he is doing, he has sex with her, and she hopes he knows it is Katie he is making love to. But by the next morning, it is clear that he has no memory of what happened, and he merely thanks her for letting him sleep there.

In evaluating this scene, we must do so from the vantage points of three different periods: the last days of World War II, when the scene took place; the early 1970s, when the movie was made; and the twenty-first century, when we watch this movie today. In other words, each of these three different periods will tend to yield three different moral judgments about that sex scene.

But first, let us reverse the sexes. By today’s standards, if a man were to have sex with a woman while she was too drunk to know what she was doing, that would be rape, for she would be in no condition to consent. However, in accordance with twenty-first century egalitarianism, we would not limit it to just a man doing that to a woman. Rather, we would say that if one person had sex with a second person when that second person was too drunk to know what he or she was doing, then the first person has raped the second person. This allows for the possibility that a woman could rape a man, a man could rape a man, and a woman could rape a woman. In other words, by today’s standards, Katie raped Hubbell.

In 1944, when the scene took place, if it had come to light what Katie had done, no one would have called it rape. Katie’s behavior would have been condemned, but not as an act of rape. Rather, she would have been regarded as a slut, in that she had sex without being married. And in no way would Hubbell have been thought of as victimized.

In 1973, when the movie was released, the people who made this movie probably did not think of it as rape either. And given the fact that it was made after the sexual revolution, what Katie did was not condemned as slutty either. In other words, the audience of the early 1970s did not condemn Katie at all.

In fact, the people who made the movie in 1973 probably had no idea that over forty years later this scene would challenge our willingness to apply a single standard to both men and women when it comes to rape. In other words, if a man who takes advantage of a drunk woman can be charged with rape and sentenced to a year in prison, should the same sentence be given to a woman who does that to a man? In particular, if The Way We Were were set in the twenty-first century, would we say that Katie should have gone to prison for what she did to Hubbell?

Some people might argue that since she and Hubbell later fell in love and got married, that made it all right. But suppose a twenty-first-century Hubbell were to realize what happened when he woke up the next morning. And let us further assume that this twenty-first-century Hubbell was outraged and felt disgusted by what happened. Under those circumstances, should Katie spend a year in prison?

Such a distinction suggests that whether such an act constitutes rape depends not merely on the circumstances leading up to and including the act of sex, but also on what happens after the fact.  To reverse the sexes again, imagine a man has sex with a woman who is drunk.  The next morning, he calls her up, tells her he really enjoyed being with her the night before, asks her out for another date for that weekend, leading eventually to their getting married.  It will never occur to that woman that she had been raped.  But suppose, instead, that he doesn’t call her, and she later hears from her friends that he has been bragging about how he got a piece of old what’s her name, she may feel violated and end up bringing charges against him.

Determining whether Katie raped Hubbell would be further complicated if Katie had been as drunk as he was.  By today’s standards, if Katie were that drunk, it would be said that she was unable to give consent; and by today’s standards, a man’s being drunk is no legal excuse for taking advantage of a woman who is too intoxicated to give her consent.  Therefore, by today’s standards, had Katie and Hubbell been equally drunk, she could claim to have been raped, and Hubbell would be in trouble.

I confess that I have a double standard concerning rape in such a circumstance. First, I would find it hard to believe that even a twenty-first-century Hubbell would be all that put out by what she did. And second, I would not want to see Katie go to prison in any event.

But my views are not important. What is important is that this scene in the movie, imagined to take place today, tests our willingness to apply a single standard to both men and women in such cases. Most people I know, after some hesitation, will admit that they would not want to see Katie do hard time.

In a way, Summer of ’42 is a companion piece with The Way We Were, only instead of challenging our attitude about rape and the double standard when it comes to having sex with someone too drunk to give consent, Summer of ’42 challenges our attitude about rape and the double standard when it comes to having sex with someone too young to give consent.

