Cult classic is still relevant
In 1975, Märta Tikkanen’s novel Men Cannot Be Raped was published. It was initially met with shock and disgust, especially in Finland, but over the years it has become a modern classic. This year, Men Can’t Be Raped will be staged for the first time on a theatre stage in Finland, starring Minttu Mustakallio and directed by Swedish director and playwright Sara Giese.
Men Can’t Be Raped is about Tova Randers, an ordinary middle-aged woman, who on her birthday decides to treat herself to dinner and a glass of wine at the restaurant Vanha Maestro. At the restaurant, she meets a man named Martti, who invites her to his home. The evening ends with Martti raping Tova. But Tova refuses to take on the role of victim. Instead of taking revenge, she decides to take revenge, by raping Martti in turn, and thus transferring the victim role to him.
Tikkanen’s powerful text touches on both the problems surrounding rape and how difficult it is to “recognize” a rapist, as well as the prevailing sexual hierarchy in our society, where the man’s power dominates over the woman’s. The fact that Tikkanen in her novel shook up the hierarchy of power, by depicting women as perpetrators, shocked the contemporaries.
Lo Kauppi, actor, director, playwright and writer, was the first to dramatize Men Can’t Be Raped for the theatre stage when it was staged last year at the Stockholm City Theatre, under Kauppi’s own direction.
“To rape someone who is above you in the hierarchy. Is it even possible? So can a white, educated, middle-aged man be raped by a woman at all and really feel shame and humiliation? Kauppi asks. For her, it was great to work with a production that reversed the sexual power structures, something that has rarely been dealt with or visualized on stage or screen.
“To have the opportunity to visualize something that, as far as I know, has never been done before on a theater stage or on film, that is, a woman violating a man of the same age with her sexual pleasure as a means – is dizzying and I think it can make us think in a new way about who we see as a victim.
Lo Kauppi dramatised and directed Men Can't Be Raped for Stockholm City Theatre last year.
Kauppi originally chose to move the play from Helsinki in 1975 to Stockholm in the 2010s, partly to highlight how little progress we have made since the book was first published. Sara Giese, who adapts and directs Lilla Teatern’s production, moves the text back to the time and space of the original work, while at the same time giving Tova’s inner world more space.
“My adaptation focuses more on Tova’s inner process, while Lo’s dramatization is a linear drama where the plot is driven forward by game scenes between the characters. You could say that I have averaged in Lo’s game scenes and framed them in a collective narrative about Tova Randers’ thoughts and development,” says Giese.
Sara Giese adapts and directs Lilla Teatern's production of Men Can't Be Raped.
Tova Randers is played by Minttu Mustakallio, who is known from the films Children and Adults and Warehouse, as well as from her role in the TV series Click Mua. Right now, she is preparing for Men Can’t Be Raped by reading the script, but also other works by Märta Tikkanen. Tikkanen’s letter biography from 2019, Must Try to Write, is next on the list.
“A big role is always interesting and requires dedication, but I don’t know yet how it will feel to play the role. I think that Men Can’t Be Raped is a group effort, and together we shape the performance into its final form,” she says.
Minttu Mustakallio plays Tova Randers in Lilla Teatern's production of Men Can't Be Raped.
Does Men Can’t Be Raped have the same social significance now as it did in 1975? Kauppi, Giese and Mustakallio agree on this point: “It is difficult to understand that we in Finland are struggling with the same problems that Tikkanen criticised in his courageous manifesto already in 1975. Tikkanen clearly conveys the position of a woman in Finland in the 70s. Her work was topical then, but it is still relevant today, and this is a problem,” Mustakallio says.“Surprisingly much is the same; how we view the victim role, the underlying threat of violence in sexual relationships between women and men, the culture of silence about men’s violence against women and the blame that is often placed on women. The view of male sexuality as an uncontrollable force that must be dealt with and the idea that “boys will be boys” lives on. Not much has happened to the story of female sexuality as something fragile that she can easily be deprived of, and the male as inviolable and difficult to control,” says Giese.“Men can’t be raped is just as burning today as it was in 1975, unfortunately. There is still a long way to go before women and men are sexually equal,” Kauppi concludes.
Text: Jonna Haikonen