Reading Between the Lines in The Reader: When is Abuse Not Abuse?
The Reader? It's goodish. And Kate Winslet is, as ever, brilliant. And it has Nazis, which elevates it on the Oscar nom scale. But I'm not critiquing it here. I'm addressing its portrayal of child abuse - an adult having sex with a minor. I'm curious about the pass the disturbingly intimate relationship between a mature woman and an adolescent boy seems to be getting in David Hare's adaptation of Bernard Schlink's novel, as directed by Stephen Daldry. Pivotal to the romantic tragedy is the passionate post-war affair between a 36.year-old female German tram conductor Hanna (Winslet) and a dewy 15-year-old virgin Michael (David Kross). During their multiple, wonderfully lit, detailed erotic scenes, we see plenty of bare gorgeous Winslet indoctrinating the equally nude boy into the ways of slow sex that please a woman, and leave a man satisfied as well. Trust me: they both look very yummy - or judge for your self. View the trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2319450137/
But, reverse the genders and consider a parallel, made up example. Imagine an intellectual period drama (perhaps they quote Chekhov and Homer, too) in which Hugh Jackman, 39, and Miley Cyrus, 16, play characters that have explicit sex. OK, so maybe there's an underlying awful secret -- he participated in aboriginal genocide, or ratted out Reds in Hollywood, or upheld apartheid in South Africa but... while the camera rolls, the focus of the scenes is the sex and intimacy that occurs in bed and bathtub, between two beautiful bodies, one experienced and dominant, the other ripely pubescent. Reverse the genders - older man deflowers underage girl - and there would be a public outcry. Look no further than Miley's scandalous Vanity Fair/Annie Liebowitz bare back photo and multiply it times ten. Is there any doubt that, even if the younger partner "consents," this is statutory rape because she's a minor and, by definition, under the age of consent?
What's interesting is the blatant double-standard in Western cultures when it comes to the relations between an adult and a minor - when the pair happens to be an older woman, younger male. When I wrote about the treatment of women teachers hitting on their pubescent male students - aka Clearasil Cougars - like Mary Kay Letourneau in the November issue of Marie Claire http://www.marieclaire.com/world/news/teachers-sex-with-students-rape, I wondered whether these hook-ups are any different from male teachers molesting female students? What I discovered is that our society often treats the victims as lucky boys being eased through a tricky rite of passage. It's the Mrs. Robinson, Summer of 42 syndrome. Fifty years ago, small-town grandpas took their pimply grandsons to a local prostitute to lose their virginity. And, in The Reader, mother-aged Hanna saves Michael from the unbearable awkwardness of unhooking some same-age Gretel's bra. Our society actually, leniently views "consensual" sex between older women and teenage boys, like marijuana smoking or underage drinking. Male judges -and Hollywood execs -- give it a wink and a pass (right on, junior!).
Ultimately what's curiously disturbing about The Reader has little to do with Nazis. As Michael grows up and Ralph Fiennes replaces David Kross in the role, the adult suffers from the kind of failure at mature sexual and intimate relationships - with his wife, daughter, and mother - that often typifies abuse victims. He's distant and at least his daughter believes the culpability is hers; he doesn't love her because of who she is, not his adolescent secret. When we first see the adult Michael, he's having an affair of the bed - but clearly not of the heart - with a gorgeous woman nearly young enough to be his daughter. And, as the mistress complains that Michael won't let her in to his life, he clearly can't wait until she leaves his apartment so that he can be alone with himself and his memories. It's textbook abused behavior - and all the movie's ambiguities about Nazis, hidden secrets, and admitting culpability don't fully address the fact that Michael is both the victim of abuse, and lost in his continued love for his abuser, because nothing since has come close to that intensity. Emotionally, he stopped growing at 15.
Michael is a victim of abuse, and his abuser just happened to have been a luscious retired Auschwitz guard. You can call their tryst and its consequences a metaphor of two generations of Germans passing guilt from one to the next, but that doesn't explain why filmmakers Daldry and Hare luxuriated in the sex scenes -- and why it's so tastefully done audiences won't see it for the child pornography it is.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Seems a couple facts are missing here.
He had his 18th birthday DURING the filming - not sure wether the nude scene were done before or after (or if it matters in Germany where it was filmed. I do know the director talked about it with and had the consent of his parents... his mother was pleased he wasn't getting beat up as in his previous film and his dad said "way to go"!
