Editor’s note: Offensive content
Sometimes, a proposed solution becomes part of the problem.
Pedophilia and rape are evil. But making a graphic film about a young girl who is raped by a 40 year old man adds more to the problem. At the Sundance Film festival in Utah, the movie The Tale premiered and caused much of the audience to walk out, according to the Daily Beast, because of the “purposeful, unflinching detail” of a young girl’s rape on screen.
Kevin Fallon of the Daily Beast praised the film, but also called it “relentlessly uncomfortable, and sometimes even aggravating.” Apparently, the story doesn’t even guide the viewers to outrage or shame over what happens to the child in the film--because “that’s not it’s job.”
The worst part? An 11 year old girl, Isabelle Nelisse, played the victim in the film. While apparently she does not act in any of the rape scenes, was made to say graphic things on screen. The director, Jennifer Fox, told the 11-year-old child how to act out losing her virginity: “Act like you’ve been stung by a bee.” What parent wanted to sign their child up for this?
It gets worse. The rape depictions of the child, which used “an adult body double,” are explicit, graphic, disturbing, and brutal. “We see them make out and it is grotesque. We see him, over multiple scenes that take place over a series of weeks, attempt to penetrate her. “We have to keep stretching you open, slowly,” he says. And then again: “No young boy would do this for you.” We see her give him a blowjob when it doesn’t ‘fit’.” No wonder multiple people walked out during the screening of this film.
Actress Ellen Burstyn tried to make it seem like the film was an act of political resistance, telling the audience in a Q and A session, “I want to thank Donald Trump for that disgusting tape that he made that we all heard that was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. And we can now at last deal with this problem that has gone on for centuries all over the world.”
Hollywood will never change, so it seems.