With both movies, we pretty much have the same three time periods: the 1940s, when the movies were set; the early 1970s, when the movies were made; and today, when we watch them from the perspective of the twenty-first century. In Summer of ’42, a 15-year-old boy named Hermie (Gary Grimes) falls in love with a 22-year-old woman named Dorothy (Jennifer O’Neill). One evening, she gets word that her husband’s plane has been shot down over France, and he is dead. She and Hermie have sex, and the next day she is gone.

I never really cared for this movie, but that is neither here nor there. The sense of it was that Dorothy, in her grief, turns to Hermie for affection, and that what happens is a deeply meaningful and positive experience for him. Now, I don’t know what the laws were in Massachusetts in 1942, but I am pretty sure that in most states, if a 22-year-old man had sex with a 15-year-old girl, he would be guilty of statutory rape; and if found out, he would be sent to prison, especially when the jury was told that he had sex with her on the very night he found out his wife had been killed, for that would make him seem callous. Should we condemn the man but excuse the woman? Did Dorothy deserve to go to prison for rape, just as a man would?

Once again, as with The Way We Were, we have a situation in which there is consent after the fact, in this case, when the boy becomes a man. Does that matter? And if it does, what would our attitude toward Dorothy be if the adult Hermie was psychologically harmed? And once again we have to distinguish between the attitudes existing when the movie was set, when it was made, and the attitudes we have today.

Even today, the double standard lends itself to late-night humor. Typical was when Jay Leno was discussing a story about a female teacher that had sex with one of her male students, leading Leno to ask in exasperation, “Where were these teachers when I was in Junior High?” Humor aside, could Summer of ’42 be made today? More to the point, could such a story be told in a contemporary setting? Probably not. But I wonder if that represents a genuine change in attitude on the part of the general public, or simply a fear that a handful of radicals would stir up trouble, making the film controversial. I, for one, would have a hard time condemning Dorothy, even if the story were set in the present, just as I would have a hard time condemning Katie, even if that story were set in the present.

A Slight Problem with Ethical Relativism

Though the moral character of atheists is neither better nor worse than the moral character of people that believe in God, yet there does seem to be a difference in conviction.  And that is perfectly understandable.  A common conception of God is that he is infinitely wise and good, and in one way or another, through sacred text, revelation, or one’s own conscience, God informs us of what is good and what is evil.  People with strong religious beliefs will tend to be firm in their convictions about right and wrong, owing to their sense that they have the word of God on which to rely.

Others, while still believing in God, are less sure about the reliability of sacred text, the revelations of others, or even their own conscience, which often urges them down one path, only to later reprimand them for not taking another.  They figure there are things commanded or forbidden by God, but they just aren’t sure what they are.  This uncertainty leads to tolerance of other religions, in which one regards them as different expressions of the one God common to all, thereby reinforcing one’s doubts in matters of morality, for different religions command and forbid different things.

Taking this to its ultimate conclusion, those totally lacking in belief are fully aware that they must rely on themselves alone when it comes to morality. Through some combination of instinct, experience, cultural influence, and prudence, they muddle their way through various moral difficulties, hoping that they are doing the right thing.

Not being absolutely sure about what is right and wrong leads naturally to the conclusion that nothing is absolutely right or wrong.  Atheism does not entail ethical relativism, but they tend to go together.  From the fact of cultural relativism, that different cultures have different views as to what is right and wrong, there tends to be an inference to ethical relativism, that what is right or wrong is relative to a particular culture, with no culture having a greater claim on the truth in such matters than any other.

When I was young, ethical relativism was cast in the most reassuring terms. Through such examples as belching Arabs and promiscuous Polynesians, I found the idea of moral relativism to be quite congenial.  Other cultures with their different ways seemed benign, even cute. When I got to college, I eventually majored in philosophy, where I discovered that the issue was far more complicated than I ever imagined.  However, I remember one textbook in ethics that had a chapter on ethical relativism. It posed such questions as to whether it was all right to marry more than one wife, kill a hornet, commit incest, or have slaves, if you treat them well.  The point was that each of these actions were regarded as forbidden in some cultures or religions, while others held such things to be morally permissible.

