Rape Revenge – Page 2

What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About Rape Culture

In ‘Titus Andronicus,’ Lavinia is brutally raped and disfigured (including having her tongue cut out so she couldn’t speak). This nod to Philomela in Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ echoes the themes of the brutality of rape and the need for revenge. The women needed to name their rapists and share their stories (Lavinia writes in the sand; Philomela weaves a tapestry that tells her story). The women have as much power as they can in the confines of their society, and we the audience are meant to want justice and revenge.

Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee

O, could our mourning ease thy misery! (2.4.56-57)

Shakespeare’s depictions of rape are too familiar today. However, his messages about patriarchy and rape aren’t familiar enough.

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

When a story about a girl who was raped and subsequently shunned and blamed breaks, I’m no longer surprised. It’s familiar. Townspeople gathering behind the rapists–just like in Steubenville–seems like the natural course of things in our toxic rape culture. She shouldn’t have been so drunk. She couldn’t say no. These boys are promising young athletes.

The rapists in Julie Taymor’s *Titus*–Demetrius and Chiron–are wild young men obsessed with violence, depraved sexuality and video games.

When Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece in the late 1500s, women were quite literally the property of men (their fathers, then their husbands). The rape culture that plagues us in 2014 was essentially the same, although laws of coverture have dissolved and women are no longer legally property.

And Shakespeare understood the horror of rape. Shakespeare–more than 400 years ago–seemed to understand that patriarchy hurts women. Patriarchy kills women.

Patriarchy is rape culture.

I read about the Maryville case with the familiar dread that accompanies these too-frequent stories. When it happens in my state in a town that looks like mine, it’s even closer. But I’m never surprised.

As I was watching Titus with my Shakespeare class just a few days later, I readied myself for the rape scene (which Julie Taymor handles brilliantly). When Lavinia’s uncle, Marcus, finds her brutalized, he delivers a long monologue, mourning the sexual violence that she has gone through.

At the end of the monologue, he says as she turns away,

“Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee

O, could our mourning ease thy misery!” (2.4.56-57)

It took my breath away like it hadn’t before, and I checked the text to read the exact quote. I paused the film and asked my students if they’d heard of the Maryville case (in which the victim and her family were basically chased out of town after the case against the perpetrators was dropped). They hadn’t. I explained, and re-read out loud the final couplet of Marcus’s monologue.

Is this how we respond to women who are raped in our culture?

No.

What if we did? What if we rallied behind not the rapists, but the one who was raped? What if we never said, “I am not saying she deserved to be raped, but…“

What if all of this happened immediately and swiftly in our own communities, and not after a case gets national attention?

In Shakespeare’s texts, it’s clear that the rapists are sub-human and villainous. Even when rape isn’t part of the plot, he shows the figurative and literal violence of patriarchy.

Hermia’s father is willing to kill her if she doesn’t marry who he wants her to marry in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (“I would my father look’d but with my eyes,” she says.)

Hamlet‘s Ophelia commits suicide when she descends into madness from being pushed and pulled by patriarchal pressures. (She says to her brother after he advises her to be chaste and virtuous, “Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, / Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; / Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine, / Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, / And recks not his own rede.”)

Emilia’s views on the patriarchal constraints of marriage and sexuality in Othello seem radical today.

Shakespeare understood.

Why can’t we?

In Titus Andronicus, Lavinia is brutally raped and disfigured (including having her tongue cut out so she couldn’t speak). This nod to Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses echoes the themes of the brutality of rape and the need for revenge. The women needed to name their rapists and share their stories (Lavinia writes in the sand; Philomela weaves a tapestry that tells her story). The women have as much power as they can in the confines of their society, and we the audience are meant to want justice and revenge.

Lavinia writes the rapists' names in the sand. The men surrounding her are not unlike Anonymous in the Maryville case. — Lavinia writes the rapists’ names in the sand. The men surrounding her are not unlike Anonymous in the Maryville case.

Shakespeare’s epic poem The Rape of Lucrece also follows a young woman who is raped and seeks revenge (although her speech is left intact).

While the death of the women at the end of the plays seems problematic to 21st-century feminists, we must remember that in Shakespeare’s Roman fictions, self-sacrifice or honor killing was honorable and dignified, thus leaving the women with as satisfying an end as they could hope for. There are cultural differences, of course, but the anti-rape and anti-misogyny messages in these centuries-old texts are gripping.

