The people who find it "problematic" point to two things that really bother them. One is the casual racism that we hear from some of the characters, particularly anti-Japanese and anti-Jewish racism. I don't think I need to describe the scenes in any more detail than that; if you've seen the movie, you know which scenes I mean. And my short answer to these scenes is that nobody is asking us to approve. To me it was pretty obvious that the director didn't approve, and that he included the scenes to tell us something disreputable about the characters who expressed this racism. At the same time, the movie is set in 1973. Attitudes like the ones we see weren't uncommon then. And the director has clearly said in interviews that some of these events were based on real things that happened (back then) to people he knows and is close to. Surely that's enough to explain the scenes?
The second thing that people object to is ... well first let me back up and say that this is basically a story about two people. Boy and girl. The "plot" is largely a collection of events loosely strung together under the rubric of A Lot of Stuff Happens, and it matters insofar as it illustrates (and affects) the relationship between these two. But the characters, and not the events, are the focus.
What kills some people -- more than anything else in the whole movie -- is that she's 25 and he's 15. And so you get people talking about pedophilia and abuse. You get people complaining that this movie should never have been made, and that the only way it could ever have been green-lighted at all is that we have a persistent, if immoral, double standard in our society in how we jusge the behavior, respectively, of men and of women. I can't count how many critics I've seen who have insisted, rhetorically, that if the sexes were swapped (so that the movie featured a 25-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl), everyone would be horrified and the movie could never have been made.
No, we're supposed to understand that these two are not boyfriend-and-girlfriend! Or at least they really don't want to be. Yes, they "meet cute." Yes, they go out to dinner. And yes, it so happens that they end up spending a lot of time around each other, for a variety of reasons. People keep asking them if they are together, and regularly each of them says, "No, no, not at all. It's just that ... [whatever]." The boy tries to date girls from his high school. The young woman tries to date men her own age. And they annoy each other. He annoys her, in particular, by being grandiose and arrogant and thoughtless and immature. She treats him like a kid. She's always driving him places. Once they are fighting and he needs to go somewhere. First she says, "Don't think I'm going to drive you!" because she's still mad, and he replies that no, he'll drive himself. And right away she tells him no, don't be crazy, don't do that, I'll drive you.
But she's also having trouble figuring out a direction for her own life. She still lives at home, she has poky little jobs, and she doesn't have a lot of luck with her own dates. What's more, even though they both deny vigorously that they are a couple, each of them starts to get irritable whenever the other is dating someone else. So it's clear that each of them is starting to get jealous where the other is concerned. It takes them a very, very long time to figure this out, partly because they are just as aware as the most censorious viewer that there's no way they can be in a romantic relationship with each other. (The whole thing is very chaste.)
Do they desire something more? In some ways. He pursues her, and obviously thinks that it makes him a lot cooler to hang out with an older woman. She enjoys the validation that she gets from him, when she doesn't get it anywhere else in her life, even if he does irritate her by being less mature. And so certain reviewers call this out, insisting that she must by definition be predatory and abusive, that she must be ruining his life and traumatizing him. They complain that the script doesn't unambiguously condemn this inter-age attachment that they develop for each other.
And I find myself wondering, Who are these people? Have they forgotten how horny they too must have been back when they were 15? What the actual fuck are they talking about??
More exactly, Don't they understand how variable all of these things are, and how far these boundaries depend on the individuals involved, and on context? Because the reality is never simple. I mean ... the law is simple, because it has to be. The law states an age limit: if you are 18 years old, it's OK to fuck; it you are 17 years and 364 days old, it's not. That's because the law has to be clear and exact; the law cannot stand liminal cases. And many of these reviewers who hate the age gap between the principals also ask, "Why couldn't the movie have made the boy 18 instead of 15, so it would have been all right?" As if the difference between 15 and 18 is so great that the 10-year gap with the older woman becomes irrelevant! Girlfriend 1 was 18 when my Wife was fucking her: did that mean she wasn't still a sheltered virgin who had been in Catholic schools all her life? Hint: no, it did not mean that. Girlfriend 1 was still a child in many ways. But she was physically mature, and she was 18.
The suggestion is asinine. And it reveals that these people clearly aren't thinking about the characters as if they were human beings at all. They are thinking of them as legal categories, and their objections are nothing more than public posturing to prove that they are pure and would never stoop to anything illegal. If the story had taken place in Texas, where the age of consent is 17, they'd be saying "Why couldn't the movie have made the boy 17?" (Not 18.) If it had taken place in France, where the age of consent is 15, there would have been no problem. A fortiori in Brazil, where the age of consent is 14.
Here's the thing. In the first place, the division between childhood and adulthood is not a clear, bright line. It's a vast, messy, foggy stretch of time. People mature at different rates, and they can handle different aspects of adulthood at different times. This person might be able to handle sex earlier, but might still be unreliable when it comes to holding down a job until much later. Someone else might be the exact opposite. If you try to tell me that a person one day under 18 is fully incompetent and has to be shielded from the world, while a person one day older than 18 is fully adult ... well, if you try to tell me that, then you are lying. The law states a limit and has done; but real life is never so tidy.
In the second place, if you actually watch the movie you realize that the characters themselves are really aware of the age-gap as an issue. They understand -- every bit as well as the most censorious viewer -- how impossible it is for them to have any kind of romantic relationship. They do everything they can to avoid it. But in the end they find themselves fighting against their own desires and inclinations. So life is tough for them. And honestly, life is tough for most of us. That part is realistic.
In the third place, I have a question for all these critics who complain about how "inappropriate" the relationship (if you can call it that) is between these two characters. My question is, Haven't you ever in your life felt inappropriate desires of some kind? Really?? Because honestly I assume we all have, one time or another. Oh, they will be desires of different kinds. Maybe for this person it's a romantic desire for someone unavailable, either because of age or because they are already married. Maybe for that person it's a desire for another slice of cake or another shot of whiskey. For a third person it will be something else again. I can't list all possible inappropriate desires. But I am certain that everyone on the planet has felt them, one time or other. So why is it so bad to explore a story about people who find themselves troubled by inappropriate desires and never give into them? As I said a couple of paragraphs ago, the movie is very chaste. There's no sex. Why is it so wrong to explore people who have to navigate a complicated emotional terrain? Isn't that (part of) what movies are for? Why is any of this an issue?
Or is it all just empty moral posturing? My bet is on that option, actually, except I think the people who raise the complaints don't realize it.
No comments:
Post a Comment