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Mike Tyson’s Comeback

Ashley

For reasons that the fantastic Sady over at Tiger Beatdown has enumerated, movies like The Hangover bother me.

Now, I hate Forgetting Sarah Marshall and every Quentin Tarantino film as much as the next manhating humorless feminazi, but I believe that The Hangover is a special kind of awful, and here’s why: The Hangover doesn’t just contribute another small niblet of turd to the enormous pile of shit that is rape culture with its celebration of men’s narcissism, disregard for the basic humanity of women, slut-shaming, and joyful exaltation of the dudebro bond above any relationship with icky girls. No, The Hangover goes above and beyond. It includes a superfun cameo by an actual rapist.

I know. Hilarious, right? I especially like the part where they say Mike Tyson is “kind of a sweetheart.” It’s funny, because it’s true!

Unfortunately, it isn’t just the douchebagedy that is celebrating Tyson these days. The new documentary about him barely mentions his rape conviction. It is just… not that important, I suppose.

The other night, I was watching one of those Access Hollywoody type shows (I realize that your opinion of me is now 50% lower, but I’m telling you this embarrassing information for the sake of feminism). The perky blond lady who has no thoughts was talking about how Tyson is healing from the death of his daughter, and how sad it is that his daughter died now, when he is making such a comeback.

I am very sorry that Mike Tyson lost his daughter. I can’t imagine his pain.

But… what the fuck? This man is a convicted rapist. He tortured another human being, for god’s sake. What kind of culture do we live in when someone who we know has hurt another person in such a way can be held up as some sort of jovial, sympathetic hero?

I believe in restorative justice, and I don’t think that we should punish punish punish rapists out of a desire for vengeance. However, we also should never forget what they did. Mike Tyson is a very, very dangerous man. He is not cute and cuddly. He is a person women should avoid at all costs.

I am consistently amazed by the degree to which this is not the case, but rape is something that we, as a culture, should recognize as one of the very worst things a person can do. And we should express that by making it very, very clear that rapists have forfeited certain things. For example, their career in show business. And their status as heroes.

20 thoughts on Mike Tyson’s Comeback

  1. The Tyson documentary is by James Toback who is one of the shittiest film makers of all time. I guess the Toback/Tyson love fest started when the latter cameoed in Black & White. Which is maybe the worst film ever made.

    But in general: yeah.

    There’s something especially creepy about the kind of fetishization of Mike Tyson’s black masculinity (inclusive of the rape history) by white dudes.

  2. The truth of the matter is… is that until this post I didn’t know that Mike Tyson had raped someone. I know he’s been abusive, and I know about the ear incident, but that’s about it.

  3. what the hell is up with the tarintino hate? That link about his movies is full of fail, I have no idea how anyone could complain about the content of movies like kill bill from a feminist perspective. Any other director making that movie would have made every fight into a ‘cat fight’ (or made the women who were tough into some har-har joke by trying to make them super butch or otherwise not beauty 2K compliant), had some scene where a dude would rush in to save her, and probably not be about a woman gettng revenge in the first place. Women get to be real characters in his movies and get good dialog and scenes, and are in movies in numbers that tend to equally or over represent their numbers IRL. He made rape into something that doesn’t just happen to women and when it happens to anyone it is a SERIOUS PROBLEM for the characters, and the characters do not bring it upon themselves in any way. The rapists are always horrible horrible people who do not get any sympathy. Contrast this with movies where rape is overlooked or a joke or seemingly supposed to be the fault of a victim or not a big deal. That is the majority of movies outside of lifetime movies sadly enough, and those ones just push other harmful stereotypes of women.

    ANYWAY. Mike tyson- I had no idea he was a convicted rapist. I thought he was convicted for domestic violence or assault or something, jesus.

    I swear I saw him at the teen choice awards cutting one of the jonas brothers hair. It adds a layer of skeeve to his being welcomed back into the public eye. If roman polanski is any indication the public would probably forgive him anyway.

