"Thus Do All Women": Comedy, Sentimentality, Ambiguity, and a Così fan tutte for the #MeToo Era

Abstract

"Thus Do All Women"Comedy, Sentimentality, Ambiguity, and a Così fan tutte for the #MeToo Era Camille Rogers (bio) Content warning: sexual assault and coercion, attempted suicide Misogyny and Ambiguity in Così fan tutte In 2018 actor Molly Ringwald published an essay in response to the #MeToo movement in which she reevaluated the ethical implications of classic 1980s films such as The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Sixteen Candles.1 While understandably reluctant to condemn movies that were not only formative to her career but also exciting at the time because "no one in Hollywood was writing about the minutiae of high school, and certainly not from a female point of view," she acknowledges that in hindsight, many of the interactions between male and female characters were highly problematic, depicting sexual harassment and, in some cases, assault. She describes a famous scene from Sixteen Candles, which today feels profoundly disturbing: The dreamboat, Jake, essentially trades his drunk girlfriend, Caroline, to the Geek, to satisfy the latter's sexual urges, in return for Samantha's underwear. The Geek takes Polaroids with Caroline to have proof of his conquest; when she wakes up in the morning with someone she doesn't know, he asks her if she "enjoyed it." (Neither of them seems to remember much.) Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, [End Page 45] "You know, I have this weird feeling I did." She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn't. And yet, despite many problematic elements, through interactions with fans Ringwald has found that these movies were powerful for many teenagers at the time, including those in marginalized positions. She writes: "How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? … Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art—change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past … so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go." Such a powerful statement could be made about many genres of art, but I find it particularly relevant to opera, which concentrates much more heavily on historical works than most other entertainment industries. Over the last few years, the opera world has been rocked by its own #MeToo scandals, and coverage of the movement has reached mainstream media outlets.2 This in turn has led to increased scrutiny of the physical and sexual violence often enacted against female characters onstage.3 With a wider conversation about gender-based harassment and violence in opera emerging, scholars are now questioning more broadly what can—and should—be done with operas that contain themes of sexual violence. In a 2018 colloquy on sexual assault in opera, Suzanne G. Cusick and Monica A. Hershberger suggest that "when we stage, perform, or teach that repertory without explicitly engaging its imbrication with sexual and gender violence, we risk unwittingly sustaining a part of its tradition that we now find morally repugnant."4 Bonnie Gordon argues that teaching opera in a more ethical way can have a profound effect on students, potentially encouraging them to be more critical not only of historical texts but of modern media as well.5 Further, Micaela Baranello comments on the possibility of staging these depictions of sexual assault with more care, in particular attempting as much as possible to situate them in their original context. At the same time, Baranello cautions against productions emphasizing the more brutal aspects of sexual violence to "trade on women's bodies for symbolic currency."6 With this increased awareness of gender-based violence, many centuries-old [End Page 46] operas are now being reevaluated, some for the first time. As far back as 2000 scholars such as Liane Curtis highlighted how the brilliance of Mozart's music could distract from the blatant misogyny and gender-based violence of Don Giovanni.7 However, more recent scholarship has gone beyond the score to focus on the agency of directors to affect audiences' perceptions of well-known operas. For example, in her 2021 dissertation "Regarding Rape: Representations of Sexual Violence on...