tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/roman-polanski-45070/articlesRoman Polanski – The Conversation2023-05-11T20:08:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027482023-05-11T20:08:39Z2023-05-11T20:08:39ZFriday essay: cancellation or conflicted joy – grappling with the work of our ‘art monsters’<p>Author Claire Dederer started off writing a book about the film director Roman Polanski. Forty-five years ago, Polanski fled the United States after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. </p>
<p>Samantha Galley (now Geimer), who was 13 years old in 1977 when she said <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-19/roman-polanski-case-new-testimony/101250020">she was drugged and raped by the director</a>, has told her side of the story numerous times, including in her 2013 memoir <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Girl-Life-Shadow-Roman-Polanski/dp/1476716846">The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.</a></p>
<p>Geimer has forgiven Polanski. And just last month, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/roman-polanski-rape-victim-samantha-geimer-defends-director-1234828246/">in an interview</a> with the director’s wife Emmanuel Seigner, she reiterated that “what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me”. What weighs heavily on her is having to repeat that, over and again.</p>
<p>Dederer, who started her writing life as a film critic, has long been a Polanski fan. But for her, Polanski <em>is</em> a big problem. For more than any other contemporary figure, Dederer argues, it is Polanski who balances so equally the forces of “the absoluteness of the monstrosity and the absoluteness of the genius”.</p>
<p>Dederer knew a book about Polanski was going to be complicated – that’s why she embarked on it. But somewhere along the way, her project morphed into <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/claire-dederer/monsters-a-fan-s-dilemma">Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma</a>. It’s a thrilling work of feminist cultural criticism which promises to be career-defining for her and essential reading for those of us who have wrestled with the ethics and emotions of fandom. </p>
<p>Fallen idols: we all have at least one. While I was reading Monsters, comedian and satirist <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-barry-humphries-the-man-who-enriched-the-culture-reimagined-the-one-man-show-and-upended-the-cultural-cringe-188719">Barry Humphries died</a>, prompting a nationwide debate about how he should best be remembered – for his iconic roles as Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson and general comic genius, or for his transphobia, casual racism and rather flippant defences of unacceptable workplace behaviours? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525283/original/file-20230510-29-7gxjny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barry Humphries’ death sparked a national debate about how he should be remembered. Rob Griffith AP.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s plenty of evidence for all of it – watch a classic skit on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVyIiDAS9RU">YouTube</a> and revel in his brilliance. Or read an account of how he described trans as a “fashion” and referred to gender reassignment surgery as “self-mutilation” to comprehend why the Melbourne International Comedy Festival <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47943745">decided to rename</a> their prestigious Barry Award back in 2019. </p>
<p>Or why, in the immediate wake of his death, some trans people and their allies were compelled to call out the hypocrisy of a man who made his fortune performing in drag, yet purportedly <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/27/barry-humphries-trans-views-jk-rowling-email/">sent a letter of support aimed at J.K. Rowling</a> in support of her anti-trans agenda.</p>
<p>Then friends and contemporaries of Humphries paid tribute. Film director Bruce Beresford <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/apr/25/barry-humphries-melbourne-comedy-festival-says-tribute-is-in-works-after-criticism">described</a> the Comedy Festival’s decision as a “disgrace” and Humphries as “one of the great comic geniuses”. </p>
<p>Entertainer Miriam Margolyes, who had “sharply disagreed politically” with her friend of 65 years, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-23/barry-humphries-was-saddened-cancelled-miriam-margolyes/102257954">also lambasted</a> what she saw as her friend’s late-in-life “cancellation”. Margolyes declared, “He was acerbic, and he was often quite nasty, but he was a genius, and you have to accept it.” </p>
<p>But do we?</p>
<p>This is where Dederer’s Monsters starts off – she recognises Polanski’s genius, yes, but the Geimer incident also changed her experience of consuming his art. And she has so much more to say, including about the terms “genius” and “cancel culture” and their limitations.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-barry-humphries-humour-is-now-history-thats-the-fate-of-topical-satirical-comedy-117499">Friday essay: Barry Humphries' humour is now history – that's the fate of topical, satirical comedy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘I felt like Woody Allen’</h2>
<p>My own fallen idols include the film director Woody Allen, who also happens to be one of Dederer’s. “When I was young”, she recalls, “I felt like Woody Allen. I intuited or believed he represented me on-screen. He was me. This was one of the peculiar aspects of his genius – this ability to stand in for the audience”.</p>
<p>I too had once felt like Woody Allen – I was a teenage girl living in Sydney’s western suburbs, and he was a then-middle-aged Jewish New Yorker who played clarinet in a jazz club every Monday night. But somehow, like Dederer, I identified with him. I also aspired to one day live in Manhattan in a book-lined apartment in the vicinity of Central Park. My future life would be filled with dinner parties, love affairs, shrink sessions and one-liners.</p>
<p>For Dederer, revelations of Allen’s relationship with his then-wife Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn were experienced as a “terrible betrayal of me personally”. He had slipped from “one of us, the powerless” to “predator”. </p>
<p>My own feelings were murkier, and it was convenient that the quality of his movies started to descend with his reputation. By the time his daughter Dylan Farrow’s account of his alleged sexual abuse of her started to be widely publicised, I was no longer a fan. (Allen has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56563149">long denied these allegations</a>).</p>
<p>Between Dylan Farrow’s <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/?mcubz=1">Open Letter</a> about Allen, published in the New York Times in 2014 (and still available online, with over 3500 comments below), and the HBO documentary series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13990468/">Allen v. Farrow</a>, first aired in early 2021, #MeToo went viral. </p>
<p>Woody Allen’s son and Dylan’s brother, Ronan, was one of one of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories">the journalists who helped expose</a> the astounding extent of the abuses perpetrated by film producer Harvey Weinstein, now serving multiple prison sentences.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525333/original/file-20230510-4877-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ronan Farrow, Woody Allen’s son, (pictured with mother Mia) helped expose Harvey Weinstein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Pizello/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The stain</h2>
<p>Against this backdrop, Dederer’s book can be seen as both timely and overdue. Yet, as is obvious from her 2017 Paris Review essay <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/20/art-monstrous-men/">What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?</a>, she started exploring the terrain long before the celebrity phase of #MeToo kicked in. </p>
