I'm reading "'I Love You, Daddy,' Louis C.K.’s Cancelled Movie, Reeks of Impunity" by Alexandra Schwartz in The New Yorker.
I'm not sure what's so reeking about that story... if we stick to the text and exclude the extrinsic evidence we have about the filmmaker.
ADDED: The New Yorker has a second piece, published simultaneously, "Why Louis C.K.’s 'I Love You, Daddy' Should Never Have Been Distributed in the First Place" by Richard Brody:
The decision to cancel the release of the film is welcome; ”I Love You Daddy”—which Louis C.K. directed, edited, wrote, and stars in—is a disgusting movie that should never have been acquired for distribution in the first place....IN THE COMMENTS: Rabel said...
The [movie] is, in effect, an act of cinematic gaslighting, an attempt to spin the tenets of modern liberal feminism into shiny objects of hypnotic paralysis. The movie declares that depredation is liberation, morality is tyranny, judgment is narrow-mindedness, shamelessness is creativity, lechery is admiration, and public complaint is private vanity. And it does so with a jocular self-deprecation that frames its screed as a personal journey through loss to self-awareness by way of a newfound respect for women’s virtues and desires—and a newfound skepticism about moral verities....
I think you are missing the point of this movie. It's not about Electra or Woody Allen or feminism or Fatherhood.I note that The New Yorker chose to put the bikini photo of Moretz on the article with the female author.
It's about putting 20 year-old Chloë Grace Moretz on screen as an underage sex object.
Period.
I'm sure many of you will say you've never heard of her but she's been playing underage sex objects since she was, well, an underage sex object.
Whether it was also about putting Louis in close proximity and a commanding position as regards Moretz is open to speculation.
And note that the New Yorker gets in on the game with the oversized bikini shot at the top of the article.
They're selling sex and trying their best to find "artistic" ways to sell it.
Posts
84 comments:
stop flirting and mooching and get to work, because, if you don’t have to depend on men for money, they can’t control you, or harm you, or fuck you over."
That was my takeaway from 60s feminism. I guess that's not what it was about.
Anyway, sounds like a good story.
From the article:
"What kind of man would be so shamefully pathetic as to avoid confronting the famous geezer who may or may not be screwing his underage daughter because that geezer has offered to read his latest script? "
Isn't this pretty darned close to saying "What kind of woman would be so shamefully pathetic as to avoid confronting the famous director from whom she is hoping for a part?"
Power held from above is common to both. So.
Is the difference that a man is expected to stand up, while a woman isn't?
Is he being emasculated by acting like a woman would be resigned to in this situation?
It also makes me want to see the movie.
I am Laslo.
It sounds like a great movie. If they won't make it, he should write it as a novel.
This whole thing has gotten ridiculous, meanwhile, these people ignore their own complicity shutting up women for decades.
If a woman does something for me she might not especially get much physical pleasure out of herself, but does it because she loves me and I asked her to, am I guilty of abusing my power over her?
Sounds like he might have a lot of time on his hands to write a novel.
"in spite of that power, young women are more likely than not to be careless and foolish" In spite of?
"[the 17-year-old character] China has to be an empty vessel, an absolute airhead with no sense of self and no mind of her own. Her attraction to [the old movie director] Leslie wouldn’t be remotely plausible otherwise;" This never happens. 17-year-old girls/women all have a strong sense of self. Movies should not portray things that don't exist.
"it is she who ends up rejected and humiliated. Leslie glides away in his Moroccan slippers with his integrity intact. He is St. Anthony warding off the devil; the young temptress is discarded," Rejection by an absurd person is the worst.
"There is something depressingly subdued about her, in the film’s last scene, a deadened quality that is supposed to pass for maturity. Such is the film’s final point where women are concerned: stop flirting and mooching and get to work, because, if you don’t have to depend on men for money, they can’t control you, or harm you, or fuck you over." Nothing more depressing than doing what feminists have told you to do for about the last half century.
"If a woman does something for me she might not especially get much physical pleasure out of herself, but does it because she loves me and I asked her to, am I guilty of abusing my power over her?"
It depends on how hard you are pulling her hair.
