Much hullabaloo has been made of Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting’s recent decision to file a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for allegedly deceiving them and profiting from nude scenes they filmed as teenagers included in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Understandably, the $500 million they hope for in damages has raised eyebrows, but I have been disappointed by the poor moral judgement evinced by many ‘conservatives’ responding to this lawsuit. Far too many are writing it off as little more than money-grabbing, rather than recognizing the objective wrongdoing on the part of Zeffirelli and Paramount, evils that movie studios continue to perpetrate today. This oversight is, I fear, representative of the moral degradation of the contemporary Right, a degradation against which we should all stand.
The pornification of film
A good example of the kind of article that raises my ire is a recent piece in this publication by Paul du Quenoy. Dr. du Quenoy is, make no mistake, an excellent writer who knows the arts quite well, and I have benefitted from his writing on more than one occasion. In this piece, however, he shows a striking shortsightedness. He begins by contextualizing the film and summarizing the relevant facts of the lawsuit. He explains that the film contains fleeting views of Hussey’s bare breasts and Whiting’s uncovered bottom.
However, he questions the sincerity of the two actors’ claims. There are, it seems to me, two questions raised in his objections. The first, raised explicitly, is whether there really was any kind of lasting harm done to the two actors by these scenes. The second, answered implicitly in the negative, is whether Paramount and Zeffirelli did anything wrong in including these brief pornographic images. Let us tackle the two in order. On the first point, du Quenoy writes,
one could start by asking why, if the trauma of brief nudity in a celebrated film regularly shown to school children whose world premiere was attended by the Queen of England was so horrible, it took Whiting and Hussey nearly 55 years to reveal their distress in any way. … If the matter had for decades tortured Whiting’s and Hussey’s souls and throttled their careers, why did they wait until the last moment to pursue the matter in court, and not do so at any earlier time?
I am, of course, incapable of knowing the true mental and emotional states of these two actors. However, I would like to suggest that it is entirely possible that these nude scenes have negatively impacted them, particularly Hussey, the actress who played Juliet. Hussey’s scenes were mainly filmed when she was 16 years old. After the film was completed, it went on to be shown to literally millions of people, including teenagers in hundreds of thousands of classrooms. This means, if I may speak frankly, that millions upon millions of men of all ages have ogled her 16-year-old bare breasts. To speak even more frankly, this means that Olivia Hussey wakes up every morning knowing that, quite possibly, tens of thousands of men have masturbated to images of her nude torso. This is enough to make any woman of any age distraught.
It is not unusual for people who are abused in any way to take many years to recognize the real nature of how they have been treated and how this treatment has impacted their lives. A dear friend of mine, for instance, was repeatedly raped by his uncle as a child over the course of several years. The uncle was imprisoned for these crimes. However, my friend literally could not remember anything about the incidents until years later. As the memories began to return, my friend started drinking heavily and even using cocaine. Thus, it is not the least bit surprising to me that Hussey could go more than 50 years not processing the nature of what has been done to her.
Du Quenoy also repeatedly emphasizes that the Romeo and Juliet film is the actors’ “only claim to anything approaching fame.” There are two ways of taking this claim, both completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. The first is that he is saying that, since these people are not fabulously famous and ‘important’ in the eyes of the world, their struggles mean nothing. This is obviously wrong, so let’s assume he means it in a slightly more sophisticated, though still wrongheaded, way: because these two actors benefitted from their parts in the film, they cannot really have been hurt by it. If I might draw an analogy, the prostitute is harmed by every ‘transaction,’ no matter how well she is compensated. For these two actors, it may well be the case that momentary fame is cold comfort given the abuse they suffered.
Let’s move on to the second and, to my mind, more crucial question: did the studio and the director do something wrong in filming these teenagers while nude and releasing those images to the public? In a better time, every conservative, nay, every sensible human being would object to pornography, whether of teenagers or adults, being included in a film meant for public consumption.
Du Quenoy, unfortunately, exonerates the studio and director of all wrongdoing. He mockingly writes: “Paramount’s culpability is a stretch, to say the least. The lawsuit claims the studio ‘knew’ or ‘should have known’ that it was trafficking in abusive and unlawfully obtained material and maliciously did nothing about it. Might it have done nothing because no one suggested that anything was amiss until less than two weeks ago?” If I might gently remind Dr. du Quenoy, the film was released in 1968, possibly the darkest year in the history of the modern West, with the only serious competition being 1789, 1848, and the later years of World War II. 1968 was the time at which the West collectively lost its mind, throwing off the supposed shackles of marriage in favor of fornication, adultery, pornography, masturbation, divorce, and venereal disease. The fact that no one has prominently objected up until now does not cast aspersions on Hussey and Whiting, but on us.
This, fundamentally, is why conservatives should support the lawsuit. Whether or not the actors are out to make a quick buck, they are taking on a major film studio for bringing pornography to the public. It is sad that we as a culture have become so desensitized to the abuse of human persons that we do not even blink an eye at the relatively ‘tame’ nudity of Romeo and Juliet. We are far too busy watching the violent pornography of Game of Thrones and other such movies and television shows.
Conservatives should stand up and support anything that goes against the hegemonic perversion of our media. We need to cultivate moral imaginations that see human beings of all ages as persons deserving of love, not bodies to be masturbated to. Pornography in all forms should be illegal, and we should offer support for recovery from porn addiction. Any defense of porn is wrong, and frankly, if conservatism can’t keep from mocking those who object to it, I’m not sure what we’re even trying to conserve.
