the reader, part one

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/
The Reader
directed by Stephen Daldry
2008

The basic plot is this: a fifteen year-old boy has a sex-filled affair with an older woman in Germany during one summer in the 1950's. He reads to her a lot. Years later, while a law student, he observes a trial of several Nazi death camp guards. She is one of them. She is sentenced to life in prison, because rather than point out that the other guards are also responsible, she keeps quiet about her illiteracy (hence all the reading to her). This whole affair haunts him for the rest of his life.

My first question is: what would we think of this movie if we switched the genders? What if it were a fifteen year old girl who fell madly in love with (and had tons of sex with) an older man who was a death camp guard? Now, there isn't really an answer to this question, because we don't have that story and its specifics in hand; we only have the idea of such a story. But there are some points to be made about possible responses.

First of all, the fact that the affair is (in fact) filled with rape might be more on our minds. And if she were as eager for it all as our young lad is, we'd be a little leery of her mental health – maybe she's “under his sway;” maybe she's sex-crazy. Who knows, really.

We'd also look at the guard differently, I expect. There's an image in our minds of the German concentration camp guard. In the popular mind, he's a strong, cruel individual (and he always speaks in harsh German). With her, there's none of that aura of terribleness to her.

Something related to the two above points is that we would expect the power dynamics of the relationship to be very different. In one scene, they argue; she tells him to leave and that she's going to take a bath. She turns the water on; he pushes past her and turns it off. Even though she's much older, he has a certain authority and power over her, in virtue of the fact that he's taller and stronger. Some of this also comes from their personalities: consider the long bike trip they take, where he is clearly leading them (and she is content to be led).

Anyways, the point is that I do not think this is a movie where it would be easy to switch the genders around.

* crazy footnote: Israeli Holocaust Pornography

The movies, gender, the holocaust