Although most theaters provide amplifying headphones to customers, those are of little use to people with moderate or severe hearing impairment. Instead, Waldo said, customers with hearing impairment need to be able to read the dialogue, either through captions projected onto the screen or through another system in use at some Seattle theaters.The dream that we'd be able to go to any movie, any time and understand it. Well, then, I'm dreaming of a machine that will project explanations for the apparent plot holes and that will provide lists and charts to answer the usual questions like is that guy the same guy that was in that other scene and exactly why am I supposed to care that the Nazi learned to read.
In the second system, currently used at AMC Pacific Place 11 in Seattle and other area cinemas, the written dialogue is projected from the rear of the theater onto clear plastic panels affixed to hearing-impaired customers' seats. The captions aren't visible to anyone without a panel.
[According to John Waldo, an attorney with the Washington State Communication Access Project], captions are available for 80 percent to 90 percent of all films shown in Seattle-area theaters. The problem, he said, is that theaters only offer a limited number of shows with any kind of captioning available.
At best, he said, most theaters only offer one or two showings daily that include either type of captioning. Waldo hopes to change that, and insists that the theaters should at least offer captioned showings of each movie they play.
"The dream," he said, is "that we'd be able to go to any movie, any time and understand it."
Ipinapakita ang mga post na may etiketa na "The Reader". Ipakita ang lahat ng mga post
Ipinapakita ang mga post na may etiketa na "The Reader". Ipakita ang lahat ng mga post
Pebrero 17, 2009
Should movie theaters have to provide captioning for the hearing impaired?
The lawsuit.
Enero 19, 2009
"The Reader" is a law movie.
Around last Christmas, I got into a bit of a dispute with Eugene Volokh over the movie "The Reader." I had written about the way the actress Kate Winslet took offense at the use of the term "statutory rape" to describe the sexual relationship between her character — the 35-year-old Hanna Schmitz — and the 15-year-old Michael Berg. I'd acknowledged that you'd have to "check the statute books" to know if the term "statutory rape" technically applied, but Eugene Volokh nevertheless said:
I've been meaning to write about this for weeks, but I realized I needed to go back and see the movie a second time so I could write down some quotes, especially the quotes of the law professor — for, yes, there is a law professor in the movie, and he makes some sharp points about law and morality. Let me tell you about this part of the movie. (Spoilers ahead.)
It's 1966, and Michael Berg is now a student at the University of Heidelberg Law School. A crowded lecture room empties out, and the next class has only 6 students. This much less popular class deals with "the question of German guilt." The teacher, Professor Rohl (played by Bruno Ganz) lectures: "Societies think they operate by morality, but they don't, they operate by law." Even though "people who kill tend to be aware that it's wrong," he says, society will not convict them of murder unless the prosecution can prove the elements of the crime as written in the law of the time. This being so, he says, individual Germans cannot be considered guilty solely because they worked at Auschwitz.
The students are required to attend the trial of a group of women — former Nazi prison guards — who failed to open a locked door during a fire, causing the death of 300 women and children prisoners. One of the defendants is Hanna Schmitz. In class, one student is disgusted by the law professor's legalistic attitude: "You keep telling us to think like lawyers but they are guilty... What is there to understand?" This student sees all the Germans of that generation as guilty — "everyone knew" — and the trial as "a diversion" that is only taking place because one woman survived the fire (along with her daughter) and wrote a book. What would he do? He'd like to shoot that woman that Berg is always staring at:. "I'd shoot her myself. I'd shoot them all." Clearly, he would be guilty of murder under the current law if he were to do that, but his point is that the law is morally obtuse. There is far too much guilt to take any satisfaction in isolating a few individuals for prosecution.
When we next see the trial, Hanna is asked why she did not unlock the door when she knew the people inside were burning to death. The judge pushes her to admit that she was afraid she'd be charged with a crime. He's thinking in legal terms and assumes that she too must have thought that way. It makes sense: If she'd been thinking in moral terms, wouldn't she have opened the door? But Hanna's answer is that she was a prison guard and if she'd opened the doors, the prisoners would escape: There would be "chaos." That's not great moral reasoning, but her mode of reasoning is morality, not law.