<p>With a book to play with, Dederer fleshes out her concerns, but Monsters is not – or not only – an extended version of her viral essay, or a catalogue of the monstrous acts of male artists. Through a blend of memoir, cultural critique and feminist analysis, Dederer offers a hybrid form that is far more ambitious, wide-ranging, slippery and complicated. </p>
<p>Sensing in the “psychic theatre of public condemnation” against disgraced celebrities a “kind of elaborate misdirection” or deflection, Dederer turns her gaze to the audience, including herself. </p>
<p>Monsters follows an intuitive logic, guided by Dederer’s shifting sense of her own project. Early on, she re-watches Roman Polanski’s films, an exercise that confirms his talent but fails to ease her conscience. “Polanski would be no problem at all for the viewer,” she notes, “if the films were bad. But they’re not”. </p>
<p>From the outset, the question of “do we separate the art from the artist?” opens up other, more interesting questions – like, who is this “we” that proposes such a separation is possible, or desirable?</p>
<p>When Dederer returns to Allen’s multi-Oscar-winning <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Annie Hall</a> (1977), she declares it “the greatest comic film of the twentieth century” – a critical assessment she later mocks for its grandiosity, for she is not that kind of critic. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, Allen’s other peak-period “classic”, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/style/woody-allen-manhattan.html">Manhattan</a> (1979) – in which Allen’s character Isaac romances the teenaged Tracy, played by Mariel Hemingway – does not stack up so well. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525326/original/file-20230510-21-hjguta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Manhattan, the film in which Woody Allen romances a teenager, ‘does not stack up so well’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MGM/IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her women friends share her “complicated” feelings and emotions. For numerous older, white men of her acquaintance, however, Manhattan remains a work of unequivocal genius, untainted by its proximity to the director’s “real-life creepiness”.</p>
<p>From the opening chapters on Polanski and Allen, Dederer moves in all sorts of productive directions. Almost immediately she undermines her own title, making a compelling case for the metaphor of “the stain” as a more apt alternative to the rage-filled “monster”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-separating-the-art-from-the-badly-behaved-artist-a-philosophers-view-116279">Friday essay: separating the art from the badly behaved artist – a philosopher's view</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Venerating white male rock stars</h2>
<p>Next, the persistently masculinist category of “genius”, embodied in Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, is examined as a product of the mass media, with a legacy most obvious in the veneration of white male rock stars. </p>
<p>More than once, Dederer brings up David Bowie, who in life (and now in death) has largely escaped reputational damage from <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/the_dark_side_of_david_bowie_as_the_mourning_goes_on_we_cant_ignore_his_history_with_underaged_groupies_in_70s/">allegedly having sex</a> with underage girls. She does so out of curiosity not condemnation, and with a sense of her own complicity and investment as a fan.</p>
<p>Rock stars like Bowie, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger – all of whom <a href="https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/i-lost-my-virginity-to-david-bowie">apparently slept with</a> teenaged Lori Mattix in the 1970s, to name one high-profile example – have, of course, often been excused for their bad behaviour on the basis that those were different times. </p>
<p>Integral to this argument is the smug assumption that we live in a more enlightened present. Dederer encourages readers to ponder their own participation in such a liberal fantasy. </p>
<p>She also spotlights enduring strains of antisemitism and racism, including historical amnesia about figures like <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/virginia-woolfs-anti-jew-diatribe-20030616-gdgxsg.html">Virginia Woolf</a>, whose diaries were “pocked” with “flippant anti-Semitic remarks”. When Dederer discusses Woolf with a Jewish friend, her friend replies “Well, if we give up the anti-Semites, we’ll have to give up everyone”. </p>
<p>Feminism propels Dederer’s analysis, and morphs with it. The feminism she initially identifies with is virtuous, fault-finding and punitive – or white, liberal and carceral. Accordingly, she depicts her feminism and her desire to be “demonstrably good” as “coming into conflict” with wanting to be a “citizen of the world of art” and her “increasingly leftist politics”. However, while such distinctions can be blind to the long history of (for example) left-wing feminism, they also dissolve as the book goes along.</p>
<h2>Staking a claim for the ‘I’ in criticism</h2>
<p>In the most pivotal chapter in the book, Dederer shares her own history as a cultural critic. It’s a significant contribution to feminist criticism, not least of all because Dederer challenges the phallocentric model of the critic as a “kind of priest” who dispenses “critical pronouncements” as gospel. </p>
<p>Against this, in the spirit of critics like Vivian Gornick, she stakes a claim for the “I”, of criticism as “relentlessly, proudly subjective”. Feminist challenges of this kind are hardly new, but Dederer’s insights are fresh, welcome and well-pitched. </p>
<p>Critics who cloak their opinions in the “garb of authority”, she reminds us, are part of the problem. “Consuming a piece of art”, Dederer concludes, involves “two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist, which might disrupt the viewing of the art, the biography of the audience member, which might shape the viewing of the art”.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Dederer models her critical practice to dazzling effect. Another stand-out chapter is her re-reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s most infamous novel, <a href="https://theconversation.com/lolita-why-this-vivid-illicit-portrait-of-a-pervert-matters-at-a-time-of-endless-commodification-of-young-girls-189688">Lolita </a>(1955). If <a href="https://www.avclub.com/reminder-pablo-picasso-was-a-bit-of-an-asshole-1836674197">Picasso</a> and <a href="https://bookninja.com/2021/04/12/on-great-writers-who-are-terrible-people-hemingway-edition/">Hemingway</a> have been largely spared the conflation of the art with the artist, Nabokov has had no such luck. By writing from the perspective of Humbert Humbert, “the child rapist”, the author was widely assumed to be a “monster” himself. </p>
<p>Dederer first read Lolita at age 13 and was “horrified” by it, including because Lolita herself did not seem like a “real character”, only an “absence”. The adult Dederer comes to see that may be precisely the point, that Lolita is “a portrait of a girl’s annihilation”. Yet Dederer does not disavow her younger self, who after all was onto something. </p>
<p>She also takes seriously the fandom of children who grew up obsessed with <a href="https://theconversation.com/rethinking-harry-potter-twenty-years-on-86761">Harry Potter</a> and the observations of her children and their friends. Her kids, she notices, are not tortured about Picasso the same way she is, or at all. At an exhibition of his work, curated to tell the story of “Picasso-as-asshole”, they ask to leave.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lolita-why-this-vivid-illicit-portrait-of-a-pervert-matters-at-a-time-of-endless-commodification-of-young-girls-189688">Lolita: why this 'vivid, illicit' portrait of a pervert matters at a time of endless commodification of young girls</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Maybe I’m not monstrous enough’</h2>
