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Rape
from I
party without telling anyone about the
attack. She really didn't think about it
much until the next morning.
"I woke up with banged-up knees,
banged-up elbows, my watch was
broken. I felt awful, but I didn't tell
anyone. I was confused about the whole
thing. I guess I was afraid what it would
look like. When you get roughed up at a
party, people think you're asking for it.
"I couldn't believe it had happened. I
didn't even think it would happen with
someone I trusted."
Hardly any other woman on campus
does, either. Rape by an acquaintance
is the most overlooked-and possibly
the most common-sexual crime on
campus. University officials don't
much care about acquaintance
rape-they never hear about it, they
say, so they can't really consider it a
problem. Local anti-rape groups take to
the streets to protest rape by a
stranger, but they hardly utter a word
about assault by a friend.
But the silence is deceiving. If a
woman is raped by a man at the
University, chances are good that she'll
know him, and even better than he'll be
a friend. She may feel guilty about it
and not tell anyone, she may not even
realize that she's been violated.
Of the 117 sexual assault victims that
contacted the Assault Crisis Center in
the 1980 fiscal year (the latest available
figures), roughly 49 percent knew their
assailant. A whopping 27 percent of
those were attacked by casual acquain-
tances or friends. The rest were
assaulted by boyfriends, relatives, or
husbands. And these figures probably
just scratch the surface of the rapes
that occur, center workers admit,
because rape by an acquaintance may
be reported even less frequently than
rape by a stranger.
Although only 10 percent of the vic-
tims were college students from.
Washtenaw County, center counselors
feel the figures hold true on campus. A
recent study at Kent State University
turned up even more startling
figures-one in eight of the women sur-
veyedbad been raped by someone they
knew. The professor who conducted
And acquaintance rapes, some exper-
ts hypothesize, are different from rapes
by strangers because they arte often
not premeditated and are more often
triggered by the situation or the cir-
cumstances. They may reveal a darker
side of human nature. Somehow it's
easier to peg rape on a lone psychopath
who stalks down women like prey. It's
comforting to isolate it to sickness and
perversion. But to think that a
man-almost any man-can suddenly
find himself in a situation where he's
'It's not the experience at all, but whether
the experience ended in genital sex. . . It's
the portrait of a woman as an endzone. If
you get to sex, you get a touchdown.'
--Lewis Okun, graduate student
that study suspects she's uncovered a
national trend.
Kent State psychology Prof. Mary
Koss interviewed some 2,000 female
students and found not only that more
than 10 percent had been raped by an
acquaintance, but that more than half
had experienced some sexual
aggression-be it physical or verbal
threat. Koss says that, "Statistically, in
college you're more likely to be at-
tacked by someone you know."
The experience bof rape by a
stranger is inherently traumatic, but
acquaintance rape can be even more
devastating than rape by a stranger. A
woman feels an acute sense of betrayal
after being violated by a trusted figure.
A victim may have difficulty proving
legally that an attack, not an act of
pleasure, took place.
forcing himself on a woman is a scary
idea. Can the pressure to be macho
push a man into making a forceful
conquest? Is rape merely the most ex-
treme and violent end of the age-old
battle men and women have had under-
standing each other?
Judy Price, a couunselor at the
Assault Crisis Center, argues that
acquaintance rapes are just as
premeditated as those committed by
strangers. The ruses of friendship are
plotted in advance, according to Price,
as an easy way to get a woman alone.
"There's a basic con implicit. Say the
person's a classmate and the con is 'I
want to get to know you. I want to be
your friend.' The object of the con is to
get the victim off someplacve where it's
safe to assault her."
But others disagree, stressing that
acquaintance rapes may be the get-a-
girl-into-bed syndrome realized in its
most violent potential. Det. Jerry
Wright of the Ann Arbor Police Crime
Prevention Bureau thinks such rapes
aren't premeditated, but rather are
triggered by a man's misconception of
a woman's signals. Koss's study
showed that men who admitted they
used violence to get sex had a very hard
time drawing the line between a little
persuasion and a lot of force when it
came to women.
One male senior had such a hard time
drawing the line when he was drunk,
that he raped a woman on their first
date. ''She seemed the partying type,"
he said, "I just attacked her. I figured
she was real drunk. I wouldn't have
done that (if I'd been sober). She was
scared, she was fighting me. . . I raped
her."