I am Laslo.
The movie has drawn a lot of comparisons to Woody Allen's "Manhattan."
In "Manhattan" Woody is the older guy lusting after the teenage girl with self-rationalizion being his conflict.
In this movie the older guy is lusting after the comedian's teen-age girl (read 'comedian' as the Woody Allen of the piece), and he is conflicted about what to do (from what I can tell without seeing it).
It appears to be looking at 'Manhattan' from the inside-out.
Again: it makes me want to see the movie.
I am assuming there are no gigantic CGI cockroaches or anything: I am tired of gratuitous CGI.
I am Laslo.
Does this contribute something above and beyond what Woody Allen did?
And if you wanted to get at the artist's sincere expression of politics (and women), you should have reprinted his anti-Palin screed. At least he apologized for that.
I read the headline, and the topic didn't interest me. At first I was just going to scroll by as I used to do when I wasn't interested in a topic, but then I thought, "Althouse really needs to know I that I don't care about this topic and she should stop writing about things I'm not interested in."
So here I am. I'm not interested in this topic and you should stop writing about things that don't interest me.
P.S. That means no more Dylan threads, OK?
"P.S. That means no more Dylan threads, OK?" Oh, please, don't start provoking her. Leave that to me.
We know why a 70 year old successful man is attracted to a 17-year old gal. He's rich and bored, wants to not think about death, wants to drink from the fountain of youth.
I say, toughski shitski - stay in your lane old man.
We know why a ditzy 17 year old gal may be attracted to a rich older man. Because she's clueless.
I stay, find a nice, even awkward teenage boy your own age and go to the movies with him.
I was looking forward to seeing this movie.
Why can’t the movie be enjoyed as escapist fantasy separate from the exhibitionist baggage and moral failings of Louis C.K.?
I never mistook anyone in Hollywood for the Pope.
The “Electra complex” (or Oedipus complex for females) has a long history in literature and films. There's "Mourning Becomes Electra" about, of course, a sluttish teen. Consider also Anais Nin's grotesque "House of Incest." Did you know that Ms. Nin, while undergoing psychotherapy in the 1930s, was encouraged to have an affair with her father?! And so on and so on. Louis CK did something like that right? Sure it's not Sophocles, but it's also not the end of the world. I mean seriously get a grip and grow a pair.
I never mistook anyone in Hollywood for the Pope.
I never mistook the Pope for the Pope.
Third paragraph:
"With the exception of Ivanka Trump, I have never known a teen-age girl to spend so much time on her daddy’s lap."
Ptewy.
That is, I withhold any respect or compassion for you bigots: Go To Hell, "NewYorker"
The traditional overseas-Chinese form (and I have seen this, personally, very often), was for a single man to work fanatically for decades, until he became wealthy. Often enough he would be 50 or older before he judged his success adequate.
Then (in the 1950s-70s, it changed later when China opened up) he would go off to Hong Kong or Taipei, and bring home (to wherever it was), a wife, and usually, subsequently, a concubine or two, all of which he set up in different households. Then he would get busy making sons. The concubines were insurance.
Bay Area Guy said...
We know why a 70 year old successful man is attracted to a 17-year old gal. He's rich and bored, wants to not think about death, wants to drink from the fountain of youth.
I say, toughski shitski - stay in your lane old man.
We know why a ditzy 17 year old gal may be attracted to a rich older man. Because she's clueless.
I stay, find a nice, even awkward teenage boy your own age and go to the movies with him.
11/12/17, 10:52 AM
___
Yes, that is how it works in cut and dried world. But tell me, how do you deal with your 16, 17 year old daughter who has the hots for a 33 year old? It's not always so easy. What if she says the boys her own age don't give her the time of day? What if you only suspect something is happening but because she wants to keep it going, she's not talking and is doing a good job keeping it hidden?
I applaud your desire in this case, I would love to hear from a man who successfully worked with his daughter to get out of this kind of situation.
Our neighbor, the Chinese merchant with the massive walled compound and four-storey mansion, lost his entire family in 1945, murdered by Japs. He survived by accident, being away at the time bringing in cached supplies. He must have been over 50 then (he lived to be well over 90).