The age of consent in most of the world (and even some of the USA) is 16 (see http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm) so who are we to say it's "abuse"?
I found it most interesting that director Stephen Daldry made sure David had lost his virginity before he gave him the part.
See Thelma Adams's Profile
On the NY Times website, the Carpetbagger/baguette, prompted by my post, posed the question on the red carpet "Won't audiences see this as child pornography?" [[http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/thelma-adams/]
Screenwriter David Hare responded: "“That is the most ridiculous thing! I think that is absolutely insane. No. No. No. That’s absolute nonsense,” In turn, director Stephen Daldry was dismissive: “I think that’s a very American question. He’s a young man who falls in love with an older woman who is complicated, difficult and controlling. That’s the story." Yes, perhaps that's the story but we're addressing how it's portrayed on screen. I look back at Lolita, novel and movie. I do not consider Nabokov's Lolita to be child pornography. It is, in fact, a favorite novel of mine. And the film adaptation is brilliant. But please note that in Kubrick's film the characters of Humbert Humbert and Lolita (James Mason and Sue Lyon) don't gloriously roll around naked in bed together in explicit, well-lit choreographed intercourse. You can address kiddy sex, or the love between an adult and an underage youth, without exploiting it. In that movie, there's no porn or gratuitous titillation. Making the claim that this is necessary to understand the subject is like saying you buy Playboy for the articles.
I haven't seen the movie but, as always, love hearing what you think about it. Am glad that you are questioning the erotic portrayal.
Sounds like a perfect brooding role for Ralph.
I hate to point this out, but it's apparent that the movie does indeed show that the relationship while pretty and glamourous in the abstract is abusive and damaging in the long run. Your own review shows it as an apt metaphor for hidden damage passed from one generation to another.
If it were less subtle with the effects of the dominant relationship affecting the grown man, it would no longer be a metaphor for hidden damage, it would be a completely different film about how difficult it is to be sexually involved with older women when you are a teenager and why it's damaging, I'm assuming that's not the subject of the film.
As to the Miley Cirus comparsion - Miley is currently 16. David Kross is currently 18 playing a role as a 15 year old. It is not child pornography if everyone is an adult.
Miley is an american female being marketed to 12 year olds that was taking pictures, not a working actor in Europe in an Oscar weight movie. She would be being exploited and underage. David Cross is neither.
There are better arguments to hang "abuse" on then a film where it seems that "damaged and corrupt while still beautiful" is the theme, according to this article's read of the movie.
David Cross is not a child, this movie does not seem to be treating the relationship as 100% positive.I think you were on slightly stronger ground about the Lebovitz pics.
See Thelma Adams's Profile
You've raised a number of issues. Allow me to clarify on this one point. While the actor David Kross is 18, the character he plays is clearly underage. I'm addressing the depiction of characters -- one an adult female, the other an underage male -- within the story, not any abuse in the making of the movie. That's the crux. How would we feel about this, how do we feel about the scenario if the genders were reversed, how does our culture feel about it, how do women and men vary in their responses, how do those who have been abused respond? And, also, how does the law treat the behavior. Clearly, in that case, the laws within the film are those of post-War Germany, not contemporary America.
Also, you're definition of adult may be different from mine and the law's. Fifteen and sixteen are minors, and therefore under the age of consent, and incapable of a consensual relationship under the law.
I am open to different interpretations of the movie, and to wide-ranging reactions to the coupling of older women/younger men, but I find that the filmmakers definitely eroticize the abusive relationship in a way that is not morally ambigous, and I find disturbing.
Thank you for responding - I agree with you about the definition of an adult - however I point out that "age of consent" varies in locale and timeframe in real life and the movies.
I was responding to was the conflation of eroticizing the relationship in the context of the movie - which seems to carry a metaphoric subtext and the comparsion to an actual live underage actress - which would be rephrensible and exploitive.
The choice to eroticize the inappropriate relationship is an artistic choice, but it's not the same thing as using actual underage actors to do it. A situation with real underage actors is not the same as with underage fictional characters.
If the male lead playing the 15 year old was 16, it would be exploitive, inappropriate and part of a double standard. This looks like a morally ambiguous a choice of the filmmaker that might be intentional. Maybe we're meant to feel disturbed by the seemingly eroticized glamorization.