The next morning, he didn't feel any
remorse at first. "At the time," he said,
"it was more being sick (with a
hangover). But afterward, everytime
I'd see her friends I'd wonder if they
knew."
That student sexually assaulted a
woman, but he says he did it because he
was drunk. He never thought of himself
as a rapist. A peculiar double-standard
can develop. "Men commit a rape with
someone they know and yet condemn
another man sincerely for committing
a rape with a stranger," said Lewis
Okun, a graduate student who is a
member of several local anti-rape.
groups. "I'm sure a lot of men think
they're doing women a favor by
ignoring when she says 'no'."
"The favor" of rape can be spurred
by crossed signals between men and
women. When a woman says 'no' and a
man hears 'yes,' the mixup of sexual
cues may lead to sexual aggression.
Experts are unwilling to pin many
generalizations on acquaintance rape,
but Koss admits that some men have
distorted perceptions when it comes to
sex. "There are certain men out there
who are prone to see positive signs. If a
girl sits on his lap, breathes in his ear,
smiles, he thinks it's an invitationm to
sex. The average person believes that
the only sure signal that someone want
to have sex is saying 'I want to have sex
with you.'"
Another study by Tony Abbey, a post-
doctoral candidate working at the In-
stitute for Social Research, indicated
that when a man meets a woman,
sexual messages flash through his mind
like a neon sign. Abbey told un-
dergraduates from Northwestern
University that she was studying the
acquaintance process, then introduced
them to a stranger of the opposite sex.
Afterward, students were queried
about the meeting.
The results, according to Abbey,
were clear-cut. "It showed men were
more likely to perceive the woman as
being seductive and promiscuous than
women were men," said Abbey. "It's a
far step from rape," she admits, "but it
might be one of the factors that leads to
it."
ASN'T THE society of the en-
lightened 80s, with liberated
women and sensitive men, surmounted
the difficulties of the male-female
relationship? Aren't relationships now
starting off more meaningfully, more
equally, than ever before?
Well, not quite.
"Guys come up Here straight from
high school and they think the women
are going to be loose, the alcohol's
going to be flowing, and they're going to
make the biggest sexual conquests of
their lives. The women come here and
they think they're going to meet a nice
guy," said Michele Blondin, a resident
director at South Quad.
"The peer pressure is to 'score',''
said Okun. "It's not the quality of the
experience at all, but whether the ex-
perience culminated in genital sex. It
can be very loving and lengthy, but if
it's not genital sex, it's not a score. It's
the portrait of a woman as an end zone.
If you get to sex, you get a touchdown."
That's the classic male goal on
Saturday night-to score. The rumors
still spread like fire about a score, a hot
date, a naive newcomer. Men call
freshwomen "tuna" and get together
for a night of "tuna-fishing" at the
dorms, an "easy catch."
In the weekend quest for a touch-
down, crossed signals fly fast and the
stories pile up-some-funny, some sad,
and some potentially frightening.
An RD tells the story of a man asking
a woman to his dorm room. "He said,
'Hey, do you want to come see my
parachute? I've got one hanging from
my ceiling.' She said 'sure' and
followed him. When she got inside, she
heard the door lock and turned around.
"He was moving in on her. She said,
'Hey, I'm just here to see your
parachute,' and he said, 'You're kid-
ding.' As soon as he found out she
wasn't there for the reason he wanted
her there, he was pretty embarrassed.
He let her out."
A senior tells of how a friend awk-
wardly tried to become a lover. "He
was really drunk and asked me to
go to his room to listen to music. When
we got there, he said out of the blue, 'I
have a rubber. Do you want to do it?' I
started laughing. I couldn't believe it.
Then he got really embarrassed. He
told me not to tell anyone, that it would
hurt his reputation. It was hilarious
really."
And men, apparently, often don't
think much of the women who become
their Saturday night scores. "The
women experience culture shock. They
music
By Marty Lederman
OR THOSE of us who envisioned
The River as a powerful and fitting
resolution of the contradictions in-
troduced in Born to Run and Darkness
on the Edge of Town, Bruce
Springsteen 's sixth album, Nebraska,
promised to be a watershed affair. Or.
more accurately, it was destined to be a
test.