<p>Motherhood is a central theme in Monsters. A gifted memoirist, Dederer builds on her previous books <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/poser-9781408817827/">Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses</a> (2010) and <a href="https://www.clairedederer.com/love-and-trouble">Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning</a> (2017) by sharing her experience as a “writer-mother”, and the dilemmas that flow from it. </p>
<p>Contemplating her writing career to date, Dederer wonders “maybe I’m not monstrous enough”. “Every writer-mother I know,” she contends, has asked herself the question: “If I were more selfish, would my work be better?” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525334/original/file-20230510-21-5490sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joni Mitchell surrendered her baby daughter for adoption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Suzanne Plunkett/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The female version of the monstrous male artist slash sexual predator, Dederer tells us, is the mother who abandons her children – and these “female monsters” are far fewer. Dederer weaves her own account of spending five conflicted weeks at an artist retreat in Marfa, Texas, into the vastly bigger stories of “abandoning mothers”: writer Doris Lessing (who, when she was 23, <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2022/04/doris-lessing-abandoned-children-motherhood-letters.html#:%7E:text=Lessing%20was%20said%20to%20have,been%20both%20vilified%20and%20celebrated.">left her two toddlers</a> behind in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, to move to London) and singer songwriter Joni Mitchell, who, as a destitute folk singer, surrendered her baby daughter for adoption. This way, Dederer encourages readers to contemplate stubborn cultural resistance and obstacles to women’s artistic freedom.</p>
<p>Dederer admirably creates space for maternal ambivalence and stakes a claim for female ambition. These motherhood chapters are scattered with gems – like Dederer’s appreciation of Jane Campion’s cinematic evocation in the 1990 biopic <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099040/">Angel at My Table</a> of writer Janet Frame (a non-mother) luxuriating in her writerly solitude after years in a mental hospital. But for me, they read as more predictable, less convincing and even oddly retrograde in parts, especially given the binary of mother/non-mother is largely left untouched. </p>
<p>I found myself wishing Dederer had cast her net wider (Sylvia Plath – again?) and challenged some of her own assumptions more. Surely the lives of say, Toni Morrison or Cate Blanchett – genius-mother-artists – would throw some new light on the dilemmas Dederer poses as endemic and perennial among “writer-mothers” like herself and her friends. </p>
<p>Is female ambition, for example, really still so widely and uniformly discouraged? And what of not-so-hetronormative models of motherhood and parenthood that offer alternatives, and which are under attack throughout the US by conservatives who deem them monstrous?</p>
<h2>Your own art monsters</h2>
<p>In any case, Monsters is, taken as a whole, a wonderfully generative read that is enhanced, not undermined, by Dederer’s unapologetic subjectivity. But nor is it confined to Dederer’s worldview or canon of fallen or “stained” idols. Her former or current cherished artists may not overlap with your own, but reading Monsters will surely bring them to mind.</p>
<p>Animated by the chapter on Woody Allen, I found myself scouring the shelves for my copy of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55386.Getting_Even">Getting Even</a> (1971), his classic comic short-story collection. It includes <a href="http://thisrecording.com/today/2009/7/1/in-which-woody-recalls-his-roaring-twenties.html">A Twenties Memory</a>, in which Allen gleefully skewers some of the “genuises” discussed in Dederer’s book: Picasso and Hemingway, among others. But I couldn’t find it – I must have thrown it out, like the people described in Monsters who did the same with their Allen books and movies.</p>
<p>Throughout, Dederer engages with others who have wrestled with their emotional responses to the art and lives of beloved monstrous men, like <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-08-30-vw-29516-story.html">Pearl Cleage on Miles Davis</a> (who, as Dederer notes, “wrote frankly” in his 1989 autobiography, about beating his wives). The book is overflowing with conversations, and it inspires them too. Since reading it, I’ve talked to a number of friends about our mixed feelings about Woody Allen – including men. He was big among Gen X-ers, as was Johnny Depp (but I won’t go there …).</p>
<p>Then there’s Morrissey, the former lead singer of The Smiths (the greatest band of the 20th century!). He’s not mentioned by Dederer, but he is – for me, and at least five other people I know – our most beloved “monster”. </p>
<p>In Morrissey’s case, it’s not sexual abuse that has “stained” his reputation and the Smiths’ legacy, but his far right, neo-fascist turn (though I’ve since discovered, after conducting a quick update search, that “Moz”, as he was once affectionately known, has also <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42050512">victim-blamed</a> those who were allegedly abused by Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/30/bigmouth-strikes-again-morrissey-songs-loneliness-shyness-misfits-far-right-party-tonight-show-jimmy-fallon">Billy Bragg</a> captured something of the despair and rage felt by Morrissey fans when he described the singer as “the Oswald Mosley of Pop”, an artist who has betrayed his fans and empowered “the very people Smiths fans were brought into being to oppose”.</p>
<p>The night I learned Queen Elizabeth II had died, I did something I had not done in a long time – I played <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS3UMjNUqFM">the Derek-Jarman-directed video</a> of The Smiths song The Queen Is Dead on You Tube. Then I sent a friend a text: “I’m allowed to play The Smiths tonight!” I’ve had them on regular rotation since.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YS3UMjNUqFM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Zora Simic felt ‘allowed’ to listen to The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead after Queen Elizabeth II died, despite Morrissey’s ‘stained’ reputation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The closest Dederer comes to a conclusion is to let us tortured fans “off the hook” because under capitalism, our consumer choices will “solve nothing”. We “do not need to have a grand unified theory about Michael Jackson”. I chuckled reading this passage, recalling my recent rediscovery of The Smiths back catalogue and the conflicted joy it has brought me.</p>
<p>For me, what was most rewarding about reading Monsters is that Dederer describes and gets “it” – the pleasure and pain of being a fan, feminist, critic and person with a unique history. And bringing all of this to the art we love (and to our criticisms of “untouchable” geniuses). </p>
<p>More broadly, Monsters is assured of ongoing relevance, at least for the near future. Dederer reminds us that dilemmas like how we should remember Barry Humphries will never be fully resolved – not by “thinking”, nor through a moral calculus that weighs up the variables. </p>
