This essay, I suspect, is far more interesting than the movie itself. So I will stop here and not see the movie.

Sorry about my tone, but would like to know what you think of Rizov' quiz Kim, and if you'd care to answer the four questions. I did, and not in a jokey way: A. is a script fix that I could realistically imagine an savvy Producer ordering, even as a pick-up/re-shoot to cover the bases (the button and the in-character come back; a third hit or payoff would only be necessary for the hearing impaired).

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/007418.html

Great analysis - far more insightful than anything else I've read thus far.

Good analysis, but the tail is wagging the dog if we don't try to understand why a huge population of female and male Brandi's are roaming the earth, medicated competing for hook ups and what that does to the dog and to the rest of us on the tail, although Kim does key the answer to teaching personal responsiblity.

Awesomepost, Kim...and i agree with all of your assertions.

I too was particularly befuddled by the SXSW screening reaction in the same way: no one even considered the scene to be date rape. Usally there's some talk about a scene that sticks out like that at various parties or over coffee, etc. But at the fest, I never heard anything like that. And, people lpaughed really hard during it which apparently isn't happening in theaters. Ah well.

Having read all the histrionics and parroting of "IT'S DATE RAPE!!" that you borught up, all I can think of yet again is how lazy some film writers are. It's incredibly lazy and downright unprofessional to judge a film and make such a strong accusation about it based on the trailer. But then to throw out something as serious as "date rape" and then not even have the guts to at least see the movie and reaffirm that or correct yourself is bad and irresponsible writing.

This whole faux-brouhaha seems to me like one person jumped on this bandwagon and then others followed suit without doing the homework.

The lengthy discussion of this over at HuffPost eventually split between those (men) who kept screaming "It's just a movie!" and everyone else who either knew or didn't care that Brandi had brought herself to that point when they replied that it's wrong to have sex with someone who's that drunk, period.

No one that drunk can offer informed consent, so having sex with them is still, therefore, rape, and it doesn't matter whether they're screaming at you to stop or keep going.

It's pretty sad when the concept of "rape" has slipped to the point that it exists only when someone eventually presses charges.

The thing is, Rudy, this is exactly why the concept of "date rape," both legally and ethically, is one big gray area and not the black-and-white issue you (and many feminists) would like it to be.

You say "everyone else who either knew or didn't care that Brandi had brought herself to that point when they replied that it's wrong to have sex with someone who's that drunk, period."

There's a difference between "wrong" and what legally defines "rape" from state-to-state, and date rape is even harder to define clearly. For instance, what objective conditions would you realistically apply to this? Something like, "It shall be illegal for one person to instigate sexual acts with another if the other party is:

1) Unconscious
2) Has vomited within the past hour
3) Is currently vomiting
4) Has a blood alchohol level greater than (what?)

I'm not being facetious here. I'm asking you what purely objective criteria you think it's reasonable to expect a man to meet before having sex with a woman he's on a date (or at a party, or whatever) with who's been consuming drugs, alcohol, or some combination thereof. Should men get a Breathalyzer, and carry along a flip cam to record the woman breathing into it, along with the level it shows, and perhaps also record her consent to sex, just to be on the safe side?

Because I've got to tell you, I think you'd be really hard-pressed to find an adult of within your extended social circle who could honestly say they haven't at least once in their lives had a bit too much -- or a lot too much -- to drink and ended up having sex with someone they maybe wouldn't have if they were completely sober. Jesus, I know I have. Waking up the morning after thinking, "Damn, I wish I hadn't done that," or "Shit! I didn't use birth control!" doesn't mean that the other person did something against my will, as my "will" was at that particular point in time.

I'd also put to you the question I asked in my column: Your argument is that having sex with someone who's "that drunk" is wrong, period. So let's flip things around, and say that it's the guy who's had more to drink than the chick, and therefore she should be responsible, by your logic, for determining whether they have sex, regardless of what he says or does. So let's say they do have sex, and she gets pregnant as a result. Would you then say that the man, because he was "too drunk" to consent to sex, should therefore not be held responsible for the ensuing child (assuming she doesn't abort) and liable to pay child support to that child until he or she is 21? Or should be be absolved from responsibility because he was not (of his own doing) in a mental state to make an informed consent as to whether he wanted to have sex, or to consider what the consequences of that sex might be? Or would you say, too bad for him, he made a bad choice and this is the consequence.

