Everyone’s a Little Bit Rapey?

Posted on June 3, 2014 Updated on May 8, 2015

Let’s get this out of the way: I love Louis CK. I’ve watched (and enjoyed) all of his stand up concert films and every episode of his FX series, Louie. Louis CK’s humor appeals to me because it makes me squirm: it makes me examine the terrible parts of myself and question my belief systems. He does what, in my opinion, all great comedy should do: “it walks the line between hilarity and horror; make me laugh when my first instinct is to cry.” (yes, I just quoted myself; don’t judge me). A great example of how Louis CK achieves this fine balance of horror, humor and humility can be found in the lengthy stand-up segment of last night’s episode, “Pamela Part I,” a bit which I first saw back in March, when he delivered it as part of his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live. It’s a great bit, reeling us in with the funny, then surprising and shaming us, then finally, making us laugh. For example, CK talks about how the Bible refers to God as “our Father” and as male, even though it would make more sense for God, if s/he truly exists, to be a female:

The point is: Women birthed us, women raised us. So why aren’t they running things? I think I know why. I think it’s because, millions of years ago, women were in charge, and they were mean, they were horrible! They made us walk around naked, and then they’d laugh at you and flick your penis when you walk by… They were AWFUL! But what could you do? It’s your Mom and her friends, like what could you possibly do about it? And then one guy punched his mom, and we’re like: “We can hit them!” And then we did the whole thing. 

After hearing this bit I actually turned to my husband and said “I should show this to my students to explain the concept of patriarchy!” Louis CK has that kind of effect on me. For this reason I’m willing to give Louis CK the benefit of the doubt when he takes a risk in his comedy. True,  Louie has been an uneven series; for example “The Elevator,” a 6-episode story arc focusing on Louie’s chaste courtship of Amia (Eszter Balint), a Hungarian woman temporarily staying in Louie’s apartment building, was not always successful (in my humble opinion). For example, it’s hard to understand why two fortysomething adults would hang out with each for hours on end without being able to communicate (Louie doesn’t speak any Hungarian, Amia doesn’t speak any English) and without having sex. No sex? No conversation? What were they doing all month? However, I forgave this unbelievable communication gap (have these two never heard of Google Translate? It’s free, Louie!) because it paid off very well in “The Elevator, Part 6,” when Amia takes Louie to a Hungarian restaurant and begs a waiter to translate her love letter into English.

 

During the six episodes of “The Elevator” we only heard Louie’s point-of-view. He tells his friends, and anyone who will listen, that he loves Amia, despite the communication gap (and only knowing her for one month).  But we never hear Amia’s (English) words. So when the waiter sits down at Louie and Amia’s table, puts on his spectacles, and begins reading “Dear Louie…” I was almost as excited as Louie was to hear what she has to say. As the waiter reads Amia’s words, my eyes stay fixed on Louie, who is (charmingly) both embarrassed and delighted by the sudden rush of emotions he can now attribute to his love object. A month of unsaid thoughts and desires come pouring out of the waiter’s mouth until Louie grips his hand and asks him to stop. It’s too much at once; Louie can’t take it all in. He’s not accustomed to women reciprocating his desires. The revelation is bittersweet, of course, because Amia will soon return to Hungary permanently, to be with her son and friends and life. Their love is doomed.

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that this touching love scene was preceded by Louie venturing out into the wilds of Brooklyn in the middle of a hurricane to rescue his ex-wife and two daughters from their slowly-flooding apartment building. Why did these three women need rescuing? As Louie’s ex-wife (Kelechi Watson) says, more than once, her husband is out of town! Yes, when her man is out of town, Janet, a normally resourceful, independent woman, turns into a wailing mess of panic and throws her arms around her ex-husband and sobs in relief when he shows up to save her and her daughters. This scene was so over-the-top in terms of its macho, hero-complex pacing that I almost expected it all to be just a fantasy in Louie’s head, an attempt to make up for the deflating experience of finally getting to screw the woman he loves (or at least lusts after) and then having her run off into the rain, muttering in Hungarian. Placing Amia’s love letter scene directly after Louie’s heroic rescue of his (all-female) family makes it feel too much like a “reward,” as something he earned for “manning up.” But maybe that was the point? Was Louis CK trying to demonstrate how his character has such a lowly sense of self that he can only be loved and receive love after performing an over-the-top rescue mission of three helpless women? Is this perhaps a commentary on the character’s deep neuroses? Maybe. Maybe.

I’m willing to forgive the masculinist fantasies at the heart of “Elevator, Part 6,” however I am far more ambivalent about the key scene in “Pamela, Part I” in which Louie appears to/tries to rape his friend/crush, Pamela (Pamela Adlon). Recall that Pamela is Louie’s longtime love interest who repeatedly shot down his attempts to romance her. Let’s revisit the speech Louie makes to Pamela back in season 2:

Pamela, I’m in love with you. Yeah, it’s that bad. You’re so beautiful to me. Shut up! Lemme tell you. Let me. Every time I look at your face or even remember it, it wrecks me – and the way you are with me – and you’re just fun and you shit all over me and you make fun of me and you’re real. I don’t have enough time in any day to think about you enough. I feel like I’m going to live a thousand years cause that’s how long it’s gonna take me to have one thought about you which is that I’m crazy about you, Pamela. I don’t wanna be with anybody else. I don’t. I really don’t. I don’t think about women anymore. I think about you. I had a dream the other night that you and I were on a train. We were on this train and you were holding my hand. That’s the whole dream. You were holding my hand and I felt you holding my hand. I woke up and I couldn’t believe it wasn’t real. I’m sick in love with you, Pamela. It’s like a condition. It’s like polio. I feel like I’m gonna die if I can’t be with you. And I can’t be with you. So I’m gonna die – and I don’t care cause I was brought into existence to know you and that’s enough. The idea that you would want me back it’s like greedy.