He imported a new young wife, rebuilt his mansion, and sired a new family. We knew them well growing up.
A man who actively wishes better for her daughter than having a relationship with an older man would probably have a daughter who would know better, so in a way, my question is not really relevant. Never mind.
Althouse said extrinsic.
Now I want to see the movie, to see if I can divorce the extrinsic evidence against him, and to compare him to Woody Allen, whom I was able to divorce here say against.
What Woody was accused of (child molestation?) seemed easier to dismiss, than the more, how can I put this? pedestrian? exposing or whatever it is CK is accused of.
Why is that?
Seems like we should have been more alarmed at Woody than CK, but are we? Seems like we're not. Which tells me the mob action ala witch hunt is strong now.
The fact that Woody has longer track record of good work probably helped him.
Comedians are not held up in the art hierarchy as high as filmmakers/actors.
Spinster. The dad's advice has the dual meaning of spinster: never married and forever employed in the schmatta district.
How New York can you get.
I saw YouTube took down the movie trailer you posted the other day.
Another reason peaking my interest in seeing the movie.
I saw the trailer. Used to be, I'd go "ewwwww" and vow not to see it.
But over the past year, as my wife and I started catching up on the culture, we've been seeing more movies, and confirmed that critics and even audiences have a different way of looking at movies than we do.
Maybe we're better educated about movies. Maybe we're older and been around the barn a time or two, but we've found ourselves at odds with what's popular or critically acclaimed.
Sometimes, our tastes align, but most of the time they're not.
I've learned -- it's late, I know; dumb me -- that the best judge of what I like is myself.
So in this case, I'd see the movie. I saw the trailer before it was yanked, and while I didn't find anything funny, I suspect he wanted to do something more than reconsider "Manhattan." At least I hope so.
In fact, I've been toying with a stunt memoir, deliberately opening myself to alternative opinions and writing down what happens next. Only thing that stops me are a) I've got several book projects in the works already, and b) the prospect of my head, heart, or stomach exploding.
cf said...
Third paragraph:
....
And that is where I stopped reading. It get's old.
God help me, I want to see the movie. Could this all be part of an elaborate marketing ploy?.....Suppose the women involved say that Louis never actually did it, that it was all performance art meant to dramatize America's puritanism and hysteria over sex. Could the movie then be released? But then I'd think that they're saying that because Louis had paid them off by offering them a part in his next movie. Hollywood corrupts us in so many ways and on so many different levels.
The movie has the wrong title -"Fifty Shades of Purple" would work better with latest trend in progressive entertainment.
As for reeking of "impunity", that word doesn't work with Louis C.K.'s known financial loss on this film and his poor future chances to ply his writing and comedic talents in film or television.
And we must always remember that asking his audience first before he jerked off doesn't work well as an excuse - even among the liberals on social media.
It would be wonderful to have a first draft review written before C.K.'s downfall.
Alas, life has no control group.
The Squid and The Whale. Same territory. Different target.
The New Yorker has a second hit piece against this movie.
With the exception of Ivanka Trump, I have never known a teen-age girl to spend so much time on her daddy’s lap.
Remember, it's always important to treat women with respect and dignity.
Unless they're women you dislike.
"The New Yorker has a second hit piece against this movie."
Went and read it.
Still makes me want to see the movie.
People complain that there are not enough films for adults. Reading from various articles, it appears there is some substance to chew on, to like or dislike. Not an Adam Sandler comedy.
Then this one disappears because the artist has done something in his life that adults are arguing about (at least in the Althouse comments.)
I guess it leaves more screens open for 'Thor' or whatever other comic-book movie is out now.
I am Laslo.
Maybe they can explore this topic with Legos.
It sounds like a good story to me.
Men know about two points of view about sex, interested and not interested; they know they're saps when interested.
I don't think women do.
Look for long term stuff.
The notion that this all just a PR ploy is interesting. Nothing makes people want to see something like repression.
I can see a standing ovulation at next year’s Oscars.
@JML said...
cf said...
Third paragraph:
....
And that is where I stopped reading. It get's old.
