Are all you pansy asses blubbering about the immoral nature of this movie telling me that you wouldn't LOVE to seduced by Sylvia Kristel when you're 15 years old??? The situation is just a wee bit different than that of an older guy and a 15 year old girl, don't you think? Sheesh. Sure, the movie was schlock, but all you phony moralists really make me puke.
shareAgreed. I would love to be in his shoes!
shareMe too, but at least I recognize that's a sexist comment. If the situation had been reversed, everybody would scream bloody murder.
So yes, I believe this movie borders on pedophilia and whether we'd all have liked to be in his shoes doesn't really matter for that question. What if it hadn't been Sylvia Kristel but an older uglier woman. There's a very fine line and in my opinion this movie crosses it
Let's not be hypocrites and assume that pedophilia or even rape (which this clearly was not) can only exist with an older man and a young girl.
"Let's not be hypocrites and assume that pedophilia or even rape (which this clearly was not) can only exist with an older man and a young girl."
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I have a better idea. Let's not be hypocrites and pretend that beautiful-older-woman-on-young-lad "rape" is anything unwanted by those assailed in any more than 0.0005% of the cases.
It's actually called statutory rape, so wether or not it is wanted is legally irrelevant.
So if a good-looking 40 year old man seduces a 14 year old girl it's okay, too, I guess. Just because he is attractive. Interesting, I guess brad pitt can become a pederast and go unpunished then...
"So if a good-looking 40 year old man seduces a 14 year old girl it's okay, too, I guess. Just because he is attractive. Interesting, I guess brad pitt can become a pederast and go unpunished then..."
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Rubbish. I already addressed the asymmetry of this issue with regard to gender, and I'm not taking a legal stance. I'm simply expressing my amusement over how people like you purposefully remain oblivious to the fact that almost all 15 year old boys would love for something like this to happen. You hem and haw and get all moralistic and preachy and toss around the lightning bolts of righteousness, but remain completely clued out about this very simple fact. Like I said, it's amusing.
Have you ever seen the room of a 14 or 15 year old girl? Full of posters of the movie or popstar they're in love with. And yes, most 15 year old girls wouldn't mind having their first sexual experience with Justin Timberlake or Brad Pitt. But that's not the issue. The reason why children are protected is that we don't see them fit to make these decisions for themselves yet.
That's why it's always rape if a minor is involved. They're not allowed to vote, smoke, drink for a reason. Just because they (think they) want it, is no argument. In fact, it is the standard argument made by rapists and pederasts: "He/she wanted it, I didn't do anything wrong."
Protecting children from rape or pornography is not being preachy or moralistic, pal, and it's certainly not amusing. When you have your own kids, you'll think differntly on this matter, I promise you that.
well i guess but pederasty is older man and boy.....
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Part of what I think gets people all riled up is that Philly didn't look 15. He looked 12, at most. Or 10. I know the actor was 16 or so, but he didn't look it. He and the character looked like a pre-pubescent little boy. Not a teenaged young man. Somehow, I suspect that if he'd looked more like a teen boy or young man instead of a young child, people wouldn't have their panties in a wad quite so much
They filmed part of this movie in the house I once lived in in Phoenix AZ. My family moved from there in 1976. It was bought and sold a couple times after we moved. The people who had it at the time Private Lessons was filmed owned but did not live in the house. I still had friends in the neighborhood who told me all about it at the time. They changed things around when they filmed, because there is only one scene that vaguely looked like anything in that house that I remember.
I also thought he seemed more like 12 than 15 and the seduction scenes creeped me out. I don't mean I was filled with moral indignation or anything, just that I kept thinking, "Wow, this is creepy. Wonder if this seems like pedophilia to anyone else?" I think it was made worse by the fact that he seemed so scared and freaked out by her advances for a long time and she was being so aggressive. I kept thinking that if I had seen this when it came out (I was too young to be allowed to see this then) I would have thought she was seducing him, but now in my 30s I think she seems like a predator.
shareThat is the point of this genre of film. It is NOT intended for mature audiences, it is intended for IMMATURE audiences. It is a Teen Sexploitation film. You would have LOVED it if you saw it as a heterosexual teen male at the time.
The movie's tagline in commercials was, "What happened to HIM should happen to YOU!" The funny thing about that tagline is that the author of it seems to wish for innocent teen boys to be hustled for money by their domestic servants.
Having had a friend who grew up with domestic servants in his house, I can tell you they are more often than not considered like family (albeit replaceable, not well-treated family).
The thing I found MOST troubling about this film was the fact that this family had servants. It just strikes me as a bit over-the-top evil. Evil people make others do their housework if they are otherwise able-bodied. Wealthy people are a cancer.
