#30: White Butterfly by Walter Mosley

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It’s 1956 in Los Angeles, and Easy Rawlins has retired from being a private eye and settled down with his wife and children. Someone has been raping and murdering black girls, but the police ignore it until a white girl from a good family suffers the same. When the police ask Easy to ask around to see who knows what, he initially refuses, preferring not to get involved, but has no choice once he learns that his old friend, Mouse, will be blamed if the real killer isn’t found.

The book is more similar to Devil in a Blue Dress than it is to A Red Death, focusing on a mystery surrounding a white woman caught up in the black neighborhood, and featuring more of Easy and Mouse investigating together. This will, however, most likely be my last Easy Rawlins book (I have a few others by Mosley that I’ll likely still read, including the Paris Minton books) due to an event fairly early in the book.

Easy wants to have sex. His wife doesn’t. She turns away from him in bed. He anally rapes her, thinking that it doesn’t matter, since her body can’t help but respond. The next morning, he’s confused about why she’s so angry. She says it’s because he raped her. He laughs and says you can’t rape your wife, but trails off when he realizes she isn’t buying it. Later that day, he has sex with a much younger prostitute he was interviewing as part of his investigations.

I’m not surprised about the prostitute. In truth, I was more surprised that he’d apparently been completely faithful until then, as his sexual relations in the first two books tended to be ill-considered at best, and some were morally suspect. But I never really thought I’d read book three of a continuing series where the protagonist raped someone. Granted, the book is set in 1956 and came out in 1992, so I can’t (and don’t) really expect modern sensibilities (and just look at what was going on regarding sex and rape in other genres in 1992) but it boggles my mind that this book went through multiple approval stages and no one went “Hey, this is book three. Anyone reading this probably already likes Easy. Maybe we shouldn’t have a character they like, and who we want them to want to read more of RAPE HIS WIFE AND THEN LAUGH WHEN CONFRONTED WITH IT.”

Mind you, I thought the relationship was rather creepy before that, with Easy’s emphasis on how she looked perfect and how she and baby Edna fit his image of a perfect family (Jesus, his adopted son, is also loved, but not a part of that picture, and he has to use a side entrance to the house to get to his bedroom) and his lack of emphasis on or even mentioning anything else about her that didn’t contribute to a surface idea of a perfect wife.

Mosley says it’s rape, and portrays it as wrong, but in the long run, that pretty much just means that he doesn’t (or didn’t at the tine) think it’s a big deal, or something a protagonist shouldn't do.

Morality and decisions have been rather grey and conflicted since the beginning of this series, but there’s a difference between “conflicted character who makes mistakes” and “rapist.” Easy does eventually realize that he shouldn’t have had sex with Regina when she didn’t want to, but he never really admits that it was rape. I have (I think) the rest of the books in the series, but I doubt I’ll read them. I’m curious to see what happens, and I like Mosley’s writing, but few things kill a character faster for me than rape, or even attempted rape. So while I may enjoy the plots, it’s highly doubtful that I’d enjoy Easy, or be able to view him separately from the rape.

 

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning this. I think I'll give the rest of this series a miss.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the rest of the series even mentions it, in all honesty. I mean, I read it, so I'm not going to be able to get past it, but I wonder about other people skipping it.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Meh. Just knowing it happens is enough to make me uninterested in reading any of the series at all.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

There's still Paris Minton! The first book of which was generally more enlightened in such areas anyway.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

1992 knew better too. With the setting in 1956, maybe Mosley thought it was just being accurate to the mindset of the period--which it is, sadly--and maybe he wanted to jolt you back considerably, but why do it like this? Why do this to the reader, or to the character of the wife?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh, I expect 1992 to know better, too. Which is why, in a way, Mosley's acknowledgement that it was rape makes it even worse, because it means that, at least then, he found that acceptable in a protagonist, as opposed to an oft-seen attitude of fiction of the time (which has yet to completely leave us) in other genres that it's ok if she ends up enjoying it. And, really, almost every scene is supposed to jar us back to the fifties on the receiving end of racism. This didn't really add to it. You can fix someone not realizing that something is wrong and unforgivable, but you can't fix someone knowing exactly what they're doing, and thinking it's ok.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Jolting the reader constantly with reminders of how bad it was in the fifties for racism suggest this was another different variant on jolting the reader.
There are writers who like to assault the reader, they get this very hostile vibe going where they seem to have contempt for the kind of readers they're aiming the book toward. And some readers accept this sort of thing in the name of lt'chure, or else they like getting woke up now and then with nasty stuff.
Not my cuppa, obviously.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I very much agree with you regarding shock for shock's sake, but I'm not sure Mosley is guilty of that. More, I think that he thinks that if he admits it's wrong and has a consequence (it factored into the wife leaving him, and taking their daughter with her) that it's ok to do. Which I don't agree with, obviously.

