By Nicholas Stix
One of Hollywood's many charms is its habit of exercising itself, in condemning crimes that never happened, while ignoring real atrocities.
Thursday, February 04, 2021
Hollywood Feigns Outrage over a Fictional Screen Rape, 44 Years after the Non-Fact, as if It Had Really been Committed; but It’s All a Cynical Marketing Ploy
The year 2016 was early in the me-too rape and sexual harassment hoax campaign, and I missed this nontroversy at the time. Actress Jessica Chastain posted an outraged tweet about a movie made before she was born.
In 1972, Bernardo Bertolucci made a pretentious, simulated porno movie called Last Tango in Paris. It made quite a stir at the time, because it went further than previous movies made by big names.
At the time, the press reaction was so overwrought, as to make it seem as though it were a hard-core porno film with real, onscreen sex. When I saw it in West Germany during the early 1980s at the local theater in Tübingen, I thought I had to be watching a censored version, because there was no explicit sex. But no, I saw the uncut version.
If memory serves, the story is about two strangers—a handsome, middle-aged man and a pretty, bosomy, young woman—who meet in a large apartment. Suddenly, without any introduction, the man grabs up the girl, carries her to a wall, and ravishes her while standing. She finds this incredibly erotic, and he certainly doesn’t mind.
The man’s wife, a famous actress, has just committed suicide a few days earlier, and is laid out in her coffin, dressed up to go, with all the trimmings, in another room.
For several days, the man and the girl have orgiastic, impersonal sex. Paul (Marlon Brando, hereinafter, “the bum”) doesn’t want to know anything about the girl, Jeanne (Maria Schneider), not even her name.
At one point, he grabs a pound of butter, lubes up her butt, and anally rapes her. Actually, since I don’t recall her fighting him off any more than during the other sex scenes, it may not have even been a simulated rape, but I don’t intend to see “the thing” again, in order to precisely determine what happens in the scene.
But she falls in love with him. However, since he has no personal interest in her, she falls out of love with him. This now piques his personal interest, and he does fall in love with her. She wants to be rid of him, but he stalks her.
(She has a regular lover, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud.)
He follows her to a public tango dance, where they join the dancers, scandalizing the whole ritual. They sit at a table, and he cajoles her into giving him a hand-job, as a parting gift.
She gets up to leave, but he won’t let her go, so she shoots him in the gut, and he stumbles off and dies.
I surmise that Bertolucci, assuming I’m not projecting grand meanings onto nothingness, wanted to say that sex without love is a dead-end which, taken to obsessive pursuit, will result in death. I called it an epitaph for the budding sexual revolution.
Of course, there was no need to make a porno movie, if that’s what the director sought to say. Rather, it was a cynical move for a big-name director and the world’s most idolized movie star to make a porno movie. People paid to see it, because of the porno, not the meditations on sex, love, and death, which few people got out of it.
“The thing” had two things going for it. Its star, the bum, was the world’s most talented actor. He squandered much of his talent, but basically just playing himself here, he still managed to be entertaining.
And it had a virtuoso score by Gato Barbieri.
“They conspired to basically rape [Maria Schneider’s character] and she didn’t know that that was going to happen, and he said he didn’t want her to act humiliated, he wanted her to be humiliated,” Chastain continued.
“In a recently surfaced interview, Director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted to La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2013 that he and Brando conspired to use butter as a lubricant for the rape scene, but chose not to tell lead actress Schneider about the idea.
“‘So if that in fact is the case, I think that’s wrong and I think we need to reexamine how we look at that film and perhaps it needs to be defined as something else and not an excellent piece of film making because it’s a situation where a woman was victimized and then it was recorded and she was 19 and he was 48,’ Chastain said.”
There was no rape. Did Schneider try to fight off the bum, regarding the butter? I can’t recall, the discussions of the nontroversy since 2016 didn’t say so, and the late Schneider didn’t complain at the time. But there still couldn’t be any legitimate complaint about a rape that never happened. And the age difference between the performers was irrelevant, but points to how desperate Jessica Chastain was to fabricate an issue.
Oh, but the “conspiracy” wasn’t even about a rape that never happened, but about the use of butter, as opposed to say, Crisco, in the rape that never happened!
So, what’s really going on? First and foremost, Jessica Chastain had a new movie coming out, and was ruthlessly exploiting a 44-year-old, simulated porno movie, in order to market it. And the matriarchal media were promoting to death the me-too hoax, because they are dominated by feminists, and most of the female shakedown artists were themselves in the media.
It was a porno movie, for crying out loud, albeit a simulated one. Anyone claiming to be outraged that a simulated porno movie was pornographic, is as phony as a three-dollar bill.
An actor, who also expressed his outrage (a Chris Evans, cited in the article) was just looking to stay on the good side of the feminazis.
I deal with real rapes a great deal in my work, yet Hollywood never complains about them. The racist kidnapping-gang-rape-torture-murder, by seven blacks—two still at large—of White sweethearts Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, on January 6-7, 2007, in Knoxville, TN, which I dubbed The Knoxville Horror.
The savage, racist, rape-torture-murder of White TV news anchorwoman Anne Pressly in Little Rock, AR, by Curtis Lavelle Vance, on the night of October 19-20th 2008, with Pressly succumbing to her wounds on October 25th.