Love is like breathing. You have to take some in and let it out to live.
Well its the double standard isn't it? When a 15 year old girl is victimized its a crime when a 15 year old boy is "victimized" he's a stud.
shareI think the laws are pretty consistent in all the cases I've heard of recently, from Mary Kay LeTourneau on...not sure if I see a double standard in practice.
Regardless of plenty of guys fantasizing about having sex with an older woman or teacher or housekeeper when we were 15, it's against the law for reasonable reasons now and was against the law then, too.
Not necessarily because Philly, or many boys, would hate such an experience. But rather, some kids would be more easily hurt without said laws.
It's not really about basing judgement upon whether or not the minor was enthusiastic. It's about creating a system that police/judges/etc can work with, with some clear/enforcable boundaries.
Draw the line somewhere (and yes, probably some people can cross that line with little to no ill effect) or don't draw the line at all.
Statuatory rape means 18 year olds can't have sex with 14 year olds in some places, but I guarantee in at least a few instances, this has happened and wasn't traumatic for anyone involved.
I get that you think the story of Private Lessons is an enjoyable one for Philly.
But, suppose instead of being seduced by the housekeeper, suppose Philly was seduced by the butler (male). Still think everything is fine? Okay, how about if Philly was 14? 12? 10? 8? How about if Philly was your son, not a fictitous fantasy character? At what point does some sense of "hmmm, maybe we SHOULD have a law" kick in for you? If it never does, you have a problem, and I worry for your offspring.
You might not draw the line at exactly the same spot as our current laws, but that's okay. Our laws aren't outlandishly off the mark; they're pretty close to common sense in most peoples' opinion. And they exist for a good reason; to stop predation on minors from sexually motivated adults. Getting a kid to go along does not make the adult harmless.
Very well put, pking-2, especially the issue of double standards. While there are a number of Americans would not disapprove of Philip being seduced by the housekeeper in the film, they would disapprove of Philip being seduced by the butler, even though both seductions can be equally exploitative.
As for myself, while I am offended by most such seductions in films, I am not offened by this particular one. Another one that does not offend me is the seduction of Kevin (Chris Pitt) the boy scout in "Lair of the White Worm" by Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe.)
I’d like to address the passionately written post of pking-2 (May 14 2008) from a page ago. I’m in the camp of those against the false moralists and brainwashed preachers who condemn PRIVATE LESSONS for affirming “pedophilia” (as is the name of this thread, even though pedophilia involves pre-pubescents – which Philly was past the stage of at the age of 15 - so what is going on in this film is not pedophilia, but statuatory rape) But pking-2’s arguments were very intelligent, and deserved a deeper looking-into.
He is right in that a double standard is not in practice as far as the law, as much as I believe there should be one. We think of men as predatory, which is true more of the time, and women as victims, and there is a definite asymmetry between an older man having sex with a teen-aged girl (where we think of the girl as being used and exploited) and an older woman having sex with a teen-aged boy (where the boy would usually give his eye-teeth to be in that situation). Frankly, I don’t think the potential for harm is that present in the latter case, and women should not be held as liable.
Of course, there may be instances of the boy being less developed and taken advantage of by an “evil” woman, but the potential for psychological damage would be practically nonexistent in most cases. P-king’s justification for older women to be just as liable as older men is that “some [boys] would be more easily hurt without said laws,” and he’s right; but does it make sense to punish the women who would be doing the greatest favor to 99% of the rest of the boys?
There are also times, as with the story of LOLITA, where young teen-aged girls are assured of their sexual power, and an older man could be the greater manipulated party. But the potential for abuse in the case of girls is greater than for boys, so it’s only logical for the law to be more protective of girls. As the law stands, as pking-2 points out, there is no double standard, because it’s easier for lawmakers to treat these two cases as equal in an easy stab for fairness (or as pking-2 smartly put it, “It's about creating a system that police/judges/etc can work with, with some clear/enforcable boundaries”) – as much as the laws of nature dictate otherwise.
(Every coming-of-age boy is eager to get a notch on his belt, and every sexual experience with the opposite sex will almost certainly aid in his development. Sure, there are also coming-of-age girls who yearn for sex as well, as with the Brad Pitt example cited earlier, but our sexist societal mores dictate girls should be better protected. These are simply facts of life.)
Here is the part of pking-2’s post I wanted to analyze. “I get that you think the story of Private Lessons is an enjoyable one for Philly.” You bet. I don’t think there is any question about that. Even the Philly character made his enjoyment abundantly clear in the film, and most of the audience would agree the sexual experience was extremely healthy and helpful for him.