  4. I’m pretty out of the loop on celebrity culture in general, but I know who Mike Tyson is. I knew he’d bitten someone’s ear off in a match, and that he has a high voice that people like to make fun of. But like Ista, I’d just never heard anything at all about the fact that he’d raped someone.

    I know that’s largely ignorance born from lack of interest on my part, but I think it’s also really sad that I never once heard it mentioned in any conversation I’d overheard in regards to him. 🙁

    It’s great to know that, in our culture, raping someone is more forgivable than being the victim</i) of domestic violence.

  5. Mike Tyson’s rape conviction was a MASSIVE news story in 1992. The man did a solid 3 years in prison in the middle of his prime, and his re-entry into society and the sports world was one of the biggest stories of 1995. Next to the ear biting incident, and his meteoric rise in the late 80s, it will be what most people remember him by.

    To try and claim that his rape conviction is conveniently left out of all conversations regarding him is a bit absurd, really. Sure it was quite a long time ago, and perhaps the ear biting may have overshadowed it, but Tyson has and never will live down the rape conviction.

    That being said, there has always been in media fascination with him and he has managed to carve out a new, comical image of himself now. In a sense, kind of the way George Foreman went from scary bully in the 1970s to loveable hamburger man in the 1990s

  6. He also beat the shit out of Robin Givens when they were together, and the media conspired to paint her as a gold-digger. Though nobody apologized for that after he was convicted (convicted!) of rape. Plus his several other multiple charges of assorted assault.

    He’s a worthless POS.

  7. I’ve seen The Hangover, and I didn’t see him come across as any sort of a sweetheart – I thought his whole appearance smacked (pardon the pun) of the psychotic. But then, maybe that was because I knew about his rape conviction: may of my friends didn’t and thought the cameo hilarious 🙁

  8. Wow, it’s surprising that people don’t know he was convicted of rape. It was in the early 90s? But they didn’t portray him as a nice guy at all. or a secret sweetheart.

  9. I haven’t seen the Hangover, nor did I know that Tyson had ever raped anyone (as a matter of fact I only briefly became aware of his existence when he did the ear thing and then quickly forgot him), but isn’t it probably intended to be hilarious because of the contrast between scary, violent Tyson and that one of the characters in the movie thinks he’s a sweetheart?

    Sort of like a comedy where you have characters comment on Genghis Khan’s laid-back, easygoing nature and wonderful sense of fun.

  10. I was always pretty aware of Mike Tyson as a kid, but I guess because he was still pretty popular then. But the rape conviction was in 92. I can totally see someone not knowing about it. Hell, I was 8 or 9 at the time. (Somehow I knew about it, but I remember lots of random stuff from my childhood, like PeeWee Herman’s brush with the law and how my mom explained it to me and how her explanation was weird and didn’t make logical physical sense to me … I digress.) People my age or younger likely would have no idea that he ever raped anyone unless it was brought up more recently. So I can see why a lot of people–especially those who are 30 and younger–would have no clue.

  11. Well, exactly, folks. I knew, I thought that most people knew and just chose to not talk about it . . . but the thing is, when we choose to not talk about it, it means that people don’t know! And when people don’t know, people act as though it never happened, because in their world it never did.

    What I see going on is this: A lot of people know. A lot of the people who don’t know are young. The reason they don’t know is because they weren’t alive, or they weren’t old enough to be paying attention to the news when it happened. And yet, they still know about the ear thing, which means that people didn’t just magically stop talking about Mike Tyson and his heinous acts of violence — only certain kinds of violence that he is known to have commmitted.

    This therefore seems like an excellent example of the effects of people shutting up about rape. People not talking about rape is a form of dismissal, a form of public erasure. It’s one big cycle. Mike Tyson is allowed a comeback because people don’t care, and because they don’t care they choose to not talk about it, and because they choose not to talk about it other people don’t care because they don’t know . . . and on and on it goes.