Later, Hanna withholds exculpatory evidence. She is illiterate, but she won't admit it, even though she is accused of writing a report that will damn her. She even lies and says that she did write it. There's a complex morass of guilt. She did serve as a guard and could have unlocked the door, but did what, at the time, she thought was right. Now, she declines to present the defense that could help her within the legal system, and she even violates the law, committing perjury, perhaps because, like that rebellious law student, she's now aware of a profound moral guilt that exists beyond law.
I say "perhaps," because it also seems that she is motivated by her shame about her illiteracy. Now, this is a bit of a problem with the movie. You can very easily come away from the movie thinking: She's responsible for 300 deaths but what she's really ashamed of is not being able to read? Ridiculous! Excuse me if I don't feel sorry for the Nazi.
You can deal with this problem by seeing illiteracy as a symbol of the failure of all Germans to "read" their own history. There is also much talk of "secrets" — the secrets of literature and of history, and illiteracy is specifically her secret. In prison, Hanna learns to read, and even though she isn't reading German history — she's reading "The Lady With the Little Dog," "War and Peace," and "The Odyssey" — the learning is presented as symbolic of what Germans need to do. As an old woman, Hanna tells Michael Berg 3 things: she's learned to read, what she feels isn't important, and people should learn from her example.
After her death, Michael goes to New York to visit the daughter of the woman who wrote the book about the fire. This woman does not want to learn anything from him. The prisoners did not go to the camps "to learn," she says — the camps were "not therapy." "Go to the theater, to literature, if you want to learn. Nothing comes out of the camps." But she accepts a memento from the camp, and putting it next to a photograph of her dead family, she reveals that she has never forgotten. As she said to Michael, "Illiteracy is not a Jewish problem."
But I'm going beyond the scope of what I mostly wanted to say, which is that "The Reader" is — among other things — a law movie — really, a jurisprudence movie — exploring the difference between law and morality, between what is written and what is good.
I should end by returning to the subject of statutory rape. The term "statutory" in the name of the crime draws special attention to the way crimes are defined in statutes, and whether something is a prosecutable crime depends on what is written in the statute. But there are larger ideas of what is wrong, and these matter — even more. There are sexual things adults do to the young that are wrong regardless of the details in the statutes.
Finally, having seen the movie a second time, I no longer believe that Hanna takes advantage of the 15-year-old boy. Closely watching the sequence before she suddenly — naked — embraces him from behind, I can see that the boy arrives at his desire to have sex with her first, and she is able to see what he wants before she, sympathetically, offers herself to him. So, on second viewing, the legal and the moral question became, for me, more starkly separate.
I have no idea whether the filmmakers intended the exploration of the difference between law and morality to extend to this issue, but the issue is there nonetheless, and it's one more reason to recommend "The Reader" as a law movie.
Ann Althouse discussed Kate Winslet's rejection of the term "statutory rape" for the relationship in The Reader (Winslet's new movie) between a woman in her mid-30s and a 15-year-old boy. As best I can tell, Althouse does take the view that the behavior is indeed properly labeled "statutory rape," both legally and morally....At the time, I wrote that I thought that Winslet's interviewer had probably used the term "to just mean sex with a person who is too young" and that "Winslet seemed obtusely unreflective":
As to the legal question, in the country where the movie is apparently set — Germany — sex between an adult and a 15-year-old is now generally not statutory rape: The age of consent there is 14. I don't know what it was in Germany in the late 1940s, but I can say that in many American states it was 14 until the 1990s (the latest to change, I believe, was Hawaii, around 2000)....
Now none of this tells us what the age of consent should be, or how seriously the law should take sexual relationships between adults and people slightly under the age of consent. But it does suggest that we can't just conclusively assume that a fictional relationship in a movie, set in a different time and place, can be treated as "statutory rape" simply because today all American states would treat it as such, though today many Western countries would not treat it as such, and until recently some American states wouldn't treat it as such.
A great actress, like Winslet, ought to want to explore the moral complexities of her character's situation. It doesn't much matter whether her character is committing a crime. Characters in movies often commit crimes, but the actors should know when they are playing characters who are engaging in behavior that many people consider to be morally wrong and that is often criminalized because it is considered wrong. If her idea is I thought I was playing a lovely person that's just dumb.This was all without seeing the movie. Then, when I saw the movie, I was floored to see that there was a central question in the movie about the relationship between the law as written and the morality of right and wrong. This question was not about the sexual relationship, but about what Germans did under the Nazi regime. How are we to understand the guilt of those who did what was legal under the law of the time?