It's not about it being "rape" only when someone presses charges. Rape is rape objectively, whether someone presses charges or not. What I'm asking is that you define more clearly what you see is date rape -- objective criteria, and how you would propose that a man determine whether a woman is in a legally medical condition to make informed consent to have sex, and further, how you would propose that a man document everything in case she still decides to press date rape charges and he ends up having to defend himself in court.

This is what sex and sexuality is being reduced to. Oh, and if you haven't, go watch Jason Reitman's brilliant short film, "Consent." It was sadly prophetic.

http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/consent/

well, first of all, there is no such thing as 'date rape', rape is rape is rape. the 'date rape' term implies the complicity of the woman, because she knows her rapist and has usually willingly engaged in some form of intimacy with her rapist; there's no such term as 'marriage rape' or even 'stranger rape', 'date rape' is a bogus term. people aren't prosecuted for 'date rape', they are prosecuted for 'forcible rape' or whatever the legal term for sexual assault is in your area, as far as i'm aware.

it not only boils down to consent, but intent. if i'm not mistaken, because i haven't seen 'o&r' yet i don't feel in a position to offer an informed opinion, but from what i gather, rogen's character is NOT drunk/drugged into oblivion and farris' character IS, and the issue of consent is hazy.

many people have engaged in drunken sex where both people are in a fumbling stupor and if they willingly have sex there's no way that's rape. but if a woman (and whether or not she is promiscuous is completely irrelevant) is too wasted or even unconscious to know what she is doing and not able give her consent to a man who is NOT drunk/drugged, there's a problem. unless a clear invitation has been extended, a man who has his wits about him should never, ever have sex with an unconscious or nearly unconscious women, it's simple common sense and not exactly rocket science. the vast majority of men would never even consider doing such a thing, because deep down they know it's creepy and wrong.

as for the movie, from the looks of the redband trailer it looks deliciously offensive and designed to shock and make you cringe while you laugh - and rogan's character is obviously deeply troubled and delusional - so even if he technically does commit rape, which from the clip of the scene in the trailer appears unclear, esp. as ferris 'comes to' long enough to chastise him for stopping, so be it. it is, after all, just a movie.

that's really good stuff in those last two comments. just want to add how much a disturbed/unexamined (hey, it's comedy, not drama) relationship Ronnie is living under with his mother which informs this sequence of scenes. Like a lot of people, I liked the guts of the movie, but feel like Hill flew alone on a wing and a prayer, like he needed more loving hands and eyes after he pitched it to De Line who brought it to Warner who said go. It's not a dark/black comedy, it's a broad comedy with serious undertones, which is better than an Apatovian light comedy with sweet undertones, but it could have been a darker comedy with sharper undertones.

T Holly,

Excellent point about Ronnie's mother and how living with her has to have vastly informed his perception of women, male/female relationships, and probably sex as well. She's an alcoholic who drinks herself into a stupor, presumably night after night, as the routine of her passing out on the floor and him tenderly covering her up seems to be a long-standing one. She talks about having had sex with all Ronnie's high school friends. How many times in his life has Ronnie inadvertantly seen his mother engaged in sexual situations while totally shit-faced? Probably a lot.

And Leah, I'd say you're correct in that Brandi is clearly more intoxicated than Ronnie. However, we also just saw him downing drinks and shots on top of the clonazepam. Brandi had MORE, yes, but that doesn't mean that Ronnie was even in a state to legally drive home. Just because we see him helping the stumbling Brandi into the house doesn't mean he's not also had enough drug and drink to compromise his own decision-making ability. I'd buy far more any outrage over the scene if, say, we were shown Ronnie clearly NOT drinking (maybe pouring his drink on the floor under the table or into a decorative plant or something) while encouraging Brandi to drink, and drink, and drink, and maybe slipping the pills into her drink, or even him encouraging her to take several of them. I agree that he's "more" sober than she is by the time they're in bed, but how much more sober, we have no way of knowing. Hence, the vagueness of the scene. And then the moment when she wakes up and yells at him to keep going, which makes us question our assumption that she's passed-out drunk.

Lastly, Leah, I agree that "promiscuity" is completely irrelevant to whether a woman is raped. I loathe the term promiscuous anyhow, as it's almost always applied to women and not men, and is a holdover of the ridiculous double-standard that men should be free to engage in (and enjoy) all the sex they want, while the only women who do so are sluts and prostititutes. Utter bullshit.

