![]() Both exist, of course: there was a male victim and there was a male perpetrator. Huh? The lesson the director took was not about the presence of a male perpetrator, but the presence of a male victim. “That’s interesting,” the director responded, “because it shows that there are male victims of domestic violence.” An encounter on the latter, involving hosts Waleed Aly and Carrie Bickmore, gives us some indication of the filmmaker’s mindset.Ĭonversation touched on former Australian of the Year, Rosie Batty, and the tragic death of her son, who was killed by his father during a domestic violence incident. The circus came to town this week, with Jaye landing in Australia and generating headlines following bumpy interviews on Weekend Sunrise and The Project. ![]() “The Red Pill should not be laughed away or derided as benign flapdoodle. As they say, to the crazy person the normal person is insane. This is how men’s rights activists view themselves: as heroes fighting the scourge of feminism for the betterment of humankind, sacrificing themselves for the greater good. The Red Pill is a reference to the famous scene from The Matrix, in which Morpheus offers Neo a choice between living in blissful ignorance or being exposed to the hard-to-stomach truth of the real world. The director asks a series of Dorothy Dixer type questions, smiling pleasantly with her feet up on the couch.Įlam explains the significance of the documentary’s title Jaye has named it in his honour. Their conversation is Kitchen Cabinet-esque, but even less probing than Annabel Crabb’s home-cooked how-de-do. Instead of rigorously scrutinising Elam (who appears to have even inspired a page on Urban Dictionary) Jaye pops over to his place for a friendly chinwag. Here’s just one, and by no means the worst: “Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.” He is, to put it lightly, a deeply controversial figure with a long history in making – again, to put it lightly – extremely unsettling statements. ![]() One who appears regularly in the film is Paul Elam, the face of the modern men’s rights movement, and one of the talking heads who compelled me to turn this wretched, morally bankrupt documentary off. Perhaps this is unsurprising given The Red Pill was funded by Kickstarter, bankrolled by the activists themselves. Jaye’s primary objective isn’t to unpack a series of complicated issues, but to humanise – and flatter, in no small measure – controversial figures in the men’s rights movement. Or at least is evidence of systematic prejudice directed at my male brethren. It is an argument often made by taking a single example of injustice (for example, a father unfairly losing custody of their child) and insinuating it applies across the board. The director’s central hypothesis is that, in the present day and age, women have it better than men. One, who speaks with closed and squinty eyes, as if trying to ignore demons streaked across his vision, speaks about how “men need compassion.” He says that for men there is “an ocean of pain out there” and “nobody listens, nobody cares.” He says many other things throughout the documentary, including asking women to “stop pretending that you’re oppressed.” It was the return to the screen of two ‘experts’, for want of a better word, who are regularly brought back, for reasons that elude me, to do their thing: complain about women and attempt to solicit sympathy about the apparently oppressed male populace. It wasn’t a single, unreasonable, offensive argument or comment – though the film is full of them – that pushed me over the edge. Ninety minutes and 25 seconds into the running time, to be precise. When watching director Cassie Jaye’s controversial documentary The Red Pill, a propaganda film about the men’s rights movement in America, that limit arrived at a specific moment. There are limits, however, to this poison-tasting, take-the-bullet approach. I say “so you don’t have to.” I said it for Human Centipede I said it for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. I have a standard response, delivered way too many times over the years to count. Every once in a while somebody a great deal saner than I asks me why I sat through a film or TV program that was widely anticipated – and indeed turned out to be – terrible.
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