The Normalization Of Pedophilia Hits Sundance Film Festival

We’re just noting mile-markers as they pass by now:

The Tale is a memoir film in which writer-director Jennifer Fox confronts the sexual abuse she suffered when she was a 13-year-old girl, having spent the next three-and-a-half decades of her life convincing herself that she was engaged in a “special” relationship with a 40-year-old man, facilitated by a woman she trusted…

Its resonance—a woman realizing that what she had thought was a consensual sexual relationship was actually child rape—is one thing. That it shows, with purposeful unflinching detail, Jennifer’s rape at age 13 is another. (We witnessed multiple people walk out after this.) But that it doesn’t direct you how to feel about it, or moralize, or redeem, or reassure is its greatest power.

The Tale is relentlessly uncomfortable, and sometimes even aggravating. It wades into the murky waters of a complicated debate currently consuming culture, but doesn’t seek to satisfy or conclude it—which can be infuriating but is also necessary. It lacerates right through that conversation, letting the full range of opinions spill out…

Would the film be as powerful if the acts were implied, instead of shown to wincing eyes on screen? Perhaps…

We see them make out and it is grotesque. We see him, over multiple scenes that take place over a series of weeks, attempt to penetrate her. “We have to keep stretching you open, slowly,” he says. And then again: “No young boy would do this for you.” We see her give him a blowjob when it doesn’t “fit.” Eventually it happens, the camera switching between her face and his as it does…

It would be impossible to list the myriad tenets of the conversation surrounding abuse and victimhood that the film explores. Should there be guilt or shame? Is she emotionally scarred? We wouldn’t purport to answer any of those questions, and maybe the film doesn’t intend to either. And that’s the prickly part of it, the thing that will keep us and anyone who sees it itching long after it ends…

While watching it, you’re not exactly sure what Jennifer wants the outcome of this whole journey to be, and you’re especially not sure what you want it to be either. What are you rooting for, if anything at all?

I have not seen this film, nor will I, so I will go with the article description here. It basically describes repeated exposures to a shocking image of a man having sexual intercourse with an 11 year old actress, which intersperses it with muddled opinions of it, which take no position on it, so it appears neither right or wrong as you are seeing it.

My suspicion is this is designed to acclimate amygdalae to the visage of child-sex. It is a sort of desensitization procedure. It doesn’t openly celebrate pedophilia. Your amygdala would flag that immediately and trigger aversive stimulus in response, and you would continue to oppose pedophilia – and oppose this movie as well.

Rather it ostensibly paces you by partly insinuating that it agrees with you about pedophilia being wrong, but then it throws in alternative viewpoints as if it is just part of the artwork, so you your mind will enter a confused mode, as you are exposed to the imagery again and again. That is an attempt to blunt the impact of what should be swift, unambiguous horror that is triggered with each exposure.

These things seem like nothing, but one minute we are being told it is OK for Bob Dole to be on TV talking about penis pills and erections in Viagra commercials, the next we are told that gay marriage has nothing to do with adopting children, and the next minute we are being told how wonderful it is that a ten year old boy is being shuttled from gay bar to gay bar by his parents to perform his transvestite drag queen act, or male trannies walking around naked in girls locker-rooms is fine, or gay parents adopting is wonderful, or public masturbation is just a bodily function, and on and on.

r-selection is a spectrum, and I fear we may not yet have hit the real slippery slope into peak degeneracy. It is possible that we have crossed a line where the descent will now accelerate.

My own feeling is, no matter what position this movie takes at the end on pedophilia, it sounds like a two hour desensitization process which the rabbits are inflicting on society in preparation for the eventual normalization of pedophilia.

Tell others about r/K Theory, because we need to stop this slide once and for all