Dona;d's discussion of his daughter, time and time again, does get old. Besides a boatload of photos of Ivanka on Daddy's lap kissing him and the number of times Trump pants over his daughter's beauty makes some of us suspicious. And the source of the thought of possible improper interfamilial sex is DJT himself. Some examples follow:
When Donald Trump was watching 16-year-old Ivanka host the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant, he turned to the then-Miss Universe and asked: “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?” In the 20 years since, Trump has called his eldest daughter “voluptuous”. He told Howard Stone that it was OK to describe her as “a piece of ass" and on "The View," he told the ladies, "I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." In 2015, Trump made a comment to Rolling Stone, referring to Ivanka, Trump said: “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father…”
Unless they're women you dislike.
Honest criticism: feminism has a solidarity problem. The principles it advocates are ostensibly universal, but they're never so universal that people feel constrained from making sexist jokes about, say, Ivanka Trump. So people discount the principles, because there's a strong feeling that you have to be part of a very restrictive club to benefit.
But pressure groups are more effective if they are single issue groups: they care about their issue, and they turn a blind eye to everything else.
The NRA is seen as a conservative group. And they largely are. But they'll endorse the abortion-lovingest, gay-marryingest incumbent out there, provided that incumbent is pro-gun -- even if the challenger is also pro-gun! They have one issue, and once that box is checked, they stand by their man.
Read up on Prohibition, and you'll find the temperance movements did the same thing -- they had one issue, they were willing to vote based on that one issue, and they let the rest slide.
Feminists would be a lot more politically potent if they settled on some core issues -- equality of treatment, say -- and then completely refused to criticize anyone who met their standards.
Of course, there are those who say they've already done this -- and the single issue is abortion. Which is at best a 50-50 issue among women at large.
Sigh.
Listening to Iheart comedy 24/7 channel on their app...Louis CK bit still in the rotation.
Gadfly,
Yes..if you can't read those with a sense of humor, of course you'd be suspicious.
Good thing your hands are clean...
Hillary has impunity. Obama has impunity. All of these actors have been acting with impunity.
It seems like something other than gender is allowing people to act with impunity. What could it possibly be.
"With the exception of Ivanka Trump, I have never known a teen-age girl to spend so much time on her daddy’s lap."
That's brilliant! Twofer for the leftist: ridiculous idiot jab at Trump and mock girls who don't have daddy issues!
These people are a disease on modern society.
I think you are missing the point of this movie. It's not about Electra or Woody Allen or feminism or Fatherhood.
It's about putting 20 year-old Chloë Grace Moretz on screen as an underage sex object.
Period.
I'm sure many of you will say you've never heard of her but she's been playing underage sex objects since she was, well, an underage sex object.
Whether it was also about putting Louis in close proximity and a commanding position as regards Moretz is open to speculation.
And note that the New Yorker gets in on the game with the oversized bikini shot at the top of the article.
They're selling sex and trying their best to find "artistic" ways to sell it.
I don't necessarily disapprove, except for the part about Louis and proximity.
Mencken called the Press a gang of Pecksniffs. I would call them a gang of Robespierres.
A gang of Marats
"The New Yorker has a second hit piece against this movie."
Yeah, I had a tab open on that one too but haven't read it yet. The vengeance rained down on Louis is awful. Why do people swing from one extreme to another? Can we deal with this in a normal fashion that will work for everyone? Are we going to delete every artist who's an asshole to other people?
In what dynasty did China have period stains?
We need to stop it structurally; because informal sanctions on people who openly lie, who occupy positions of social power and use abusively, do not work. Free Rider problem. The only way is a structural sanction. A functionary comes by with a French Camembert breath analyzer and fines you for talking shit.
Come on, guys, work out the details. The current system is fucked and if there IS a system in place to deal with this sort of shit in the public forum, then it is seriously fa-kaqta!
We have always been at war with Eurasia. We have never been at war with Eastasia...
LCK was in Trumbo, so he has a clue how to deal with this.
Morality is back in style! Don't blink.
It is the usual pre-revolutionary madness.
Everything is contradictory because there are no shared values even among the cultural elite. You get winds of hysteria in parallel with universal hypocrisy.
