Hollywood just can’t help itself.
Amidst an ongoing sex abuse scandal in Tinseltown, including charges of pedophilia, the most celebrated film of the early awards season is “Call Me by Your Name,” a movie about an affair between a man who is 24 and a teen boy who is 17.
"Call Me by Your Name" just took the best feature film prize at the Gotham Awards, the first big party of Oscar season. Directed by Luca Guadagnino’s, “Call Me by Your Name” stars Timothee Chalet as a 17-year-old who is summering in Italy and falls in love with a 24-year-old man played by Armie Hammer. "Above all, 'Call Me By Your Name' is about compassion and transmission of knowledge," director Guadagnino said when he accepted the Gotham award.
Of course, the same liberal media that is charging hard against Judge Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate who is alleged to have pursued teen-aged girls when he was in his 30s, is praising “Call Me by Your Name.” The film is “a masterpiece” that is “leaving audiences in tears.” It "is one of the great movie love stories, for audiences of all stripes." It’s also a sure contender for the Oscars.
Writing in the far-left website Slate, Jeffry Bloomer insists that “‘Call Me by Your Name’ is not a story of predation: It’s a story of first love and lust told from the perspective of a particularly mature teenager on the cusp of adulthood; the relationship is consensual; even Elio’s parents seem to approve; and, in any case, this is a fictional depiction, not an ethical endorsement.”
Boomer goes on: “Even if ‘Call Me by Your Name’ doesn’t depict anything technically illegal, does that make it ethical? To answer that, we need to resist the revulsion that often comes with thinking about sexual relationships outside the idealized “charmed circle” (of the straight, married, same-age sort) and consider the specifics of the situation. That’s not to give cover to pedophilia or any other form of violation, but to acknowledge that human desire can be far more complex and intractable than we might like to admit. Not every relationship removed from our comfort zone is abuse.”
Roy Moore supporters might find those words handy.
Still, there is doubt amidst the praise. Glenn Gaylord, a reviewer for Rotten Tomatoes, states the obvious: "The story of a 17-year-old boy's 1983 summer of love with a 24-year-old man can't help but have a whiff of pedophilia about it, despite the fact that the age of consent in Italy, where the story takes place, is 14."