“But, suppose instead of being seduced by the housekeeper, suppose Philly was seduced by the butler (male). Still think everything is fine?”
This is not a proper analogy. As much as homosexuality is no longer regarded as the stigma it once was, we are not yet at the stage of utopian society in America where homo-sex is regarded as equal to hetero-sex. Of course, the man would be seen as more predatory, as all men already are observed, and especially in the case of homosexuality, would be regarded as corrupting an impressionable youth. Unless the youth is already gay, however, the tendency for most coming-of-age boys would be to opt for the vaginas, and the potential for harm here is not at all equitable with the case of an older woman sexual situation.
“Okay, how about if Philly was 14? 12? 10? 8?”
Certainly, the more down-the-line we go in age, the more troublesome the issue becomes. As pking-2 argues, of course the line must be drawn somewhere. But he is overstating his case, in order to make his point. There is no argument of clear-cut, pre-pubescent children needing to be protected from older people, regardless of gender, wishing to persuade them into having sex. But a 15 or 16 year old is clearly at a different phase of development than a 10 or 8 year old. In response to pking-2’s further argument, “How about if Philly was your son, not a fictitous fantasy character?” we would all be up-in-arms if our son was a child of 8 or 10, but if our son was 15 or 16, I’d hope most parents would think, “More power to you, son.”
(And we all know these parents would think differently if their 15 or 16-year-old happened to be a daughter. The double standard clearly exists in real life, and the courts should take this into account with older women having sex with teen-aged boys.)
It’s not that pking-2 isn’t making sense, that laws are necessary to “stop predation on minors from sexually motivated adults.” The question is, is it fair to make criminals of women who have sex with teen-aged boys? Especially when these women would be performing the greatest favor for 15-16-year-old boys, as every man who remembers how they were at 15 or 16 should agree?
The “pedophilia hysteria” has made dunderheads of a lot of us, simplistically putting a 16-year-old at the same level of an innocent 6-year-old. Yet these stages of development are radically different, and we are neglecting that a teen-ager can be capable of making responsible decisions for himself. For those who agree with pking-2’s concluding statement (as pertaining to older women and teen-aged boys), which read: “Getting a kid to go along does not make the adult harmless,” I’d first like to make the point that a 15-16-year-old boy would not need much persuasion to have sex with an older woman, and probably would be doing more of the persuading.
But to make this point more clear, I’d like to have another IMDb PRIVATE LESSONS Message Board poster say it for us (henry_darger, May 26 2007, from the “this movei [sic] couldnt be made today” thread); it serves as terrific food-for-thought:
“You can accept and respect a 15-year-old decision to have sex with another teen but can not accept his choice to do so with an adult woman? You said you would have been more than happy to oblige had the opportunity turned up back then (as most of my schoolmates did and hoped for back when I was that young) so, I honestly can not see how that personal decision may be affected by the choice of partner. Would the boy's pleasure be pure and honest with a girl but filthy and sinful with a woman? I disagree.”
He is right in that a double standard is not in practice as far as the law, as much as I believe there should be one. We think of men as predatory, which is true more of the time, and women as victims, and there is a definite asymmetry between an older man having sex with a teen-aged girl (where we think of the girl as being used and exploited) and an older woman having sex with a teen-aged boy (where the boy would usually give his eye-teeth to be in that situation). Frankly, I don’t think the potential for harm is that present in the latter case, and women should not be held as liable.
Every coming-of-age boy is eager to get a notch on his belt, and every sexual experience with the opposite sex will almost certainly aid in his development. Sure, there are also coming-of-age girls who yearn for sex as well, as with the Brad Pitt example cited earlier, but our sexist societal mores dictate girls should be better protected. These are simply facts of life.Not exactly facts. Actually, there are plenty of apprehensions and issues some teenage boys have and can be exacerbated whether they are "seduced" at 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, whenever...you may like the fantasy; some boys do not. Those are the actual facts. "Fact" is a significant word, so wield it accurately lest you deny the existence of some boys, who, in fact, deserve societal protection or consideration given their level of maturity, mental health, whatnot...
"But, suppose instead of being seduced by the housekeeper, suppose Philly was seduced by the butler (male). Still think everything is fine?"Well, first of all, its not an analogy. It's a supposition.
This is not a proper analogy. As much as homosexuality is no longer regarded as the stigma it once was, we are not yet at the stage of utopian society in America where homo-sex is regarded as equal to hetero-sex. Of course, the man would be seen as more predatory, as all men already are observed, and especially in the case of homosexuality, would be regarded as corrupting an impressionable youth. Unless the youth is already gay, however, the tendency for most coming-of-age boys would be to opt for the vaginas, and the potential for harm here is not at all equitable with the case of an older woman sexual situation.
question is, is it fair to make criminals of women who have sex with teen-aged boys?And I would see the logical answer to be "not always, but sometimes."