These issues were a touch more serious than the examples to which I was first exposed, but they were not alarming.  I could imagine living among people who believed differently from me on such issues without too much discomfort, although I might find not being able to kill a threatening hornet somewhat inconvenient.

The past was more problematic, for history is replete with examples of societies that once practiced all sorts of cruelties and atrocities with a clean conscience and even a feeling of righteousness about it all.  But as they were in the past, there seemed to be the sense that they could be safely ignored.  It was only modern cultures that need be considered.

Well, we have come a long way since those halcyon days in which one could accept the tenets of ethical relativism as proof of one’s sophistication and enlightenment.  Nowadays, when one thinks of the differences between one culture and another regarding what is right and wrong, it is things like genital mutilation, child brides, forced adultery, and honor killings that come to mind.  And now, as if we needed one more example, we have the situation of boys being held as sex slaves on military bases by some of our Afghan allies, while our own soldiers are being told to accept such practices as just a cultural issue, in what might be the most perverted application of moral relativism ever embraced by our society.  I find it impossible to say, “Well, in that culture, such things are morally permissible.  We must not be judgmental and presume to impose our values on others.”  Instead, I want to say, “That culture is morally depraved.  And it needs to be crushed!”

How about this for a moral absolute:  It is wrong to chain an eleven-year-old boy to a bed so that he can be repeatedly raped no matter how much he screams.  It is easy enough to agree that this is absolutely wrong, although I have no theoretical justification for such a claim.  At best, all I can say is that it feels like a moral absolute.

As long as I am in my absolutist mode, I am also appalled that relatively little attention has been paid to this story.  On the other hand, there has been an excessive amount of coverage on Pope Francis.  As long he was getting so much coverage, it would have been nice to hear him say a thing or two about boys being kept as sex slaves on our military bases, especially since he could have tied it in with the rape of boys by priests, but he said nothing, alas. Perhaps in the next debate Carly Fiorina might talk about the boys being raped with their legs kicking and hearts beating, but I doubt it.

Of course, unlike fetuses, there are no videos of boys being raped, and we tolerate a lot of things as long as we don’t have to see them.  Logically, there should be no difference between seeing pictures of boys being raped and only hearing stories about them, but such is human nature.  After all, that is why ISIS made pictures of their beheadings instead of merely telling us about them, because they knew it would disturb us more and possibly goad us to war with them.  And that is why the CIA destroyed the images of torture so that our moral outrage would be much less.

But videos do not tell the whole story.  After all, it is not American little boys that are being raped, but only little boys in Afghanistan, who are probably going to grow up to be terrorists anyway.  As Jeb Bush might point out in the next debate, at least President Obama is keeping us safe.

Rape and Race in the Movies

In Sergeant Rutledge (1960), which is a Western directed by John Ford, a black soldier faces a court martial for the rape and murder of a white girl.  At the end of the movie, someone else, a white man, of course, confesses to having committed the crime, and the title character is acquitted.

The movie To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) is, along with a few subplots, a story about a black man who is accused of raping a white woman in Alabama in the 1930s.  Most of the white people in the town are ready to lynch him, being sure that he is guilty.  By virtue of some rather fortuitous evidence, that the black man does not have full use of his left hand, it is clear that the white woman lied about being raped.  The town is so prejudiced, however, that he is convicted anyway.

In the movie Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys (1976), nine black teenagers are accused of raping two white girls.  Once again we are in Alabama in the 1930s.  Once again there is a lot of prejudice in the town and a presumption that the African American youths are guilty.  Once again, it is pretty clear that the white girls are lying.  The boys are convicted anyway.

At the time these movies were made, the typical reaction of the audience was to deplore this racial prejudice, especially in what was regarded as the ultimate outrage in the Jim Crow South, the rape of a white woman by a black man.  This obsession was made especially clear in the movie Birth of a Nation (1915), the racist classic that justified the formation of the Ku Klux Klan as the only way to keep black men from molesting white women.

