ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

So, the recently resurfaced Mormon sex slave scandal wherein it was claimed that a busty beauty queen subdued and raped a 6’4″ male Mormon missionary got me thinking about some films I had the chance to see recently, Hard Candy (2005) and Teeth (2007). Each of these films centers around a woman who stalks a man with the intention of inflicting a very violent sexual crime on him, and even more interesting, each of these films manages to make the audience root for this to happen (or at the very least, feel ambiguous about it). What follows is an analysis and discussion of these movies laden with spoilers, so if you want to see either of them and you have not yet, you might not want to read on.

HARD CANDY [2005]

The film opens on a flirtatious Internet chatroom session between a 14 year-old girl and an older man in his 30s. They make plans to meet at a local coffee shop where it’s established that Hayley (Juno‘s Ellen Page) is a very, very youthful and energetic little tease who is flattered to have the attentions of an attractive older man and Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a handsome and affluent photographer, is very, very into that. They go back to Jeff’s house, play music, drink screwdrivers, and just as Hayley takes her top off and begins to dance, Jeff suddenly blacks out.

Upon waking up, Jeff finds himself bound to a chair with Hayley looking over him, her demeanor now completely changed. Turns out Hayley (if that’s even her real name) was on a mission. She knew that Jeff was a habitual pedophile who only sought the attentions of young teenage girls on the Internet, and she suspects him of being involved in the disappearance of a girl named Donna Mauer. Internet pedophiles may fear running into Chris Hanson, but a victim-turned-predator like Hayley could only exist in their nightmares. After a search of Jeff’s house eventually turns up his illegal child pornography stash and a picture of Donna Mauer, Hayley decides to wreak vigilante justice on Jeff in the form of castration.

The dialogue between Jeff and Hayley is intense, and both actors have rightly been praised for their performances. Hayley is ultimately the good guy (if there is a good guy in all this), but throughout the movie she behaves and talks like the villain. Likewise by the end of it, Jeff admits to being the bad guy, but he is so likable, charming and desperate in his situation that you can’t help but feel sorry for him. The castration scene takes up a good chunk of the movie, and Jeff cycles through every conceivable excuse to get out of it. He offers to turn himself in to the police. He tries to convince Hayley that going through with it will forever impact her sex life for the negative, and she should think of herself. He tells her that he himself was sexually abused as a child by a cruel aunt. Finally he resorts to wildly screaming and begging, all to no avail: Hayley says she’s still going to castrate him and appears to carry it out.

When Hayley finishes and leaves the room, Jeff manages to break free only to discover that she didn’t actually castrate him; he was too numb to tell, but she only pretended to. The torture was all psychological. By the end of the movie, Jeff admits to being involved in the Donna Mauer murder and Hayley is able to manipulate him into committing suicide. She then sneaks out of the house and slips away into the woods, mission accomplished.

It’s interesting to note that while Hard Candy is thematically dark and has gruesome implied acts of violence, it is not a gory film. No nudity is ever shown and there is very little swearing and blood. The film plays out as a discussion between a pedophile and a would-be victim with no pornography or actual pedophilia ever being shown.

TEETH [2007]

Teeth tells us the story of a high school girl named Dawn O’Keefe (Jess Weixler), a religious abstinence advocate who speaks to other teens about saving sex for marriage, but Dawn is secretly unsure of her own sexuality and suspects there is something different about her “down there.” Dawn’s life has other troubles as well. Her mother is terminally ill, her stepfather is a good but weak-willed man, and her psychotic, erotically charged stepbrother (John Hensley) has a disturbing crush on her. She begins dating another boy from the abstinence group, Tobey (Hale Appleman), and one day they come pretty close to having sex when Dawn wants to stop. Tobey decides he would rather finish it whether she likes it or not and starts to rape her. Bad move on Tobey’s part. It turns out Dawn’s vagina has teeth in it, and her vagina dentata react instinctively to the rape, leaving him with one less penis. Tobey runs off screaming, and Dawn is traumatized by the rape and confused by what happened.