I’d first like to make the point that a 15-16-year-old boy would not need much persuasion to have sex with an older woman, and probably would be doing more of the persuadingUnless upon examination this was not the case. In which case you've allowed your certain 15 year old to get hurt...if you blanket-statement say that it must be welcome and healthy for this minor to be having sex with that adult caregiver...if the minor is male and the caregiver is hot and female.
Sure, when I was 15 I would have loved to have sex with Sylvia Kristel. I'm also sure that some 15 year old girls today would have loved to have sex with Brad Pitt or someone else over 30. The child, male or female, doesn't have the legal power to consent to sex with the 30-year old, male or female, no matter how much they want to do so.
shareI agree about the fact that this movie depicts something that is illegal for a reason. I agree with all that has been said here about "would you want this to happen if it was your own son/daughter etc"
but that said, what I really want to comment on, is the very sad fact that something like this movie could not be made today. the early 70's to 1980 was a true experimental time. tons of great foreign movies were made during this time that explored this subject, ok maybe they are not the greatest films ever made, but they could get made. I miss this openness, this experimentation in films. today all is dominated by political correctness. these types of movies such as "the little girl who lives down the lane" can't be made today, not due to some governmental regulations, but due to political correctness. these themes should be allowed to be put on film, even though they might show illegal activity. you can show people being stabbed, shot, hung, killed by sticking a Knitting needle into the eye, but you can't show anything close to an older man with a teenage girl, or an older woman with a teenage boy, even if it is pure fantasy, and even if it's depicted as a bad thing. you just can't do it. why is it that I can watch "inglorious bastards" showing somebody killing somebody with a baseball bat with repeated blows to the head, or somebody literally scalping somebody, but you can't show a 40 year old woman with a 15 year old boy, or a 40 year old man with a 15 year old girl? ok, I get it, this is bad, it's not something anybody should be promoting, but it should be able to be a small part in some small film somewhere, without it being banned or judged as promoting child rape. i'ts just a "story" after all, isn't it? it's not real.
You make a good point about movies today being more sanitized than those of 30 or 40 years ago. While watching this movie I noticed there was a scene in which Kristel's crotch was blurred out of view. Why was it okay to show almost 30 years ago but now it needs to be censored. I noticed the same thing about Taxi Driver and Gorp when scenes from pornos shown on the screen that I remember seeing when I was a kid are now blurred out of view.
All this is probably not linear but rather it comes in waves. There were nude scenes in an early Tarzan film and they were later deleted.
To be quite frank, if when I was in my mid-teens, there had been an experienced older woman who would have shown me the ways of sex, I would probably not have had the awkward and psychologically damaging experiences that formed my flawed adult sexuality. Sexual mores in the U.S. have been so incredibly screwed up for so long.
I will not make a blanket statement that this kind of scenario would work for every teen, but to have it as an open and honest option would result in much healthier sexual relationships in adults.
(The following is mainly a response to the last two comments on Page 2, by pking-2 and bbraat; before we begin, a quick opinion regarding what uvl wrote directly above. I found it to be most intelligent.)
"Sure, when I was 15 I would have loved to have sex with Sylvia Kristel...The child, male or female, doesn't have the legal power to consent to sex with the 30-year old..."
I’m not sure about what you wrote, Bbraat; as far as I am aware, no teen-ager (a less confusing term for a 15-year-old, I think, rather than "child" - as much as "child" is not inaccurate) who has sex with an adult is brought up on criminal charges. The teen-ager would be viewed as the victim of the equation. (Technically, you do have a point in that the teen-ager too would also be allowed in illegal activity; but rare would be the male teen-ager who would stop himself for this reason, should the opportunity for sex with an older woman present itself. At any rate, we should not expect the teen-agers to be mindful of such adult sensibilities, because the American view is that they are only "children.")
(For the purposes of discussion, I am limiting the discourse to teen-aged boys and women. I am applying a sexist double standard and excluding teen-aged girls and men, for reasons I have outlined in my first offering.)
I have discovered that pking-2 has prepared a detailed response to my initial offering. He has a tone of dogma that deserves brief correction; the female housekeeper-male butler point he raised was indeed an analogy (as well as the supposition that he preferred it be termed as). He may have too quickly breezed through what I had written; for one, I certainly would not approve of “coercion.” When it comes to sex between human beings, coercion is always out-of-the-question, regardless of age. If we are talking coercion, laws are in place for the over-18 crowd, and they do not exclude the ones who are younger.