I've been meaning to write about this for weeks, but I realized I needed to go back and see the movie a second time so I could write down some quotes, especially the quotes of the law professor — for, yes, there is a law professor in the movie, and he makes some sharp points about law and morality. Let me tell you about this part of the movie. (Spoilers ahead.)
It's 1966, and Michael Berg is now a student at the University of Heidelberg Law School. A crowded lecture room empties out, and the next class has only 6 students. This much less popular class deals with "the question of German guilt." The teacher, Professor Rohl (played by Bruno Ganz) lectures: "Societies think they operate by morality, but they don't, they operate by law." Even though "people who kill tend to be aware that it's wrong," he says, society will not convict them of murder unless the prosecution can prove the elements of the crime as written in the law of the time. This being so, he says, individual Germans cannot be considered guilty solely because they worked at Auschwitz.
The students are required to attend the trial of a group of women — former Nazi prison guards — who failed to open a locked door during a fire, causing the death of 300 women and children prisoners. One of the defendants is Hanna Schmitz. In class, one student is disgusted by the law professor's legalistic attitude: "You keep telling us to think like lawyers but they are guilty... What is there to understand?" This student sees all the Germans of that generation as guilty — "everyone knew" — and the trial as "a diversion" that is only taking place because one woman survived the fire (along with her daughter) and wrote a book. What would he do? He'd like to shoot that woman that Berg is always staring at:. "I'd shoot her myself. I'd shoot them all." Clearly, he would be guilty of murder under the current law if he were to do that, but his point is that the law is morally obtuse. There is far too much guilt to take any satisfaction in isolating a few individuals for prosecution.
When we next see the trial, Hanna is asked why she did not unlock the door when she knew the people inside were burning to death. The judge pushes her to admit that she was afraid she'd be charged with a crime. He's thinking in legal terms and assumes that she too must have thought that way. It makes sense: If she'd been thinking in moral terms, wouldn't she have opened the door? But Hanna's answer is that she was a prison guard and if she'd opened the doors, the prisoners would escape: There would be "chaos." That's not great moral reasoning, but her mode of reasoning is morality, not law.
Later, Hanna withholds exculpatory evidence. She is illiterate, but she won't admit it, even though she is accused of writing a report that will damn her. She even lies and says that she did write it. There's a complex morass of guilt. She did serve as a guard and could have unlocked the door, but did what, at the time, she thought was right. Now, she declines to present the defense that could help her within the legal system, and she even violates the law, committing perjury, perhaps because, like that rebellious law student, she's now aware of a profound moral guilt that exists beyond law.
I say "perhaps," because it also seems that she is motivated by her shame about her illiteracy. Now, this is a bit of a problem with the movie. You can very easily come away from the movie thinking: She's responsible for 300 deaths but what she's really ashamed of is not being able to read? Ridiculous! Excuse me if I don't feel sorry for the Nazi.
You can deal with this problem by seeing illiteracy as a symbol of the failure of all Germans to "read" their own history. There is also much talk of "secrets" — the secrets of literature and of history, and illiteracy is specifically her secret. In prison, Hanna learns to read, and even though she isn't reading German history — she's reading "The Lady With the Little Dog," "War and Peace," and "The Odyssey" — the learning is presented as symbolic of what Germans need to do. As an old woman, Hanna tells Michael Berg 3 things: she's learned to read, what she feels isn't important, and people should learn from her example.
After her death, Michael goes to New York to visit the daughter of the woman who wrote the book about the fire. This woman does not want to learn anything from him. The prisoners did not go to the camps "to learn," she says — the camps were "not therapy." "Go to the theater, to literature, if you want to learn. Nothing comes out of the camps." But she accepts a memento from the camp, and putting it next to a photograph of her dead family, she reveals that she has never forgotten. As she said to Michael, "Illiteracy is not a Jewish problem."