Why Conservatives Should Support the Romeo and Juliet “Shakedown”
Much hullabaloo has been made of Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting’s recent decision to file a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for allegedly deceiving them and profiting from nude scenes they filmed as teenagers included in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Understandably, the $500 million they hope for in damages has raised eyebrows, but I have been disappointed by the poor moral judgement evinced by many ‘conservatives’ responding to this lawsuit. Far too many are writing it off as little more than money-grabbing, rather than recognizing the objective wrongdoing on the part of Zeffirelli and Paramount, evils that movie studios continue to perpetrate today. This oversight is, I fear, representative of the moral degradation of the contemporary Right, a degradation against which we should all stand.
The pornification of film
A good example of the kind of article that raises my ire is a recent piece in this publication by Paul du Quenoy. Dr. du Quenoy is, make no mistake, an excellent writer who knows the arts quite well, and I have benefitted from his writing on more than one occasion. In this piece, however, he shows a striking shortsightedness. He begins by contextualizing the film and summarizing the relevant facts of the lawsuit. He explains that the film contains fleeting views of Hussey’s bare breasts and Whiting’s uncovered bottom.
However, he questions the sincerity of the two actors’ claims. There are, it seems to me, two questions raised in his objections. The first, raised explicitly, is whether there really was any kind of lasting harm done to the two actors by these scenes. The second, answered implicitly in the negative, is whether Paramount and Zeffirelli did anything wrong in including these brief pornographic images. Let us tackle the two in order. On the first point, du Quenoy writes,
I am, of course, incapable of knowing the true mental and emotional states of these two actors. However, I would like to suggest that it is entirely possible that these nude scenes have negatively impacted them, particularly Hussey, the actress who played Juliet. Hussey’s scenes were mainly filmed when she was 16 years old. After the film was completed, it went on to be shown to literally millions of people, including teenagers in hundreds of thousands of classrooms. This means, if I may speak frankly, that millions upon millions of men of all ages have ogled her 16-year-old bare breasts. To speak even more frankly, this means that Olivia Hussey wakes up every morning knowing that, quite possibly, tens of thousands of men have masturbated to images of her nude torso. This is enough to make any woman of any age distraught.
It is not unusual for people who are abused in any way to take many years to recognize the real nature of how they have been treated and how this treatment has impacted their lives. A dear friend of mine, for instance, was repeatedly raped by his uncle as a child over the course of several years. The uncle was imprisoned for these crimes. However, my friend literally could not remember anything about the incidents until years later. As the memories began to return, my friend started drinking heavily and even using cocaine. Thus, it is not the least bit surprising to me that Hussey could go more than 50 years not processing the nature of what has been done to her.
Du Quenoy also repeatedly emphasizes that the Romeo and Juliet film is the actors’ “only claim to anything approaching fame.” There are two ways of taking this claim, both completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. The first is that he is saying that, since these people are not fabulously famous and ‘important’ in the eyes of the world, their struggles mean nothing. This is obviously wrong, so let’s assume he means it in a slightly more sophisticated, though still wrongheaded, way: because these two actors benefitted from their parts in the film, they cannot really have been hurt by it. If I might draw an analogy, the prostitute is harmed by every ‘transaction,’ no matter how well she is compensated. For these two actors, it may well be the case that momentary fame is cold comfort given the abuse they suffered.
Let’s move on to the second and, to my mind, more crucial question: did the studio and the director do something wrong in filming these teenagers while nude and releasing those images to the public? In a better time, every conservative, nay, every sensible human being would object to pornography, whether of teenagers or adults, being included in a film meant for public consumption.
Du Quenoy, unfortunately, exonerates the studio and director of all wrongdoing. He mockingly writes: “Paramount’s culpability is a stretch, to say the least. The lawsuit claims the studio ‘knew’ or ‘should have known’ that it was trafficking in abusive and unlawfully obtained material and maliciously did nothing about it. Might it have done nothing because no one suggested that anything was amiss until less than two weeks ago?” If I might gently remind Dr. du Quenoy, the film was released in 1968, possibly the darkest year in the history of the modern West, with the only serious competition being 1789, 1848, and the later years of World War II. 1968 was the time at which the West collectively lost its mind, throwing off the supposed shackles of marriage in favor of fornication, adultery, pornography, masturbation, divorce, and venereal disease. The fact that no one has prominently objected up until now does not cast aspersions on Hussey and Whiting, but on us.
This, fundamentally, is why conservatives should support the lawsuit. Whether or not the actors are out to make a quick buck, they are taking on a major film studio for bringing pornography to the public. It is sad that we as a culture have become so desensitized to the abuse of human persons that we do not even blink an eye at the relatively ‘tame’ nudity of Romeo and Juliet. We are far too busy watching the violent pornography of Game of Thrones and other such movies and television shows.
Conservatives should stand up and support anything that goes against the hegemonic perversion of our media. We need to cultivate moral imaginations that see human beings of all ages as persons deserving of love, not bodies to be masturbated to. Pornography in all forms should be illegal, and we should offer support for recovery from porn addiction. Any defense of porn is wrong, and frankly, if conservatism can’t keep from mocking those who object to it, I’m not sure what we’re even trying to conserve.
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