Being my age I liked and like a lot of stuff that seen through modern eyes is deeply problematic. Take, for example, the B movie Love Potion No. 9. The premise of the film is that the titular potion is a magic elixir that makes anyone of the opposite sex* fall in love, or at least lust, with you.
Two scientists, Diane and Paul (played by Sandra Bullock and Tate Donovan draped in Hollywood ugly), after testing the potion in the lab with spectacular results decide on self experimentation. The power quickly corrupts. Diane finds herself in, and takes advantage of, a position to control the mind of a prince. And Paul, well, Paul rapes an entire sorority. Because in practice the potion turns people into mindless slaves. “Love” slaves, but slaves nonetheless.
This point is made several times throughout the movie. It is explicitly explored in a plot arc in which Diane’s on again off again boyfriend Gary, played by Dale Midkiff, discovers the power of the potion and uses it against Diane. Which is why watching it again I am both nostalgic and horrified.
Before we go on I want to talk a tiny bit about sex. There are those that say sex is nothing more than a bodily function. This is something I have never been comfortable with. Masturbation is a bodily function. But the minute we add someone else to the mix it becomes something more.
That’s not to say it can’t be casual. I don’t think sex has to mean something. But, ideally, it should be a fun experience for everyone involved. To use a food analogy, because I’m like the Hulk only instead of being always angry I am always hungry, sex can be French fries or a seven course meal at the French Laundry. Sex can involve laughter, tears, love, affection, hell, there is even hate sex. But one thing it absolutely must have is consent. Because without consent it isn’t sex.
The problem is that, for some reason (The PATRIARCHY!) people – men and women – struggle with consent. Our culture, including the popular bits, reflects this. And is, perhaps, partially to blame. There are songs like Blurred Lines, books like Fifty Shades of Grey, and other media in which consent is, at best, misunderstood and others in which sexual assault is portrayed as downright romantic.
And then there are the movies. Love Potion #9 was released in 1992. From the hebephilia in That’s My Boy (I mean, how was this movie even made?), the voyeurism in American Pie, the rape in 40 Days and 40 Nights, the statutory rape in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the everything in Porky’s, to Rhett Butler carrying a screaming Scarlett O’hara into the bedroom. The whole of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first is rife with examples of sexual consent violations, often exploited for laughs.
Comedies, particularly romantic ones, tend to push the idea that consent is secondary to love or even to “good” sex. The sexual deceit in Revenge of the Nerds is justified by the victim’s orgasm. In The Breakfast Club Molly Ringwald’s Claire ends up with Judd Nelson’s John despite John’s sexual assault of her. Even the guy in Love Actually who stalks his best friend’s wife is rewarded with a kiss for his efforts.
Basing our knowledge of sexual consent on popular movies, books, and songs would lead to very problematic behavior, regardless of our gender. The ideas that yes means no, that men can’t be raped by women, or that women’s clothing or even the shape of our bodies give consent even as we say no or are never asked in the first place. All of these ideas and worse are popular in the culture. Of course, reasonable people get that pop culture, even romantic comedies, may not offer realistic depictions of love and relationships. Just like reasonable people understand that porn is performance and not sex.
The problem is that, in general, people aren’t reasonable. More, we are exposed to these images and ideas repeatedly and from a very young age. They can seep into our imaginations and may create an image of romance that subtly shapes our perceptions and expectations of what love is supposed to look like. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, pop culture matters. Whether we believe it holds a mirror to our communities, is a filter through which we see ourselves and others, or actually influences the way we think, the way we talk about social issues, even the way we relate to each other- there is no doubt pop culture plays an important role in society.
Be it from Hollywood or the bodice rippers pouring out of Manhattan publishing houses Americans love a chase scene. When it’s the getaway car in a bank heist, that’s one thing. Too often, though, it’s a man in hot pursuit of a woman. To conquer the hard to get woman of his dreams our hero will stalk, or even abduct, the heroine. The thrill of the chase is so common as to be integral to romantic plot lines. Unless we reverse genders. When a woman chases a man she is more likely to be portrayed as crazy, pathetic, or both. As the TV Tropes page on the subject states, “To put it simply: a man wants to catch a woman; not be caught.”
American pop culture tells men that they are in a constant state of uncontrollable arousal. As a result men are supposed to be in constant pursuit of sex, be it with actual women or through pornography. Meanwhile, women who seek sex are vilified and punished. Samantha on Sex and the City is the only one who does not get her happily ever after** and slut shaming is still rampant. Instead, pop culture clings to the idea that women don’t like sex as much as men. Even gay men joke about what they perceive as the lack of sex among lesbians. Thus men are given the message that any yes, even a forced one, is acceptable because women are just not that into it. This ignores the fact that for most women sex with men comes with a lot more risks: being more vulnerable to disease, pregnancy, finding a partner who’s not going to “cum and go” leaving us sexually frustrated are just a few of the obstacles women face that men may not. It also ignores the fact that when it comes to good sex women are just as passionate as men are.