But I'm going beyond the scope of what I mostly wanted to say, which is that "The Reader" is — among other things — a law movie — really, a jurisprudence movie — exploring the difference between law and morality, between what is written and what is good.
I should end by returning to the subject of statutory rape. The term "statutory" in the name of the crime draws special attention to the way crimes are defined in statutes, and whether something is a prosecutable crime depends on what is written in the statute. But there are larger ideas of what is wrong, and these matter — even more. There are sexual things adults do to the young that are wrong regardless of the details in the statutes.
Finally, having seen the movie a second time, I no longer believe that Hanna takes advantage of the 15-year-old boy. Closely watching the sequence before she suddenly — naked — embraces him from behind, I can see that the boy arrives at his desire to have sex with her first, and she is able to see what he wants before she, sympathetically, offers herself to him. So, on second viewing, the legal and the moral question became, for me, more starkly separate.
I have no idea whether the filmmakers intended the exploration of the difference between law and morality to extend to this issue, but the issue is there nonetheless, and it's one more reason to recommend "The Reader" as a law movie.
Disyembre 31, 2008
The New Year's Eve live-blog.
7:27 Central Time: Shouldn't you be out carousing? No. It's smart to stay in on the night when everyone else is out. So hang out here if you like. I hope you don't mind that I'm doing Central Time. But one must be somewhere? Where are you? Are you already in 2009? I see from Site Meter, that there are currently 142 people on the blog. There are readers in Dublin, Brighton, and Germany, so, hello, people of the future.
7:44: Celebrations around the world, but "A number of Arab nations - including Egypt, Jordan and Syria - cancelled planned celebrations in solidarity with Palestinians in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip after a fifth day of Israeli air-strikes on the coastal enclave."
8:24: Champagne cork popped.
8:44: I'm watching Mickey Kaus and Bob Wright doing their New Year's Bloggingheads.
9:27: "How cold is it in New York? Look at that jacket! What a candyass!" I exclaim, looking at Ryan Seacrest — whoops for a second there I called him Ryan Seaquest — who is wearing an overstuffed down jacket and ear muffs. We've turned on "Dick Clark's New York Rockin' Eve" — or whatever it's called. I check my iPhone. It's 19° in NYC. So: candyass! They go to commercial, and we switch to "South Park."
10:00: We're kind of excited about Kathy Griffin (along with Anderson Cooper) covering Times Square on CNN.
10:05: The sound technology on CNN is terrible! They're trying to talk to reporters in lots of different cities, and either they can't hear them or the crowd noise is blowing out the microphones. Now Anderson and Kathy can't hear each other when they are standing side by side. "Can we stop saying Pap smear?" Cooper asks, after Kathy makes a few Pap smear jokes.
10:52: CNN comes back from a commercial break with Lynyrd Skynyrd singing "Sweet Home Alabama" in Pikeville, Kentucky. It sounds terrible. Is it the CNN mikes? Or do they suck? Hey, is that Bill Clinton? Oh, that's not Kentucky now. It's New York City. And there's Hillary and Bloomberg. Bill is not wearing a puffy jacket. He's got a lovely brown leather jacket. Very attractive. He's got his values in order.
10:57: Close to the end in New York City. They're playing John Lennon singing "Imagine." Chris says: "It's sort of a downer of a song in the last 2 and a half minutes."
10:58: I'm kinda tired. Can I be on NY time?
10:59: The Clintons start the ball. The ball, the ball, the ball, the ball. Yay!!!! Happy New Year!!!!!!!
11:00: "Oh, I'm tired! Can I be on NY time?" "No! You have to be on the time that you're in!"
11:01: Oh! Good lord! The Clintons are dancing and it makes me cry! Now, Kathy and Anderson are dancing, and Kathy says to Anderson, "Are you seeing anyone?" and we all know that's a huge joke.
10:05: "2 thousand and 9. We got to the big 9." I say that, as if 9 is an especially magnificent numeral. CNN plays Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York," then Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful," then Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World."
10:08: Lot's of folks are wearing those 2009 glasses, and I suddenly realize that this is the last year for the 00 glasses. You'll have to wait until the year 3000 to wear glasses like that. Will we even have eyes in 3000?