In truth, though, the only thing that will kill a character as quickly for me as rape (whether attempted or successful) is cruelty to or abuse of children. Things (including pairings) I love have died in an instant over that.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on that last one. In movies, as the saying goes, "Don't kill the dog! Anybody but the dog!"
Which, hey, in movies like that? The dog iss the only one I like!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

This is probably why I mostly stick to "fluff" (even though i don't agree with the designation) fiction, instead of "important and meaningful" stuff. Unless it involves swords and battles and awesome epicness*, I don't want to be depressed by my entertainment. (I also tend to find it hard to care about characters in the better-regarded stuff.)

And yeah, I react to animal cruelty/abuse similarly to that of children.

*In which case, I will most likely be too busy flailing over other things to be depressed.

[skygiants]

That scene bothered me a whole lot too, but it didn't completely turn me off the book series - I think maybe because I read Mosley's disconnect from Easy's perspective on the rape as much wider, and that Mosley was really trying to portray this as creepy and disturbing and wrong and throw light on the giant blind spots in Easy's moral code (such as it is) and also on noir's general treatment of women. On the other hand, that could be my wishful thinking . . .

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The major thing for me is that Mosley acknowledges it as wrong, but clearly still considers it as something acceptable to have your lead do, which indicates that it isn't a major wrong in his book. I mean, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't expect us to keep reading about Easy if he raped or beat Jesus. (Err...for anyone reading this who hasn't read the books, that's the name of Easy's adopted son.)

[skygiants]

I think it's possible that after seeing Blade Runner and (trying to) read the first Stephen Donaldson book in an ill-advised effort many years ago, my standards are just low. :/ "At least the author seems pretty clear on the fact that it's wrong!"

Also, I have to admit, I am fascinated by the way Easy
acquires adopted small children at a meteoric rate. I need to know how many he will have by the end of the series!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the fact that Mosley at least REALIZES it's wrong is what keeps me from hating him. At the same time, though, there's this thing where, if someone doesn't realize that something is wrong, then it may just be ignorance, and they can learn. But if they know it's wrong and still do it (or have their protagonist do it) then it's most likely a part of their overall outlook on life.

[skygiants]

Hmmm. I do think that there's definitely a difference between having your protagonist do something because you don't think it's that terrible, and having your protagonist do something because he doesn't think it's that terrible and you want to comment on that blind spot - I'm trying to think of a good example here and failing . . . oh! Willow mindwiping Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that's the example I wanted, which is HUGELY squicky, but I don't read it necessarily as Joss Whedon Being Okay With That, I read it as Willow's worldview being incredibly messed up. So I'm wary of identifying the fact that Easy does it with Mosley not thinking it's a big deal.

Which is definitely not to say that it shouldn't be a Dealbreaker, because it totally is completely squicky, and it's completely fair not to want to be stuck in the head of a character who doesn't think it's a big deal for the course of a series!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...giving Faith having sex with Riley in Buffy's body and Cordy and Fred's arcs eventually ending with someone else in their bodies (Jasmine essentially becomes Cordy, Illyria's possession erases Fred fro existence[supposedly]) Xander's attempted rape of Buffy being completely swept under the rug due to possession (and so it being forever ignored that he remembers but doesn't tell her) and the entirety of Dollhouse, I think it's actually very debatable just how wrong Whedon sees that.

[skygiants]

Xander's attempted rape of Buffy being completely swept under the rug due to possession (and so it being forever ignored that he remembers but doesn't tell her)

. . . I don't remember that. D: D: D: (But I also have not seen much of s2 and s3, or almost the entirety of Angel or any of Dollhouse at all, so . . . possibly I am not arguing from a position of strength here!)

The other example I'm coming up with is most of Octavia Butler's Patternmaster books, where there's a whole lot of mental coercion going on that is clearly Not Okay, and the protagonists equally clearly Do Not Get It. And equally people often get turned off those books for that reason! Which is fair again, so.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It was in season 1. Where they eat the principal. We cut from him starting to attack Buffy to Buffy dragging him in unconscious. Later, he claims to remember nothing so Buffy and Willow laugh it off rather than tell him what he tried, but he later admits to Giles that he remembers what he did, and it's never mentioned again.

Dollhouse is...weird. It takes the stance that rape (even though it's never called rape) is wrong, but that, instead of addressing the wrongness, you should focus on the fascinating motivations people have for being rapists.

[skygiants]

And now I reveal myself to be a total hypocrite, because I am like, "and that is the reason I don't have much interest in watching Dollhouse!" when I have just stated that I am still interested in the fascinating motivations of Easy Rawlins. Uh. But at least Walter Mosley doesn't write it as fanservice?