No sympathy for the devil

Regarding your article on The Woodsman ["Sympathy for the devil," Jan. 27]: I am unable to see the merits of a film seeking sympathy for a child molester, and I have a feeling that the director's opinion about her subject would have been less enthusiastic and forgiving if she had been a victim of sexual abuse herself as a child.

Does Nicole Kassell expect victims to see this film and suddenly feel all better now because, surprise, sexual predators are people, too? We know they're people: they are our uncles and grandfathers, etc. That's why it's disturbing. When you're betrayed by the ones you're told you can trust, the world becomes a very lonely place. Trying to draw sympathy for a character who's sick, knows it, and still doesn't seek help, is irresponsible and, frankly, shocking, considering that the director is female.

Victims of sexual abuse have enough obstacles in their paths. Setting up a sympathetic character based on a very real predator and showing it on every movie screen and advertising in every paper is another example of how money and shock value always win out over the state of the human psyche, which is very delicate to begin with. What will her next subject be: a sympathetic documentary on the human side of Hitler? Isn't he a person too? I don't think I need the likes of her to tell me how to regard my assailant. She should grow up. And I don't know a single woman alive who would sleep with an admitted child molester. This is a serious matter, and the director dropped the ball completely.

» Sandra Archibald

Rape and racism

Although I was impressed with the interesting gender commentary in Amy Barratt's review of The Rape of Lucrece ["Slave to Lust," Jan. 27], her questionable comment on what would make the play "resonate today" was an embarrassment to your publication and your readers.

Are we to understand from her concluding comment that Shakespeare's retelling of the Etruscan story of domestic rape should have in turn been set by Potter "in a non-Western society" so that Montreal audiences in 2005 would find it more credible? Is this because Ms. Barratt lives - or believes spectators to live - in the orientalist delusion that domestic rape doesn't happen in our enlightened time and place?

I urge Ms. Barratt to defend what she meant by "resonate," when all it seems to mean to any reader with half a clue about post-colonial politics and culture is that the play would be better if it had been racist - i.e. if it had exploited common prejudices about "non-Western" societies so as to remove, as Shakespeare did in his original poem, the horror of sexual assault from "our" time and place, and remove it to the land of the "other." I urge Ms Barratt to go read Edward Said's Orientalism and get back to us.

» Jordan Arseneault

Amy Barratt replies: I never suggested that domestic rape doesn't happen in "our enlightened time and place," merely that Western society is no longer, as it was in Shakespeare's day, a place where a woman who has been raped would kill herself out of shame. Does Mr. Arseneault deny that there are places in the world today where, if a raped woman doesn't take her own life, her male relatives will do it for her?

Leave him alone

I object to the media lynching of Michael Jackson in your editorial cartoon [Rosen, Feb. 3]. One is innocent until proven guilty.

» David Arrayet

Parent quest woes

I relate to Terry Gardiner's story and the frustrations of being an adoptee, and I'm happy his quest was successful ["More adoptee adversity," Feb. 3]. Not every adopted person has the luxury or the lawful right to know their biological parent, myself included.

I am under a closed and private adoption agreement, with a hint of black market included. The lawyer involved is now a QC and his cousin is a member of parliament. So the law works for some, while others go on without answers, photos or even hints as to their biological parents' identities.

To those who are searching, my heart goes out. I'm grateful at least to have my life mummy who adopted me still about. But, knowing the truth is out there somewhere, will that ever be enough?

» Barbara Milch

Fight tuition hikes

As media spokespersona for KAKKA (Kanadians Against Kredit Kard Akademia), I applaud David Leahy's consciously retarded stand against post-education cost increases ["Give students a break," Letters, Feb. 3].

In a recent informal KAKKA poll, nine out of seven low-end service industry job-holding university students surveyed said: If they were not obliged to work to study, they would devote their free time to the reading of great books, like The Illustrated Kama Sutra.

Today's students are tomorrow's leaders - just as Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton and Donald Trump were in their day. Don't deprive the future of a thousand points of light. Fight tuition hikes.

» Ron Huza

Correction:

The number given for the punk community centre in last week's People column on Manic Manon should have been 866-4004. The loft and L'X benefit space, called The Outsider, is at 2070 Moreau.

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