Over the past decade, on what was once a bedrock principle of the Democrat Party, the Party has lost its soul. The rights of the accused no longer matter, especially when there is a Social Justice cause to push.
This is especially true when it comes to accusations of sexual assault. For example, too many college campuses are now Stalinist Kangaroo Courts, where young men are hauled before administrators and, without a shred of due process, have their futures shredded over unproven allegations of sexual misbehavior. For this to be allowed in any Western culture is unconscionable and un-American. But beneath every Social Justice Warrior you will always find a fascist.
Things are even worse online, so bad in fact that a famous actress, in this case Jessica Chastain, can now use her Twitter account to falsely accuse a dead man of rape. And although we know Chastain is smearing this dead man with an objectively false accusation — one of the worst imaginable — she pays no price. As long as her cause is “correct,” as long as her agenda is “acceptable,” Chastain can defame a man no longer able to defend himself, and do so without fearing a consequence.
The whole kerfluffle began when “Last Tango In Paris” (1972) director Bernardo Bertolucci said in a 2013 interview about the film’s co-star Maria Schneider:
I’d been in a way horrible to Maria because I didn’t tell her what was going on. Because I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react and she felt humiliated… and I think that she hated me and also Marlon [Brando] because we didn’t tell her that there was that detail of the butter used as a lubricant.
Bertolucci is talking about the film’s most shocking scene, where Brando (who was 48 at the time) anally rapes Schneider (who was just 19).
Now if you read Bertolucci’s quote closely, he quite clearly says, ” [W]e didn’t tell her that there was that detail of the butter used as a lubricant.”
In other words, what he surprised her with was the butter.
Fast-forward a few of years, and you have the SJW crowd getting a hold of the interview and writing hysterically dishonest headlines and openings like this…
Bertolucci Admits He Conspired to Shoot a Non-Consensual Rape Scene in ‘Last Tango in Paris’
The director said he didn’t tell star Maria Schneider because he “wanted her reaction as a girl not as an actress.”
It’s known as one of the most infamous rape scenes in Hollywood history—but Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted in a recently surfaced video that star Maria Schneider never consented to it.
Instead, Bertolucci confessed in the 2013 clip that he and Marlon Brando came up with the idea to shoot the assault scene in which Brando’s character uses a stick of butter to rape Schneider on screen. At the time, Brando was 48. Schneider was just 19.
Huh?
Whuh?
No!
Even Schneider herself said it was not rape:
That scene wasn’t in the original script. The truth is it was Marlon who came up with the idea. They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry. I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that. Marlon said to me, ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie.’ But during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and, to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.
Time Magazine tweeted out this defamatory insanity, but at least added the appropriate context…
Jessica Chastain, though, outright accused Brando and Bertolucci of planning and carrying out a criminal rape:
Now I am in no way saying that what Bertolucci did was appropriate (for the record, Brando also felt exploited and humiliated by the director). An actor is never more vulnerable than during a sex scene and to manipulate Schneider (who died in 2011) in this way is disrespectful of her talent and highly unprofessional. That said, directors humiliating actors to get the desired performance is not unheard of. Some have even gone so far as to slap their actor.
And just in case this is not painfully clear, there was no sex, no penetration, no intercourse. The rape scene was simulated … it was a thing we call ACTING.
It was not a rape.
It was not a sexual assault.
It was not criminal behavior.
Rape is rape is rape is rape.
Soon after all this nonsense played out, Bertolucci found it necessary to repeat the obvious in a statement released earlier this month:
Bertolucci said Monday that Schneider did know about the planned violence. She just didn’t know about the butter, which was used as a lubricant.
“I specified, but perhaps I was not clear, that I decided with Marlon Brando not to inform Maria that we would have used butter. We wanted her spontaneous reaction to that improper use [of the butter],” the director said in Italian in a statement obtained and translated by Variety. “That is where the misunderstanding lies.”
He added: “Maria knew everything because she had read the script, where it was all described.”
When everything is rape, nothing is rape.
Chastain’s hysterical, illiberal, online lynch-mobbing is doing a lot more damage to women than it is to Brando.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC