Veteran reporter Sharon Waxman knew she’d found a new low. Reporting
from the Toronto Film Festival, she revealed the viewpoint of director
Nick Cassavetes, which she summarized in a headline: “Who Gives a Damn?
Love Who You Want.” The topic was incest.
Hollywood’s march to tear down – to obliterate, really -- every
boundary of sexual decency should compel even the harshest accusers of
social conservatives like Rick Santorum to apologize profusely. They
were wrong to mock conservatives for warning of the extremes, as we’re
lurching so quickly and easily into the darkest “love who you want”
extremes of the Lifestyle Left.
Cassavetes is selling his film “Yellow,” which stars his ex-wife
Heather Wahlquist as a beautiful woman addicted to pain pills. She
travels back home to Oklahoma after being expelled from her teaching job
in Los Angeles for “having broom closet sex on Parent Night.” On her
way home, she stops to visit her brother in prison. It results in a
incest scene that we’re told is “tender and affecting and signals no
judgment of the relationship.”
Cassavetes
told Waxman at The Wrap, “I have no experience with incest...We started
thinking about that. We had heard a few stories where brothers and
sisters were completely, absolutely in love with one another. You know
what? This whole movie is about judgment, and lack of it, and doing what
you want. Who gives a [bleep] if people judge you?”
Then he arrived at what became the headline of the article: “I’m not
saying this is an absolute, but in a way, if you’re not having kids –
Who gives a damn? Love who you want. Isn’t that what we say? Gay
marriage – love who you want? If it’s your brother or sister, it’s
super-weird, but if you look at it, you’re not hurting anybody, except
every single person who freaks out because you’re in love with one
another.”
In a very real sense, he’s right. This is where the slippery slope
leads. Cassavetes said he wanted to portray a modern woman who is, in
his words, “a rock star” and “a mess.” He wanted “an exaggerated version
of a girl who came from a place where different things are acceptable.”
In reality, he wanted a beautiful woman that viewers would find
sympathetic, and then throw this shocking, “tender” incest scene in
their face.
Don’t think critics won’t like it. A reviewer on Indiewire called this
movie “officially the most refreshing breath of air” at the Toronto film
festival. “So far there is no news on distribution or when this thing
is coming out, but as soon as it does, go out, don’t take it too
seriously and have a little fun with it.”
Don’t take the incest scene too seriously? Have fun with it? What – chuckle?
Incest isn’t the only grave sin that’s being promoted by the cultural
revolutionaries. Last fall, the major gossip website Gawker.com strongly
attacked the social site Reddit for having a “Jailbait” subsection
displaying sexualized images of girls of junior-high age for “catering
to pedophiles.” So what is Gawker doing now? Catering to pedophiles.
This juggernaut website published an article on September 7 titled
“Born This Way: Sympathy and Science for Those Who Want to Have Sex with
Children.” The writer Cord Jefferson cited “a growing number of
researchers, many of them out of Canada, whose work suggests that
pedophilia is an illness deserving of the public's sympathy the way any
brain disorder is. Some of the scientists say pedophilia is a sexual
orientation, meaning that it's unchangeable, regardless of how much jail
time or beatings or therapy someone is dealt.”
Where are the national media outlets who are still pounding their
anvils on the front pages and talk-TV segments against the Catholic
Church and their struggles with pedophilia? Nowhere to be found.
Jefferson argued “if pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that also
means it's futile to send pedophiles to prison in an effort to alter
their attractions. Doing so is akin to sending a homosexual child off to
a religious-based institution that claims it can ‘pray the gay away.’”
This jaw-dropping article concluded that the weakest in our society –
he listed blacks, women, Latinos, and gays – “are still in no way on
wholly equal footing in America. But they're also not nearly as lowly
and cursed as men attracted to children. One imagines that if Jesus ever
came to Earth, he'd embrace the poor, the blind, the lepers, and, yes,
the pedophiles.”
Jesus would embrace every sinner...who is ashamed of his sin. Shame and judgment have been banished in most of our pop culture.
Perhaps Gawker will next try and convince Nick Cassavetes to make his
next daring indie film with “tender and affecting” scenes of pedophilia
which “signal no judgment.” There are so many lows, and so little time.