Notorious rapist climbs stage, is met with applause and loving jokes about how he could beat folks up (for example, prior to and/or while raping them). Movie featuring notorious rapist, which is about the hilarity of roofies, hating women who don’t and/or do have sex, and Zach Galifianakis maybe being a registered sex offender (HA! Just like that one guy in the movie who IS A RAPIST, IN REAL LIFE) wins award for Best Comedy. More jokes about awesomeness of notorious rapist ensue; warm-hearted applause for notorious rapist resounds throughout the theater. Unlike that one time when the guy who participated in blacklisting won an award, there is no visible or reported protest. Not that it would ever be okay to compare this extremely visible and obvious verification that we live in something called “rape culture” to blacklisting. Because, you know, that (blacklisting) was actually bad!
In a related story, feminist blogger Sady Doyle completes plans for utopian space colony NoDudesonia. (SPACE COLONY MOTTO: Seriously, Guys, We Tried. We Just Need Space, All Right?) Should you wish to defect from Dude Culture, re-education programs will be made available to you. Stay tuned for tips re: escaping from this dystopian hellworld before it is too late.
24 Comments
THANK YOU for calling this shit out. I didn’t see this film because of Tyson, and I was appalled that he was at the Golden Globes. Wasn’t he just supposed to have a cameo?
It’s interesting that I know Tyson more for biting a man’s ear off then for raping a women. I’m blaming it on my age – I was only 5 in 1992. Thanks for the education.
I would like to join Nodudesonia like RIGHT NOW. Beam me aboard The Mothership, O Beloved Leader.
(Side note: Hooray for me not having a working television. It has provided a considerable amount of head-asplode prevention. Also, I love Tiger Beatdown to an almost unhealthy degree. That is all.)
THANK YOU! I couldn’t even find the words to explain to my roommate how distasteful that whole scene was. And that MOVIE. So AWFUL. It about broke my brain.
Because, you know, that (blacklisting) was actually bad!
Well, Sady, that happened to real people– men!
Thanks for doing the planning, Sady. I happened to turn on the Golden Globes when I was exhausted, eating, bored, and generally not in HumorlessFeministTM mode and the whole thing was like, wha?!? I dunno, I guess I get disoriented when dudes give the worst bits of their culture awards for being the best products of “our” culture.
It was, indeed, shocking. I kind of recoil whenever I see the guy, and had no idea he’d been in The Hangover and now that I know that he was and apparently the filmmakers found him so AWESOME and HILARIOUS that they thought his eight-minute cameo merited his attendance at the Golden Globes I am trying to resist the urge to shoot myself.
Exactly, Gnatalby.
Also, Sady, may I too defect to NoDudesonia? I really, really need space.
A lot of space.
I missed the GGs last night. But I remember Elia Kazan’s lifetime achievement Oscar and all the crossed arms and scowling faces in the audience, and all the reports leading up to the ceremony about organized protests and shit.
Kazan temporarily ruined the careers of rich white dudes. Unforgivable!
What about sugar tits?
For someone as well spoken and analytically gifted as you, one would think you’d be able to distinguish that which is laughed at vs. that which is laughed with. But, of course, showing male chauvinism–even in a negative and satirical light–is obviously perpetuating a rape culture, right?
@Dude: I don’t know, Dude! How negative and satirical is it to invite a convicted rapist up on stage with you so that you can accept your award, and to make a big show of being awed by and/or friendly with and/or not-at-all-condemnatory of the raping tendencies of said convicted rapist?
Point of clarification: Blacklisting WAS bad and I think (or is it hope?) that Sady recalled the Kazan protests to emphasize the lack of Tyson protests rather than to claim that the Kazan protests themselves were trivial. Because to gloss over the seriousness and reality of our nation’s history of McCarthyism and its relevance to today’s post 9/11 society is to dishonor the men AND women (seriously, look it up), rich AND poor, who suffered their fate of blacklisting and in some instances, death, because they had the courage to stand up for their beliefs. So in honor of these brave men and women, I applaud Sady for speaking up about that which matters (whether or not it matters most is irrelevant), and turn my head in disgust at those who have the kind of short-and-narrow-sighted arrogance it takes to claim that blacklisting wasn’t that bad because it only ruined the lives of rich, white men.
