No Rapes Please

A rape scene is not only too much for audiences, Ms. Zambello said, but it also overshadows everything else. “The point is fine,” she added, “but when it is so graphic it becomes the end rather than the means.”

Ms. Zambello is an opera director.  She is concerned here with offending the sensibilities of those educated, rich people who occasionally go out to the opera.

I would ask opera director Ms. Zambello if she plans to stage “Macbeth” or “Hamlet” or “Othello” or, well, just about anything, in the future, which might have a murder in it.   Or how about “Salome”, which features a decapitation?  If so, why would you refuse to stage a rape?  Why, indeed, would you stage anything at all, if you want your audiences to be shielded from the unpleasant realities of war and social dysfunction?

So substitute “murder” for “rape” in the quoted paragraph.  Well, it could be done.  It could be a Disney film.  No murders, no violence.  And it could be a serious film.  But it would never be a serious film involving a murder, because it would “overshadow” everything else in the story.  So get busy rewriting “Macbeth” and “Hamlet” and “The Pianist” and “Saving Private Ryan” and all the other works of art that have murders in them.

[whohit]No Rapes Please[/whohit]