Would he realize the limitations of the
urban angst and freedom/respon-
sibility dichotomies which were so
systematically developed in their
inevitable resolution of mature faith
and resigned perseverence of limits in
"Two Hearts," "Ties That Bind," and,
especially, "Price You Pay?" Or would
he continue to wallow in these dilem-
mas until they became confusingly
mangled and burdensome, instead of
merely contradictory and dialectic?
Unfortunately for all of us
systematizers who read patterns into
places they probably weren't intended,
the answers to the questions above are
hardly made clear with the release of
Nebraska, primarily because
Springsteengdoesn't see thisas such a
period of great artistic forks in the
road. Though Nebraska might seem to
be a radical departure, it is really a
very logical progression portended by
Springsteen's increasing reliance on
characters alien to his Jersey element
and therefore unlike his own personal
character, and his obsession with
American musical and frontier
"roots," as represented by the not as
paradoxical as it seems duality of
Woody Guthrie and Elvis Presley.
Toward the end of his 1981 tour, Bruce
began to perform incredibly mournful,
primarily solo versions of both "This
Land is Your Land" and "Bye, Bye,
Johnny" (a dirge about the emptiness
which Elvis' death created and/or un-
covered), both of which would fit very
well on Nebraska, which is essentially a
collection of solemn vignettes designed
to expose the romantic ideal (and its
concomitant despair) that Springsteen
believes to be still embodied in the fron-
tier ethos. In fact, it seems as if
Springsteen is trying to fashion his own
"timeless" Dust Bowl Ballads or Sun
singles, more than he is trying to "ex-
pand" the existing Springsteen oeuver.
Rolling Stone's report that Nebraska
is an unprecedented recording event,
comparable only to Dylan going elec-
tric, couldn't be further from the truth.
In fact, Springsteen is attempting a
move quite experimental (for him), but
hardly unprecedented; he is in truth
trying to recapture a very traditional
form of -American music: the third-
persgn folk lament as parable of a more
universal "truth." "Like a Rolling
Stone" is the last thing that this resem-
bles; it is, in a sense, the Springsteen
equivalent of Dylan going unelectric
with John Wesley Harding. Like that
work,Nebraska deems it necessary to
reject the standard normalcy, which is
seen as being trapped in its own ex-.
cesses and trends, in favor of a more
primal, timeless piece of Americana
that reflects a pure, more eternal truth.
In both Dylan and Springsteen, this is
done by stripping away all vestiges of
progress and confusing modernization
(read: electric instruments) in favaor
of a stark minimalism that ostensibly
reveals a "profound" innocence. This
innocence, in turn, harkens back to
Guthrie and Presley and their "pure"
visions of an uncorrupted yet morally
complex frontier.
Quite a tradition to uphold, and Bruce
revels in the opportunity for such
responsibility, particularly because he
is seen in many quarters as a modern-
day savior, originally of "roots" rock
'n' roll, now of rock and roll's roots.
Springsteen's quest is not new at all; it
is, in fact, profoundly traditionalist,
even reactionary. Today's equivalent of
the psychedelia against which John
Wesley Harding rebelled is the overly
planned and contrived Rabelasian
spectacle (or grand event) that rock
"aspires" to. Springsteen seems to
think that current rock does not
adequately treat the existential dilem-
mas of the common man, but Nebraska
does not fully succeed in extricating us
from th ecloudy milieu any more than
does the best of post-punk (Gang of
Four, Au Pairs). But Springsteen does
not acknowledge this British treatment
of the common man's plight (his idea of
England is Americanized pop-e.g.,
Manfred Mann, the Animals), so he
concentrates on what he sees as an
American canon empty since the effor-
ts of those frontier artists mentioned
previously.
Nebraska is not in a class, however,
either musically or thematically, with
John Wesley Harding or The Sun
Sessions or the best of Guthrie's
ballads. In fact, it falls short of such
American folklorists as John Fogerty,
Robbie Robertson and the later Neil
Young in describing what it is like for
the common man to be caught in the
contradictions of our "freedom."