In these texts, the following messages are clear:

• Rapists are depraved misogynists who want some kind of power.

• Silencing of women is evil.

• Women aren’t always allies (see: Tamora, who mothers and encourages Rape and Murder) .

• Retribution is necessary for justice.

Four-hundred years later, we still can’t seem to grasp these realities.

We look to media for social norms and values. If we see objectification of women on screen, we can clearly see the if this objectification has deeper feminist implications if we are supposed to villainize the objectifiers. (This is, incidentally, why the sexism in The Big Bang Theory makes my skin crawl and Sons of Anarchy–in all of its vengeful Shakespearian glory–is one of my favorite shows.) Shakespeare’s women–who are victims of violent patriarchies–are the ones the audience is supposed to sympathize with. The tragedy of these tragedies is that this patriarchal social order creates hell on earth for many women.

At the beginning of Titus, Lavinia pours a vial of her tears in her father’s honor as he returns home from war. She mourns and rejoices with him and is able to express her emotions surrounding his losses and his victories.

Mourning with him comes naturally. It’s what we expect when men encounter battles.

And just as Marcus says that they must mourn with Lavinia, she must not withdraw, we need to learn to mourn with those whom rape culture affects so deeply.

Four-hundred years later:

• Rapists are still misogynists who do not want sex, but want power.

• Women are still silenced. (And when they speak out, it is not without consequences.)

• Women still aren’t always allies.

• Retribution is still necessary, although we must fight to see it happen (and rely on online hackers and internet outrage to open up cases). Far too often we must wait for justice, if it ever comes.

When we can look to fiction from centuries ago and see common and familiar–almost radical–representations of the violent outcomes of restrictive patriarchies, we are doing something wrong.

Because the masses still don’t seem to understand that patriarchy hurts women. Patriarchy kills women.

Patriarchy is rape culture.

See also at Bitch Flicks: The Fractured Rape/Revenge Fantasies of Julie Taymor’s Titus

__________________________________________________________

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Cowboy Justice: Rape Revenge in Mainstream Cinema and TV

So maybe what had looked like a trend toward marginalizing rape survivors was actually a move toward bringing them into the fold of the American action hero? This is a move that discloses a terrible truth about the handling of rape cases in our legal system, but can be viewed as a genuine attempt to find a way to make the cowboy narrative, and the catharsis that comes with it, available and relevant to survivors of rape.

This guest post by Morgan Faust appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

When I set out to research and write this article, I assumed (can you make an ass out of me and you when it’s just one person?) I would be writing a piece on how American cinema has let down women when it comes to reflecting and portraying a constructive image of rape and it’s aftermath. The rape revenge fantasy genre of exploitation films a la I Spit on Your Grave certainly did, striking me as cinematic renderings of discomfort and titillation wrapped in the guise of catharsis (I mean….look at the poster art). However, only a niche audience seeks these out, so while these films certainly have their fans and detractors, most people have never seen them.

What I wanted to know was how is mainstream cinema and tv presenting the topic? Outside of afterschool specials and the life and times Kelly Taylor? What I found was a trend of well-drawn female heroines, marginalized by society, who in the aftermath of being raped, had become, to some degree, vigilantes. OK, not terrible, but why were these survivors all presented as isolated loners? Usually viewed as crazy? And then I realized something: in its own limited way, American cinema has tried to comprehend the complexity and challenge of dealing with the issue of rape, an issue that brings up deep feelings of anger, shame, guilt, arousal, questions about gender and power dynamics, the woeful reality that only 3 percent of rapists ever spend a day in jail, by forcing these storylines into our most American of male hero molds: the lone cowboy.

Thelma and Louise—the most critically acclaimed, mainstream of all the rape revenge movies–seemed like a great starting point. This is a movie about a rape survivor (Louise) and a woman who was almost raped (Thelma) evolving from, respectfully, a repressed waitress and a subservient housewife into a pair of vigilante outlaws with an aim to better the world by teaching men how to treat women better.

