To the editors:
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Ms. Mencimer’s pomous-ass imagined superiority over alcoholics, prostitutes, Elisabeth Shue, and apparently all white, male heterosexuals is just plain absurd. Her inability to provide details of just the characters’ actions, intentions, or motivations makes her terribly ill-suited to this task (it would do her good to read some Tennessee Williams). Her narrow insight into Sera’s line “You should know that included with the rent around here is a complimentary blowjob,” is completely ignorant and without compassion. Are you telling me, Ms. Mencimer, that this doesn’t strike you as at all discomforting, self-deprecating, and a massive attempt, on Sera’s part, to mask her own shame? You really think the line is straightfoward, completely without subtext? Does Mr. Cage’s sympathetic, compassionate response to her line provide any context for you? (I’ll give you a hint: it has something to do with pain and the walking wounded.)
The analysis throughout is similarly heavy-handed and ill-informed of the fundamentals of human behavior. Ms. Mencimer tries to make some case about Leaving Las Vegas being solely about Sera’s acceptance of Ben (or so, she calims, most male reviewers would have it–a gender thing, you know). Was she in the lobby playing pinball during the scene when Ben lays it all out by quite plainly stating, “We both know I’m a drunk and you’re a hooker . . . “? Ms. Mencimer’s determination to overlook such details in support of her politically-correct-faux-feminist-jourmalistic pose hardly gives the ilm its due. Her revoltingly odd attempt to criticize the gang rape scene for its placement in the film, after Ben leaves, as opposed to its placement in the novel, before Ben arrives, is completely inane. When you’re a prostitute, Ms. Mencimer, rape, gang rape, and physical abuse sort of goes with the territory. People who deride this sequence in the film (and several reviewers and publications have offered varied opinions on the sequence, Ms. Mencimer), lack the fundamental understanding that the whole point is that Sera is not in control–that’s a major problem for her, she is not in control–and that her involvement with Ben has made her vulnerable and therefore, off her game. The threat of gang rape exists every night she prostitutes herself–she is dancing with death. After all, Leaving Las Vegas isn’t just about a man drinking himself to death; it’s also about a woman getting fucked to death. Sera isn’t “punished for defiance,” and therefore gang raped. She is ready to go.
Sean O’Neil