It is not hard, I believe, to discover
why Nebraska doesn't quite work. First
of all, it is obviously not planned out
sufficiently. I would never have
dreamed that I would accuse Bruce
Springsteen of underproduction, baut
that is certainly the case here. In an
overzealous obsession with
minimalism, Springsteen neglects to
fill out or even tone up these tunes, The
result is that. some, particularly
"Atlantic City" and "Open All Night,"
are obviously yearning for accom-
paniment, much like "I Don't Believe
Yoy was on Another Side of Bob dylan.
But unlike Dylan, who kept that song
acoustic because he was not yet gutsy
enough for the radical change which
was to come a year later, Springsteen
simply does not realize that his songs
would be stronger with a band, because
he is committed to capturing the
"moment" or the "feel" which he found
in these demos, which were origially
intended for transposition to a band
sound. One anticipates an emotional
kick as he heads into the chorus of
"Atlantic City," but Springsteen's
limited structure prevents this.
Bruce cannot see that it is not all or
nothing. One can have a sparse band
sound, indeed, use instruments to
create a minimalist effect without the
grandiose seven-piece maelstrom of
The River. It seems that at the very
least, Bruce should have spruced up his
own guitar work to create more
V
dynamic effect, rather than letting it
serve (as it does for most of the album)
,as merely background strumming
against which to vent his frustrations.
Springsteen's voice is simply not ver-
satile (or knowledgeable) enough to
convey the different qualities of the
lonely everyman, which he aspires to
do. To be primitive it is not necessary
that one reject nuance and embellish-
ment, as Springsteen does on
Nebraska. I'll be willing to bet that a
couple of these songs will be heart-
wrenching when accompanied by Max
Weinberg's drumming and Garry
Tallent's bass on the stage. In the
meantime, we are left with an album
that seems half-baked, not because it is
simple (it isn't), but because it's often
simplistic.
Similarly, the lyrical aspect of these
songs seems strangely underdeveloped.
Rhymes, syntax and syllabic construc-
tion often seems forced (e.g., "Used
Cars," "Johnny 99"), a problem which
seemed trivial on The River, but which
is revealed *nakedly and discomfor-
tingly on Nebraska.This brings us to a
more significant problem, namely, that
Springsteen seems mighty uncomfor-
table singing these songs, and not just
because they're often clumsy
arrangements. As previously men-
tioned, Springsteen relies far more
heavily on a particular brand of third-
person narrative here than he did
earlier. In this context, Springsteen
discards his colorful Jersey characters
for a set of primarily bland and
despairing "everymen," be it Charles
Starkweather in the title cut or Joe
Roberts in "Highway Patrol. By
presenting Americans in a broader
range (closer to the real frontier,
perhaps), Springsteen hopes to tran-
scend the cultural and thematic provin-
cialism of his previous work.
Regrettably, he is at most only
slightly successful. It is obvious that
Bruce Springsteen has not lived these
characters' lives, and his interpretation
of their "stories" therefore seems a bit
forced. Of course, Dylan did not "live"
the lives of his John Wesley Harding
characters either, but then he didn't
really try - to sound like he
did. His songs were sung by a
voice more worldly, indeed
more ominiscient (though
not moralistic), than Spring-
steen's are. This gave the songs a
dual subjectivity, namely the artist
and his characters. The result was a
kind of dynamic tension that imbued
each tune with a sense of real strength
and consequence.
Springsteen, on the other hand, wants
desperately to become those charac-
ters which he has created. In fact, he is
ridiculously sincere in his attempts to
do so. There is certainly no sense of
bullshit here. Unfortunately, this does
not allow for any depth or intricacy in
the telling of the tales. For all the talk of
moral ambiguity and the battle bet-
ween faith and fatalism on Nebraska,
the grey areas are lost beneath a sea of.
black and white. It was those grey
areas which Springsteen most excelled
in earlier. Now there is no resolution or
reconciliation even possible: there are
only the bare facts, and those facts
point in only one direction-despair and
blind faith. While at first alarming, this
does tend to become quite desultory and
limiting very quickly. One thing this
album is not is compelling, which is the
least I expected from Bruce.
Part of his problems is, of course, his
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Judy Price: Counselor at the Assault Crisis Center.
4 Weekend/October 15, 19829W
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