Interestingly enough, there is one thing that these four movies have in common.  No such rape of a white woman by a black man ever takes place. It is threatened in Birth of a Nation, a white man did the raping in Sergeant Rutledge, and the rapes are spurious in To Kill a Mockingbird and Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys; but in none of these movies is there a rape of a white woman by a black man.  The reason why this is so in the latter three movies is obvious, because the point was to create sympathy for African Americans, who are often treated unfairly.  In the case of Birth of a Nation, however, an actual rape of a white woman by a black man would have been too horrible to contemplate.

From completely diverse motives then, movies in which a black man actually rapes a white woman are rare, a couple of exceptions being Deep in My Heart (1999) and The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck (1988), movies you have probably never even heard of, let alone seen.  A slightly more well-known movie in which this rare cinematic event occurs is Death Wish II (1982), about which more later.  In most cases, however, there is only the accusation of rape, which turns out not to be true.  And the way in which the accusation turns out not to be true in To Kill a Mockingbird and Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys is that the white women lied.

Another movie in which a man of color is accused of rape but is exonerated when it turns out that the woman lied is A Passage to India (1984).  The movie is set in India in the early part of the twentieth century when it was still under British rule.  A white Englishwoman accuses an Indian of trying to rape her, but she recants on the witness stand.  It is our impression that her lie was not deliberate, but rather that she became hysterical as a result of being unable to come to terms with her repressed sexuality.

I must confess that when I saw these movies when they first were made, I accepted the idea that the women lied as not only being plausible, but perhaps more importantly, as in no way being inconsistent with the progressive attitude of the movies.  In other words, such things go on in the world, but that does not guarantee their being depicted in a movie.  To take the example already alluded to, that of black men raping white women, while such things do occur in real life, they are almost nonexistent in the movies. And with the exception of Birth of a Nation, the reason is a desire on the part of the movie industry to portray African Americans (or Indians, in the case of A Passage to India) in a positive light.  But that same industry, the same producers in fact, had not the slightest qualm about making the women be the villains as part of their progressive agenda.  Their conscience was undoubtedly as clear on this score as mine was when I watched these movies with approval.  The fact that women do sometimes lie about being raped is not an explanation, for what is real and what we want to see in a movie are two different things.

Over the years there has been a gradual awareness of the prejudice against women when it comes to rape.  A lot of men used to think (and some still do) that rape is not a big deal (who can forget the old advice to “just relax and enjoy it”?).  Some rapes are dismissed as not being “legitimate” or as not being “rape-rape.”  In other cases, women are said to have brought it on themselves by dressing provocatively or by egging men on.  And finally, some are thought to be vindictive, seeking revenge for having been scorned.

Slowly, social consciousness is finally coming around to a more progressive attitude about rape, one that takes women seriously when they make this charge.  Unfortunately, women do sometimes lie about rape, as in the notorious case about “Jackie,” whose alleged rape was reported and then retracted by Rolling Stone magazine.  But that is reality, over which we have no choice.  Where we do have a choice is in deciding what is acceptable to put in a movie.  Given the climate today, it seems to me unlikely that a major motion picture will soon be produced that involves a woman falsely accusing a man of rape.  In particular, I have to wonder if To Kill a Mockingbird could be made today.  Hollywood is always looking for a movie to remake, especially if the original was a big hit.  And since the original was filmed in black and white, some might regard a remake as justified in that this time it could be filmed in color.  But I don’t think so.  I suspect that a movie in which a woman lies about being raped might be as unacceptable today as a movie about a black man raping a white woman.  It is ironic that the movie we once embraced for its progressive denunciation of racism, we might now have to regard as flawed for the misogynistic way it played off a prejudice against women who claim to have been raped.

Of course, To Kill a Mockingbird is even less likely to be remade now after the release of another novel by Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman, which is actually the first version of To Kill a Mockingbird.  An editor advised her to rewrite the story, which she did.  To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about a girl named Scout, whose father, Atticus Finch, defends a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell, in a small town in Alabama in the 1930s.  Though Atticus proves that Robinson is innocent, a prejudiced jury convicts him anyway.  Later, when Scout and her brother are attacked by Mayella’s father, Bob Ewell, Boo Radley, a mentally retarded man, saves them by killing Ewell.  Atticus and the sheriff pretend to accept the story that Ewell fell on his own knife.

