The Washington Post is under fire after publishing a glowing review of an off-Broadway play which appears to sympathetically portray child sex offenders.
Downstate, written by Bruce Norris, is being shown at the Playwright Horizons theater throughout December 22. The play is set in group home for sex offenders in southwest Illinois where the audience learns the life stories of four pedophiles — Fred, Dee, Felix, and Gio.
Fred abused two of his preadolescent piano students, Dee abused a boy while acting in a production of Peter Pan, Felix molested his own daughter, and Gio was convicted of statutory rape. All four of the main characters are shown as struggling with life and what is characterized as the undue burden of social stigma due to their offense history.
Fred in particular is portrayed as struggling to live in a wheelchair due to an injury sustained after being attacked in prison, while Felix is served up to audiences as a tragic figure after being prohibited from contacting the daughter he molested.
The play initially premiered in 2018, and, according to a Chicago Tribune report at the time, the Steppenwolf Theatre was anxious to run it due to perceptions it was too sympathetic to pedophiles, but did so anyway.
The production and its large cast were sponsored by the funding of Powerball lottery winner Roy Cockrum who wanted to support “massive, out-of-the-ordinary artistic projects.” Cockrum has also funded a play titled “2666,” which depicts a brutal rapist and murderer’s crimes against young women in graphic detail.
Among Norris’ other works include a play titled Domesticated, which first premiered in 2013. Domesticated is centered around a politician who is caught in a hotel room with a prostitute dressed as a schoolgirl. In that play, which was described as “very juicy,” the woman suffers brain damage and falls into a coma after either falling or being pushed and hitting her head.
Following the recent return of Downstate to the post-COVID stage this month, theatre critic Mark Peters published a shockingly positive review in The Washington Post that is now attracting ample backlash.
In a review dated November 23, Peters called the play “brilliant,” and “scintillating,” describing Norris’ “provocative efforts” to go for the “societal jugular” as resulting in one of the best theater evenings of 2022. Peters tells readers that Norris’ depiction of these predators, who have completed their prison terms, causes audience members to “seizes on [their] reflexive response to these crimes and [shift] emotional focus to the perpetrators.”
Although admitting the offenses each of the four men committed as heinous, Peters considers the moral question Norris presents- of whether the punishments for their crimes are harsh and inhumane- as one that our “retributive correctional culture would rather not have to debate.” Peters also lauds Norris for his portrayal of one of the offenders’ victims, a man named Andy, as “disagreeable.”
Peters describes Andy’s visit to confront his childhood abuser as an “indulgent marinating in self-pity.” Peters also insists that this play “will be a stunning demonstration of the power of narrative art to tackle a taboo, to compel us to look at a controversial topic from novel perspectives” for many theatergoers.
On November 27, The Washington Post tweeted a link to Peters’ review, which rapidly accumulated massive backlash. As of the publication of this article, the tweet has over 1,300 primarily furious replies, compared to just 180 ‘likes.’
Users on Twitter have been quick to push back against the glowing review, with some recounting their own experiences with childhood sexual trauma in response to the sympathetic way in which pedophiles are portrayed in both the play and Washington Post article.
Some users weren’t only upset about the glowing review, but the fact that Norris’ play was being shown in the first place.
“The fact that the play got made is already a problem. Calling it ‘brilliant’ is disgusting. The part where you wanna burn it all down is when the [Washington Post] described the character of the victim as ‘the most disagreeable character’ who is played ‘irritatingly well,'” former heavyweight boxer Ed Latimore wrote.
Other users are taking the opportunity to call attention to what they described as a “mainstreaming” of pedophilia by major mainstream media, academia, and even corporations.
Luxury fashion house Balenciaga was under fire just last week after launching an ad campaign that featured photos of young children holding teddy bears donned in BDSM gear. Although Balenciaga has since apologized for the campaign and scrubbed the photos following massive outcry, the incident sparked a discussion about the apparent normalization of pedophilia.
There have been multiple controversial incidents over the past year with respect to prominent academics seeking to “destigmatize” pedophilia or “minor attraction.”
Last November, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, was forced to resign after the public discovered she had interviewed with a controversial organization many describe as “pro-pedophile.” Walker had appeared on Prostasia’s now-defunct podcast to promote her book titled “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.” Walker faced sustained backlash after it was discovered her PhD thesis had entertained theories about giving pedophiles “high quality child pornography” to curtail offending.
Following her departure from Old Dominion, Walker joined the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse as a postdoctoral fellow.
But Walker was not the only person in a position of influence pushing what some have described as “dangerous” theories regarding humanizing pedophiles.
In June, Reduxx revealed that a prominent Norwegian academic and activist had called for pedophilia to be taught in high schools as being an innate sexuality.
Ole Martin Moen, a gay man who identifies as “queer,” currently serves as a member of the advisory board on Norway’s Patient Organization for Gender-Incongruence (PKI), a social and political lobby group for trans rights. In 2018, one of Moen’s essays titled “The Ethics of Pedophilia” appeared in The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, a textbook widely available at Universities across the globe.
“When you were 11, it is not unlikely that you were sexually attracted to prepubertal children… the mental state of finding children sexually attractive is very common,” Moen wrote in the essay.
Moen also called for information on pedophilia to be taught in schools, suggesting “a certain percentage” of high school students had an innate pedophilic sexual identity.
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