<p>What we can pay attention to, however, is how authoritative claims of “genius” continue to hold sway in this purported age of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-joanna-bourke-the-nsw-arts-minister-and-the-unruly-contradictions-of-cancel-culture-189377">cancel culture</a>”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zora Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So many of our artistic geniuses have complicated legacies. What do we do with work we love by artists whose behaviour is more difficult to admire?Zora Simic, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/952542018-05-18T07:53:24Z2018-05-18T07:53:24ZThe death of the auteur director in the #MeToo age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218974/original/file-20180515-122925-wbq4rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Woody Allen.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rome-italy-august-12-2011-us-226972468?src=rPrH3ob-G8Wte5MbzflkEQ-1-1">Shutterstock/LuckyTeamStudio</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/auteur-theory">The Auteur Theory</a>, which has held the film industry and film criticism in its grip since the 1950s, has recently come under attack from film critics – until now its greatest champions. The problem they face is that many of the directors deified as auteurs have been caught up in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/metoo-45316">#MeToo</a> movement’s sweep of the film industry. </p>
<p>Film critic Ryan Gilbey writes of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/23/the-end-of-the-auteur">the atrocities wrought</a> by the Auteur Theory and asks what happens when a God-like director turns out to be a liability. He ends his piece with the line: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is difficult to see how the unquestioning reverence of directors can continue in this new climate of hyperawareness, where the constant drip-feed of discrediting stories proves once and for all that time’s up.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Time may be up, but #MeToo is not a critically sound basis for renouncing the Auteur Theory. Its faults need <a href="https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/communications/journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/2017/06/01DavidTregdeEJFall13.pdf">greater scrutiny</a>. The foundation stone for the theory can be found in one paragraph from <a href="http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/camera-stylo-astruc.shtml">a thoughtful 1948 essay</a> by the film-maker <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/23/alexandre-astruc-obituary">Alexandre Astruc</a>, in which he sought to identify a new age of cinema: the age of the camera-stylo (camera-pen): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Direction is no longer a means of illustrating or presenting a scene, but a true act of writing. The film-maker/author writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218976/original/file-20180515-122942-13jqy25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218976/original/file-20180515-122942-13jqy25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218976/original/file-20180515-122942-13jqy25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218976/original/file-20180515-122942-13jqy25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218976/original/file-20180515-122942-13jqy25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218976/original/file-20180515-122942-13jqy25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218976/original/file-20180515-122942-13jqy25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexandre Astruc.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Astruc#/media/File:Alexandre_Astruc_1965.jpg">Wikipedia/DutchNationalArchives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Astruc considered the future of cinema to be dependent upon there being a single creator (a scriptwriter who directs his own scripts – like Woody Allen). After all, as he says: “Could one imagine a Faulkner novel written by someone other than Faulkner?” His aim was to push cinema towards being taken seriously as an art form, rather than remaining “a fairground attraction”. Yet it was the line: “the film maker/author writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen” that launched the Auteur Thoery and the cult of the director.</p>
<p>Astruc’s argument was twisted but his aim was achieved: cinema could now be considered an art form, with a single creative mind in control – the director. This led eventually to the use of the notorious <a href="https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0402-Feb-2004/Possessory-Credit-Timeline.aspx">possessory credit</a> which states that the film is “by” the director, regardless of who wrote the screenplay. This happens even when the screenplay is an original idea, written before a director is attached to the project.</p>
<h2>The auteur tyranny</h2>
<p>The Auteur Theory became a tyranny, McCarthyite in its single-mindedness. Horribly, lists of auteur directors were drawn up, notably by American film critic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sarris">Andrew Sarris</a>. Those whose names were not on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_auteurs">list</a> had been judged by critical opinion to be lesser directors. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001379/">John Huston</a>, for example, never made the list. His <a href="https://www.imdb.com/list/ls005530865/">extraordinary number of great films </a> failed to display the kind of mono-style that marked out the true auteur, aiming instead for a style appropriate to the literary source. </p>
<p>Yet the fact remains that over the decades it held sway, the focus on the director meant that many artists working in film flourished and produced masterpieces. Among the discredited auteurs cited by Gilbey are Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, whose names would feature in most critics’ lists of the greatest geniuses of cinema – along with Chaplin, Hitchcock, Kubrick and Welles. It is through their innovations that film achieved its modern ability to rival the novel in depth and subtlety. </p>
<h2>Art and ethics</h2>
<p>But if cinema is an art form, then why treat it differently from the other arts? Conversely, why not include the other arts in the clean-up and stop revering the paintings of Picasso, Gauguin or Degas? Or stop reading the works of Lewis Carroll or Vladimir Nabokov, just in case? Let us not look at anything made by anybody who is, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/15/margaret-atwood-feminist-backlash-metoo">Margaret Attwood’s phrase</a>, “guilty by allegation” (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/feb/03/actors-condemn-woody-allen-hadley-freeman">like Woody Allen</a>). </p>
<p>Reviewing Allen’s latest film Wonder Wheel in The Times, Kevin Maher found it necessary to ditch discussion of the film’s director altogether, only mentioning Allen in the final sentence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The film was written and directed by Woody Allen. In 1993 he was accused of molesting his adopted daughter … He denied the accusations and was never prosecuted. Should you go and see it? Over to you.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218975/original/file-20180515-185595-nqcjaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218975/original/file-20180515-185595-nqcjaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218975/original/file-20180515-185595-nqcjaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218975/original/file-20180515-185595-nqcjaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218975/original/file-20180515-185595-nqcjaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218975/original/file-20180515-185595-nqcjaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218975/original/file-20180515-185595-nqcjaw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roman Polanski in court in Cracow in 2015 after a hearing on a request for his extradition to the US.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/krakow-poland-february-25-2015-polish-267871061?src=nJm5VJwfx3WH6KyVf4Fndw-1-34">Shutterstock/praszkiewicz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And what of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43994591">Roman Polanski</a>, who actually admitted a statutory rape charge in 1977? If Allen’s films are suspect, Polanski’s must be even more so. It does not for one moment excuse his crime to insist that <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2015/great-directors/roman-polanski-2/">his work</a> in cinema has taught and inspired generations of film makers, with some of his films even claimed by <a href="https://exploringfeminisms.com/tag/repulsion/">young feminists</a>. Must we now avert our eyes?</p>
