MovieChat Forums > Leaves of Grass (2010) Discussion > co-ed assaulting billy played for laughs

co-ed assaulting billy played for laughs

posted 10 years ago by knightsintodreams
2 replies | jump to latest

[bear with me, i'm not trying to be difficult.]

i want to bring this up because i think it's important.

while i understand their intentions, i just think showing an undergrad being sexually aggressive on an unwilling, clearly no'ing person who then has their JOB put in jeopardy is highly irresponsible, especially since it's female on male.

there's this idea that male sexual assault is "funny" which creates a culture where men feel they won't be believed or taken seriously if they mention it. it's not ok. it's not ok at all and to view it as a goofy thing when he nearly lost his job for it is dangerous. i know that billy didn't feel violated but he was still punished for her sexual behavior.
i wish they included a scene where he's believed or some kind of nod to how messed up that was. :/

it's 2014. like, c'mon.

*steps off soap box*

Reedus/Fassbender/Hiddleston

[–] sunezno (269) 10 months ago

It's been a while since I've watched it, but I think maybe that part was what needed to happen in order for him to end up in Oklahoma at the end. If he had actually done something unprofessional with a student, that would show the audience that he's not a good guy, ya know? But the way it played out, and the way the Harvard people saw it, if I remember correctly, was like, "Hey, we don't necessarily believe her claims, but it would still look bad on us if we hired you now."
Completely bullshit and unfair since Bill didn't do anything wrong at all, but like I said, I think it was also the catalyst for him staying in Oklahoma after everything went down with his family.

So then he doesn't really have any reason to go back to the east coast, and he's found love with what's-her-name in OK, and reunited with his mom, and can just kind of relax and enjoy life. Especially after losing his brother, and then narrowly escaping death himself.

Anyway, yeah, I think it was just the believable and necessary catalyst while also keeping him as a good person that got a raw deal, essentially.

[–] sunezno (269) 10 months ago

I just rewatched that scene on the bridge where Bill is talking to the female student, because I'd forgotten how exactly all of that went down. She claims that she had written him a love poem in Latin (that was pure fantasy, she admits), but that another student read it over her shoulder in the library and went to the department about it (because he was still salty about Bill having given him a B+ on a paper last year or something). Then that's where Bill's assistant chimed in with what she saw in his office that one day.

It sounded like the female student even told them that she was the one that came onto him, and that he said absolutely not, but that didn't really matter to the higher-ups. So it was the "perception is reality" shit that screwed him over.