I completely understand Hollywood’s creative aspect, and the need to explore different topics and themes for movies for entertainment and expressive purposes. However, how many times are we going to lighten up pedophillia for creativity’s sake? Are we going to continue to have the helpless middle-aged man be the victim of some young girl’s allure?
I wanted start this off by talking about the movie American Beauty, which came out in 1999. I personally had never seen it until recently, and even though I knew of it’s terrific ratings and awards (it even received an Oscar for best picture), I could never get past the plot. The story is a satire about a man, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) who is going through a midlife crisis, and begins to become enamored with his teenage daughter’s friend, Angela (Mena Suvari).
American Beauty turned out to be all I expected. It was entertaining and unconventional. What I realized after I watched American Beauty was that although Lester’s obsession with his daughter’s friend Angela (Mena Suvari) is creepy and disgusting in more ways than one, the film depicts him as a man who is simply crushing on a girl. Angela is shown as some powerful seductress who is actually influencing him.
It bothered me that Lester is seen as this weak-willed person that is succumbing to this teenage girl’s hold over him. I was also bothered that Angela is seemingly enjoying the attention, and encouraging Lester to chase her. But hey, it’s only a movie, right?
Or is it really?
What prompted me to write this editorial was actually not American Beauty, but a new film coming out this summer called Irrational Man. Directed by Woody Allen, Irrational Man appears to a similar story to American Beauty in the sense that it is again about a grown man having a midlife crisis, whose life is filled with purpose and light because he becomes infatuated with a younger girl, who is his student in this case.
There isn’t much information out about this movie yet, but the short description on IMDB alone tells me that we will be looking at a weak, defenseless man enticed by his student, like she’s some sort of siren.
I worry about the impact movies like this have on our society in general. You’ve all heard of the “she was asking for it” or “she wanted it” excuses in cases of sexual assault towards women, which seem ridiculous. But movies like this change the perspective and simultaneously turn our empathies towards the predator of the story while taking away the innocence of the girl. Consequently, we begin to question who was taking advantage of who in the situation?
From Lolita to Liberal Arts and from American Beauty to Irrational Man, what is Hollywood’s obsession with these scandalous relationships? And more importantly, why is it that despite the stereotype of young girls being clueless and naïve in your popular teen movies like Mean Girls or John Tucker Must Die,these movies portray them as the ones who are giving life to these men and and making them lose all of their sensibility? And how does that affect people’s perceptions of these relationships when they occur in real life? Is it possible that a real life predator could be seen as a hopeless man due to films like these?
If Hollywood is going to tell this story, it should be told both ways. It’s important that we see the older man in the movie for who they really are, which is predator taking advantage of a younger girl. I truly believe that it’s possible and necessary to produce equally entertaining films that portray this relationship in a more realistic light.