<h2>Where will this end?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLlMbHatRwo">Charlie Chaplin</a>, possibly the greatest auteur the world has known, made all his films before the Auteur Theory existed. Chaplin wrote, directed, starred in and composed the music for his movies. His stature as an artist is arguably on a level with Picasso. Of Picasso, the novelist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Caroline_Blackwood">Caroline Blackwood</a> – speaking from personal experience – said: “He was an old letch, genius or no”. Perhaps something similar could be <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlie-chaplin-23262">said of Chaplin</a>.</p>
<p>The artistic drive and the sex drive have always been closely linked. The adoration of the human form, the fascination with the object of desire, driving the creation of works of art, or simply driving the artist. <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/tracey-emin-2590">Tracey Emin’s work</a> is as sexually driven as Hitchcock’s, or as her hero, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jun/16/tracey-emin-vienna-expressionist-egon-schiele-all-his-angst-made-sense">Egon Schiele’s</a>. To deny this, to attempt to outlaw it, is an act of cultural suicide. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that a line – first drawn by the early feminists – has been underscored by #MeToo. The attitudes that once enabled male artists to exploit and abuse women with impunity must be cast into the past. But leave the work alone, with its cultural life living on beyond its creators. And as far as cinema is concerned, simply calling time on the already waning Auteur Theory does not accomplish anything at all. It’s perhaps time for a new theory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret Leclere does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The social structures that once enabled male artists to exploit and abuse women must be cast into the past. But castigating their work to the scrapheap is an act of cultural suicide.Margaret Leclere, Senior Lecturer (screenwriting), English & Creative Writing, Staffordshire UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/962472018-05-10T10:48:58Z2018-05-10T10:48:58ZWhy the betrayal of Bill Cosby, Eric Schneiderman and other influential men is deeper than you think<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218354/original/file-20180509-34009-3sf341.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman at a news conference in New York in 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned on Monday, May 7, hours after <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/four-women-accuse-new-yorks-attorney-general-of-physical-abuse">The New Yorker</a> published an article in which four women accused him of physical abuse. </p>
<p>This came soon after the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/movies/cosby-polanski-academy-expelled.html">announced its expulsion of Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski</a> for violating the organization’s <a href="http://www.oscars.org/about/standards-conduct-and-process-submitting-claims-misconduct">standards of conduct</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bill-cosby-convicted-on-three-counts-of-sexual-assault/2018/04/26/d740ef22-4885-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.729b11716380">Cosby has been convicted</a> of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old woman Andrea Constand in 2004, and at least <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/11/21/bill_cosby_accusers_list_sexual_assault_rape_drugs_feature_in_women_s_stories.html">58 women</a> have publicly accused him of sexual assault. <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/17/16156902/roman-polanski-child-rape-charges-explained-samantha-geimer-robin-m">Roman Polanski</a>, who admitted to raping a 13-year-old in 1977, has been accused of four other child rapes. </p>
<p>All these men, and many others recently accused of sexual harm, carried enormous cultural influence. Indeed, the academy’s decision to expel Cosby and Polanski revived the <a href="https://theconversation.com/metoo-in-the-art-world-genius-should-not-excuse-sexual-harassment-91554">age-old question</a>: Can the value of a person’s creative work be separated from <a href="http://time.com/3599394/bill-cosby-accusers-cosby-show-fans/">the harm of their behavior?</a> As one who <a href="https://www.vanderbilt.edu/gdr/people/bio/hilary-scarsella">studies</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/11/30/4774014.htm">writes on sexual violence,</a>
I believe this question fails to recognize the loss resulting from their actions. I’ll focus on Cosby since, of the three figures I have named, he has arguably been the most culturally prized. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218355/original/file-20180509-34038-x7sonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218355/original/file-20180509-34038-x7sonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218355/original/file-20180509-34038-x7sonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218355/original/file-20180509-34038-x7sonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218355/original/file-20180509-34038-x7sonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218355/original/file-20180509-34038-x7sonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218355/original/file-20180509-34038-x7sonz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this combination photo, Bill Cosby, left, on the campus of University of the District of Columbia in Washington on May 16, 2006, and director Roman Polanski, right, at the 70th Cannes Film Festival in southern France on May 27, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How does a society come to terms with the knowledge that a beloved figure has committed sexual assault?</p>
<h2>The importance of being Bill Cosby</h2>
<p>Psychoanalyst <a href="https://iapsp.org/kohut/">Heinz Kohut</a> developed the theory of <a href="https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.144.1.1?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed">“self psychology,”</a> based on the idea that one’s sense of self develops - for better and worse - in response to external persons and things. He used the term “selfobject” to refer to those external influences that are so significant that they become a vital part of who a person is. </p>
<p>For Kohut, a <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Self-Psychology-and-the-Humanities/">“cultural selfobject”</a> is an influential person whose creative work and public presence is vital to the development of selfhood for a group of people. </p>
<p>Cosby is a good example of a cultural selfobject. Affectionately nicknamed “America’s Dad” for his role as Cliff Huxtable on “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086687/">The Cosby Show</a>,” Bill Cosby long represented an image of fatherhood, family and upper middle-class life that both reflected and shaped what Americans valued, understood themselves to be, and saw as possible for their lives. In this way, he became part of the American self.</p>
