Check out my anatomy of a pitch for this one.
“Licorice Pizza” is being lauded among critics though very few are mentioning the glaring problem wherein a 25-year-old woman doesn’t shut down the advances of a 15-year-old man. The relationship is described as chaste by most critics.Alison Wilmore attempts to downplay, it for example, with the headline “Licorice Pizza’s Unlikely Romance is the least interesting thing about it.”
First, let’s be clear, the movie ends in a romantic kiss (more on this movie trope here) and the 25-year-old professing “I love you” as the closing credits role. The ending is criminal and has been deemed unacceptable in 98% of contexts outside of this one
For example, Indiana Jones (and its three venerable screenwriters: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kadsan) nearly got cancelled because of the ickiness of the Marion-Indiana dynamic and there was a miniseries on TV less than a year ago “The Teacher” in which a young teacher who seduces her 17-year old student is seen as the devil. Additionally, in real life we have been pretty unforgiving of Woody Allen’s courtship with a 19-year-old Soon Yi Previn was “the heart wants what it wants” and have rejected the “It was the 70s” approach with Roman Polanski’s rape defense.
For a society that has worked consent into its common cultural vocabulary in the last few years, there seems to be a lack of consistent standards the more this film is embraced.
I am all in favor of allowing works that challenge our ideas and provoke to go out into the ether. After all, few would argue that the Hayes Code that restricted the morality of movie characters (for instance, mandating that criminals or homosexuals had to be punished by the end of the film) was a good thing. However, what determines how the public decides when such a work of art or someone’s personal life
(for example, Sean Connery, William Hurt, and Kirk Douglas have openly admitted to acts that could be considered assault on women or sexual assault) is a moral affront? I’d like to address that in an essay and discuss perhaps the solution is to cast a wider net in letting art exist unfettered so that people can comment about what is portrayed that is right or wrong within that art.
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