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Observe and Revolt

 Dana, I saw Observe and Report this weekend and I must say, I found the rape scene—in which Seth Rogen's sad-sack security guard has sex with Anna Faris's makeup counter floozy while she's passed out—to be just another stomach-turning plot point in a movie consisting of several similarly revolting scenes. If you are to take the film and its characters seriously, which perhaps is beside the point, Rogen's cop not only sexually assaults Faris but basically stalks her, and the movie ends with him publicly slut-shaming her.

Maybe I'll buy that the movie is failed satire, and certainly director Jody Hill's interview with the Onion's AV Club (via Majikthise) shows that he has a totally muddled vision of the rape scene and its context:

AVC: In the Times piece, they describe the scene you’re talking about as Seth Rogen’s character forcing himself on Anna Faris. Is that how you perceived that scene?

JH: [Pause.] I dunno. I’ve always kind of liked scenes that you talk about how fucked-up they are. I would have been happy without any dialogue in that scene. I wanted to show them just having sex and her passed out, and I thought that would have been funnier. But I think I have a darker sense of humor than most people. So at the end, [Faris’character] is okay with it. [Laughs.] And that was like, “I’ll shoot it both ways.” So I actually shot it both ways. I just kept the camera rolling. There’s like a line that’s “We’re okay laughing, and you’re pushing the envelope.” But you’re not really pushing the envelope until you cross that line where a lot of people don’t go along with you. I tried to do it in a few scenes in this movie, where a lot of people aren’t going to go along with the film or with what we’re trying to do.Hopefully that means we’re actually pushing the envelope. [Laughs.] You know what I mean by that? I think if you’re really pushing the envelope, you have to not include everybody, if that makes sense. Or else it’s not really pushing the envelope.

As blogger Majikthise points out, "[Hill's] reply seems to confirm my theory that Faris' 'motherfucker' line is a cop out—a ploy contrived to keep the scene 'funny' instead of taking it to an even darker place." And that's the crux of the problem with this movie: It tried to hedge its bets between dark comedy and just dark, and managed to accomplish neither. It's as if Will Ferrell tried to make a Todd Solondz movie—Hill went for cheap laughs rather than depth or coherence of vision.

Observe ... and Consent?

Now that my wildly ambivalent review of the disturbing new comedy Observe and Report is up, I can address that little matter of date rape in greater detail here. Is it true that Seth Rogen’s character Ronnie, a bipolar mall security guard, forces himself on drunk and drugged cosmetics clerk Brandi (Anna Faris) against her will? On New York magazine’s Vulture blog yesterday, Dan Kois makes a case for the prosecution. In a New York Times profile of the director Jody Hill, Dave Itzkoff disagrees, noting that before the scene is over Faris’ character “indicates that she had given her consent” (I love the Times-ian delicacy of that paraphrase. What she actually says is “Why are you stopping, motherfucker?” And she says it from the perch of a pillow stained with her own vomit.)

There are a lot of things in Observe and Report to feel morally icky about, but for me, this scene didn’t number among them. In fact, it probably made for the biggest laugh in a movie that often had me staring at the screen in slack-jawed dismay. By the rules of this movie’s crude, vapid and ultraviolent world—a world that the movie is (I think) a not-entirely-successful attempt to satirize—Ronnie’s hesitation when he notices his partner is passed out, and her slurred command for him to keep going, constitute a moment of tenderness between the two of them. And when what looks like a creepy sexual assault suddenly becomes a declaration of female agency (when she tells him to keep going, Ronnie apologizes and deferentially complies), it’s the reversal that makes it funny.

Remember the controversy over the use of the term “retard” in last summer’s far funnier comedy Tropic Thunder? My stance on both gags is the same: When a character in a satire engages in bad behavior, it’s not fair to disregard the satire and condemn the simple fact that said behavior is being represented. I’m hoping a few of you will see the movie this weekend and tell me what you think.