<p>Practical theologian <a href="https://mccormick.edu/content/crumpton-stephanie">Stephanie Crumpton</a> defines <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137378132">cultural selfobjects</a>, in part, as the “public figures who mirror back our value in ways that make us feel uplifted.” </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30194819">the first black actor to star in a 1965 American TV drama series</a>, “I Spy,” Cosby also became the first black representation of idealized American values in TV entertainment. Cosby influenced the cultural sense of self held by both white and black Americans. For some white Americans, when Cosby became a household name, he nudged their cultural sense of self beyond their <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195152791.001.0001/acprof-9780195152791">whiteness</a>. For many black Americans, Cosby mirrored back the value of black families, fathers, entertainers and communities <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781403972729">that they had been historically denied</a>. </p>
<h2>The effects of betrayal</h2>
<p>What happens when a person with such deep meaning for one’s sense of self is accused of sexual assault?</p>
<p>Trauma specialist <a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/judith-herman">Judith Herman</a> describes the trauma of sexual violence as <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/judith-l-herman/trauma-and-recovery/9780465061716/">characterized by betrayal</a>. Being assaulted by someone who is known and trusted shatters a survivor’s basic sense of self and world. </p>
<p>This traumatic betrayal ripples outward and is replicated in a diluted way for all members of a community who invested trust in the one who caused harm. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218356/original/file-20180509-34024-1rgq6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218356/original/file-20180509-34024-1rgq6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218356/original/file-20180509-34024-1rgq6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218356/original/file-20180509-34024-1rgq6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218356/original/file-20180509-34024-1rgq6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218356/original/file-20180509-34024-1rgq6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218356/original/file-20180509-34024-1rgq6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill Cosby accuser Andrea Constand, left, embraces prosecutor Kristen Feden during a news conference after Cosby was found guilty.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Matt Slocum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a cultural selfobject, Cosby’s acts of violence against individual women were also a betrayal for all those who built a part of themselves in response to the value he mirrored back to them.</p>
<p>He cannot remain a figure who mirrors ideal American cultural values and the value of black American life because his sexual violence – behavior that undeniably rejects the value of women – is incompatible with both. </p>
<p>Because cultural selfobjects shape who we are, this betrayal and loss is profound. It results in a loss of a part of our own selves. </p>
<p>Indeed, some people could argue that accusations of sexual assault have circled publicly for decades. What’s more, Cosby’s <a href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Bill%20Cosby%20-%20NAACP.pdf">criticism of black culture, black women and his tendency to blame black people</a> for the impact of systemic racism on their communities has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/arts/cosby-defends-his-remarks-about-poor-blacks-values.html">led many to feel he does not reflect their values</a>. Over the years, this has chipped away at the degree to which he continued to function as a cultural selfobject. Nonetheless, he remained a role model for many, and so <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/11/20/7246681/rape-victims-bill-cosby">the sense of loss is ongoing</a>. </p>
<h2>Responding in a constructive way</h2>
<p>The next question is, how do we respond? </p>
<p>Herman would say responding well to such a loss involves, at the very least, affirming, rather than denying, it happened. </p>
<p>As a society, acknowledging the loss that resulted from Cosby’s behavior is important because doing so also recognizes the cause. It affirms that survivors’ testimonies are worthy of belief, that <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801298004003002">sexual violence is a social harm</a> and that it is unacceptable.</p>
<p>This act of internal reckoning makes solidarity more possible with immediate survivors for whom the cost of sexual violence is considerably higher. And solidarity is key for any society wanting to stop sexual violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hilary Jerome Scarsella is affiliated with Into Account. </span></em></p>It’s not shallow to be upset by the latest scandals. Learning about the bad behavior of people we admire can harm our very sense of self.Hilary Jerome Scarsella, PhD Candidate, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/963152018-05-09T10:38:42Z2018-05-09T10:38:42ZHorror film festivals: why their best screenings never make it to multiplexes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218251/original/file-20180509-34027-m9rnck.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cut. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/filming-horror-movie-female-zombie-holding-242381503?src=AepMNA-yhm06XdTW4tWU6g-1-3">Kiselev Andrey Valerevich</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the east coast of Scotland, calendars are circled in blood: it’s time once again for Dundead, the horror film festival that descends on Dundee each May. </p>
<p>Launched eight years ago for campaigning locals who wanted a dedicated festival to rival Glasgow’s <a href="http://www.frightfest.co.uk/glasgow-2018.html">FrightFest</a>, Dundead screens various previews and even premieres. There is always a gem among these mostly shoestring productions – like last year’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3289956/">The Autopsy of Jane Doe</a>, starring Dundee’s own Brian Cox, aka the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091474/">original Hannibal Lecter</a>. </p>
<p>The buzz this year has centred on <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7026370/">Vampire Clay</a>, a Japanese film about possessed sculptures running amok in an art college. But my money is on <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4399952/">The Lodgers</a>, a slice of Irish Gothic from Brian O'Malley, a young filmmaker whose <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3148348/">Let Us Prey (2014)</a> was a surprise hit at the festival several years back. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ltIcW2xMuzs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>These new releases are always built around a carefully curated themed retrospective. Last year’s focus was Stephen King; this year it’s the late Tobe Hopper – starting with his first and finest film, <a href="http://www.dca.org.uk/whats-on/event/the-texas-chain-saw-massacre">The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)</a>.</p>
<p>It’s not only Scots that want to scream at the likes of Leatherface, of course. Horror movie festivals have become big business in recent years. There is <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/back-from-the-dead-how-horror-is-this-year-s-rising-film-trend-1.3268256">Horrorthon</a> in Dublin; <a href="http://www.abertoir.co.uk">Abertoir</a> in Aberystywth; <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/horror-on-sea-film-festival-19-28-january-2018-tickets-38033279563">Horror on Sea</a> in Southend; while London has both the <a href="https://filmfreeway.com/BritishHorrorFilmFestival">British Horror Film Festival</a> and another <a href="http://www.frightfest.co.uk/frightfest-dates-for-2018.html">FrightFest</a>. </p>