He is very sensitive to the resulting damage that a teen-aged boy may suffer from sex with an adult woman. I have already conceded that such cases are possible, and are unfortunate. But these boys may also suffer through initial sexual episodes with girls their own age, if so emotionally fragile. (The ending paragraph of my initial write-up carries this implication.) The vast majority of teen-aged boys, however, would welcome the opportunity of sex with an older female, and in more cases it would be their idea, not the woman’s. These are indeed the “Facts of Life”; not merely a “fantasy,” as his preferred term. (Naturally, yearnings of teen-aged boys primarily remain unrealized fantasies, since most inexperienced teens would not know how to seduce adult women; yet the desires themselves are biological realities, simply the stuff of life, and it would be unreasonable to argue with such a fact.)
"Teachers and parents and people in power can easily get toddlers to do just about anything." We are not talking about prepubescents. We are talking about teen-agers, specifically teen-aged boys. In his last paragraph, pking-2 revealed that he considered an 18-year-old as a "toddler."
I’m not going to get involved in a point-by-point; for one, most readers with short attention spans would not really care. Obviously, pking-2 is a most intelligent person, I respect his opinions, and readers are free to determine what makes the most sense from our writings.
Sometimes when societal concern over an issue reaches hysterical proportions, people become conditioned to get overly emotional and sometimes even irrational, forgetting common sense. Is pedophilia such a new issue? No, it has been around since the dawn of man. It was undoubtedly around in 1880, where I have read (but have not confirmed) the age of consent was 10 and 12 in the USA.
Societal views change with the times. Another movie with the same theme was one from a decade before PRIVATE LESSONS, entitled SUMMER OF ’42. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067803/) This film was considered a beautiful love story; no one thought the affair between the teen-aged boy and the young woman was “wrong.” Was pedophilia (which is the incorrect term for teen-agers) any less present in 1971 than it is now? You are free to arrive at your own conclusion.
I was at another IMDb board exploring similar territory, and a member had put up this interesting link outlining worldwide ages of consent, as well as for the different states of the USA (states do not always follow the federal guidelines):
http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm
The average age of worldwide consent hovers around 16, which is nearly the age of our hero from PRIVATE LESSONS. Countries such as Italy, Hungary, Peru and China have set the age at 14; Spain has opted for 13. Does this mean these countries are less protective of their children, or even worse, less moral than the United States? Or has the United States, along with its sometimes infantile views toward sex, become overly hypersensitive?
I, and any other guy who likes girls, would be a liar if I said I wouldn't have wanted to be seduced by a woman as sweet as Sylvia Kristel. I was a full grown 6' by age 15, so I wouldn't have needed to stand on a stack of phone books to make out with her. I still have issues with Eric Brown as Philly. He's such a little pipsqueak that he looks ridiculous in his scenes with Ms. Kristel. Still can't believe he was 16 when they filmed this movie.
shareYep, I totally agree with you. I probably would have needed to call a doctor for having an erection lasting longer than four hours. At least that's what the Cialis commercial says to do. But back to the movie, he (Philly) took losing Nicole was too easy. In reality he would have been heartbroken beyond all belief. Maybe to the point of doing something really crazy. This may be another reason why it's illegal. Most 15 year old kids couldn't handle such an emotional crash. I remember having a panic attack when I lost my first girlfriend, and I was a little older than Philly.
shareEverybody's and I mean everybodys point of view is backed up by their what ifs and if it was this way or that way practice 2 + 2 + 2 does not equal 6 in this case and here's why number one no matter which side you're on most agree but this movie could not be made today
But when this movie was made it was the era of Reagan and a more conservative Nation the films of the seventies were the ones that caused the stir movies like Last Tango Straw Dogs carnal knowledge so at the time this movie should have been controversial it was not it made money it was successful now people look back and say no way this is pedophilia
now today an 18 year old who has a relationship with a 16 year old can you put in prison and charged with sex with a minor and statutory rape and you may not know which one is a 16 year old and, which one is 18 year old, 16 year old girls can be nineteen or Twenty appearing,.. and a late-blooming 18 year old boy can appear 15, and both can be emotionally on the same level, but on paper being charged , would make them look like one is a 60 year old pervert, and the other one a 10 year old child, and there have been prosecutors do this to people!
And lastly in the words of Chuck Berry
" all the cats wanna dance with
Sweet little sixteen" does that make him a perv ?
" I saw her dancing by the record machine
I knew she must have been about 17"
Is Joan Jett a perv ? NO!
2+2+2 doesn't always equal 6