On Becoming Cowboy: Louise (Susan Sarandon) and Thelma (Geena Davis)

The near rape of Thelma is the inciting incident that gets this story rolling; however, the roots of their cowboy nature run much deeper with Louise, which is why she is the mentor figure of the duo. Louise’s entire character is built out of her rape: she is a highly controlled individual (look at that hairdo at the beginning of the movie), unwilling to trust others, completely self-reliant, and since she uprooted herself and fled her home in Texas (in an attempt to get as far from her rapist as possible), she has little in way of a family or community outside of Thelma and boyfriend Jimmy, both of whom she keeps at a safe distance. In the first few minutes of the movie we’re told that Darryl (Thelma’s husband) thinks Louise is “out of her mind.” In a different movie this could simply seem like an insult a controlling husband uses against his wife’s friend, but in this movie the women have reclaimed the word crazy to mean self-actualized, truly yourself, truly a woman, truly a cowboy.

See what I mean (this is taken from the cop chase near the end of the movie):

THELMA

I guess I went a little crazy, huh?

LOUISE

No… You’ve always been crazy.
This is just the first chance you’ve
had to really express yourself.

Thelma and Louise serves as a kind of origin story for many of the women in other rape revenge movies. Louise’s rape, and the near-rape of Thelma sever them from society, forcing them into a life where they must seek justice on their own.

Veronica Mars, another marginalized loner, despised by her fellow classmates and working as an amateur PI, has a very similar backstory to Louise: once a naive, happy, student with a popular boyfriend, she was drugged and raped at a party, contributing to and the result in her ostracization from society. The private eye, of course, is the narrative twin of the cowboy: “The private-eye novel was a western that happened somewhere else,” William Reuhlmann says in Saint with a Gun. Veronica only becomes the strong, smart, dogged, lone gun vigilante we know and love in part as a result of the rape.

By keeping this secret inside of them, these women had been transformed. In rape revenge films, that transformation is from an open, trusting person to someone isolated, and alone, but damn tough.

But why were all these women alone? Why after so much discussion on college campuses of coming forward, not being ashamed, speaking out about what had happened, was I finding this pattern of women in cinema having to seek justice on their own rather than through their community? It just seemed to reinforce ideas that contradicted the messaging around rape I’d heard from crisis centers and abuse shelters. There is of course The Accused….but that actually is a movie that proves just how difficult it can be to get justice against rapists in the court of law (let’s look again at that disturbing statistic of only 3 percent of rapists serving time in jail).

The Accused: Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) fighting to get her day in court. — *The Accused*: Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) fighting to get her day in court.

Rape is an intensely personal violation, something you live with for the rest of your life. On cinematic terms, it is equivalent to murder–the kind of thing that John Wayne seems to be speaking about directly when he said in Stagecoach, “There’s some things a man just can’t run away from.” So if society isn’t providing women with the means to achieve justice, perhaps this cinematic response of the isolated vigilante made real sense. Veronica Mars explains her choice to seek vengeance on her own saying that she didn’t tell her father because “no good would’ve come of it.” For a recent reminder of just how difficult our society makes it for women to confront their rapists, look to the ongoing “Girl who Ratted” scandal unfolding at Vanderbilt University, where a woman reported a rape and was immediately torn to shreds on the University’s messaging boards. Thankfully, there is a support structure building around her; however, the culture of shaming, ridiculing and marginalizing rape victims is still going strong, giving Veronica’s comments a reality and weight more profound than most network TV programs care to touch.

Before there was Thelma and Louise ... Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — Before there was *Thelma and Louise*… *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid*

Is the cowboy actually a cathartic outlet for the “fantasies” of women who found society turning against them in their time of need, rather than offering support? America suffers from a schizophrenic sense of cinematic self-identity: we should all be patriots and defend the American way of life to the death, yet a extremely high number of individuals are forced to take the law into their own hands when society lets them down. So maybe what had looked like a trend toward marginalizing rape survivors was actual a move toward bringing them into the fold of the American action hero? This is a move that discloses a terrible truth about the handling of rape cases in our legal system, but can be viewed as a genuine attempt to find a way to make the cowboy narrative, and the catharsis that comes with it, available and relevant to survivors of rape.

In most westerns or private eye movies our hero is tasked with saving a vulnerable person. Sometimes it’s a kid, but usually we are talking about a damsel in distress. With rape revenge stories, the damsel needing saving is the woman herself; in order to save herself, she must become the protector of other weak and vulnerable people.

