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?
shareI don't believe he did, and I feel those claiming he did are being insensitive to real victims of rape. He continuously asks her permission throughout the scene and then she asks him to 'come up here' after taking her own clothes off. I would be very happy if I had been treated this way during a one night stand and believe guys could actually learn from this. Ridiculous.
Well said emilymorris-29390
And not only are they being insensitive to real rape victims, they're insensitive to women like Lisa, who may be insecure, who may be unworldly, who may be naive and inexperienced, but who deserve to enjoy consensual sex and intimacy, and the feelings of validation that often go with that, as much as anyone.
this is the same pathetic thread as on the old imdb board
share'Rape'?!?
Anyone who says that needs to have their head examined.
Michael was clearly disturbed and one might even argue that he was using Lisa. Then again, doesn't all sex and intimacy involve using people to some extent?
But speaking as someone who empathised with and felt more touched by Lisa's story than I did with Michael's, as sad and sympathetic as the latter's was, I think Lisa needed Michael, even if it was only for that one night.
She was a deeply insecure, lonely, borderline self-loathing woman, who desperately needed to feel special. Michael gave her that feeling and the intimacy she hadn't felt for at least eight years if not longer (perhaps even for the very first time in her life), and it his feelings towards her, however brief, however bizarre in their basis, were genuine. And he was tender with her. He, quite rightly, asked whether it was okay to go down on her, and he checked to make sure he was moving and acting at a pace she was comfortable with. He wanted to make her feel special, and he wanted her to feel an orgasm, assuming that is what she wanted.
What he did after their night together was weird, but, in view of his messed-up pathology, understandable, but that night together is precisely what she needed.
All those posters calling him a rapist or 'too child-like' to consent to sex have no clue.
Lisa wasn't clinically retarded. She wasn't even particularly stupid. She was unworldly and only had a rudimentary education, but the same can be said of billions of grown women and men throughout the world, most of whom, rightly, enjoy an active and healthy, consensual, sex life; something which Lisa deserved too!
Sadly, I suspect Lisa won't have many future opportunities like that, but for one night a man made her feel special and desirable, and, irrespective of what was going through his head, Michael inadvertently did a very good thing.
The puppet would get #MeToo'd today.
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