The victory will go to the disciplined and organized, regardless of their ethics.
Yeah, I had a tab open on that one too but haven't read it yet. The vengeance rained down on Louis is awful. Why do people swing from one extreme to another? Can we deal with this in a normal fashion that will work for everyone? Are we going to delete every artist who's an asshole to other people?
When I look back at a whole century's worth of archives regarding comedic artist's political commentary, I don't see the sort of ad hominem which Louis C.K. exemplifies (cf. his comments on Palin). I don't mean to suggest that he invented it. If I had to guess, I'd say that it all started under Nixon, grew rabidly under Reagan, flourished under the Bushes, and now dominates "comedy" under Trump. When did it really start? How can we stop it besides not laughing?
The movie declares that depredation is liberation, morality is tyranny, judgment is narrow-mindedness, shamelessness is creativity, lechery is admiration, and public complaint is private vanity.
Every day the public morality of our betters resembles more & more the morality of the preachers I grew up with in 60's & 70's northern Alabama.
I wonder: will Western culture have a Judaeo-Christian revival, with the J & the C sides reviving their respective moral traditions? Will the seculars impose a Soviet-style secular puritanism on the rest of us? Or, maybe, there is, at root, a deep kinship between radical Islam & modern secularism on the questions of public morality, an explanation that makes as much sense of the Left's tolerance for Islamic extremism as does their self-proclaimed "intersectional" explanations.
Ann Althouse said...
"Can we deal with this in a normal fashion that will work for everyone?"
Althouse, weren't you the one saying we have to cleanse our lives of the products of evil people? The guy jerked off in front of a couple women, who did not object. Which means that he was using his comedy superpower to zombify them into sex objects. What forgiveness is possible when someone is that literally Hitler?
For non-comedic ad-hominem, Dante is a good benchmark, but hardly an originator.
"Why do people swing from one extreme to another?" You mean, from extreme protection to to extreme vilification of prog heroes? The calculations have shifted, that's why. Partly for reasons you've explained (Clinton downfall etc.). But the calculations may be wrong: scorch-the-earth fourth-wave woe-is-us feminism may undermine prog purposes.
"Can we deal with this in a normal fashion that will work for everyone?" We "can." But "we" won't.
@Sebastian,
But the calculations may be wrong: scorch-the-earth fourth-wave woe-is-us feminism may undermine prog purposes.
It's amazing how many people who ought to have known better thought that there could be a Sexual Revolution without collateral damage. And, of course, even if there was, they were sure that it would never be them.
Flying is wonderful until you hit the ground.
All the problems are with the audience, not the writers.
The audience forms into a mob. It does this because it's entertaining to get mad.
Learn to recognize entertainment.
Actual moral dilemmas are not entertaining. There's the key.
Flying is wonderful until you hit the ground.
Actually it takes a few hundred hours of serious air work before flying is anything like you started out imagining. The plane finally becomes intuitive. You know what all your options are and what the plane will do as an intuition.
Before that it's more or less by the book and not felt.
So a world is being created with no Forgiveness and no Redemption. This will not wear well.
tcrosse said...So a world is being created with no Forgiveness and no Redemption. This will not wear well.
Louis C.K. is no prodigal son. I doubt he's even a prodigious one. Only his handlers know for sure.
I wonder: will Western culture have a Judaeo-Christian revival, with the J & the C sides reviving their respective moral traditions? Will the seculars impose a Soviet-style secular puritanism on the rest of us? Or, maybe, there is, at root, a deep kinship between radical Islam & modern secularism on the questions of public morality, an explanation that makes as much sense of the Left's tolerance for Islamic extremism as does their self-proclaimed "intersectional" explanations.
11/12/17, 2:56 PM
Last week, I remembered an observation made by the late Jacques Barzun: that leftist revolutions always start out by promising sexual liberation and always end up enforcing sexual repression when they obtain power because the sexual urge is far too powerful to be permitted to operate outside of state control.
The powerful elites, like Beria and Mao and Castro still have their fun. But the masses? The love life of the average Soviet citizen in 1937 somehow did not resemble the "free love" idyll predicted by people like John Reed and Emma Goldman in 1917.