Gregory Peck, who played Atticus in the movie, has on occasion played a bad man, as in Duel in the Sun (1946), but when he plays the good guy, no one can surpass him for being morally upright. In fact, sometimes he is so good that it is a little too much to bear.  He is almost nothing but superego, an embodiment of moral rectitude.  I often suspected that the reason Atticus’s wife has been dead for some time when the story begins is so that we won’t think of him having sex, which might make us think him capable of being motivated by a strong passion rather than by the light of reason informed by knowledge of right and wrong.  Also, the love between a father and his daughter, which a lot of people think is the more important feature of the story, would lose some of its intensity if there were a mother for Scout and a wife for Atticus with whom the love would have to be shared.

As there will not likely be a remake of To Kill a Mockingbird, so too is it doubtful there will be a movie based on Go Set a Watchman, though for very different reasons.  In the earlier version of the story, Scout, as Jean Louise, returns home at the age of twenty-six to find that her father has an id.  He denounces the Supreme Court for Brown v. Board of Education, because he is opposed to integration, he despises the N.A.A.C.P., and it is revealed that he once attended a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan.  At one point, he says, “The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people,” and he asks his daughter, “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters?  Do you want them in our world?”

There has never been anything like this.  The disconnect between the saintly, much-revered Atticus of To Kill a Mockingbird and the racist of Go Set a Watchman borders on blasphemy.

When watching the movie, I always had misgivings in To Kill a Mockingbird when Atticus shoots a dog with rabies.  I figured the point was to prepare the way for when Boo (Robert Duvall) kills Bob Ewell (James Anderson), who figuratively is a mad dog that needs killing.  But it bothered me that the mob that comes to lynch Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) probably had exactly the same attitude, that Tom was a mad dog that needed killing. I always had a sense that the movie was inadvertently justifying lynching.

But now I am not so sure it was inadvertent.  In Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise, as the grown-up Scout, is portrayed as disillusioned by what she discovers about her father, saying to him, “I’ll never believe a word you say to me again. I despise you and everything you stand for.”  On the surface, one would think that Harper Lee is expressing her disapproval of racism through this character.  But that may be just a front, a pretense of disapproval as a devious way of advocating her racist views through Atticus.  Furthermore, Jean Louise’s views are not that different from his.  At one point in her discussion with her father, she says, “We’ve agreed that they [Negroes] are backward, that they’re illiterate, that they’re dirty and comical and shiftless and no good, they’re infants and they’re stupid, some of them, but we haven’t agreed on one thing and we never will. You deny that they’re human.”  And so, perhaps the killing of the mad dog really was a subliminal way of justifying lynch mobs.

Whereas in To Kill a Mockingbird, Robinson is convicted, in Go Set a Watchman, he is acquitted.  I take this as a southern defense of the South’s judicial system during the Jim Crow period.  Go Set a Watchman is saying that a black man accused of raping a white woman can get justice. In other words, the book has it both ways.  Through the mad dog metaphor, it justifies the lynching of evildoers in the old days, while at the same time assuring us that when a black man was actually innocent, he was likely to be acquitted, even by an all white jury.

There are those who argue that To Kill a Mockingbird, as book or movie, stands on its own, and that authorial intent, as revealed by Go Set a Watchman, is irrelevant.  For most of us, however, the latter contaminates the former, and few people will ever be able to regard To Kill a Mockingbird in the same light again.

To return to the main issue of this essay, the way the movies handle rape across racial lines, African Americans turn out to be innocent of rape charges in To Kill a Mockingbird and Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys because the white girls lie about being raped.  In Sergeant Rutledge, however, the white girl is not only raped, but also murdered, and so the device of having the girl lie about being raped is not available.  Instead, it turns out that a white man actually raped and killed her.  However, some of the blame for what happens still falls on the girl.