.
I'll reserve further judgement until I see it myself - but you saw it and reported that the character was damaged by the relationship. It had consequences showing the effects of abuse.
Maybe I'm missing the point you're making because I haven't seen the film. if you're uncomfortable with the eroticized sexual context then that is certainly your experience and I wouldn't want to invalidate that. I think Kubrick's Clockwork Orange over-sexualized things to the detriment of the source material so maybe this is the
same thing for you and it detracts from the overall movie.
(sorry cut off the the tag end of the last post)
You are exactly right in your article. The movie, like "Birth" with Nicole Kidman and the old French film "Murmur of the Heart," make female predation on a young male into an OK act. This is NOT OK. Rape is rape. Molestation is molestation. Pedo[hilia is pedophilia. The gender of the victim and victimizer does not matter one bit.
Can you imagine these directors and writers and producers reversing the genders? Of course not! They would never remotely consider it.
The actor is 18, not 15. The parallel doesn't hold wrt the outrage someone would feel at the casting.
And LeTourneau was and is seen as a predator. The reason the Tampa teacher got off so easily is that she's a swimsuit model and the decision makers were male. Ugly, fat women get arrested for this all the time, and they definitely don't get off with a slap on the wrist. They're also not publicized because there's nothing titillating about the image of Martha Dumptruck having sex with a 10th grader.
Thank you for this courageous article.
It is 100% right on.
Male victims of such abuse by women are ignored or dismissed if they complain, and the horrible, sexist, anti-male double standard exists. Another film addressing this as an OK rite of passage is "Murmur of the Heart," in which the pedophile is also the boy's mother. Nicole Kidman also had a sex scene in a bathtub with a young boy in "Birth." When a woman character does it, it's "art."
The damage done by these characters is as horrible as if the genders were reversed, but we don't want to see women as predators, a la Letourneau, or the pretty female teacher who was even released from her house arrest early, though the house arrest was already an overly lenient sentence.
I know a good number of men who have been victimized by these monsters, and all have been badly damaged by it. Those who think it's OK, or that it's not the same as if the genders were reversed, simply don't know what they're talking about. Or they have an agenda to dismiss this horror.
Rape is rape. Molestation is molestation. Sodomy is sodomy. Pedophilia is pedophilia. Regardless of the genders of victim and victimizer.
Thelma always provokes thought...not sure if I agree with this one...but still, makes you pause
Thank you for this article.
I agree completely that there is a disgusting double standard. I was never physically assaulted as a child, but I knew someone in my early years at college who was obsessive and worked in the cafeteria. I didn't know much of anyone so he would always talk to me. It seemed innocuous and I admit I'm very introverted, but it quickly got very inappropriate. I got so uncomfortable at one point that I could never go back to the cafeteria. I would only eat food from the vending machine near the laundry room. And many times it would be emptied out by my over-caffeinated over-worked peers and I would have nothing. Finally, to make a long story short I transferred to a different University. Still, I got into a cycle of not eating, it wasn't as dramatic as anorexia, but I only like to eat very little. I say this because even though it wasn't physical it still affects me till this day at 23.
I don't feel comfortable when being approached by men. Thus, I've never honestly been in a relationship. I don't tell this story to be melodramatic. I tell it because I could only imagine if this same experience was done to a young boy instead of me, a young girl, it would be woefully ignored. Would they care? Or would they call him a coward for not "having it on" with the much older cafeteria worker?
It's sickening.
Ah yes our Kate. I agree (to a point) w/ your article too-check out things like 'Private Lessons' or 'My Tutor' from the early '80's. Same thing.
The roots of the different attitudes towards adult males with female minors vs. adult females with male minors, comes from nature itself.
Sex is more risky for women than for men. And due to the ways we are wired, men are physically stronger and tend to be more sexually aggressive - which makes it is more likely that the adult male is coercing and actually intimidating or threatening the female minor, in ways an adult female tends not to be physically intimidating a male minor.
And for these reasons, adult males having sex with female minors is much more objectionable to society. Adult males having sex with female minors really is much more risky and more damaging.
eh? Not so sure I agree with you here, dude. Women are manipulative, remember that.
Who's more likely to subtly work you into a position where you HAVE to do what he/she wants? More often than not, a woman. :P
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