  12. I still want to slap Sinead O’Connor silly for her “poor poor Mike Tyson” article in Rolling Stone where she talked about the young black woman who he had raped as if she were persecuting poor, poor Mike Tyson for racist reasons by accusing him of rape, the poor black man. Really, a black guy can’t get a break in this world, if every time he turns around and rapes someone they actually bring *charges* against him. God, I know O’Connor was abused by her mother and I know she did her best to bring the world’s attention to the abuses committed by the Catholic Church in Ireland, but her internalized misogyny and verbal abuse of a rape victim makes me want to kick her in the stomach. And I love her voice and her music. But she needs to be whacked upside the head for this.

    I don’t know why this isn’t the first thing anyone says about Mike Tyson, either. “Mike Tyson, convicted rapist and boxing champion, did blah blah blah.” Hell, I’d accept “Mike Tyson, boxing champion and convicted rapist.” But the fact that he *raped* a woman, a young black woman who idolized him, and there was enough evidence to actually convict him of it in our racist rape culture despite the fact that he was a celebrity and she was black, needs to be brought up every time Tyson’s name is mentioned. The woman he raped deserves that much.

  13. Of course, if you go to wikipedia to even look it up, it’s barely mentioned. Sure, it’s under a huge headline, but it mentions how much he got and then how he got back into his career.

    So, really, I think the thing that did him in was NOT the rape, but rather that whole ear biting thing. I guess rape just doesn’t matter. (<—I don't believe that, but sometimes it really seems like a lot of the rest of the world does.)

  14. I’ll never understand the fascination so many people have with Tyson. He started out his time in the public eye by being a mediocre boxer with an unusually strong left at a time when boxing had few strong fighters. Then he went to jail because he raped a woman, which everyone somehow managed to be surprised by despite his domestic violence history. Even when he got out of jail and was given a second chance (for what reason I can’t comprehend) he fucking bit someone in the ring TWICE. What does this man have to do to get the rest of society to write him off?

  16. I have long been an unfan of MT. I was horrified when the British bend a law forbidding conficted felons from entering the country so that MT could fight with their up and coming fighter. When entire countries are willing to turn a blind eye to an act of utter brutality because ignoring it will allow them the dubious entertainment of watching two men trying to knock each other unconscience it just makes you want to throw you hands up in the air and howl!! I personally was shocked that he was allowed back into the business, but probably shouldn’t have been. I am however shocked that so many people are unaware of his past, as if it never even happened, and that he can covort with Disney’s chosen teen gods and goddesses. If I were that boy’s mother (whichever Jonas brother it was) I would have had an utter fit and refused to let my son have anything to do with that man.

    But we ignore this sort of thing every day. Heck we listen to Ted Kennedy moralize about right and wrong and the state of the world, and the only difference between him and MT is that he had enough money not to get convicted!

    Also thanks, Although The Hangover wasn’t even a blip on my screen, I shall now choose next Friday night to sit home, have an ice lollie, and revel in the fact that I am activly not watching it 😀

  17. Sadly, perhaps the reason why people remember “the Ear Thing” but not the rape is that one is much more unusual than the other…

  18. #10 – I think it is because men are allowed to have no emotional control
    when it comes to anger and aggression. Women are constantly chastised for
    being emotionally soft but anger and aggression in men is exhalted. For instance,
    there is that show about that British guy (can’t remember his name) who walks around
    screaming at his new chefs. The show is despicable – one out-of-control douchebag
    screaming at people who are executing his commands under pressure. The host has the
    emotional control of a two-year-old. There is NO WAY a woman could away with
    that behavior.

  19. I think the “ear biting incident” still gets a lot of media attention because there is actual graphic video of it happening – it is great way to sensationalise a news story.
    Although they could easily add a prison mug shot to highlight the rest of his disgusting past.

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