The Way We Were: This is inspired by the increased interest here and elsewhere [View all]
.. in the question of what is rape and what is not.
In The Way We Were, the Streisand character ... long burning w. love/lust for the consistently uninterested Redford character.... maneuvers the utterly inebriated Redford via taxi to her bachelorette lair after a chance meeting at a NYC club in the middle of WWII.
(They knew each other years earlier but were never romantically involved. Much to her regret; not to his.)
She plans a more conventional... and presumably civilized...seduction: she makes coffee for the two of him while he's getting violently sick in the bathroom. She comes out of the kitchen to find him... stripped naked and out like a light ( what they used to call "dead drunk"
in her bed.
Crestfallen... she carefully considers her options. After due deliberation, she decides to remove all of her clothing, slide into bed next to the naked and thoroughly unconscious Redford and gently prods him into semi-conscious state. He groggily and gradually assumes the top position. His back is the the camera. His face is not shown. Her's is.
It is implied that he performs sexually to an extent that is satisfactory to the Streisand character.
Many people know the scene. Is this rape? If so... by whom against whom? (No one asks permission; no one says "no". (He appears to be incapable of saying no; she clearly wants "it " ( i.e. sex) to happen --- yet at no time does she grant verbal permission.)
If it is she... who essentially rapes him ( if you accept a working definition rape as including "inability to consent" are there any mitigating circumstances?
What about the reverse? Is he responsible for not gaining consent?
Does the fact that the films douses the scene w. a gentle, romantic, Marvin Hamlisch score make us feel less inclined to call a "rape" a rape?
Are we that simple-minded and easily manipulated?
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