@Benchly: Correct! Not a fan of the blacklisting! Also not a fan of the rape culture, however. Don’t really consider one evil to be less major than the other.
@Dude: Allow me to submit to you a fairly basic concept. In one box, we have what I will call the “human community.” This is the portion of the human race that you should hire, work with, be friendly to, enable in most general respects, unless they were rude to you at a party or something, in which case fuck ’em. But they don’t have any strikes against them on the major level, this “human community.” They haven’t completely violated the sanctity and entire concept of the “human community” through actions such as… I don’t know. Murder, maybe. OR RAPE. This also happens to be the portion of the human race that includes many a professional athlete and ex-professional athlete, all of whom (MOST of whom?) could be hired to portray a “pinnacle of male self-parody,” convincingly.
However, once a person makes the choice to RAPE SOMEONE, they take a step out of the “human community” box. Because they willfully, in full consciousness, violated the body and mind and life of another human being; they purposefully took what is one of the most vital human experiences – sex – and transformed it into a weapon of physical and psychological torture. They treated another human being as a thing; they caused pain, for pleasure. That pain will last a lifetime. I mean, how many rape victims do you actually know? Well: you probably know a lot of them, actually, because it’s a common crime. But how many rape victims do you know that you know? The damage really never, ever, ever goes away. You don’t get to be the same person after the rape as you were before. All you get to do is to figure out how to hold it together despite the pain that your rapist caused you, and how to live as the person you are now. Once a person has crossed that line and become a rapist, once you’re willing to say that the humanity of another person means JACK SHIT to you, that you’re willing to cause that damage just because you feel like it, you don’t get to cross back over that line. You don’t belong to us any more. And you definitely shouldn’t be treated as a hero, joke-celebrity figure, actual-celebrity figure, or anything other than a rapist. You shouldn’t be rewarded for what you’ve done.
And, I mean, I know this sounds like a harsh line! So, I’ll cut you a deal: maybe we don’t need to do it with the majority of rapists, the ones who never get sent to court and put on trial before a jury of their peers. Maybe we don’t need to do it with rapists who aren’t convicted, even though getting a rape conviction is really, really fucking tough for any number of fair and monstrously unfair reasons. But if it’s proven, in court, beyond a reasonable doubt, that someone is a rapist, “rapist” is what they should be known and treated as from that moment forward.
Therefore it not acceptable to make a movie with that person, that person who has exited the “human community” box and entered the “rapist” box, particularly not if that person is making a cameo appearance AS HIMSELF and the point seems to be that he’s a bit scary at first but fun to party with and basically, in the words of one of the characters in the movie, a “sweet guy.” It’s grossly insensitive, it trivializes rape, it treats rape as fundamentally less important than a gimmicky cameo in a movie. It contributes to a culture where rape is not dealt with, not reported, not adequately understood, not taken seriously: in other words, a culture where rape is tacitly permitted.
This is where the concepts get REAL basic, Dude: RAPE IS BAD. WE NEED TO ACT LIKE RAPE IS BAD, BECAUSE RAPE IS BAD. RAPE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN A MOVIE. I know it might not seem that way, when you’re chuckling it up at “The Hangover!” But trust me: REALIZING THAT RAPE IS BAD, AND ACTING LIKE RAPE IS BAD, IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY MOVIE, EVER, IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. You might not realize this, because you live in a thing called “rape culture,” and that is the culture that convinces you that it’s not actually unusual or gross to see Mike Tyson fawned over in a movie or at an award ceremony, that hiring him in the first place (let alone making his cameo one of the movie’s major selling points) is not an actual, inexcusable, deeply alarming trivialization of an actual rape that actually happened to an actual woman (because Mike Tyson wanted it to happen – Mike Tyson wanted that woman raped, he wanted her to suffer in that way, and then he raped her), or that the many jokes trivializing sexual assault in the movie and the actual choice to cast a rapist in the movie, without once mentioning his rape or treating it as a legitimately scary thing, are two separate and unconnected phenomena. Both of which you seem pretty damn eager to excuse. It’s THIS – the treatment of rape as NO BIG DEAL, in the grand scheme of a derivative dick-joke summer comedy – that the post is about.
