Rape or not, it really just seems like that was a pretty typical night out for that character anyway. She had been out partying with some friends before the date so she was already a bit drunk anyway. Then she goes and orders all those drinks since she knew that he was going to pay for it all. And then she pounced on the opportunity to talk him into giving her those pills. Clearly she has a problem there. It just looked like she put herself in the whole situation. She wanted to get wasted. He didn’t think to stop it because he was just trying to please her and she obviously didn’t want to stop what she was doing.

Not to say that he couldn’t have crossed a line somewhere though. At some point through all the booze and pills she had to be running on autopilot, no longer thinking about her actions even the slightest bit. As much as she brought it on herself and as much of a ***** and a slut as she is, he really should have known better than to go through with it.

That’s just it though, isn’t it? He didn’t know any better. Just look at his mom’s drinking problems and the story she tells him about how she met his father. How was he to know that **** like this isn’t normal or healthy?

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Love your Travis Bickle!

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Most people draw the line at their personal survival.

I have a theory about humor and this may be a bit long if you will indulge me.

Humor is drawn from mitigated fear. Humor is not biological it is intellectual.
A situation has to be perceived before it is understood and can become humorous. Biology only deals with action and reaction to physical consequence. If someone is assaulting you it is dangerous and the biological reaction is to save yourself. The intellect comes in and decides if you should run, cower or fight.
If someone else is being assaulted the biological self is safe. The intellect perceives the situation and has to chose to empathize or ridicule. This is a survival based behavior. All intellectual observation is information that either reinforces ideas that you already have or shows new ideas on how to deal with a situation. Ideas you agree with you empathize with ideas you do not agree with you ridicule ideas you were not expecting can go either way.

All stories are self solving puzzles. Dramatic stories are puzzles with standard but undesired solutions forced upon the protagonist. Humorous stories are puzzles with unconventional solutions forced upon the puzzle.

People relate at different levels to different characters but all characters are just an amalgam of ideas the viewer sees as similar or different to their own.

With two characters that are dissimilar to the viewers ideas about who they are as a person the characters become observational instead of personal. Such characters in this cartoon like state become the subject of situations that would be terrible if they happened to the viewer but are funny when they happen to the dissimilar characters.

Unwanted assault is never funny to a person. Even upon a fictional character it is a bit of work to get it to a humorous level. Almodovar attempted to make a “humorous rape” in Kika and that did not pan out as the director thought it might. Where Observe and Report believes it negates the drama and transitions to humor is in the inclusion of the character who was passed out having a line that can be interpreted as encouraging the current situation even if that could be argued at a later time to be misinterpreted.

This however is a conceit of the writing and not in the general social concept about women, physical behavior and verbal contracts. Individuals will decide for themselves if they can distance the characterizations far enough from their own egos to find the scenes of any movie humorous or unpleasant. Most women and a few men generally cannot distance themselves from sexual assault to find it funny. Unless it is a crotch shot to a man but that is another rant altogether.

I remember seeing Home Alone in the theater and being filled with dread that I was surrounded by 800 people who found the assault on the robbers not just funny but uproariously delightful. I personally found it to be meh funny because it relied to much on realistic sound effects and visible wounding.

as for humor beyond physical and into the realm of “Surrealist art is not my cup of fur.” (Diane, Cheers). There is still a survival based play in misinterpretation. It is a different level of humor but there is a very real threat to a person’s survival if they are in a group that does not understand them. They could be shunned and denied food, shelter, comfort, medicine, income…. any of the many things people in social groups depend on each other for. This humor is based on accumulated understanding of social concepts and behaviors and playing with those ideas with a misunderstanding through either ignorance or confusion.

There is more to this concept but I have probably rambled on long enough. If it is unclear I apologize. I am not very adept at making succinct statements out of massive ideas.

In general people who find this movie funny will be people who have familiarity with the situations and have not felt any long lasting negative affects so they can relieve a little tension about the situations by seeing them played out with unconventional results with little negative affect to the character. (negative affect either in the fictional reality or in the perception of the character about their situation.)

People who do not find this movie funny will be people who have been through these situations or worry about being in a similar situation and do not think that it would be a marginal inconvenience in their lives.

It is all about where you draw your disconnect.

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If this movie does nothing else (Lord willing), at least it can claim to have led to a great THEATER HOPPER piece!

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I’ll fix tonight, Inho. Thanks for the head’s up.

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