After watching the trailer for "The Invention of Lying" I came to a very scary conclusion: what is essentially rape was shown over and over again to promote this movie. Y
es, I realize that the movie is a comedy and I should stop being such a femi-nazi and everyone should just laugh away, but I can't help but characterize the scene in which Gervais' character tells a woman to have sex with him or else the world will end as rape. He does not allow her to consent by giving her a false impression that she has sleep with him to save the world. Under these terms the woman thought the lives of everyone she knew were in danger, not to mention her own life was also threatened.
The fact that no one had a problem with this makes me think that most people would not consider this rape, and indeed that this was just "the art of seduction." The idea that most people would never consider something like this rape is shocking to me. I know life is not a morality contest but making someone believe their life is in danger to sleep with them is rape (to me). Now let me say that I have not seen the movie, but this scene is in the trailer (this post is late, the movie is pretty much done having any buzz) and you can infer what will happen pretty easliy. I think it is rape, but I am intersted to know what other people think about this scene.
Thoughts? Criticisms? Sorry this post isn't more topical I just made this account today. Also apologies if someone already posted on this topic! Again, first day...
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You're right, the trailer absolutely makes it look like a rape scenario - threatening a woman to make her sleep with you is, in fact, rape. It's no different from a rapist holding a gun to a woman's head and telling her that unless she submits he'll kill her.
I haven't seen the movie, but I read Amanda Marcotte's review over at Pandagon and according to her Ricky Gervais' character winds up not going through with it because he realizes that's a line he shouldn't cross. Here's the link: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/bamboo_review_the_invention_of_lying/
Of course, despite the fact that Gervais doesn't rape this character, that doesn't change the fact that the trailer presents the possibility of it as a joke - it is supposed to seem funny that a man would be able to trick a woman into sleeping with him under threat of the world ending. Forgive me for not laughing.
This is exactly what I thought when I saw the trailers for this. A friend of mine told me that the actual movie has more depth, but I still found the trailers really problematic. Ha ha ha, tricking women into "consenting"! Not funny.
We kind of touched upon the deception and consent in the prostitute/thievery thread. Someone asked if it was rape if the customer said he would pay and then didn't. Then someone asked, is it rape if a person lies about not being married and another person has sex with them?
I know the dynamics here are a little different, but I would be willing to let this one go. The humor is that he's so desperate for a lay that he'll say anything (which is what I think the writers were going for, rather than he's so desperate that he'll threaten someone) AND the fact that what he said was so clearly in the heat of the moment that when he actually realizes what he said, he understands he was wrong.
That understanding changes it a great deal, imo. He's not just a sociopath who doesn't feel remorse or compassion and he's not someone who doesn't understand that what he's doing is wrong, unlike two of the qualifications for a rapist.
So while one of my first reactions was an awkward "um", I think this one is worth letting go.
"This scene is in the trailer... and you can infer what will happen pretty easily." If you had seen the movie, you would know that you can't really "infer" what will happen from this clip. (**SPOILER ALERT** for those who haven't seen it.) The woman insists they go to a motel immediately because she thinks the world is going to end, Gervais' character is horrified at the prospect of tricking someone into sex -- but can't talk her out of believing what he said. He pretends to take a call from NASA alerting him that "the world's not really ending after all" before she'll abandon the idea, and then she weeps with relief.
The humor in the scene derives from the fact that the character (like everyone else in the movie) doesn't understand the concept of a lie, and so she reacts to his preposterous line as if it were true. And the events that follow show that lying to get someone into bed isn't fun, or sexy. The woman is terrified, because she thinks the world is about to end, and Gervais is desperate to undo the damage he's done. In the end I think the scene does the opposite of "normalizing" rape or coercion -- it sets up the male fantasy of "what if women would believe anything you tell them," only to show the distasteful and traumatic results of that.
I agree with the original poster that the trailer is in bad taste and implies that tricking women into sex is funny. But the title of the post, "Is There Rape in 'The Invention of Lying,'" is misleading -- it's probably a good idea to see a film before trying to analyze its attitude toward rape.
This comment actually makes me want to see the movie. I was really disgusted by that scene in the trailers, and I'm glad to know it ends better than I thought. I'm still annoyed with whoever put together the trailer though-- they're just getting a cheap laugh out of it.
... it sets up the male fantasy of "what if women would believe anything you tell them," only to show the distasteful and traumatic results of that.
Um, I think this is totally not true. The scene wasn't meant to make a moral comment of any sort about rape or coercing women into consent; it was simply a scene to serve as an experiment with lying, inspired by the dumb comments of Gervais' bar buddies. It establishes him personally as a "nice guy," him personally as someone who won't use his power to get girls, not the concepts of COERCION or RAPE as inherently "distasteful" or "traumatic." Hardly. Later, he goes back to the bar and decides that he would rather have money and power more, so he pursues those. If he wasn't himself or wasn't quite such a "nice guy" or had happened to decide that he actually wanted sex, I have no doubt he would have slept with her, and probably the movie would have continued on like normal, with the audience understanding and relishing the basically unlimited, unchecked power lying gives him. That unchecked power is the whole POINT of the movie; it's never resolved. He still possesses it at movie's end. He could still do whatever he wanted with it. It's just so nice and happy and romantic that what he REALLY WANTS is a nice little family.