The main female character of this movie, Mary Beecher (Constance Towers), is a strong, independent-thinking woman. However, most of the rest of the women in this movie are a bunch of simpleminded old biddies, whose purpose in life is to be scandalized by the shameful behavior of others.  One of the things that scandalize these women is the behavior of Lucy Dabney (Toby Michaels), the girl who is subsequently raped and strangled. The women chastise her for riding a horse astride. But Lucy says, in front of Chandler Hubble (Fred Libby), who we eventually find out is the one that actually raped her, that as long as she says her prayers and behaves herself, her father doesn’t care if she rides around like Lady Godiva. It is also worked into the conversation that her mother is dead. In other words, Lucy does not have a simpleminded old biddy for a mother to instill the proper sense of decorum into her.

At the end, Lieutenant Tom Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter), whose job it is to defend Rutledge (Woody Strode), beats a confession out of Hubble while he is on the witness stand. Hubble admits that he had to rape Lucy because of the way she walked, the way she moved her body. You see, what with Lucy’s having her legs spread-eagled when she rides a horse and putting into Hubble’s mind the image of her being naked while on that horse as well, it was just too much for him. In other words, the movie is just a hair from blaming the victim, although it stops short of that, blaming the circumstance of her not having a mother to raise her properly instead.  One might think that the real blame for the rape would fall on Hubble, the man who raped her. But the movie portrays him as having acted under a sexual compulsion (especially since his wife is deceased, thereby depriving him of a normal sexual outlet). The point seems to be that it is up to women to behave in such a way as to not unleash the demon in men such as Hubble.

One way to make rape across racial lines more suitable for movie audiences is to lessen the color difference between the man and woman.  This can be done in two ways, by having the man belong to a race less dark than that of an African American, or by making the white woman be a brunette instead of a blonde.  In the movie The Searchers (1956), for example, Debbie, a dark-haired girl of about eight, is abducted by the Comanches, and the rest of the movie consists of Ethan (John Wayne) and Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) searching for her. As the years go by, it becomes clear that Debbie is getting to the age where the Indians will start having sex with her.  The thought of such defilement makes Ethan want to kill her, and even Laurie (Vera Miles) agrees that Debbie’s mother would have wanted Ethan to put a bullet in her brain. Just to get us in the mood for what is coming, Ethan and Martin check out some girls that had been captives of the Comanches to see if one of them is Debbie. We see three girls who are all crazy to point of either screaming or laughing maniacally. And they are all blonde.  But later, when at last they find Debbie, who is about thirteen and is one of the squaws of the Comanche chief, the principal villain of the film, she seems just fine.  And, as she is played by Natalie Wood, she is a brunette.  The idea seems to be that white brunettes can tolerate being raped by men of a darker race, because they have a dark aspect themselves, and thus can absorb the shock; but blondes cannot, for they are so white and pure that the violation destroys them.

The Searchers is another movie for which there will never be a remake, because Indians have all been replaced by Native Americans.  Native Americans are peace-loving indigenous people, who are close to Nature, at one with the environment, full of shape-shifting spirituality, and whom we stole this land from and treated atrociously.  Indians, on the other hand, are vicious savages that scalp men, rape women, and subject their captives to horrible tortures. Unable to hold their liquor, they are always going off the reservation, impeding our Manifest Destiny.  The last time Indians in this sense were in a Western was in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), where they tried to rape a white woman. Since then, if a woman in a Western supposedly gets raped by a Native American, it always turns out that it was white men who did it, as in the movie The Lone Ranger (2013).  If an Indian actually scalps someone, as in Dances with Wolves (1990), it is a bad Indian, as opposed to the good Indians (i.e., Native Americans) in the movie who would never do such a thing. In other words, when it comes to raping white women, Native Americans have achieved the same immunity in the movies that African Americans have:  it practically never happens.

On the other hand, when rape is only threatened, then the difference in color can be as extreme as possible.  Consider, for example, the movie King Kong (1933) and its remakes in 1976 and 2005.  As many critics have observed, these movies subliminally play off the white man’s fear of black lust for white women.  And in each version, it is a blonde that King Kong captures and falls in love with. Having Ann Darrow played by a brunette just would not be the same.  She has to be a blonde to make the thought of rape as horrible as possible, which the movie is able to suggest with impunity because their difference in size makes any actual rape impossible.

