The legal dictionary defines rape as “a criminal offense defined in most states as forcible sexual relations with a person against that person’s will.” Many women, children, and even some men have been raped which is a terribly form of violence both psychical and emotional, with heavy psychological tolls on the victim.
Ask former Hollywood actor Kim Novak however, and she will tell you that rape is an artistic choice of music in a film used in a manner that she does not agree with. Kim Novak, who few persons aside from film buffs or adults over perhaps fifty has heard of, made the stupid move of taking out a full page ad in Variety, -telling really no one that cares about her foolish opinion- that she was raped. ‘I was raped,’ her ad actually began. She went on to bemoan how music that she didn’t even create that was used in a Hitchcock film she appeared in, and was later used in the outstanding film ‘The Artist,’ made her feel that her ‘body of work’ was raped. No Novak, it wasn’t your work. You’re not Bennie Herman. Bernard created the music, not you. And if Bennie were alive, he would surely have the good sense enough to realize the great merit of ‘The Artist,’ and the good gesture of ‘The Artist’ director Michel Hazanavicius in keeping the music alive for new generations of film goers. If Novak were rational, she would be thanking The Weinstein Company and Mr. Hazanavicius for creating such a wonderful, masterful, film, which may inspire others to see films of earlier periods when Novak was a name more people knew.
Instead, the insane sounding Novak would rather let film composer Bennie’s work die with her generation, an era of films most kids these days-short of film students-unfortunately don’t even know of or care about, and she would rather waste money on publicizing her idiocies which takes power away from kids and others who actually are raped.
Those who attempt to control and modify human behavior do so often with the destruction or modification of words. Tell the world over and over that the world ‘rape’ means using a film score you don’t like, and then the actual definition ends up meaningless, and actions created to deter rape are more difficult to define and create, since all action begins with communication which is predicated on words. War is Peace! Love is Hate! Rape is a film score I don’t like! No, its not.
Director Michel Hazanavicius credits the composer at the end of his film and, unlike that loony acting retired American actress Kim Novak, replied to her in the Hollywood Reporter and stated, “I love Bernard Hermann and his music has been used in many different films and I’m very pleased to have it in mine. I respect Kim Novak greatly and I’m sorry to hear she disagrees.”
What a gentleman. Far more class than Kim Novak to be sure, a woman who does dis-service to her own gender, as well as children and some men who actually have been raped.
Novak and her team arrogantly refused to apologize, suggesting in pseudo intellectual attempts at rationalizing her bad behavior that rape can mean many things. According to Fox News, Novak’s manager Sue Cameron stated to Fox411: “There are all kinds of rape including the rape of one’s soul. All rapes are violent acts and all victims should be supported.” Uh, no Sue, using Bennie Herman’s score in The Artist was not a violent rape, and no, Novak is no victim and on the contrary, she should be condemned, not supported. In this weak attempt at trying tell the world how the word rape can be defined loosely, in order to gratify her ego of being right, Novak and her team lessens the power of the word which contributes to further abuse of actual rape victims. I am sure than many rapists would love Novak on their jury, justifying how rape can be simply a poem.
When other stars have blundered using the rape word loosely, forgetting they represent culture and that children listen to what they say, they have wisely apologized. If you were at a party and offended a rape victim by saying how you were raped when you clearly were not in a different context, and that rape victim asked for an apology after telling you how it made them feel, you would most likely have good manners and decency and apologize to the offended person. Stars, whose party is the public, must recall too their manners. Stars with class have manners, or at the very least, apologize when they are insanely offensive. Every star that has miss used the rape word in public – save for asinine comedians who speak of killing people they don’t like- have made amends for their errors. Not Kim Novak, whose team defends her insane choice of words and who do not care who they offend.
According to Fox411, Lynn Blanco, the CEO of the Rape Crisis Center in San Antonio, Texas, and herself a victim of rape, also disagrees. She states, “When (the word) rape is used in a way that over dramatizes a situation that did not include an actual rape it diminishes the suffering of the thousands of men, women and children who have suffered from the crime.” Exactly. But does Kim Novak or her team care? Not a bit. Seems to me that that retirement wasn’t such a bad move after all.