What I am arguing, though, is that women AND men have a responsibility to themselves NOT to deliberately get so shit-faced drunk (or drugged) they can't make an informed decision to begin with. And that women have a responsibility to themselves to be in a condition to make their own decisions, and not put it on the guy they're with to make the determination of whether they've had too much to consent, even if they're saying "yes" or aggressively pursuing sex.

I think there needs to be more studying of what's going on with young women generally that there's such a prevalence of drinking to excess for the purpose of having sex with equally drunken frat boys. It's almost like it's an obligatory thing: Oh, it's the weekend, I've got to dress up and then get shit-faced drunk and have sex. Not that there wasn't some of that back when I was in college, but jiminy, it sure seems WAY more prevalent now.

I love the Oxford Film Fest and SXSW, but man, I have been SHOCKED by some of the behavior I've seen in those towns by the college girls. They gussy themselves up in skimpy, sparkly dresses and stiletto heels, pile on the makeup, fix their hair -- seriously, the Square in Oxford looks, at the start of a given Friday or Saturday night like there's a major movie premiere or something going on there, the way these girls are dressed up. By the time the bars close, these same girls are literally falling-down drunk, being carried over the shoulders of frat boys, their short skirts riding high and thongs exposed for all the world to see. There's a pack of drunken girls standing over by the courthouse at 2AM, looking like sex workers in a red light district displaying themselves for customers. I have to tell you, I find the Square in Oxford on weekends, and 6th Street in Austin, and the bar drags in most college towns, to be thoroughly disgusting displays of (presumably otherwise intelligent) young women and men deliberatly drinking to puking-and-passing-out excess, weekend after weekend. And it's not funny, it's stupid and dangerous. But maybe I'm just getting old.

As an aside, this is exactly why sex positive clubs forbid illegal drug use and often limit the use of alchohol as well -- they want their members to be making informed consent as to the sex they're choosing to have, and they don't want some guy "encouraging" his reluctant wife or girlfriend to participate by lowering her inhibitions through drugs or drink. And they don't want to be sued by some chick claiming she had too much to drink and was gang-raped in the group sex room, or forced by her husband to have sex with another guy (or woman) or what have you. Keeping it sober reduces the liability of the club to such claims, and most of them know that.

Since I've never had enough alcohol to affect my balance, let alone my judgment, I always thought that a guy who was so drunk that he didn't know what he was doing would probably be too drunk to attain an erection. Your mileage may vary, however...yet if he did manage to pull that off, as well as an orgasm, while completely oblivious, then I'd say he still has no excuse to avoid any of the consequences. He, too, should have known better.

But the fratboys will argue until doomsday that drunken sex is perfectly okay as long as women continue to say that it's perfectly okay with them, too. The worst possible example, as far as I know, came up in "The Lost Children of Rockdale County", when a 12 year-old girl who snuck out to go to a party got so drunk she passed out. This quote is what blew me away: "The next thing I know, I wake up and I'm in a room, and I don't have my pants on and- so, I mean, I really couldn't call it rape because, you know, I put myself in that position in the first place. And I was only 12 years old, and I shouldn't have been out past that time anyway. And I shouldn't have been drinking or none of that. But you know, I was in a blackout, so I was going along with it. I just didn't know it." (from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/georgia/etc/script.html) She's quibbling about whether she'd even been raped!

Doh!

Human sexuality is never going to be explained Rudy, she's not quibbling, she's trying to figure out her personal responsibility.

Or Kim, to be more general about it and to express what I saw --

The pinnacle is the dinner scene. Ronnie is square, and sober, as the scene shifts back and forth between Brandi's intoxication and Ronnie's cluelessness and lack of power-of-observation; stripped of his abiltity to observe and report back to self. I wish I could say he likes guns because he'd get picked off without them if he were an animal in the wild, but I don't want to argue it.

I wrote a piece on this last week, basically saying that 'yes, it's date rape, but it makes sense in the context of the characters and the film'. IE - it's rape, Ronnie's a bastard, but the movie does not lionize him and if audiences find his actions not immoral than that's their fault. One thing that crossed my mind later was the things that were more or less taken for granted.

