Today Seth Rogan and Anna Faris' new comedy, Observe and Report opens today and despite the misleading G-rated trailer for the film, this is no Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Seth Rogen's character is a mall cop, but he's mentally ill (he is bipolar) and goes off his meds. He's delusional. And guess what? He's violent and also a rapist.
Yes, the hero of the film is a rapist. He date rapes Anna Faris' character Brandi, who has consumed massive amounts of alcohol and drugs, thrown up and passed out. She is unconscious and there is vomit on the pillow next to her. But Rogen still has relations with her. That is rape. Rogen said in an interview that her drunken ramblings mean she gave consent and that makes audiences laugh.
SETH ROGEN: when we're having sex and she's unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the f** are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay:
BRANDI: "Why are you stopping, motherf***er?"
News flash: no one that impaired has the capacity to consent to anything.
Anna Faris was uncomfortable with the scene and never thought it would air. Here's what she told the A.V. Club:
I had to fight a little bit for the role, and I wanted to be a part of it so badly.... I'm so grateful I was cast, but when I read the script, I thought, "Well, this is Warner Brothers. This is a studio movie, so this is all gonna be softened up. It's a comedy, right?" So when we were shooting it, even the date-rape scene -- or as I refer to it, "The Tender Love-Making Scene" -- I just thought, "We'll shoot it, but it's not gonna be in the movie. I don't have to worry about that one."
Here's what New York magazine had to say about it:
Surely no studio comedy, no matter how supposedly "dark," would portray its lead character as a rapist, right?
*****
It turns out that yes, by any reasonable standard of behavior, Seth Rogen's character, Ronnie Barnhardt, totally rapes Faris's Brandi. More surprising is that, in the dark world of Observe and Report, raping Brandi is one of the least unsympathetic things Ronnie Barnhardt does.
The movie doesn't mitigate that sex scene at all. In fact, it makes it even more clear than the trailer does that when Brandi and Ronnie get home from dinner, she's unbelievably trashed on antidepressants and tequila. Not only does she throw up all over the place, she can barely walk — and she certainly can't give any kind of informed consent. She's way too wasted for her yelling at Ronnie to mean anything.
*****
....a truly dark big-studio comedy in which, yes, Seth Rogen rapes the girl of his dreams.
Depicting sexual violence as funny is absolutely disgusting. According to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, one in six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Absolutely hilarious, Warner Brothers.