The racist rape-torture-murder, by four black Marines, of USMC Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak, and his black bride, Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, on October 15, 2008, in Winchester, CA, which I dubbed “The Winchester Atrocity.”
Hollywood has never reacted with outrage over any black-on-White atrocities, with or without rape being perpetrated. Actually, it is in the habit of changing black perpetrators into Whites, as it did, for instance, in a TV movie about the murder-rape (likely in that order) of White Kitty Genovese by black serial murderer-rapist, Winston Mosely, on March 13, 1964, in Kew Gardens, Queens (as I learned via my friend and partner-in-crime, David in TN), or any number of black-on-White and black-on-Asian crimes depicted on Dick Wolf’s perennial hit series, Law & Order, with the races switched.
Tinseltown’s moral dudgeon is always fake. Twasn’t always so, but it’s been that way for a very long time.
“I Think That’s Wrong”: Jessica Chastain Explains Her 'Sick' Last Tango in Paris Tweet
By Nicole Sands
Updated December 05, 2016 09:07 A.M.
[People]
FB Tweet
Jessica Chastain is doing everything in her power to shed light on the horrifying revelation surrounding The Last Tango in Paris, where the director revealed that the film’s infamous butter rape scene was not consensual with the lead actress.
“Well it came out in the news yesterday The Last Tango in Paris, there’s a quote from the director where he said he conspired with [Marlon] Brando [about] the famous scene with butter,” Chastain told PEOPLE on the red carpet premiere for Miss Sloane on Saturday.
“They conspired to basically rape [Maria Schneider’s character] and she didn’t know that that was going to happen, and he said he didn’t want her to act humiliated, he wanted her to be humiliated,” Chastain continued.
In a recently surfaced interview, Director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted to La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2013 that he and Brando conspired to use butter as a lubricant for the rape scene, but chose not to tell lead actress Schneider about the idea.
RELATED VIDEO: Jessica Chastain Fights Against Oversexualizing Women In Hollywood
The Oscar-nominated actress says it will change the way she views the film — and she thinks the film community at large should also reexamine it.
“So if that in fact is the case, I think that’s wrong and I think we need to reexamine how we look at that film and perhaps it needs to be defined as something else and not an excellent piece of film making because it’s a situation where a woman was victimized and then it was recorded and she was 19 and he was 48,” Chastain said.
Immediately after the news broke Saturday, Chastain took to Twitter express her disgust.
“To all the people that love this film, you’re watching a 19 year old get raped by a 48 year old man,” the Oscar nominee tweeted. “The director planned her attack. I feel sick.”
Chastain wasn’t the only star who was disgusted by the revelation — Captain America star Chris Evans also said he felt “rage” after reading about the interview.
–With reporting by Mabel Martinez
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4 comments:
Chastain's complaint is mainly about the age difference--and no doubt-- most women will not entertain thoughts of sex with a man 30 years older than they are.Mixed race sex is fine now,gay sex is condoned,but same race sex with a man a generation older "is disgusting"(unless she gets money for it).
I don't understand the thought process.The "father figure" argument doesn't make sense--if he isn't your father.This is the last discrimination in the USA--I think other countries are less "hung up" on age.
But here,it's "The next to Last Taboo".
--GRA
jerry pdx
Critics heaped effusive praise on Last Tango but the only things I remember about the movie was being bored out of my mind and the butter scene. According to what I heard it was some kind of "erotic" rape scene but I don't remember the woman putting up any kind of resistance. It's been a while though and I'm tempted to re watch to see if I missed something but there have been so many movies critics praised to high heaven that turned out to be terrible and so many they panned but were actually quite good, I hate to waste the time. Siskel & Ebert thought it was the greatest movie ever made, but then again they also thought Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was one of the top 10 movies ever made.
I did appreciate Brando's acting but not sure about his politics. His hi jinks at the Academy Awards with the Indian girl pretty much deep sixed any possibility of a special award and who presentation but he obviously didn't care. I do recall him posing with Black Panthers once which does not speak well of him and but I don't remember him being particularly outspoken otherwise. You could look at what he did as a precursor to today's Academy Awards where virtue signaling to racist blacks has become standard but I have to wonder if that's what he really intended to happen. Maybe, who knows, he's dead now but it's unfortunately that part of his legacy is helping to pave the way for the politicization of the Academy Awards.
jerry pdx
Well, it can be OK when it's a celebrity male 30 yrs. older, or more. I remember a quote from an ex of Brando's: "He attracts women like a feces attracts flies" ha ha, sounds like she was a little bitter. But yeah, one of his other exes described being with Brando even in his elder years, the size of a small house and barely any hair left to speak of, young women were constantly hitting on him, slipping their numbers into his jacket pocket and offering him sexual favors on the spot. Not sure how much he imbibed, he wasn't known for being a particularly prolific lothario and had odd taste in women which produced tragedy prone children. There are rumors of being bisexual and even had an affair with Richard Pryor, of all people. Not sure the truth of that but I recall some photos with him and another guy that were pretty damning. Hollywood was always a little uncomfortable with him being the "greatest actor of his generation", which was fine, those arrogant stuffed shirts take themselves way too seriously.
Hollywood is not real life--neither is Washington D.C.
But women everywhere will pretend to like someone for money and/or fame.But those are the only times you see a 25 year old with a 55 year old.
--GRA
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