You want to know the sad thing? I will bet you one million dollars that you posted this because you were offended by the joke in the second paragraph. (I mean, calling yourself “Dude” was a subtle tip-off.) Not realizing that reasoning like yours, and actions like these, are the reason I ever got upset enough to make that joke in the first place.
Is a dick move ever not satire?
Outside of boxing circles, Mike Tyson is laughed at. Does anyone take him seriously outside of his career (which took a turn for the worse itself)? He’s ignorant in every sense of the word. And for a movie which relies upon ignorance in every joke and gag, his presence itself was another over-the-top punchline. He was not revered in anything other than a tongue-in-cheek way… as a pinnacle of male self-parody.
That said, I’m sure the director felt obligated to include Tyson’s presence at the awards. He’s a big name (even if infamously), and part of Todd Phillips’ job is making friends (or, more appropriately, not making enemies). I don’t agree with his choice to associate with Tyson in the first place, but I also wouldn’t base the director’s stance on sexual rights through something as contrived and novelty as an award ceremony.
Dude, what would you suggest one base the director’s stance on “sexual rights” (which presumably encompasses the right to, you know, consent to sex) on? Good faith? On his devotion to the “pinnacle of male self-parody?”
Also, is novelty an adjective now?
Pilgrim: I would not make any assumptions. I don’t believe he’s explicitly demonstrated any inclination toward sexual rights one way or the other. The movie is too outrageous and (I’ll say it again) satirical to be read literally, and I noted my feelings toward the Tyson incident. So I wouldn’t put all my eggs in one basket.
Also, “novelty” can be an adjective, according to the American Heritage Dictionary. But if you want to split hairs over that, I’ll give you the novelty points.
Thank you for writing this and for taking the trouble to explain it to Dude.
Sady:
I apologize for not responding right away. Considering your own in depth response, I didn’t want to blow you off with something relatively insignificant. Unfortunately, that’s probably what this is going to be.
Anyway, you’re right and I agree. In retrospect, I didn’t separate Tyson from the movie. Since I defended the latter, I suppose I felt obligated to defend the former, but that doesn’t adequately separate fiction from reality. Moreover, I didn’t adequately consider the grounds for when someone loses their spotlight (to say the least) privileges.
While I’m fully aware of the things mentioned in your response, the reminder did make me consider if Tyson should have ever been contacted for work in the first place, I’ll move my chips over to “no.”
And thanks for noticing my name; I strive for subtlety.
Dude,
Thank you for being open-minded enough to reconsider. That kind of thoughtfulness is the sort of thing that makes me reconsider my planned move to NoDudesonia.
I believe I nipped out for a cigarette during that part of the show. I could hear the fawning applause through the door.
When I came back in, I said to my SO “I will never ever stop thinking of Tyson as a raping fuckhead”. He did not disagree.
Not defending him, but Tyson DID serve 3 years in prison and 4 years of probation. He’ll have that conviction hanging over him for the rest of his life, but what do YOU propose he do after he’s served his time? Is there no life after punishment? Should it have been life in prison or the death penalty? Or his he allowed to move on after he’s “paid his debt to society?”
Did anyone notice how, when Josh Brolin and Amy Adams were coming onstage to present an award, he reached out and touched her pregnant belly? I yelled out ‘no’ at that point. Pregnant women are not public property, dude.
One Trackback/Pingback
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by elenielstorm: I’ll start packing my spaceship. http://bit.ly/6WqzoL…