After watching Anomalisa, I went to IMDB like I always do after watching any film. I was surprised to see that some contributors were claiming that Michael raped Lisa. With the film fresh on my mind, I strongly feel that the sex was consensual and not rape. She didn't tell him to stop nor express to him to stop his sexual advances. But maybe I'm wrong and totally missed something. What do you all think?
shareIt is not rape, but it is certainly very sneaky. Lisa was naive and Michael got her drunk. He took advantage of her naivete. It was painful to watch, but that's very real life situation. Lisa wouldn't have a rape case here, but it doesn't cancel the fact that Michael is a disgusting manipulative selfish old fart. On another note Lisa is also painfully stupid and she got a lesson she deserved.
shareThe notion that Michael raped Lisa is overeaching to a major degree. Michael Stone is indeed portraited as a tremendously selfish and immature man. However, nothing of what he did could be considered rape. First of all, he wasn't taking advantage of Lisa. He knew he could have had easily had sex with Emily, Lisa's friend, who was, by all accounts, more attractive and showed enourmous availability for sexual intercourse with Michael. He prefered Lisa because she looked, sounded and acted differerntly from the rest of the world - he though he had seen in her some of the characteristics that Michael believed to match his idilyc woman (as he did with many other women before her, but of course at that point we do not know that yet). He believed himself to be in love and though her to be unique, so unlike everybody else. However, in the morning, after she became to him more "common" and strating to sound like everybody else(as we all do when our mysteries and inner selves are completly bared for another to see) he lost interest. it is then revealed that the fault exists not in others but in Michaels shelflessness, who is unable to cope to anything resembling routine and that may be devoid of novelty, mystery and, toa certain degree, innocence.
He did not force himself on Lisa, she knew he was married and the promises of leaving his wife was made after the sex act was consummated, not before, so she was well aware at that time that it would a one night stand kinda deal.
So, if he didn't lie to her or made promisses to her before sex one can hardly say he took advantage of her and he was in earnest (at least at that moment) when he promised to leave his wife (after sex - I can't stress that enougth). It is when a longer life with Lisa becomes a real possibility that Michael, selfish and unable to cope with what it means to be in a mature, delusioned realtionship, that he believes he had rushed.
Intially we believe Lisa to be a emotionally unstable person as she doesn't fit in behavioral social standards; however in the end we learn that it is Michael who has serious problems with maturing and coping that will probably never be resolved; Lisa however seems to be able to easily accept circunstances - she is, as it turns out, more emotinally able to cope with life's misfortunes and traps than Michael is.
The movie should not, however, be taken at face value. It's story is obviously meant to be metaphorical and it should be pondered as just that - a metaphorical and alegoric take on love, human relationships, aging and the unwillingness to cope with life's reality and the deselusioment that comes with it. The characters are archetypes and metaphors and therefore, perceivd and judged as such.
There's always going to be some feminist and others with similar mental disorders, who hates all sex and will yell "RAPE" at even a hint of sexual relations. They are about as sane as religious fanatics who will stop at nothing to judge and berate people who actually enjoy life.
Don't give them any attention, and they usually start disagreeing about something, only to end up fighting amongst themselves instead.
ABSOLUTELY NOT! There is nothing that REMOTELY resembles rape. She was star struck and had low self esteem , but so are many people. She was a willing participant and loved every minute of it. Those who think it was rape are what's wrong with the world!!!
shareOh, yes, he "raped" her.
He also "micro-agressed her vagina" and "violated her safe space".
What a pathetic load of crap.
Peace.
That had not occurred to us, Dude.
@zuleika-44325
Your brain is so full of hysterical rape-culture rhetoric you can't see the wood for the trees.
Michael did not rape Lisa, legally or morally (if there was even such a thing as moral rape). Your insistence on drawing parallels with pedophilia and grooming is pedantic to the extreme.
Lisa may have been rather dim-witted, uncultured and plain to us, but it was clear from how she appears and sounds that Michael finds her miraculously different from all the other people he had encountered up until then. Something about her, perhaps her innocent, unpretentious nature, sparks something in him more than lust, but an impulse for life which up until that point was barely beating.
His feelings may have changed later as this infatuation wore off, but at that moment she was the most precious thing to him and he wanted to share this rare euphoric bliss with her, which he clearly hadn't felt in a long time. Sex was how this was expressed and it's clear to MOST people here that BOTH parties desired this intimacy, despite Lisa's hesitancy over revealing her body. If Michael said things to her to boost her confidence at those moments, can you honestly call that manipulative? You said she just lay there like a corpse, but I saw her passiveness as taking time to release her inhibitions and be led to enjoy her own sexuality again under Michael's gentle advances, which were far more focused on her pleasure than his. There were multiple points where she stopped the action and continued it on her terms, there was no coercion. Besides, if and an 'easy lay' was all Michael wanted, he could have chosen to bed Emily, who had clearly shown that she was in to him.
In the end, Michael is the victim of his hopelessly idealistic delusion and the realization that he is a prisoner of his own mind. Lisa, though saddened by the abrupt end to their relationship, manages to extract something good from it and leaves with a renewed confidence in herself and a hope for the future. She isn't presented like a victim, because she's not one.