Are we going to delete every artist who's an asshole to other people?
There's no reason to delete it. Just think twice about the adulation. Hitler's art was never deleted (until recently); nor was it lauded.
Pathetic males who are not gentlemen, and their female chauvinist counterparts who are not ladies. Two curds in a bowl.
“There's no reason to delete it. Just think twice about the adulation. Hitler's art was never deleted (until recently); nor was it lauded.”
This is very rational, I agree.
Feminists would be a lot more politically potent if they settled on some core issues -- equality of treatment, say -- and then completely refused to criticize anyone who met their standards.
Of course, there are those who say they've already done this -- and the single issue is abortion
I'm one of them.
I gotta call bullshit on Roseanne Barr (if that's still her name) and her claim she heard stories about Louis CK “locking the door and masturbating in front of women comics and writers.”. First, that's nothing but hearsay. Second, she's about as likely to be sexually harassed by a straight man as Tig Notaro is (that is, not at all), so maybe she's envious. Third, didn't these thing happen in hotel rooms after comedy shows? Are locked hotel doors inoperable FROM INSIDE? Even if it happened at work, I doubt the doors would be bolted, and the women trapped. How would that work?
Most likely Louis asked if women minded if he masturbated in front of them. Being comedians, and most likely lefties, they would of course say they didn't mind. Later, often much later, they decided they had been violated.
Well, shit. Look what I did.
I would like to see it and judge it for myself. We'll see when that happens now that #metoo is enveloping an expanding category of people in its eyeless embrace. (Pretty crummy for all the other people who worked on that film to block it now. Ironically, especially the woman who is the lead actress!)
The cast. Sorry, all you other people who aren't even Louis C.K. We can't tell if he's really a witch unless we throw all of you into the river.
You know how hard all those people have to work to make a movie? Hope the people who wanted this pulled feel their righteous anger satisfied by the sacrifice of the labor of the innocent.
If an executive at a company is accused of sexual misconduct, do we close the doors and fire everyone there?
Casablanca was on TCM. I caught about a half hour of it. Ingrid was way too young for Humphrey. He slut shames her for walking out on him in Paris. Dooley is embarrassingly deferential to his white boss. Claude Ranier engages in a kind of sexual coercion that can best be described as white collar rape. I had to turn it off. How can people watch such filth?
"How can people watch such filth?"
Great Satire.
BTW, one of the perks of being a Hollywood leading man, is you're always the tallest man in the room. And so 5/8 Bogart towers over Lorre and Claude Rains and was propped up with pillows so he could look down into Bergman's eyes.
"If an executive at a company is accused of sexual misconduct, do we close the doors and fire everyone there?"
Actually, it would be more like an executive at a company is accused of sexual misconduct at a company he worked for many years earlier, so his current company is shut down and everyone is fired.
Hillarywood - BORING.
Let me mansplain it for you ladies: Every movie is like a startup. The multi-talented CEO/COO/CTO rockstar does something awful to damage the brand or product so the investors pull their money before the real hemorrhaging begins.
Very amazing post,
Where are all the "author's intent doesn't matter" literary theorists now?
1. 23 year old men having babies with 22 year old women
2. 33 year old men having babies with 22 year old women
3. 33 year old men having babies with 32 year old women
4. no babies
outcomes: 1>2>3>4
16 year old pregnancy is somewhere between 2 and 4 on average, but mostly because of confounds. the issue with mothers that young is that they're generally not great mothers (physically they're more able than older moms, but that's not all that matters)
Such is the film’s final point where women are concerned: stop flirting and mooching and get to work, because, if you don’t have to depend on men for money, they can’t control you, or harm you, or fuck you over."
Or as Carrol Channing once said "diamonds are a girls' best friend".
All of the sudden the "critics" are realizing that Hollywood in its entirety (with very rare exceptions) always declares "that depredation is liberation, morality is tyranny, judgment is narrow-mindedness, shamelessness is creativity, lechery is admiration, and public complaint is private vanity."
>If an executive at a company is accused of sexual misconduct, do we close the doors and fire everyone there?
That's the bit that bothers me too.
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