"The Thoughts in Your Head": The Pedophile as "Other" in Sidney Lumet's The Offence
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3200/jpft.35.3.133-142
ISSN1930-6458
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoAbstract Sidney Lumet's harrowing psychological study, The Offence (1972), spotlights one of society's most elusive and reviled, but seemingly necessary figures: the pedophile. Lumet's film blurs the usual boundaries between normal and pathological to ultimately expose the "latent" pedophile within society at large. Here James R. Kincaid argues that society needs the pedophile to explain the attraction of the eroticized child; provided society can keep the pedophile at a distance by turning him into the figure of the "other." The Offence moves the pedophile to center stage, forcing viewers to get to know the "unknowable," and entertains, but ultimately rejects, the "dirty old man" stereotype—opting for a far more paranoid McCarthyesque outlook where the pedophile is "one of us" and is not reassuringly other Keywords: children and filmSidney Lumet The Offence pedophilia
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