<p>Yet now that the genre finally seems to have gained mainstream acceptance, you might wonder if afficionados will need so many festivals in future. Look no further than Jordan Peele winning Best Original Screenplay for <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5052448/">Get Out</a> at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-oscars-inclusivity-riders-are-a-start-but-change-needs-to-come-from-the-ground-up-92946">Academy Awards</a> this year. Everyone rightly celebrated Peele being the first African American ever to win this category, but most people failed to realise it is also very rare for a horror film to be recognised in this way. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218248/original/file-20180509-34018-fvwc9r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jordan Peele takes Best Screenplay.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/awards">The Silence of the Lambs</a> did take the five biggest Oscars in 1992, but it is the exception to the rule: horror movies rarely even get nominated, let alone win these categories. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/">The Exorcist (1973)</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/">Jaws (1975)</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167404/">The Sixth Sense (1999)</a> are the only others to have even been nominated for Best Picture in the past. </p>
<p>Not only has Get Out now been added to that list, it was beaten by Guillermo del Torro’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/">The Shape of Water</a> – a fantasy film with horror elements. Meanwhile, three Stephen King adaptations were also released in the past year, and were all quite good. The <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1396484/">remake of It</a> performed well at the box office, while <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3748172/">Gerald’s Game</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6214928/">1922</a> must rank as two of the best films to be premiered on Netflix. </p>
<h2>Anatomy of horror</h2>
<p>But while there is bound to be some overlap between horror festivals and these mainstream box office movies, Dundead helps to illustrate some differences. Many films showing at the festival have no advertising budget and therefore fall under the radar of most mainstream cinema exhibition chains. Yet in many cases, they would not be considered serious enough for many arthouse cinema programmers either. This lack of distribution can be a big problem for people working in the genre. </p>
<p>Festivals like Dundead, with its specialist programmer Chris O’Neill, help filmmakers working on the margins of the industry, including local talent, to get their work seen on the big screen.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218252/original/file-20180509-34006-1yjm46t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aaaaargh!</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/filming-horror-movie-female-zombie-holding-242381503?src=AepMNA-yhm06XdTW4tWU6g-1-3">Joe Prachatree</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Horror films can, of course, be works of art. As a British cinema specialist, I think that Michael Powell’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054167/">Peeping Tom (1960)</a>, Jack Clayton’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055018/">The Innocents (1961)</a>, Roman Polanski’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059646/">Repulsion (1965)</a> and Nicolas Roeg’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069995/">Don’t Look Now (1973)</a> rival any film the UK has produced. </p>
<p>The best horror films reject the aesthetics, narrative codes and mores of conventional Hollywood cinema and replace them with something more innovative and subversive. Films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068833/">The Last House on the Left (1972)</a> addressed the Vietnam war long before any major studio dared to, just as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093286/">It’s Alive III (1987)</a> was years ahead of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107818/">Philadelphia (1993)</a> in confronting HIV/Aids. Meanwhile, the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/">The Blair Witch Project (1999)</a> proved that professional sheen was not a prerequisite for success. </p>
<p>Above all, a good horror movie provides a vicarious thrill. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/">Psycho (1960)</a> lets you be both Marion Crane and Norman Bates – the predator and the prey. We can confront both our darkest fears and even live out murderous fantasies, always in the knowledge it is only a movie. Put this together and you would have to conclude that horror is further from the mainstream than any other genre. </p>
<h2>Knives out?</h2>
<p>All this considered, this year’s recognition for Get Out was a double-edged sword. It is great to see a genre you love getting limelight, but being welcomed into the Academy can only lead to the genre becoming more bland and safe. </p>
<p>There are echoes of this in Dundee right now around plans for a nine-screen multiplex in the city centre. The site is right next to <a href="http://www.dca.org.uk">Dundee Contemporary Arts</a>, where Dundead takes place, and people are <a href="https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/dundee/646042/dundee-city-centre-multiplex-will-imperil-future-of-dundee-contemporary-arts/">rightly concerned</a> about the future of the centre. </p>
<p>It is hard to imagine a proper horror festival in a multiplex – even if Dundead was created in response to popular demand. Horror festivals are the antidote to Hollywood populism. Dundead attracts a crowd that includes DCA regulars and people who might not otherwise visit an independent cinema or watch a subtitled film. We all happily sit through an Italian giallo, a Korean zombie movie, or an Argentine ghost story. </p>
<p>So while it’s nice to see horror films going through a phase of mainstream critical recognition, brace yourself for some expensive turkeys in the coming months. If it’s the genre’s beating heart you are looking for, get along to horror festivals like Dundead instead. </p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.dca.org.uk/whats-on/films/dundead">Dundead</a> runs from May 10 to 13 at Dundee Contemporary Arts.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Hoyle writes programme notes for Dundee Contemporary Arts, but is not paid for this and is not an employee of the centre. </span></em></p>From Dundee to Dublin, horror spectaculars are springing up like zombies from the dead.Brian Hoyle, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859712017-10-19T02:02:53Z2017-10-19T02:02:53ZRape is a plot device in western literature, sold back to us by Hollywood<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190931/original/file-20171019-32370-vbjntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harvey Weinstein: the allegations against him cast a spotlight on the stories we prize in literature and film.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Buck/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Woody Allen said it was <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41626750">“sad”</a>. Quentin Tarantino said he needed to nurse his own<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/13/quentin-tarantino-harvey-weinstein-allegations"> “pain” and “emotions”</a> about the revelations. Oliver Stone took it further – it was not just that he gave the nod to Woody Allen’s fear-mongering about “witch hunts”, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2017/10/13/oliver-stone-defends-harvey-weinstein-not-easy-going/">adding warnings</a> about the potential emergence of a “vigilante system” – but that he claimed people needed to understand disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein was also having a difficult time: “It’s not easy what he’s going through, either.”</p>
<p>One of the things that makes these statements offensive – and yes, I confess, they are offensive on many levels – is that they figure the alleged sexual harassment, assault and rape of women as just another plot point in a narrative that is fundamentally about men.</p>
<p>And perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, because this is the narrative that has been sold by Hollywood’s dream factory for much of the last century.</p>
