“To blame victims for crime is like analyzing the cause of World War II and asking, ‘What was Pearl Harbor doing in the Pacific, anyway'?”

I saw the movie Fury this weekend. Fury, as most of you know, depicts a five-man tank crew operating in Germany toward the end of WWII. There are many many things I liked about the movie. I liked how the movie accurately depicted the atrocity of war.  If you thought the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan was raw, let's just say Fury takes it to the next several levels. I liked how the movie portrayed how war changes a person, even if the director did have to demonstrate that change on a compressed time frame due to American audiences' limited attention spans.  I liked how the movie showed how difficult it can be to follow the Law of War in a place where it is killed or be killed. I liked how a real tank, not a prop, was used in the movie. I liked how when WarDaddy (Brad Pitt) said, "Best job I ever had," I believed him and felt that perhaps the audience could get a small sense of why being in the military really is a uniquely special and rewarding experience despite its quite obvious drawbacks. Perhaps what I liked best was how the movie showed that sometimes people we would consider trashy, dickish, unsophisticated, and poor make the best soldiers.  The movie was very thought provoking and I could go on and on about what the movie got right. BUT, because I'm the resident asshole of this blog, I want to discuss the one thing that was horribly wrong with the movie.

There is a scene where, after taking the town, the US soldiers celebrate. Prostitutes and alcohol and smokes are consumed with reckless abandon. WarDaddy and another soldier named Norman, go into an apartment where they find a woman. The woman is hiding her young cousin and tells WarDaddy it is because she was afraid.  WarDaddy and Norman remain in the apartment and give the women eggs to cook. In the apartment, the sohnds of the party below are heard. Breaking bottles, gun shots, screams, moans, and other sounds of general debauchery waft into the apartment. At one point, Norman plays the piano and the younger girl sings. After the song, WarDaddy tells Norman, "She's a good, clean girl. If you don't take her into that bedroom, I will. " Into the bedroom they go (after Norman grabs his gun).  The older woman walks to the door, presumably to check on the girl or prevent what is inevitably going to happen, but WarDaddy stops her. He says, "No. They are young and they are alive." Not surprisingly, Norman has sex with the girl and eventually the girl and he emerge from the bedroom smiling. The audience found this scene funny.  So why didn't I? Am I some sort of fun-hating, morally righteous ball buster? Possibly, quite possibly I am, but that's not why I found the scene displeasing.

The big issue I had with this scene is that in a realistically visceral and violent movie, this scene was totally and utterly unrealistic. The ludicrous fantasy this scene portrayed stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the harsh realism that dominated the film.  What I mean is that the sex between Norman and the young girl was portrayed as being consensual, and thus, comical when the two youngsters emerged all grins. But, from my perpective, there was no way in hell that sort of a situation could ever lead to true consensual sex. Why not? The girl didn't scream, cry, fight or otherwise resist. Ergo, according to prevailing sentiment, it must have been consensual, right? Well, let's examine that belief. If we know that the girl didn't put up a fight, what else, other than consent could explain that? Well, how about what the other people in the room were doing and implying? Haven't we, up until this point, only looked at what one person was doing or not doing? What about the other party to the transaction, you know, the one who committed the sex act? Why havent we looked at what the other party to this tryst was doing?  If this were a drug transaction,  would we only be concerned with what the buyer was doing or wouldn't we also look at who was selling the drugs? 

Sex crimes are the only crimes where we focus primarily on the victim's behaviors instead of the alleged criminal's actions. Thus, if a victim doesn't resist hard enough or scream loud enough or use the magic word NO enough, that means no crime occurrred. What? Really?  Such a one-sided perspective leaves out the other half of the sexual encounter-the one who is alleged to have committed the crime. And sex crimes are the only crimes we approach in this fashion.

For example, if a person is robbed, as a society we don't ask why the person didn't fight back.  Can you imagine questioning a robbery victim as to why they didn't try to fight off the robber or why they didn't try to wrestle their wallet out of a robber's hands?  In fact, we train people (like bank tellers) to NOT fight back if they are robbed at work.  Contrast this with, if a person is being sexual assaulted, we expect the utmost resistance out of that person and if they don't, we blame them. I have also never heard of the police questioning a robbery victim about what he or she was wearing. For example, if a man is wearing a rolex watch, a $2,000.00 suit and drives a Mercedes, isn't he asking to get robbed? No? Wasn't he just asking for it by advertising his wealth? What about someone who puts their 60 inch TV up so that it can be seen through a window? Doesn't that person really want her TV to be stolen? Shouldn't we be questioning her why she would put her TV up for all to see if she really didn't want it to get jacked? We don't, however, because such lines of thought are illogical. No one wants their TV to be stolen simply because they mounted it on a wall.  No one wants to be robbed simply because they wear fancy clothes and accessories. Yet, these illogical assumptions are made routinely in sex crimes. I believe it is just as illogical when applied to sex crimes. A woman who dresses sexy no more wants to be sexually assaulted than a rich guy in a tailored suit wants to be robbed. But how many times and in how many ways do we teach our daughters how not to get raped, like it is all within their control? How many times have we given the same instruction about how not to get robbed? Taking it one step further, how many times do we instruct our sons on how not to get raped? You see, it is only the women who are blamed for rape. The same crime does happen to men but we aren't instructing the men on how to not be raped. But from the time we are tweens, women learn how not to get raped which implies if we do get raped it was our fault. Don't go out alone at night. Go to the bathroom with a friend. Don't drink too much. Carry mace. Don't dress sexy. Don't go home with strangers. Look under your car before you get in it. The list goes on and on. What do men do to not get raped?  In a course I was at where this question was asked one man replied, "Don't go to prison." Touche. That is the extent of the guidance we give men on how not to get raped.  Only women get the laundry list and, correspondingly, the Lion's share of the blame. I'm reminded of this quote that I once saw posted on a bulletin board on an Army base: "To blame victims for crime is like analyzing the cause of World War II and asking, ‘What was Pearl Harbor doing in the Pacific, anyway?"

So let's re-examine what the soldiers were doing in the sex scene in Fury. Perhaps that will illustrate why I found the portrayal of the sex as consensual patently offensive. First, two soldiers bust into an apartment with guns and find two unarmed women who make clear they are afraid of the soldiers. The soldiers order the women to get hot water and make themselves at home. The entire time, the guns are within arms reach of the soldiers. One of the soldiers makes clear someone is going to screw the girl. The soldier who is going to do the job takes a gun into the room with him. All this, and we are supposed to believe the sex was consensual just because we didn't see tears or hear screams? I don't think so. I know movies aren't always realistic so perhaps I should've let this go. But in a movie where realism infused every single scene, I have to wonder how, or better yet, why the sex scene was so damned wrong.