There is a burgeoning conversation around consent and the idea that getting enthusiastic consent can be pretty fucking sexy. There is nothing inherently wrong with letting your crush know you are crushing. The problem with the romantic pursuit narrative that plays out on our screens and on the pages of our novels is it buttresses the idea that a man can overwhelm and claim a woman’s desires by simply being relentless. This also applies to “nice guys” who think the work they have put into their friendship, acquaintance, or by simply placing themselves in their chosen female’s physical proximity, that they are somehow owed sexual access. All of this is regardless of what she may want.
All of this media around stalking, sexual pursuit, the chase, or whatever moniker one may choose has given rise to a body of research studying its effect on us. A study in 2015 found “that media portrayals of gendered aggression can have prosocial effects, and that the romanticized pursuit behaviors commonly featured in the media as a part of normative courtship can lead to an increase in stalking-supportive beliefs.” A 2017 study concluded men who “more strongly held rape-supportive attitudes” are more likely to see a womn as consenting even when she is saying no. We live in a culture in which pestering and hounding women into sex is the norm. This needs to change.
As we exit the twenty-teens things have gotten better. Still too many movies promote the idea that romance is about a man’s desire for a woman. The woman, herself, is almost inconsequential. This occurs in a society in which girls learn not to be rude, to be “nice” to boys regardless of how we feel about them, to take unwanted attention as a compliment, to put our desires – especially sexual desire – at a distant second.
These ideas, these ideals, happen in our real lives. Powerful people, mostly men but certainly not all, prey on and abuse those with less power. These harrasers, stalkers, and rapists apologize (or don’t) and, for the most part, things are forgiven or forgotten. It took decades for Bill Cosby to get to trial and Harvey Weinstein still hasn’t done so. Perhaps never will. This is the result of a culture that protects the powerful over the powerless.
The first time I had sex I was 22 years old. I’d been going out with the guy for a while. We’d done a lot of fooling around. Sexual contact had been made. We’d even exchanged I love yous. But I just wasn’t ready to go “all the way”. To be vulnerable in that way. To have him inside me in that way.
One night we were in his apartment making out on his bed. Layers of clothes peeled off until we were both naked. It was a hot Louisiana summer. We were sweaty, frantic, and the air already smelled of sex. I decided to do “it”. To let him do it to me. When I told him he jumped out of bed and dashed across his tiny studio apartment for the condoms he kept in the bathroom.
As I sat on the bed, sweat congealing on my cooling body, I had second thoughts. By the time he made it back, all of two or three minutes later, both of us still naked, I confessed that I had changed my mind. He deflated. Well, most of him anyway. We fooled around a little more, cuddled, then I got dressed and went home.
Even at the time I was aware of how easily things could have gone wrong for me that night. How it had gone wrong for other women and girls I knew. How their voices would lilt up when they ended their confessions, theirs, not his, never his,*** with “It’s not like he raped me.(?)” How they would tell their stories in a way that questioned their claim to their own bodies.
A couple of days later I showed up at his place wearing a tiny babydoll dress and nothing else. As soon as the door closed I whipped off the dress and we jumped each other. He didn’t do it to me. We had enthusiastic, fun, and slightly awkward sex with each other. That is what consent looks like. But, here’s the thing, waiting for consent doesn’t make him a hero. This normalizes rape culture by implying that not raping someone, in this case me, is going above and beyond. Worse it implies that all men have this urge to rape but only the “best” ones can heroically resist it. Instead, not being a rapist should be a most basic characteristic.
This is because it is, in fact, quite easy to avoid being a rapist. As a writer for Villainese put it, “Sexual relationships can be complicated, yes. But consent is not difficult to figure out. No one is asked to decode a series of mixed signals. If you’re confused, the solution is as simple as asking a question: Do you want to do this? Yes means yes. No means no. Anything in between needs clarification. But that’s it.”
Sources
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093650215570653 (Abstract)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/55b92fda-d9f0-436d-a1f6-674e9e3504c6
http://meloukhia.net/2016/03/pop_culture_matters_television_and_consent/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10810730.2015.1018615?journalCode=uhcm20
https://sjushatteringsilence.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/is-pop-culture-implying-consent-to-sexual-violence/
http://www.balancingjane.com/2013/01/sexual-consent-in-pop-culture-waiting.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6070995/
https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
https://youtu.be/a7pVOuYUs7M
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/1/16/16894722/aziz-ansari-grace-babe-me-too
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/when-pop-culture-sells-dangerous-myths-about-romance/549749/
*The media to which I am referring is hetronormative cis gender so that is the language I am using.
** Following through to the films and her break up with Smith. (They should have had her stay with Richard. The turn in her personality to possessive never fit. Exploring a committed but open relationship would have been both more interesting and perfectly in character.)
*** Men can be raped or sexually assaulted. Men can be raped or sexually assaulted by women. In my personal experience at that time I had no male friends share such an experience with me. This is no longer the case.