11:30: We've finished the bottle of champagne, and I'm making herb tea, as if that will keep me up until midnight. I've muted the TV, which is really annoying me, and Chris and I are making lists of all the movies we saw in 2008 and putting them in order. This little effort wakes me up a bit. Here's my list:
11:47: Okay, now, who's in the Central Time Zone with me? The Central Time Zone rules!
11:51: "We're the only ones here! This is like a really messed up bar!" So says Kathy Griffin, looking down at Times Square. Anderson Cooper explains the notion of time zones.
11:59: CNN is playing some crap music. This is not the way I want to end a year or indeed what I want to do anywhere.
12:00: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! We watched CNN do the countdown in New Orleans. It was really lamely done. "Wouldn't it be great if there was a hologram of the Clintons dancing there?" says Kathy Griffin. We laugh. First laugh of the year. That can't be the biggest laugh of the year. Let's hope there are many laughs.
UPDATE, 10/22/11: I'm just reading this by chance and laughing at that last line Let's hope there are many laughs. In the year I was anticipating, I met Meade in January, fell in love with him in February, and married him in August. 2009 was brimming with excitement and happiness... and many, many laughs.
UPDATE: 12/12/14: I'm just rereading this again, including my 2011 update calling attention to my the last line Let's hope there are many laughs, and I'm seeing that Meade, at 1/1/09, 7:51 AM, quoted that line and said:
7:44: Celebrations around the world, but "A number of Arab nations - including Egypt, Jordan and Syria - cancelled planned celebrations in solidarity with Palestinians in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip after a fifth day of Israeli air-strikes on the coastal enclave."
8:24: Champagne cork popped.
8:44: I'm watching Mickey Kaus and Bob Wright doing their New Year's Bloggingheads.
9:27: "How cold is it in New York? Look at that jacket! What a candyass!" I exclaim, looking at Ryan Seacrest — whoops for a second there I called him Ryan Seaquest — who is wearing an overstuffed down jacket and ear muffs. We've turned on "Dick Clark's New York Rockin' Eve" — or whatever it's called. I check my iPhone. It's 19° in NYC. So: candyass! They go to commercial, and we switch to "South Park."
10:00: We're kind of excited about Kathy Griffin (along with Anderson Cooper) covering Times Square on CNN.
10:05: The sound technology on CNN is terrible! They're trying to talk to reporters in lots of different cities, and either they can't hear them or the crowd noise is blowing out the microphones. Now Anderson and Kathy can't hear each other when they are standing side by side. "Can we stop saying Pap smear?" Cooper asks, after Kathy makes a few Pap smear jokes.
10:52: CNN comes back from a commercial break with Lynyrd Skynyrd singing "Sweet Home Alabama" in Pikeville, Kentucky. It sounds terrible. Is it the CNN mikes? Or do they suck? Hey, is that Bill Clinton? Oh, that's not Kentucky now. It's New York City. And there's Hillary and Bloomberg. Bill is not wearing a puffy jacket. He's got a lovely brown leather jacket. Very attractive. He's got his values in order.
10:57: Close to the end in New York City. They're playing John Lennon singing "Imagine." Chris says: "It's sort of a downer of a song in the last 2 and a half minutes."
10:58: I'm kinda tired. Can I be on NY time?
10:59: The Clintons start the ball. The ball, the ball, the ball, the ball. Yay!!!! Happy New Year!!!!!!!
11:00: "Oh, I'm tired! Can I be on NY time?" "No! You have to be on the time that you're in!"
11:01: Oh! Good lord! The Clintons are dancing and it makes me cry! Now, Kathy and Anderson are dancing, and Kathy says to Anderson, "Are you seeing anyone?" and we all know that's a huge joke.
10:05: "2 thousand and 9. We got to the big 9." I say that, as if 9 is an especially magnificent numeral. CNN plays Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York," then Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful," then Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World."
10:08: Lot's of folks are wearing those 2009 glasses, and I suddenly realize that this is the last year for the 00 glasses. You'll have to wait until the year 3000 to wear glasses like that. Will we even have eyes in 3000?
