Absolute Power
I've just rewatched the movie Absolute Power, something I've written about before but it sort of comes across as a jumping off point for a seemingly unrelated point. I did comment on how Walter Sullivan married a much younger woman because he didn't want to bury another wife and it's a significant plot point, but didn't really follow up.
I don't recall writing it and was surprised where it went. At the time it was written, I was being sexually harassed by a substantially older married man in a position of power and I was trying to figure out how to neutralize two threats:
1. Pointlessly offending him about something trivial and stupid: the age difference.
2. Unintentionally leading him on by trying to be polite and inoffensive.
At some point, I ran across his obituary, so I no longer need to worry what he's likely to read into my writing and don't confuse him with the facts.
While rewatching the full movie, made notes of some of the dialogue. Starting just before the 22-minute mark of the film:
Black guy: "Nothing to tell. He screamed for help."Woman boss: "You heard no sounds of violence before then?"White guy: "Nothing we haven't heard before."
I think at this point in the film, it's not yet clear Gene Hackman is playing the President of the USA.
That last line indicates he is a chronic philanderer and he routinely beats up his women who presumably usually have the good sense to to just let him if they value their lives because they know full well there's always security within earshot, so obviously armed men can hear him slap her around and are standing around doing nothing about that but will absolutely be there in short order if he feels threatened. As, you know, an extra layer to the fact that men are typically bigger, stronger and more likely to have combat training or martial arts training or similar.
If you want to study so-called rape culture and try to do something about it, there you go. The movie shows a conspiracy to protect a powerful man in the public eye from any appearance of wrongdoing while aiding and abetting his philandering knowing he beats his lovers up and, no, they probably don't know ahead of time what they are getting themselves into, having not met him at a BDSM club.
That kind of thing is probably fairly common. See, for example, my recent rants about being banned from Cyburbia for trying to notify a corrupt male mod abusing his position of power what infection he should be tested for as a consequence of spending the night with me:
At about the 41-minute mark, Walter Sullivan, elderly husband of the dead woman, says the following in the course of speaking to police after identifying the body of his much younger wife:
I'd been married to my Rebecca for 47 years. When she died, I decided I never wanted that pain again. One thing I knew about Christy, she was going to outlive me.
I like the fact that the movie gives Walter Sullivan such a nice reason for marrying someone so much younger. I write a lot about my criticisms of heternormative culture and that women are under enormous social pressure to marry for money and it helps foster the average age differences that skew older man-younger woman as the norm.
I also sometimes write about my criticisms of Western culture being so hung up about age differences in relationships. If two people hit it off, they are whatever ages they are and you can't change one or both of them because society might look askance at it.
I once wrote a critique of the video for Madonna's song 4 Minutes which pairs her with a much younger Justin Timberlake, then later felt like a butt. How many professional dancers her age are there?
In the course of trying to figure out this blogging thing, I used to write and redact a lot of stuff. One of my redacted rants was about how I tended to get involved with older men during my divorce in part because I was in my 30s and 40s and older men made it clear they viewed me as a pretty young thing, which felt good, but men my age were buttheads ripped from that scene in Bridget Jones Diary where the guy is all "No one in their right mind would want either one of us middle-aged losers. Let's settle." and she wisely dumps him because she wants a better offer than that.
In some cases, I desperately tried for years to figure out how to say "That loneliness problem you have? I could help you out with that." without having to crawl naked across broken glass and shred my self esteem in the process and got zero cooperation. I eventually pulled my head out my butt and concluded the men in question weren't that stupid, no.
They were actively sabotaging the relationship in spite of also falling all over themselves to talk to me.
I like nice, well-mannered men who are polite, respectful and not neurotic buttheads incapable of saying something like "I like you, but I don't really foresee marrying you." or whatever it was driving this bizarre behavior that only had the opportunity to drag on for years because I was deathly ill and not really in a position to get with anyone anyway.
My limbo state left an opening for some men to keep bothering me because I was alone a long time due to my situation. And that would have been true even if they had let me help them with that loneliness problem they had.
It was consistently older men who were capable of passing the time pleasantly with me in the present and accepting the situation for what it was. Men my age and younger simply couldn't enjoy my company and pass the time pleasantly without making up nonsense drama unrelated to reality because I was quite open about how sick I was, that I wasn't looking to remarry, etc.
So there was zero need to try to explain something like "I really like you and would love to spend time with you, but I don't want to marry you." and get me to understand. That was already exactly my position on the subject.
I don't think rape culture will get solved. Our current approach to the issue is to vilify men and act like only men have any power to fix this shit. Women are all helpless victims and if you try to tell women to do something different, you are blaming the victim and will be openly hated on, so if you have ANY sense, you should just shut up and cover your ass.
A nice touch in this movie is that one of the male secret service agents wants to call the police and it's his woman boss who insists on a cover up.