Seed & Spark: Rape as a MacGuffin: The Hollywood Cop Out

This is a guest post by Mara Gasbarro Tasker.

MacGuffin: an object or device in a movie or a book that serves merely as a trigger for the plot.

Everyone loves a revenge story.  Yet no one mentions the disturbing trend–in both television and film–of victimizing women to kick start the narrative.  From modern procedurals like SVU, to older films such as I Spit on your Grave or newer films like Irreversible, women are repeatedly given the Hollywood shaft.  I won’t reference SVU much beyond this because I can hardly stomach the show given that every episode I’ve seen features an opening that is 10 minutes of female sexual victimization.  Now think of all of the revenge films you have seen in your life.  Starring men or women.  Think back to what starts the story.  A disturbing number of them begin with rape.  They use brutal violence against women to get the ball rolling. Let’s look at a few examples.

In both the 1978 version and the 2010 remake of I Spit on your Grave, our young, beautiful and somewhat reclusive female protagonist leaves her worries behind for a summer to focus on writing. But not long before she arrives in her hideaway cabin, she is brutally, violently, and sadistically gang raped in the woods and her rental home.  Later in the film she comes back for revenge.  But her motive and her actions for the rest of the narrative are all defined by that senseless assault.

In the case of Abel Ferrara’s 1981 B-movie hit Ms. 45, Thana, a mute and beautiful young seamstress is raped on her walk home.  Unable to scream, it hardly seems to happen.  When she gets home, however, a second intruder breaks into her house and has his way with her.  It was a tough day for Thana.  These are both “B-Movies” and yes, there is a tendency in this kind of film to exploit violence.  But before we write off this brutality to just one less-prevalent genre, let’s look at mainstream cinema.

American Psycho.  Patrick Bateman is the world’s weirdest man.  A total power player, a stud, a dick.  He lures women in and takes pleasure, on screen, in killing them.  The infamous chainsaw scene comes to mind.  Bateman commits one murder in his bed before spending the next few minutes chasing a second prostitute to her death.  It’s an extreme example, but this act of casual violence against women happens again in other forms and its effect is the same.  As another example, Gaspar Noe’s powerful film, Irreversible, sets violence into motion from minute one.  While it’s led by a male character and mostly affects a male population in the film, we later see that the center of the tale, the very object that put all of this aggression into motion, is the brutal, hate-filled rape of his girlfriend. This film features a male lead on a revenge quest, but it all hinges entirely on the abuse of a woman.  We could go on–films like The Skin I Live In and remakes such as Last House on the Left and The Evil Dead all perpetuate the practice of using brutality as a narrative tool.

Rather than harp on the fact that sexual abuse is used frequently in film, let’s pay closer attention to how it’s used.   I Spit on your Grave and Ms. 45 are ultimately female revenge stories that feel satisfying, but it’s only after brutal and forced, criminal sexual assaults that these women come into their power and their own violence.  The abuse at the start of the story is what sets their lives on screen into motion.  I know I was not alone in thinking hell yes! when these women struck back.  But why are stories of female characters taking aggressive or assertive stances allowed to happen only after they have been victimized? In men’s revenge stories, oftentimes a woman has been killed off and he sets out to even the score.  In a female revenge story, more often than not she has been assaulted and wants to get even.  In both cases, women are victimized and the female body is used to move the narrative forward.

Men can seek revenge.  Men can become monsters.  Walter White can justify his actions because it was driven by the need to earn money for his family in Breaking Bad.  Travis Bickle can become a sadistic psychopath in Taxi Driver without being forced into it by trauma.  Patrick Bateman can kill for the pleasure of it.  Men are given the freedom in film to seek revenge for any perceived slight.  But women are only granted that unadulterated kind of freedom, that get-out-of-jail-free card, if they have first been victimized.  How many films feature women being assertive or dangerous who don’t have their bodies forcibly violated first?

Storytelling has a responsibility.  To the men and women writing any form of media, if it isn’t absolutely necessary to tell a truthful story, I challenge you to find a different reason to seek revenge.  Look for a better technique to get your characters moving.  Find a better reason for the action to start.  Rape is not excusable.  If we don’t want to normalize violence against women, we must be smart about what we normalize on screen.  When teenage girls sit down at the movies or on their own couches, they’re quietly–if not openly–reminded that they are the “weaker” sex and can be taken and brutalized with ease.  It may bring out some interesting male characters, but it comes at the cost of a woman’s body.  Rape is not, and should not be, a MacGuffin.  Let’s tell a better story.

Mara Gasbarro Tasker is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles.  She’s currently working as an Associate Producer at Vice Media and has co-created the Chattanooga Film Festival, launching later this spring.  She holds a BFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  She is directing a grindhouse short in April and is still mourning the end of Breaking Bad.