11:30: We've finished the bottle of champagne, and I'm making herb tea, as if that will keep me up until midnight. I've muted the TV, which is really annoying me, and Chris and I are making lists of all the movies we saw in 2008 and putting them in order. This little effort wakes me up a bit. Here's my list:
The Fall11:35: Chris IMs his movie list:
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Synecdoche, New York
The Reader
Mongol
Iron Man
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Faster, Bigger, Stronger
Standard Operating Procedure
U23D
Australia
Dark Knight
Children of Huang Shi
Doubt
Rachel Getting Married
Sex and the City
Milk11:40: A shot of Times Square: Everyone has cleared out. Weird. It was the place to be, and then it's nothing.
The Fall
The Reader
Synecdoche, New York
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
U23D
Mirrors
Rachel Getting Married
Sex and the City
11:47: Okay, now, who's in the Central Time Zone with me? The Central Time Zone rules!
11:51: "We're the only ones here! This is like a really messed up bar!" So says Kathy Griffin, looking down at Times Square. Anderson Cooper explains the notion of time zones.
11:59: CNN is playing some crap music. This is not the way I want to end a year or indeed what I want to do anywhere.
12:00: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! We watched CNN do the countdown in New Orleans. It was really lamely done. "Wouldn't it be great if there was a hologram of the Clintons dancing there?" says Kathy Griffin. We laugh. First laugh of the year. That can't be the biggest laugh of the year. Let's hope there are many laughs.
UPDATE, 10/22/11: I'm just reading this by chance and laughing at that last line Let's hope there are many laughs. In the year I was anticipating, I met Meade in January, fell in love with him in February, and married him in August. 2009 was brimming with excitement and happiness... and many, many laughs.
UPDATE: 12/12/14: I'm just rereading this again, including my 2011 update calling attention to my the last line Let's hope there are many laughs, and I'm seeing that Meade, at 1/1/09, 7:51 AM, quoted that line and said:
"First laugh of the year. That can't be the biggest laugh of the year. Let's hope there are many laughs"
Raising my cup to that sentiment and taking my first sip of hot strong black coffee to that.
I am wishing Althouse and all her wacky worldly-wise wonderful readers a new year filled with hope, love, and friendship.
And laughter... always laughter.
Disyembre 24, 2008
Kate Winslet is "so offended" by the use of the term "statutory rape" to describe what she does in "The Reader."
Even though we see her having sex with a 15-year-old boy.
(By the way, the actor playing the role was only 17 when most of the scenes were filmed. They did some last minute filming of the naked parts "literally days" after he turned 18.)
Winslet should have talked about how complex the story is and how difficult it was for her to understand how the character could believe what she was doing was simply beautiful and loving when there was so much else that she should have seen. Winslet is there to promote the movie and to promote herself as an actress, so why would she simplify the moral context of the movie?
One answer is that she is genuinely afraid that the movie will be ruined if people get the impression that to see the movie is to see teen pornography. If what the character does in the movie is a crime, and if the scenes involve graphic nudity, then it seems criminal or at least morally wrong to go to see it.
ADDED: Eugene Volokh links here and says:
I'm critical of Winslet for being simple-minded, probably to promote the movie -- so people won't think it would be wrong to view the movie (since we know to steer clear of child pornography). A great actress, like Winslet, ought to want to explore the moral complexities of her character's situation. It doesn't much matter whether her character is committing a crime. Characters in movies often commit crimes, but the actors should know when they are playing characters who are engaging in behavior that many people consider to be morally wrong and that is often criminalized because it is considered wrong. If her idea is I thought I was playing a lovely person that's just dumb.
Now, Winslet herself at the age of 15 began a relationship with a 28-year-old man, and this relationship continued for 5 years, so you can see that she has some motivation to idealize this sort of thing. Do you have a teenage daughter? Picture a 28-year-old man seducing your 15-year-old daughter. Although, Winslet's parents accepted the relationship, I think most Americans hate this sort of thing.
Where to draw the lines of criminal law is a distinct, but not entirely separate, matter. But, again, this is a work of art, and what matters most is the artist's understanding of the human mind.
IN THE COMMENTS: Linus wrote:
Q: Do you ever have any trepidations about approaching controversial material like abortion in "Revolutionary Road" or statutory rape?Check the statute books before acting on Kate's legal advice.