As noted above, one exception to the general rule that African Americans do not rape white women in the movies is Death Wish II (1982).  However, color difference is minimized to make the rape more palatable.  Actually, there are two women in this movie that are raped.  The first one is gang raped, and two of the men that rape her are dark-skinned African Americans.  However, the woman is Latina, and this reduces the color difference.  The second woman, however, is a Caucasian, but she is raped by a light-skinned African American, once again reducing the color difference.  Also, she is a brunette rather than a blonde, thereby further reducing the difference.

Even so, this movie is definitely an exception.  Since then, movies that depict rape across racial lines typically have the man be white and the woman be dark, as in A Time to Kill (1996) or 12 Years a Slave (2013).  We are fortunate to still have white males available for the depiction of the worst forms of evil and depravity in general and of rape in particular.

Frenzy (1972)

Frenzy is set in London, and Barry Foster plays Robert Rusk, a man who rapes women and then strangles them with a necktie. Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) is in charge of the case, assisted by Sergeant Spearman (Michael Bates).  At one point during the movie, Oxford tells Spearman that when they catch up with the necktie strangler, it will probably turn out that he is impotent. Spearman expresses surprise, and rightly so, for this is a bizarre claim. A man who is impotent cannot get an erection, and therefore is incapable of having sexual intercourse. Therefore, if the necktie strangler were impotent, there would be no semen in the vaginas of his victims. Since all his victims were murdered and thus could not give evidence, there would be no reason to think they had been raped. Inspector Oxford does not address that question, but simply tells Sergeant Spearman that it is not sex that gratifies such rapists, but violence.

When Brenda Blaney (Barbara Leigh Hunt) is raped and strangled with a necktie, suspicion falls on her ex-husband Richard Blaney (Jon Finch).  Because the Blaneys never had any children, Inspector Oxford probably took that as confirmation of his impotence theory, although he never says so explicitly.  In fact, he might have even thought that was why they divorced, because Brenda was sexually frustrated by having a husband who could not get it up.  In any event, Richard Blaney is eventually convicted of the crime.  He breaks out of prison to get revenge on Rusk, who Blaney knows is the real necktie strangler.  All turns out well in the end when Inspector Oxford catches Rusk with another one of those women whom he impotently raped in his room.

Several years prior to the production of this movie, it became fashionable to say that rape was not about sex, and some people maintain that theory to this day. It is said that rape is really about power, about dominating women. Even if it is so that rape has some motive other than sex, there still has to be a rape, and that means that the rapist cannot be impotent, regardless of what his motive might be. If we bend over backwards to make sense of Oxford’s claim, we might say that the rapist is able to penetrate, but cannot achieve completion, cannot ejaculate. But that would mean no semen in the vagina, which brings us right back to the question, what would make the police think the women had been raped?

Oxford speaks with an authoritative voice in the movie, and so we know we are supposed to believe him. But aside from squaring impotence with rape, there is the incongruity between his words and the rape that took place in the movie thirty minutes before, when we see Rusk raping Brenda. In the history of mainstream cinema, no movie, made before or since, has depicted sex, consensual or coerced, in which anyone, male or female, experiences greater heights of sexual ecstasy than does that of the necktie strangler in Frenzy.

What is remarkable about this movie is that in discussing it with others, I have noticed that a lot of people accept the pronouncements of the detective, notwithstanding their apparent inconsistency with the rape scene. This is in part due to the authoritative voice of the detective, and in part due to the widespread acceptance of the rape-is-not-about-sex theory at that time. I have seen people twist themselves into a pretzel trying to argue that the rapist never really got it up, let alone gratified himself sexually.

Alfred Hitchcock directed this movie, and I suspect that this was his idea of a joke. He purposely put this contradiction into the movie between the words of the pompous detective and the scene of intense sexual passion, as his way of making fun of that theory.