I'm speaking specifically of the idea that 'Melanie is already established as a slut so it's ok'. However offensive that is on its face, the film doesn't actually state that Melanie sleeps around in the film. If I recall, the only other time she is shown engaging in sexual behavior is towards the end of the film, long after the would-be date rape scene. That viewers are quick to assume that Anna Faris's character is portrayed as slutty right off the bat, purely because of her tight-fitting outfit and extreme valley girl vocabulary, says much about the character of those making such statements.

Anyway, my original rant is here if you want it -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson/more-thoughts-on-observe_b_185840.html

And though this may reveal me as a gamer geek for checking out Penny Arcade on a daily basis, I can't help but think it's fitting that this ran today: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/4/17

(And please don't skip over his comments down at the bottom of the "News" section: "I have since been told that Chip and Dale are almost always played by women. This has added a new layer to the experience.")

Doh, you guys, it's one step forward, two steps back with you. There's a perspective settling in that it's accepted that no one's mind is changed, so I tried this:

If it makes you feel better Marilyn, Vadim neglects to tell you that part of the funny stuff in the movie before the funny stuff that happens in the bed, happens at the dinner scene before it, when Ronnie displays mindbending blindness to Brandi's deteriorating condition/increasing toxicity. It's all tied to Ronnie's home condition where he lives in a deranged relationship with his funny alcoholic mom (it's complicated). Agreed the whole thing falls short of working, and you can wait for it to come out on DVD, where I'm hoping they do a funny post mortem, what went wrong, "making of" DVD extra, where Hill talks about, among other things, why it would have been so wrong to show Ronnie negotiating to have sex with Brandi and so out of context to show Brandi rallying to put the moves on Ronnie and why it had to be the way it was, which is hardly any different than the way it is in pornography, which is what I think Hill is trying to say: welcome to sex, porn and girls gone wild, everyone's numb and a machine. But the real deal on the politics is over here:

(i.e. here, where you are, not over there where I was:)

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/007418.html

Thanks, T. Holly, for that link. Yet another scary discussion.

Vadim says "Now, why didn't it occur to me this would strike most people as date rape? Mainly because Brandi isn't a real person." And yet Kim said she's seen plenty of Brandis wobbling down the streets of Austin on your average Saturday night. Vadim then wonders why it was this act that set people off, and not the scene of Ronnie killing drug dealers, but he misses the point: fantasy avengers aren't bumping off drug dealers, but fantasy Casanovas are committing "date" rape with surprising regularity.

Rape is real, in other words, and that's why it caught the attention of everyone except the jaded masses at SXSW. Another example? Ask anyone who read "Watchmen" if they remember the most violent scene, and most will probably say it was when Rorschach broke a guy's finger. There were plenty of folks dispatched in fairly gruesome ways, but it's the broken finger that sticks out (err...) because it's so easily imaginable.

As for some of the other posters over there: "...its awesome to see realistic, non predictable, thought provoking scenes. Great movie!"

Um, yeah.

I'm trying to tell you why. It's because Ronnie's mother is a fall down drunk and his best friend and protector (and abuser), and he doesn't process what Brandi's doing. Girls are like this, you kiss their vomit lips, you put them in bed and if they're not your mother, you go all the way. That's the funny thru-line of the story: Ronnie's cluelessness.

catching up on this thread, i would say that while i'm all for teaching our young girls/women to respect themselves and their bodies, and that getting fall-down drunk so that you are not in control of yourself is a stupid and dangerous thing to do, that's not going to solve the problem, it is simply shifting responsibility yet again to women.

this is the time-tested and ONLY way to proactively prevent rape: teach boys from a young age that they do not have a 'right' to sex, to respect women as autonomous individuals with every right to say no at any time, and that they should never, ever engage in a sexual act with a woman unless she gives her clear consent, which means if she is too drunk or out of it to know what she is doing, hands off. simple, commonsense, clear-cut. if this is how boys were raised, the need for this entire discussion would be greatly diminished.

You'd have more success exposing the consequences and outcomes and asking for personal responsibility than teaching expectations and options, because those limitless.

The problem with focusing with consequences and outcomes is that potential rapists will only think in terms of "What are my chances of getting caught?" If the chances are low, they'll go for it.

Teaching them to treat a girl the same as they'd treat one of the guys might yield a more enlightened outcome...unless they way they'd treat their brethren is reminiscent of a Dave Chappelle routine involving weed and carrots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvg-ug9CvE

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