The movie follows Dawn’s attempts to determine what’s “wrong” with her, and other victims crop up along the way. A gynecologist who sexually assaults her and loses four fingers for it, a boy who manipulates her into having sex with him to win a bet because she’s “the abstinence girl” (last sex bet he’ll ever win!). When Dawn’s stepbrother decides he would rather have sex with his girlfriend than call an ambulance for his dying stepmother, resulting in the premature death of Dawn’s mother, Dawn decides he needs to be taught a lesson. She easily seduces her stepbrother thanks to his long-running obsession with her, and well… the rest (of his penis) is history.

As dark comedies go, Teeth was well-reviewed by most critics, and it manages to make it’s points (no pun intended) while still injecting gruesome humor into the situations. Contrary toHard Candy, which was relatively clean in the blood and gore department, Teeth is not even close and doesn’t try to be. It’s a bloody comedy and bloody business.

Girls Can Do It But Boys Can’t… ?

There have been some complaints from men about these movies, particularly Teeth. If a movie were made about a man who was doing something to violently mutilate female sex organs, it would be considered outrageous, appalling, misogynist, etc. Sure, there have been movies where men carry out violent sex acts on women, but in those cases the men are almost always the villains and the audience is meant to hate them for it. So why is it okay to make movies where girls do it to men and we cheer for them?

The first thing is, in order to make the audience root for sexual violence, there has to be a sense that the person it’s being done to deserves it. Look at the victims in these movies: a pedophile/accomplice to kidnapping and murder, a young rapist, a gynecologist who commits sexual assault, and a few womanizing teenage boys (one of whom was practically guilty of murder). What kind of female victims who deserve it would you use? Sure, womencan be sexual predators and rapists, but they only commit 3-4% of sex crimes in the US, and that number includes women who commit sex crimes in conjunction with a male partner. That’s a pretty pathetically small number. While I think female sexual predators are every bit as despicable as their male counterparts, a scriptwriter would really have to reach to have a male protagonist run into more than one female sexual predator who deserved punishing.

Likewise, women are less likely to commit violent crime, and women who do commit sex crimes are less likely to use violent means (guns, weapons, kidnapping, etc.) than their male counterparts. The end result may be the same but their methods are more manipulation and seduction, less blunt force, so people end up hating them less. It’s hard to want to see a woman get her just desserts through violence when women are seldom violent to begin with.

The final appeal of these movies (and why it wouldn’t work the other way) lies in the fact that women are inherently weaker than men. I’m no feminist nor am I prone to griping about past injustices, but it’s no big secret that women spent thousands of years being subject to and controlled by men. These movies work because there’s something appetizing and exciting about watching the little guy, the underdog, overcome and overpower someone bigger and stronger. If you made a movie about a man overpowering women, it would be like… “Um, grats. You accomplished something you’ve always been able to do easily!”

Other Double Standards

So I’m admitting that there is a double standard when it comes to women as sexually violent predators in film. It’s a double-standard that was created by society though, not the movie industry, and you can’t really blame the film industry for merely capitalizing on it.

However, there are plenty of double standards out there working in men’s favor or against women. Male protagonists can sleep with and discard women left and right and still be considered the hero of a movie (we have 21+ James Bond movies which testify to this). Women protagonists who sleep around are almost always portrayed as conflicted; they’re doing it because they’re not sure what they want, not because they just like using men for sex. If a woman slept around with men like James Bond does, we’d call her a whore and not want to watch her.

Women are almost never the leaders of evil organizations. They’re great as side villains, especially if there’s a saucy leading lady on the good guy’s team for her to have a chick fight with, and there are a few female exceptions to this rule, but almost always the big bad is a man, or men.

Women are frequently exposed in horror movies and other genres (apparently boobs increase ticket sales), and topless women have become a regular staple of rated R movies, even when it adds absolutely nothing to the plot. Male nudity? Not so much. For the record I’m not saying I’d like to see more male nudity in films; I’d rather see less of both. I’m just saying the double standard is there.

Conclusion

Let me reiterate that I think real-life sex crimes are appalling regardless of the genders involved. The female teacher in her 30s who seduces and has sex with her 10 year-old male student is just as disgusting as the 30-something guy who seeks out a teenage girl on the Internet for sex. And I would never want to watch a movie about anyone (guy or girl) carrying out sex crimes on innocent people and have the movie treat that person as a hero.

But movies about women who get back at male sex offenders? Yup. I’m definitely okay with that, as were the male makers of these films. So I say let the girls have their fun.