Age of consent
Mar. 8th, 2006 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
undyingkingI went to see State and Main the other day (showing as part of the campaign to save the Ipswich Film Theatre) and was struck by something I hadn't really thought much about when I saw it when it came out in 2000.
One of the main pieces of plot revolves around Alec Baldwin's character, a film actor, having a thing for under-age girls. He takes up with Julia Stiles, who is one, and gets into a scrape which involves prosecution for statutory rape (ie. underage sex). In the end he doesn't have to face the charges, thanks to the prosecutor taking a bribe, and so the film can carry on being made, happy ending for everyone, etc.
I wondered whether a plotline like that could be treated so lightly in the UK. Julia Stiles's character is presented as being sexually mature and entirely willing, so it's not exactly kiddy-fiddling, but all the same it's a serious sexual offence (just ask Graham Rix). The underlying assumption behind an age of consent law is that below that age, children are not sufficiently mature to really know what consent implies and what the consequences might be. In fact even in the film's light-hearted terms, Julia Stiles is deeply upset by the aftermath of the episode, and once she's done her plot duty the camera skips away from her very quickly. Is this an American thing? Is it because, having ages of consent that vary widely from state to state, they tend to take them less seriously near the top end? Maybe I should conduct another 'tame Americans' opinion survey...
Obviously there is a sense in which having sex with someone of 15 is less serious than if they're 12. It doesn't make sense to say it's a hideous moral outrage one day and entirely normal the next, just because that day happens to be the 16th birthday. But the law has to operate to fairly crude guidelines, and maybe the UK having a black / white cutoff like this is better than de facto turning of a blind eye that turns into the thin end of a slippery slope (etc)?
One of the main pieces of plot revolves around Alec Baldwin's character, a film actor, having a thing for under-age girls. He takes up with Julia Stiles, who is one, and gets into a scrape which involves prosecution for statutory rape (ie. underage sex). In the end he doesn't have to face the charges, thanks to the prosecutor taking a bribe, and so the film can carry on being made, happy ending for everyone, etc.
I wondered whether a plotline like that could be treated so lightly in the UK. Julia Stiles's character is presented as being sexually mature and entirely willing, so it's not exactly kiddy-fiddling, but all the same it's a serious sexual offence (just ask Graham Rix). The underlying assumption behind an age of consent law is that below that age, children are not sufficiently mature to really know what consent implies and what the consequences might be. In fact even in the film's light-hearted terms, Julia Stiles is deeply upset by the aftermath of the episode, and once she's done her plot duty the camera skips away from her very quickly. Is this an American thing? Is it because, having ages of consent that vary widely from state to state, they tend to take them less seriously near the top end? Maybe I should conduct another 'tame Americans' opinion survey...
Obviously there is a sense in which having sex with someone of 15 is less serious than if they're 12. It doesn't make sense to say it's a hideous moral outrage one day and entirely normal the next, just because that day happens to be the 16th birthday. But the law has to operate to fairly crude guidelines, and maybe the UK having a black / white cutoff like this is better than de facto turning of a blind eye that turns into the thin end of a slippery slope (etc)?