<p>In popular fiction - and in the many film adaptations of these notable books - rape is often deployed as a mechanical plot device to propel the hero on his narrative journey.</p>
<p>It turns a male character into a villain, or alternatively makes him heroic because he saves the hapless woman. In either case, the women are seldom characters in their own right, and if their pain is ever recognisable, then it’s invariably as a metaphor for something else.</p>
<p>And I’m not just talking about Game of Thrones, although it is an obvious case in point.</p>
<p>If you are as old as I am, then you will recollect the way in which your average English professor blithely brushed over the issue of sexual violence in his anxiety to get to the discussion about the aesthetic complexity of the composition of a sonnet.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190933/original/file-20171019-32355-hf0n5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Image from the e-book edition of Leda and the Swan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Take, for example, W.B. Yeats’s <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/leda-and-swan">Leda and the Swan</a>, which figures the “helpless breast”, the “loosening thighs” and the “white rush” of – well – this is a poem about rape.</p>
<p>Apologists often claim the rape of Leda is a metaphor for the conquest of Ireland, but this is hardly better. To put it academically, the “rape trope” or “rape as metaphor” displaces the actual, violent and traumatic act of rape. In short, there’s something deeply misogynistic in the way female rape victims continue to be cast as collateral damage on the way to something else.</p>
<h2>Sexual violence in western literature</h2>
<p>Any rudimentary survey of the history of western literature throws up an extraordinary amount of sexual violence. They are stories of victim blaming, slut shaming, sexual objectification, trivialisation and the denial and displacement of trauma.</p>
<p>And the rape scene is not just a problem that only concerns male writers with a predilection for adapting weird Greco-Roman myths. (Though there are many – if you weren’t learning about Leda and the Swan in English class then perhaps it was the rape of Persephone, Callisto, Daphne, Europa or Io … the list goes on.)</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190932/original/file-20171019-32345-12xqwx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1174&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Samuel Richardson’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/417549.Pamela_or_Virtue_Rewarded">Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded</a>, a book about the assault of a serving maid by her wealthy master, is perhaps better read as a lengthy tale about sexual harassment in the workplace – except for the fact that Pamela marries her would-be rapist; this is the “virtue rewarded” bit. In contrast the heroine of Richardson’s other well-known book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/529243.Clarissa_or_the_History_of_a_Young_Lady">Clarissa</a>, gets raped, repeatedly abducted, imprisoned, and then dies.</p>
<p>Much of the history of the novel might be seen as extended portrayal of dysfunctional relationships, the cultural product of a society in which men are propertied and powerful, women are disempowered, and the boundaries between sex and violence are blurry.</p>
<p>It’s only a hop, step and a jump to the masochistic romance narratives of Stephanie Meyer’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41865.Twilight?from_search=true">Twilight</a> or E.L. James’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10818853-fifty-shades-of-grey?from_search=true">Shades of Grey</a>.</p>
<p>Even where authors have seemingly set out to create positive representations of female sexual desire, the results can be uncanny. “I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender,” says the eponymous heroine of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10210.Jane_Eyre?from_search=true">Jane Eyre</a>, whose paramour often seems to totter on the brink of actual physical attack. Yes, Rochester gets maimed in the end, and Jane scores a fortune, and this makes them more equal. But the fact that the hero is a man who locks his mad wife in the attic needs to be questioned.</p>
<p>Then there’s Heathcliff in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6185.Wuthering_Heights?from_search=true">Wuthering Heights</a>. He hangs Isabella’s dog. Need I say more?</p>
<h2>Taking issue with oppressive power fantasies</h2>
<p>Of course, there are writers who have taken issue with oppressive power fantasies. Among the best known is Thomas Hardy’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32261.Tess_of_the_D_Urbervilles?ac=1&from_search=true">Tess of the D’Urbervilles</a>, a novel about a young woman who is raped by her employer, rejected by her husband, and turns on her abuser. Hardy draws attention to the fact that the habit of victim shaming runs so deep in our society that the victim has learnt to blame herself. “Why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk?”</p>
<p>Hardy was careful to subtitle Tess “A Pure Woman”. And his insistence that Tess remains “pure” caused great consternation to his contemporaries. Not only should such a subtitle be read as a pre-emptive strike against critics who would interpret his text otherwise. It also contains the hint of an expectation that one day the world would be different.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190935/original/file-20171019-32361-1agn1jl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roman Polanski at an event for his film, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, in 1979.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">idmb</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet, it seems that we are no further forward.</p>
<p>Tess was famously adapted for the screen by convicted child rapist Roman Polanski, who repressed the predatory and violent nature of Alec D’Urberville’s actions. (So too, do literary critics continue to debate whether Tess was “raped” or just “forcefully persuaded”.)</p>
<p>Then there’s the question of race.</p>
<p>Racial stereotypes are too often constructed at least partly out of sexual stereotypes, and sexual violence, and the figure of the “pure white woman” – and the predatory Black, Arabic or Indian male – is standard fare in the literature of the imperial “Civilising Mission”.</p>
<p>Toni Morrison’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6149.Beloved?from_search=true">Beloved</a> stands alone as a novel for the astonishing way in which it intervenes in the representation of race and sexual violence, and for the way it addresses sexual violence as a systematic part of the culture of slavery. Often described in shorthand as a novel about infanticide, Beloved depicts a society in which the female characters are victims of rape and carry the scars of its consequences. A 1998 film adaptation saw Oprah Winfrey cast as Sethe. </p>
<p>I am certainly not advocating that any of these books should not be set on the curriculum. Or even be prefaced with a “trigger warning”. Rather, there’s an urgent need for these stories to be read again.</p>
<p>Not by interpreting power as “passion” and violence as “persuasion”, or glossing over the politics of sexual violence in order to get to the “aesthetics” of a text. These books are important precisely because they are a reflection of the oppressive societies that gave rise to them. And, indeed, function as a reminder that the oppression isn’t over yet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85971/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Woody Allen said it was “sad”. Quentin Tarantino said he needed to nurse his own “pain” and “emotions” about the revelations. Oliver Stone took it further – it was not just that he gave the nod to Woody…Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor of Writing, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.