{"id":33416,"date":"2011-02-23T10:24:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T15:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=33416"},"modified":"2011-09-28T14:29:37","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T19:29:37","slug":"guest-post-reactions-to-the-case-of-lara-logan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/02\/23\/guest-post-reactions-to-the-case-of-lara-logan\/","title":{"rendered":"Reactions to the Case of Lara Logan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sexual assault of CBS reporter\u00a0Lara Logan<\/a> in Tahrir Square last week has resulted in two predictable, but utterly depressing types of commentary.<\/p>\n

Muslims are backwards<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the one hand are the anti-Islam\u00a0culture warriors<\/a>, eager to find in this incident proof of how degenerate Muslims (and Arabs) are. This, despite the fact that there\u2019s no proof the assailants were Muslims, nor that they had any connection to the overwhelmingly peaceful and\u00a0harassment-free<\/a> demonstrations. In fact, there\u2019s reason to believe that Logan\u2019s attackers may have been\u00a0pro-Mubarak thugs or apolitical opportunists. <\/a>The right wing response to this story was inevitable, but liberal response was also problematic. Film critic and outspoken liberal Roger Ebert tweeted this today:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe attack on Lara Logan brings Middle East attitudes toward women into sad focus.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

Oy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to call Roger Ebert\u2019s attention to the case of Roman Polanski, who has enjoyed a long and celebrated movie career, in spite of his status as a fugitive child rapist. When Polanski was arrested in September of 2009, while attempting to accept an award at a film festival in Switzerland, supporters circulated a petition on his behalf.\u00a0Over a hundred people in the film industry signed that petition <\/a>which gratuitously called Polanski\u2019s crime \u201ca case of morals.\u201d Some weeks later, Gore Vidal went so far as to smear Polanski\u2019s 13 year old victim as\u00a0\u201ca young hooker.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Has Ebert ever decried the Polanski case for the way it \u201cbrings Hollywood\u2019s attitudes towards women into sad focus?\u201d Has he ever criticized Polanski, Vidal, David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai, Harvey Weinstein or any of the dozens of cinematic luminaries who signed off on this petition? Nope. On the contrary, he gave a big\u00a0thumbs up<\/a> to a documentary which argued Polanski should be given a pass for his crime.<\/p>\n

I hardly expected\u00a0Russ Meyers\u2019 former writing pal <\/a>to be an exemplar of feminist discourse, but his tweet yesterday was especially myopic. Does he really believe that the West is so much more enlightened about rape and sexual violence than those primitive, backwards Middle Easterners?<\/p>\n

The opportunistic use of feminism is a common feature of the \u201cliberal\u201d discourse in the culture war against Islam. Just look at how Ayaan Hirsi Ali is trotted out by the media (especially Bill Maher and Steven Colbert) to justify imperialist wars and burqa bans, all in the name of protecting Arab and Muslim women from their own cultures. Meanwhile, many of these same commentators ignore the fact that rape and misogyny are also endemic to our own culture. (And that includes\u00a0our movies<\/a>, Roger.)<\/p>\n

Rape is sexy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The other type of response to Logan\u2019s assault was the usual victim blaming, made extra creepy by the focus on Logan\u2019s good looks and alleged sexual history. The worst offender was\u00a0LA Weekly<\/em> blogger Simone Wilson, who, in an\u00a0extraordinarily trashy piece of writing<\/a> had this to say:<\/p>\n

Logan was in Tahrir Square with her \u201c60 Minutes\u201d news team when Mubarak\u2019s announcement broke. Then, in a rush of frenzied excitement, some Egyptian protesters apparently consummated their newfound independence by sexually assaulting the blonde reporter.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wilson conflates the historic Egyptian revolution with gang rape. Classy stuff. But she\u2019s not through. In addition to \u201cblonde reporter\u201d we\u2019re also treated to these descriptors of Logan:<\/p>\n

\u201cit girl\u201d
\n\u201cfirecracker\u201d
\n\u201cshocking good looks\u201d
\n\u201cHollywood good looks\u201d
\n\u201cgutsy stunner\u201d
\n\u201chomewrecker\u201d <\/em>(this courtesy of a\u00a0NY Post<\/em> article from 2008)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As\u00a0has already been noted<\/a>, focusing on a sexual assault victim\u2019s good looks and allegedly dubious sexual character amounts to victim blaming. But it also does something even more insidious. It makes rape sexy.<\/p>\n