Amazing shit, right? But Pamela isn’t into it. She only likes Louie as a friend so she gets on a plane and moves, permanently, to Paris. That is, until she returns in “Elevator Part 3,” contrite, hoping that she and Louie can “pursue something, a girl/guy kissing thing.” Pamela doesn’t sound convinced, even as she tries to convince Louie, and he gently turns her down because he has fallen for Amia.

But in “Pamela Part 1” Louie is heartbroken (“walking poetry,” according to the pragmatic Dr. Bigelow [Charles Grodin], resident sage of Louie) and decides to give Pamela a call. Like any self-respecting person, Pamela sees the rebound for what it is, and Louie doesn’t deny it. Still, Louie attempts romance once again one night, after Pamela babysat his daughters. In a scene which echoes the first time Louie and Amia kiss (and later, make love), Louie awkwardly leans in to kiss Pamela. After she ducks his mouth, he tries again. And again. And AGAIN. He grabs and pulls at her. He drags her small frame from room to room. He reminds her that she wanted to do some “girl/guy kissing stuff,” but Pamela isn’t having it. Is it because she can’t bring herself to admit that she’s attracted to Louie? Or is it because she would really like to be attracted to a “nice guy” like Louie but just…isn’t?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what Pamela did or did not “truly” want in that moment. What matters is what her mouth was saying and her body was doing — both were communicating, quite clearly, no. Old Louie would have given up after the first pass. Like a turtle retreating into his shell, it takes little for old Louie to disengage. But new Louie, the Louie who can single-handedly rescue three women from a Brooklyn apartment, who won over the recalcitrant Hungarian, doesn’t retreat. He is clearly frustrated by Pamela’s hot/cold routine. He believes that if he can just fuck her, or just kiss her, then she’ll know, unequivocally, that she is, in fact, attracted to him. Louie is large man, tall and broad, and Pamela is small. After a lengthy struggle, Pamela finally frees herself and screams “This would be rape if you weren’t so stupid. God! You can’t even rape well!” After he secures a psuedo-kiss from Pamela (still under duress), she escapes his apartment and we see Louie’s expression: it is not one of shame but triumph.

Throughout this entire ordeal I was horrified, not because I haven’t seen this scene before — the trope of the woman who resists and resists and resists until finally, she collapses in a man’s arms, is a tried and true cliche — but because I didn’t expect to see it in an episode of Louie. Now I’ve read several recaps of this episode that point to Louie’s lengthy bit about patriarchal oppression (quoted above) being strategically placed before this scene. In other words, because Louis CK was aware that this scene was “rapey,” it’s okay. It’s honest and real. It’s about how date rape happens. It’s about how all men are just a little bit rapey. Maybe. Maybe. But coming in the wake of the University of California Santa Barbara shootings less than 2 weeks ago, in which a young, troubled man murdered seven humans because he was tired of “not getting the girl,” this episode felt like salt rubbed in a very raw wound.

In his (mostly) thoughtful reflections on this episode for the AV Club, Todd VanDerWerff writes:

 The thing it does more bracingly than any episode of TV I’ve seen is place us in the point-of-view of a man who would force himself—no matter how mildly—on a woman and have us see how easily that could slip over into being any man if the circumstances were right, if his feelings were hurt just so or if she lashed out at him while crying on their bathroom floor. To be a man is to remember constantly, daily, that you are, on average, bigger than the average-sized member of half the population, that your mere presence can be scary or threatening to them, especially in the wrong circumstances, and that it is up to you to be on guard against that happening, no matter how unfair that might seem.

But here’s the thing: I’m tired of trying to understand the man’s point of view in this situation. I don’t want to know anymore about the PUAHaters and their hurt feelings. I don’t want to hear about how men think about sex all the time (newsflash: SO DO WOMEN). I don’t care what led up to Louie’s attempted rape of Pamela. I don’t care about his low self esteem or hurt feelings. I don’t want to sympathize with this point of view anymore. Louis CK and other well-meaning men want to tell us how hard it is to be a big strong horny man who just wants that cocktease to finally…give…in. But damn, Louis CK, I’m just not here for that.

I know lots of men who would rather die than force themselves on a woman. I know lots of men who are not in the least bit rapey. I know lots of men who can control themselves. So let’s do ourselves a favor: let’s stop pretending like rape is a man’s default setting when a woman says no because it’s not. I want think pieces about men who don’t rape women. I want to see entire episodes of television in which a man does not rape a woman, or attempt to rape a woman. I would like a rape-free TV this summer. 

But, as Louis CK says, “…we’re like’ We can hit them!’ And then we did the whole thing.”