Rape as Comedy: Why ‘Horrible Bosses’ Is A Pretty Terrible Movie.

Saw ‘Horrible Bosses’ today.

Funny  film, except that for some reason, the writers thought that shoving a whole load of rape jokes in would be abso-fucking-lutely hilarious.

The synopsis of the movie is pretty simple: three men hate their bosses yet are unable to quit their jobs for various contrived reasons. One boss is manipulative and greedy. One boss is lazy and a cokehead. One boss is a rapist.

The rapist boss, though? Female. Attractive. Played by Jennifer Aniston.

You know what this means, right? INSTANT COMEDY.

The guy saddled with the rapist as a boss is constantly mocked by his friends. According to them, his continual sexual harassment by a superior is nothing to complain about compared to, say, being told off for being two minutes late or having to fire someone when you don’t want to. In fact, one character implies that he should be grateful to be sexually harassed – after all, he’s getting some action from a hot chick, what’s the problem?! When Jennifer Aniston sprays water on his crotch, he makes high-pitched squeaking noises. The audience laughs. When she accosts him in her office wearing nothing but panties and a labcoat, he can’t take her eyes off her hot body. The audience laughs. When she grabs his penis completely against his will, his face freezes in an exaggerated grimace. The audience laughs. The guy rightly accuses his boss of raping him and expresses a desire to work in a ‘rape-free environment’. The audience cacks itself.

A game I enjoy playing while watching movies is How would this be played if these characters were genderswapped? Would a young, female dental hygienist being stripped and molested by her middle-aged, male superior while under anaesthetic be played for comedy? Would one of her friends asking in a strained voice due to barely controlled laughter to see the photos her boss took during such an incident be treated as a reasonable, if slightly insensitive, reaction? Would the same friend sleep with the rapist boss because he was ‘really hot’ and ‘eating suggestively in front of a window’ even after she knew of the boss’s history? Probably not.

In fact, definitely not. Because male on female rape is serious, dramatic, tragic, a trigger for ruggedly handsome male heroes to go off on murdering sprees or broken female waifs to do the same.

Female on male rape? Unlikely. Impossible. Hilarious. Well, according to Hollywood.

The movie plays the reason for this man’s hatred for his boss as this: he does not despise her because of her sexual harassment, he despises her because her sexual harassment might jeopardise his relationship with his fiancée. Because, of course, he couldn’t be upset that he was being sexually harassed. Because he is man. And men don’t get sexually harassed. He is upset that his fiancée will find out that he is being sexually harassed and break up with him because being sexually harassed is the same as willingly cheating on someone amirite?

This man is, of course, the youngest, weakest and stupidest of the three main characters. The implication being that you would have to be pretty weak and stupid to be taken advantage of by a woman. This movie is pretty good, see – it manages to deny the existence of serious, cruel female on male rape and imply that concession to a woman is weak and unmanly. Koala tea.

At the end of the movie (omg, spoilerzz!!11), one boss ends up dead and another in jail. Rapist boss, though? She is blackmailed into stopping her sexually harassment. And that is it. The movie considers her punishment to be adequate. The boss who is sent to jail murdered someone, fair enough, comeuppance earned. The boss who is murdered was a cokehead who hired prostitutes and fired people because he didn’t like the look of them, comeuppance not really earned, but who are we kidding, this is Hollywood, comeuppance earned. The only significant change to the life of the boss who constantly molested her inferior is that she has to stop molesting her inferior. No restrictions on her life or liberty. Comeuppance earned, apparently.

Another thing that got me about the movie was the conversation the two other protagonists (you know, the normal ones with real problems unlike their stupid, weak, rape victim friend) about which of them would be more rapeable. Just, you know, a casual, jocular conversation about rape. One of the same characters makes a passing reference that his boss was spending the rest of his life down on all fours in prison. The implication being that he was being raped. You know, as punishment for what he had done. The audience howls with laughter.

For some reason, I find it hard to laugh at rape jokes. I’ve never been raped or sexually assaulted so I’m not going to pretend in a million years to know what it’s like or how a victim feels. However, as seems to come with being female, I’ve experienced my fair share of guys hollering poignant, well-thought out comments such as ‘Hey sexy!’ and ‘Slut!’ and ‘I’d do you!’ from car windows. I’ve had it drummed into me never to walk home alone at night, never to talk to strange (or even familiar) guys by myself, never to draw too much attention to myself in ‘dangerous’ (read: racially diverse) areas. I’ve had guys leer at me and ‘compliment’ me and even, in one memorable instance, ask the guy next to him whether or not he would have sex with me. While rape and sexual assault have thankfully so far not been a reality for me, the threat of them has been in a way that it wouldn’t be for a man. The way our society is constructed makes rape feel almost inevitable for me, in a way that it would never feel for a man. I am very conscious that rape has a distinct possibility of occurring to me at some point in my life, so I have a really hard time finding it funny.

If you look at it this way, you would never, ever make dead baby jokes to a pregnant woman, because there is an uncomfortably high possibility that something could go wrong and she could lose her child. You would also never, ever make cancer jokes around someone going through remission, because there is an uncomfortably high possibility that they could end up dying. So why is it a-ok to make rape jokes in a movie where around half the audience have an uncomfortably high possibility of being raped?

Reality check: it isn’t.

The thing about ‘Horrible Bosses’ is that it is very, very self aware. There’s a great scene where a presumptuous white man is humiliated as he tries to tell a black man that he understands discrimination and disenfranchisation. Yet shit like rape jokes are played 100% straight.

Oh, and one more thing about the movie. When the young, weak, stupid guy finally confronts and stands up to his rapist boss, he triumphantly pronounces her a ‘whore’. You know, that insult people use to shame promiscuous women. Because sexual assault is as trivial as sleeping around for women. Or being promiscuous is as horrible a crime as rape for women.

I can’t even decide which is worse.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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