The rape jokes, on the other hand, are so pervasive that, Miller points out, we often don’t even recognize them as such. No comic icon is as lovable as Harpo Marx, but Harpo is constantly chasing after women, and “what are we to imagine he’d do if he ever caught one in a lonely place? And yet no one thinks of Harpo as primarily — or even secondarily — a would-be rapist,” Miller points out. Viewed from a twenty-first-century perspective, the threat of rape fits all too comfortably into what were seen at the time as unremarkable sexual dynamics — which is what makes these scenes, in retrospect, so disturbing.
No one thinks of Harpo as a would-be rapist because they know he is simply a thwarted romantic. He just wants a hug, a kiss, a girlfriend. Maybe it's that twenty-first-century perspective that needs a second look. Maybe there's more prurience to it than its proponents realize.
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