But, um, no, that scene is no feminist hope.
This is tough because in real life lying to get someone to sleep with you is NOT rape. E.g., pretending you are rich or lying about your age or saying you own a porsche to try and seduce someone is not rape.
BUT - this isn't real life, because in this world they don't understand lying and thus she isn't really given a choice to decide if it's the truth or not so that changes everything. Interesting scenario. I think that if he actually went through with it it would be rape as the OP suggested. Glad to hear he doesn't though.
"This is tough because in real life lying to get someone to sleep with you is NOT rape"
Well, lying to someone that you are a doctor or have a porche doesn't make it rape. But on the other hand, if you say "I'm going to shoot you unless you have sex with me" I don't think you can claim its not rape by later saying that you were lying, and you didn't really intend to shoot them. That is, there's a difference between threats and other lies. Now what about an indirect threat, like "If you don't have sex with me you'll die (but I won't be the one to kill you)". Those usually aren't believable, but in the situation in this movie they are believable. I think that makes it just as bad as saying you'll shoot someone if they don't have sex with you.
But, I'm really glad to hear how it concludes in the movie. Pretty much that scene in the previews made me think I'd hate the movie, but now I'm a little bit more interested in seeing it. I'm still mad at whoever put together that trailer, but based on the comments here it sounds like the actual movie handled it well.
"I'm going to shoot you unless you have sex with me" I don't think you can claim its not rape by later saying that you were lying, and you didn't really intend to shoot them.
I'd say that's a poor example because the lying part doesn't in fact matter in that case. Whether the person had been lying or truthful it was criminal. Further all of the elements of a crime were satisfied.
1.) A threat was made which caused the victim to reasonably fear for their life
2.) The threat was committed with the intent, or the reasonable knowledge that the threat would cause the other person fear
A better example in my opinion would lie in the case of failure to disclose STDs since it lies specifically in an active lie or lie by omission or the sabotage of birth control.
Well, the point is that in the situation in this movie, lying does not exist as far as this woman knows. So when he says the world will end if she doesn't sleep with him, she believes him. And that is a threat, whether its true or not. He made her believe that if she didn't have sex with him, she would die, her family would die, everyone she knows would die. Its got the same effect as if he threatened to kill her and her family if she didn't have sex with him.
Imagine if you found a severely mentally challenged person who would believe whatever you told them, and you told them the world would end if they didn't have sex with you right now. They might do it, and they might not even realize it was a lie. Now, does it make it ok because you were only lying, not directly holding a gun to their head?
If you manage to 100% convince someone that they will die if they don't have sex with you, for the purposes of making them fear for their life, how does that not meet you conditions 1 and 2?
how does that not meet you conditions 1 and 2?
In this case? No reasonable person in his position would know this would cause the effect. By the same token as the woman does not know about lying, he does not know anything about it either.
To a reasonable person in his place, it was the most absurd statement imaginable, the one most likely to be laughed at. When he received new information, that it was not in fact laughed at he stopped, which would completely negate criminal intent, and would fall entirely into what we would expect of a reasonable person.
I think we're all saying that it would have been rape IF he actually followed through on it, at which point he obviously saw the effect it had. Since he apparently didn't follow through on it, there was no sex and thus no rape. That's not what's under discussion.
He grew up in a world where everyone believes everything everyone else said-- he KNOWS that she'll believe him. He might not have thought through all the consequences, but a "reasonable" person who grew up in this imaginary world would know that this woman would believe him and behave accordingly. Someone from OUR world transplanted into theirs might not know that, but as I understand it that's not what the movie's about.
I saw the movie, and, yes, he takes her to this hotel room, all the while sort of internally agonizing about it - I don't think he ever really intended to sleep with her, he was just sort of pushing the limits of what he could do with his lying - and eventually tells her "It's OK, I got a message from God, and he said the world isn't going to end after all." It was sort of ridiculous because the whole while she was sitting on the bed, actually DEMANDING that he have sex with her right now because she truly believed the world was going to end. Either way, yes, it was coercion and would have been rape because the only reason she would have slept with him is because she thought it was some "obligation" to "save everyone's lives." The rape situation came about because he was sitting in a bar with the obligatory stupid-ass-lonely-drunk-buddies-who-clean-up-well, asking them what they would want or do if they could have or do anything in the world, and of course they said, "Boobies." "Sex." You know. The stereotypes about the incompetent slacker sex-obsessed males.
There's other annoying shit in the movie, too, like that he characterizes god as a "man in the sky." Fuck that. Also, the "lying" part of the movie is bullshit; Jennifer Garner does an awful lot of lying-by-omission in order to uphold her womanly expectations of marrying someone wealthy and good-looking. Apparently the audience isn't supposed to notice that she basically "bites back the truth" through her entire courtship with the "other guy," behavior which conspicuously doesn't fit with the rest of the movie, where people randomly blurt out what they're thinking at the moment.
So, yeah, interesting gender dynamics. Lying had been happening in the world all along: for WOMEN.
And some movie reviewer made a douchebag comment about Garner's character being "unlovable" and a poor choice as object of Gervais' affection. Yeah, no stereotypes about bitchy women or expectations that women be "nice" there.