Of course, if you analyze it with an everything-is-rape-culture bias, it's easy to ignore that and assume Michael is just a sleazy manipulator who lured the 'child-woman' Lisa to his bed, said nice things to get in her pants, then casually discarded her and that any attempt to show Lisa's positive outlook following this 'grooming' (as you call it) is just a cynical way for privileged male writers to excuse 'rapey' behavior and mistreatment of women, instead of the honest and thoughtful portrayal of humanity it really is.
I'm glad no one else thinks like you do.
How sad it is, that male viewers who write on this thread use every excuse to scream 'it is not rape'. The very fact of the passionately one-sided, literary interpretation of the question shows how deep the problem is. There is here an excuse for man's momentarily passion/fantasy that made an object out Lisa, made her a doll to play with and to throw out once the moment of childishness is over. There is no way around the fact that this movie objectifies women, and the men who do not see this and are not disgusted by it, have still a room to grow before becoming humane.
shareYou're completely wrong of course, because Michael was not thinking of discarding Lisa at that moment. He was fully prepared to run away and spend the rest of his life with her, until his delusion unfortunately caught up with him. You and that other feminist idiot are analysing this through a biased 'rape culture' lens which is primed to interpret any sexual encounter led by a man as 'aggressive, 'manipulative' and 'objectifying'. You're completely ignoring the moments that Michael showed his interest in Lisa was more than just sexual -like when he asked her to sing for him and then started crying at how beautiful he thought it sounded. He clearly thought the sun shone out of her ass, however naive and hopelessly idealistic that belief was.
I don't say it's wrong to dislike his actions and think him an ass, but to suggest that an awkward sexual encounter between a delirious, infatuated man and a slightly tipsy, naive, shy woman has parallels with rape just because she got rejected afterwards is hysterical.
Also, for the record, numerous female posters have argued that it was NOT rape, including one (nicver) who declared herself a survivor of rape. She seemed to find it rather insulting that this innocuous sequence should be compared to what she went through. You might respond to her.
Here's my interpretation of the film. Michael is a broken human being he is trapped in a world of boredom and disappointment. He hates his job about customer service because he can't stand to be around people. He tries like many people who are unhappy with their situation to fill it with something. Michael fills it with sex. He's more than likely a serial cheater and probably has been his entire sexual life.
He first tries to cheat or at least tries to get some kind of emotion out of seeing his ex girlfriend who just happens to live in this city he's only been to once before. Either, he lied to the cabby or she is just a different Lisa from a different time. Who he probably left in the same manner as he does later with Lisa.
When ex gf walks out on him he tries to find something else to do to alleviate his boredom. He sees Lisa and her friend and basically uses his power and influence to get with Lisa for a one night stand. From our point of view which is his she is shown as the only one with a voice and a face he has decided for some reason that she is special. He convinces himself very quickly that he loves her. He doesn't even have a good reason for why this would be it just is. This calls back more to the serial cheater aspect once you've found a target you tend to fixate on it ignore all the flaws, which Lisa has quite a few. The two characters are not really on an equal playing field when it comes to money, power, age, sexual history, and could be argued intelligence. This makes this liaison a lot creepier. IN my opinion, this is just Kauffman showing us the mind of a serial cheater/ whatever other mental disorder this guy has. He convinces himself he loves her, that she is unique among all things, that if he could only have her everything would be alright, so he uses everything he's got to sleep with her and succeeds. She then almost immediately becomes something drab and ordinary. He's had sex with her already so what's the point. The goal is always something new.
I do think that this sex is obviously consensual. I don't think you could ever make an argument that it isn't. What it is however is what I would call predatory, even if Michael is unaware of it. I don't think there is some threshold number of relationships someone needs to have had to not have a one night stand but I don't think what happened to her is the right thing. She is obviously quite vulnerable and has self esteem issues. A fact Michael takes advantage of to have sex with her.
We don't know Lisa's outcome from the one night stand since we don't see things from her perspective. Hopefully his showing affection for her would help her begin to see her own value and maybe make her come out of her shell more but we don't know. It could very easily have been emotionally damaging and may still be she is writing the letter trying to put a positive spin on it like she has done with everything up to this point. It could even be Michael reading a made up letter he created himself ho justify his actions. To show that no one really got hurt in the process.
I think the point of the movie is to show how alone Michael is and any happiness he has slips away immediately. He's a broken person and does despicable things. If anything you should pity him.
I think it's kind of brilliant that this movie has sparked this kind of discussion but I think people are using too much vitriol on either side. Michael isn't a rapist he's that creepy guy at the club who tries to get you to take him home by buying you drinks and boasting about his job (although in a much more subtle way) He's definitely not blameless either. He can't just blame his condition on why he is an ass (which he actually uses through several points in the film to justify his bad behavior mostly to himself). No matter how immature Lisa is she is also responsible for her own actions. You can't escape from your choices.
Definitely not rape. She didn't say no at any point. It was clear Lisa was uncomfortable...but that's it. I thought this movie was very clever in helping me understand an illness of which I knew nothing about. Michael used Lisa for sex but that is the end of it. He may have emotionally took advantage of her to help himself feel better about himself.
shareThey're both adults and it was totally consensual. He didn't even pressure her. It was totally 100% consensual. ?? I am confused why this is even up for debate.
share