This is par for the course at the\u00a0LA Weekly<\/em>, where almost anything can be sexed up.\u00a0LA Weekly<\/em>\u2018s cover art department in the last couple of years has managed to make nearly every topic sexy, from murder to toxic mold and overpopulation.<\/p>\n

Murder is sexy:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Toxic mold is sexy:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Overpopulation is sexy:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rarely do the sexy women adorning the covers of the\u00a0LA Weekly<\/em> figure as the subjects of these stories. They\u2019re splayed on the cover to boost circulation, because sex sells and, after all, \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with being sexy?\u201d<\/a> (This isn\u2019t even to mention the content of the\u00a0Weekly<\/em>\u2013 its abundance of ads for plastic surgery, or its routine back page ads from American Apparel\u2013 subjects for a longer post.)<\/p>\n

Given this particular aesthetic, it is not at all surprising that an\u00a0LA Weekly <\/em>blogger would choose to play up the sexy side of the Logan assault story, taking extra pains to emphasize her \u201cHollywood good looks.\u201d Even an \u201calternative\u201d newspaper upholds the local value system. Arab Muslim rapists are bad. Sexy women make great victims. And cinematic geniuses\u00a0should get a pass.<\/a><\/p>\n

UPDATE, after the jump:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, thank you to Sociological Images for re-posting my commentary. I\u2019d like to address a a few key points in the comment thread.<\/p>\n

1) Obviously, this essay was not meant to be a definitive analysis of Western media response to the Logan assault. I made a couple of observations to contribute to a larger discourse. If the people commenting here are genuinely curious, there are a number of excellent articles that take a wider view of the media response, particularly the way in which it sexualized the victim and reinforced Orientalist stereotypes. Salon\u2019s take is a very good one:http:\/\/www.salon.com\/entertainment\/tv\/feature\/2011\/02\/15\/lara_logan_rape_reaction<\/a><\/p>\n

2) I was instead interested in focusing on liberal response to the attack, and how this underscored the tendency to point the finger at the Other, for problems that are also deeply rooted in our own culture. This type of rhetoric is often used to justify wars of aggression against Muslims & Arabs, as well as assaults on the rights of immigrant Muslim populations.<\/p>\n

3) I don\u2019t think Roger Ebert is the worst offender. I simply saw in his tweet, an opportunistic disavowal of sexism in Western culture. Following from that, I attempted to show how rape culture is very much a part of Hollywood, its films, and by extension, the local \u201calternative\u201d rag, which freely uses womens\u2019 bodies to sex up all kinds of unsexy subjects. Such tendencies in our popular culture are so deeply ingrained, that people assume them to be a natural state of affairs. The axiom that \u201csex sells\u201d is a curious mixture of free market tautology and biological determinism.<\/p>\n

Finally, I think it\u2019s telling that none of the critics of my piece have addressed what I had to say about the LA Weekly\u2019s commentary, nor about the paper\u2019s pattern of using sexualized images of women to boost circulation.<\/p>\n

As Erika notes above, it\u2019s always easier to point our fingers at other cultures, rather than look at manifestations of the same social ills in ourselves and in our culture. Of course I condemn stoning, FGM and other manifestations of misogyny in Muslim societies. But my criticism of sexism doesn\u2019t stop there. It extends to myself, my local environment, my popular culture and even my political allies. Does yours?<\/p>\n

——————————-<\/p>\n

Matt Cornell is an artist, performer and film programmer. From 2000\u00a0to 2004, he was a business consultant in San Francisco for outsider\u00a0artist eXtreme Elvis. Matt lives and works in Los Angeles.\u00a0\u00a0He blogs at\u00a0My Own Private Guantanamo<\/a>. \u00a0Contact him\u00a0at\u00a0matt@mattcornell.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our\u00a0Guidelines for Guest Bloggers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sexual assault of CBS reporter\u00a0Lara Logan in Tahrir Square last week has resulted in two predictable, but utterly depressing types of commentary. Muslims are backwards On the one hand are the anti-Islam\u00a0culture warriors, eager to find in this incident proof of how degenerate Muslims (and Arabs) are. This, despite the fact that there\u2019s no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,55,2090,778,129,283,285,1756,120,133],"class_list":["post-33416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-intersectionality","tag-media","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-arabsmiddle-easterners","tag-sex","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33416"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33424,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33416\/revisions\/33424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}