Winslet: I'm so sorry, "statutory rape"? I've got to tell you, I'm so offended by that. No, I really am. I genuinely am. To me, that is absolutely not this story at all. That boy knows exactly what he's doing. For a start, Hanna Schmitz thinks that he's seventeen, not fifteen, you know? She's not doing anything wrong.
They enter that relationship on absolutely equal footing. Statutory rape – really please, don't use that phrase. I do genuinely find it offensive actually. This is a beautiful and very genuine love story and that is always how I saw it.... She wasn't cruel to him. She didn't force him into anything at all.Don't all statutory rapists say this sort of thing? It's more of an argument for abolishing the crime of statutory rape. Do you think 36-year-old women should be free to seduce 15-year-old boys?
There's nothing I believe to be remotely inappropriate or salacious about that relationship.Defamer adds this:
Salacious? Well, we've never seen a teenager's ball hair lit so romantically in a film, but then, we haven't yet caught up on our Criterion editions of the Bel Ami catalog.I'm just going to assume I know what those last 3 words refer to. I'm afraid to Google them!
(By the way, the actor playing the role was only 17 when most of the scenes were filmed. They did some last minute filming of the naked parts "literally days" after he turned 18.)
Winslet should have talked about how complex the story is and how difficult it was for her to understand how the character could believe what she was doing was simply beautiful and loving when there was so much else that she should have seen. Winslet is there to promote the movie and to promote herself as an actress, so why would she simplify the moral context of the movie?
One answer is that she is genuinely afraid that the movie will be ruined if people get the impression that to see the movie is to see teen pornography. If what the character does in the movie is a crime, and if the scenes involve graphic nudity, then it seems criminal or at least morally wrong to go to see it.
ADDED: Eugene Volokh links here and says:
Ann Althouse discussed Kate Winslet's rejection of the term "statutory rape" for the relationship in The Reader (Winslet's new movie) between a woman in her mid-30s and a 15-year-old boy. As best I can tell, Althouse does take the view that the behavior is indeed properly labeled "statutory rape," both legally and morally.No, I say for legal advice, check the relevant statute. It depends on the statute applicable at the time and not, as Winslet seems to think, whether it was a loving, consensual relationship. But the interviewer was really using the term "statutory rape" to just mean sex with a person who is too young, and that was what Winslet seemed obtusely unreflective about.
I'm critical of Winslet for being simple-minded, probably to promote the movie -- so people won't think it would be wrong to view the movie (since we know to steer clear of child pornography). A great actress, like Winslet, ought to want to explore the moral complexities of her character's situation. It doesn't much matter whether her character is committing a crime. Characters in movies often commit crimes, but the actors should know when they are playing characters who are engaging in behavior that many people consider to be morally wrong and that is often criminalized because it is considered wrong. If her idea is I thought I was playing a lovely person that's just dumb.
I will say that my intuition is that 15-year-old boys are unlikely to suffer lasting emotional harm from affairs with 30-something-year-old women, any more than from any first sexual relationship, whether at 15 or 16, and whether with a 35-year-old or another 15-year-old.It wouldn't be much of a movie if the relationship didn't have a profound impact. I think the story is about how deeply it hurt him. Do you have a teenage son? How would you feel if a 36-year-old woman seduced him? How would you feel if she not only gave him his first sexual experience, but captured his romantic imagination for years, keeping him from developing in relation to girls his age?
Now, Winslet herself at the age of 15 began a relationship with a 28-year-old man, and this relationship continued for 5 years, so you can see that she has some motivation to idealize this sort of thing. Do you have a teenage daughter? Picture a 28-year-old man seducing your 15-year-old daughter. Although, Winslet's parents accepted the relationship, I think most Americans hate this sort of thing.
Where to draw the lines of criminal law is a distinct, but not entirely separate, matter. But, again, this is a work of art, and what matters most is the artist's understanding of the human mind.
IN THE COMMENTS: Linus wrote:
... I find it a little strange that so many men (including Professor Volokh, whom I admire) think that it's unlikely the boy would be damaged, simply because when they were 15, they had fantasies about scoring with an older woman. Man, when I was 15, I was an idiot. I thought I wanted a whole bunch of stuff that, I know now, would've scarred me for life if it would've actually happened.
I mean, when you are asking the question "is this a good idea?", is it really persuasive to answer with "well, my 15-year-old self would approve"?
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