As I mentioned yesterday, I rewatched this movie, which I'd absolutely loved when it came out. The script is by Woody Allen, who plays an extremely nervous and clumsy man whose wife has left him, and he's desperately looking for love with the help of his married friend, played by Diane Keaton. As the title suggests, there are references to the love triangle in "Casablanca."
Much of this movie worked quite well for me today. I even got waves of full-body chills at one point — to my surprise. I thought, what the hell? How did they make that happen? Movie magic! But not long before that climactic moment, there was an awkward love scene that included some dialogue that I can't remember accepting at the time but must have been considered hilarious and that is totally beyond the pale today:
KEATON: Did you read that another Oakland woman was raped?
ALLEN: I was nowhere near Oakland! Do they know who did it?
KEATON: No, they haven't a clue. He must be very clever.
ALLEN: Yeah, you gotta have something on the ball to rape so many women and get away with it.
He's smiling mischievously at that point.
KEATON: You know, I think if anybody ever tried to rape me, I'd just pretend to go along with it until the middle and then just grab a heavy object and let him have it... that is, unless, of course, I was enjoying it.
ALLEN: They say it's the secret desire of every woman.
KEATON: I guess it depends on who's doing the raping.
She giggles and he laughs a bit shyly. Now, you could say, they aren't seriously talking about rape. She's really trying to say he should make an aggressive first move. But all the lines are really for us, the audience, and the intention is clearly that we will find the idea funny and intriguing: Is rape the
secret desire of every woman?!
ALLEN: Well, why dwell on morbid subjects? Odds are, you'll never get raped.
KEATON: No, not with my luck.
He looks like he's slowly processing the message, and she shifts to murmuring about how the drink is going to her head.
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3 comments:
Paul writes:
"I noted your take on the lines you showed us. It's one of the few early works of his I've never seen. Love & Death (1974 I think) was his best, pure funny film to me, and to watch it now, given his history afterwards, brings the same chills, but of a different variety.
In one scene, Diane K goes to a rabbi to talk about Boris (Woody) who is depressed, and what his advice would be. The ancient rabbi, with a beard about 6-8 feet long, proclaims that the secret of life is 12 year old girls.............talk about chills.........."
Assistant Village Idiot writes:
"Having spent my career working with rapists, rape victims, false rape accusers, and a hundred shadings of "what the hell happened here," I have had some time to think about this. Freud did some real damage to society here, as did Kinsey and his assertions that 12 y/o girls secretly want sex (See his Chapter 12. Where did he get his data about children having orgasms, hmm? A vile man lionised for terrible reasons.)
"Having a fantasy does not mean it is a thing you hope will happen in real life. It is self-contained in your head. Women read genre fiction with carefully calibrated degrees of forcefulness/aggression/ravishment. It doesn't mean any of them want to be raped, or even to be raped by an appropriately handsome and rich member of the minor nobility. (Ripped bodices are great on covers, but require sewing in real life.) Because she can put the book down at any time, or turn off the movie. If she calculated wrongly and this authoress is a little too steamy, she can find another who backs it off a bit. It's a fantasy, and it can work for seventy years with no concrete expressions whatsoever. This is also true for men, but some use it as a justification for whatever they want to do, so it's not exactly equivalent. And it's a different subject anyway.
"I feel confident about these assertions for women who are my own generation, the one younger, and the one older. I don't know about the rising generation - they are too far away culturally from me at 68."
LA_Bob writes:
"On the post about fantasy rape, Assistant Village Idiot wisely noted, "Having a fantasy does not mean it is a thing you hope will happen in real life". I tend to think a lot of people often overcomplicate simple things. And oversimplify complex things. A lot of those people are psychologists."
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