A Matter of Consent

The graphic rape sequence in Last Tango in Paris is layered with stories of exploitation

I COULDN’T look at butter the same way for a long time, after I finished watching Last Tango In Paris.

In and of itself, that graphic rape sequence in the Bernardo Bertolucci-directed multiple-award-winning film featuring Marlon Brando and the much younger Maria Schneider (he was nearly 50 and she wasn’t yet 20), is horribly disturbing. The revelation that it was not consensual ( the interview in which Bertolucci confessed to this fact came out in 2013, but only in the last couple of days has it become the subject of the latest outrage on the internet) also tells us just how skewed the power structure is between the powerful older men who dominate the film industry and the vulnerable on whom they prey, whether it is Hollywood or Bollywood.

Basically, if you are female and want to be on screen, and by implication be rich and famous, you are fair game — you could be employed as an outright sexual toy, or a literal show-and-tell figurine for anyone from the all-powerful pantheon — almost all male — which lays out the funding, and has the final word on casting. Couches are real. They are part of the deal, the unspoken covenant between the aspirant and the gatekeeper — you want in, you put out.

Those rapes — because that’s what they are, let no one be fooled — are not even remarked upon because they are so common. They are executed by those high up enough on the food chain who feel entitled to have it all. Those who are exploited — both female and male — are expected to shut up, and keep shut.

The rape we see in Last Tango In Paris is all the more disturbing because Schneider wasn’t told what would happen. Brando and Bertolucci hit upon the idea of using a stick of butter as a rape tool, and filmed it in flagrante in a shocking violation of the girl and her privacy.

The reason Bertolucci and Brando, the B Team, gave was that they wanted her to “react as woman”, not act. Really? When she was, in fact, an actor, and that was presumably the basis on which she was given the job. How does the idea of rape even occur, unless the two who thought it up did it for one simple reason — because they could. Because Schneider didn’t have the power to say no. Because they could force her to do what they wanted.

Horror stories abound among those who work in on film sets, and especially those who have an in on all the gossip. But what is fodder for those of us who hear the salacious bits with enjoyment, and who print it or televise it or tweet it, is poison for those who have to suffer through multiple indignities and exploitation of the body and mind. A rape by any other name is just that—rape.