In the rape revenge films the damsel in distress and her savior are one and the same — In rape revenge films, the damsel in distress
and her savior are one and the same

Veronica Mars is an entire show about how she uses the skills she has honed in response to going through the crucible of tragedy that was her rape and the death of her best friend to serve the student body of Neptune High and right the wrongs inflicted upon them. Think of Thelma and Louise blowing up the rig of the dirty truck driver. Why? To teach him to stop harassing women. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander, a hacker–the modern version of the cowboy, policing uncharted virtual terrain, living by his/her own moral code–is a highly introverted woman, isolated and unwilling to conform to social norms, the victim of sexual abuse and rape. She uses her power to solve the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance and uncover the culprit behind a number of murders of young women.

Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), modern Cowboy — Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), modern cowboy

In one rare example, Hard Candy, we have a protagonist in Hayley Stark who is never identified as having had any sexual abuse in her own past, but has taken on the mantle of vigilant to make the men responsible for the rape and death of a 14-year-old girl (and possibly others) pay for their crimes. Here we have a far more traditionally male hero set-up, as she is avenging the death of a loved one. She is presented as a wanderer, and since she is a con artist we can presume we know nothing about her past, except that she has killed before and is methodical in her approach to administering her own form of justice against these pedophiles and killers. She is, in a way, our Man without a Name.

The Kid without a Name (Ellen Page), seeking vengeance for those who can’t do it for themselves

I was feeling fairly positive about this new spin I had found. I was a little frustrated that so few action-oriented female characters exist without the rape back story, but intrigued to discover that the isolated vigilante trope was actually aligning these women with a strong American tradition of self-reliance and cowboy caretakers. And then I looked at a few films where the victims of rape are men. Outside of Sleepers, I had a hard time finding films that fit the rape revenge model, so I expanded to films that contained significant rape sequences–Pulp Fiction, Deliverance, American History X–and you know what I found? A whole different set of storylines–no isolated, marginalized characters. In fact, quite the opposite. I saw men working together to help each other deal with both the rapists and the aftermath of the act. I saw men transformed into more understanding, caring individuals in the aftermath of being raped. What the hell?

Sleepers, victims, but they are not alone — *Sleepers*–victims, but they are not alone

One takeaway here is the very likely possibility that filmmakers are even less comfortable with exploring the psychological effects of being raped when the victim is man so they treat it lightly; however, I can’t help but ask what it says about us if the stories we tell about female rape victims continue to be ones of trauma and marginalization, while men remain well-adjusted members of their community?

I think what it says is that we (and when I say we I am making the assumption here that cinema reflects us) still don’t know how to respond to incidences of rape.We still have difficulty talking about it, and are unsure how to understand the nuances of each case and how it differs when it is a stranger, or a friend, or a spouse, or a relative, or when the victim is a child, or an elderly person, or when the victim is drunk or high. Choosing to make these women into cowboys is ultimately a safe choice. The women are presented as brave and strong; the catharsis is satisfying–there are good guys and bad guys, and no outside forces (like police or lawyers) have to get mixed up in it, confusing the issues, bringing up unwanted questions. I am eager to see more films that tackle this subject with a new perspective (Black Rock gave it a shot, with limited success), films that don’t reinforce the notion that female victims of rape have no place in common society. But I have to admit that I have found a greater respect for the existing canon.

Morgan Faust started working in film as an intern for the Squigglevision classic Dr. Katz and never looked back. A graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, she now works as half of BroSis, a brother/sister writing and directing team with brother Max Isaacson in Los Angeles, where they are finishing up their first feature script (a female-helmed actioner), and ramping up to direct a pair of films in 2014. Her short film Tick Tock Time Emporium won numerous film festivals and is distributed in the US, India, Greenland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and is available online at Seed & Spark. Her other credits include Gimme the Loot (editor), 3 Backyards (editor) and Mutual Appreciation (producer).

When Biopics Go Awry: ‘Bandit Queen’ as Rape Revenge

When considering female agents of violence in a film, there is a troublesome tendency that plays to the audience’s anxiety about a women disrupting the essentialist notion that women are naturally gentle and nurturing: the tendency to have the woman acting in response to sexual violence, that only after a woman is overpowered and assaulted can she find a place of violence in her. Once the naturalness of a woman is disrupted by an outside force—a (usually male) perpetrator—she is no longer required to be viewed as “womanly.”

This guest post by Colleen Lutz Clemens appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

When reading articles about the rape revenge genre, one sees cited I Spit On Your Grave, Teeth and other western films. But I would like to put forth that Shekhar Kapur’s 1994 film Bandit Queen should be considered a rape revenge film, even if the film that is supposedly putting forth the “truth” exploits the rape of the main character Phoolan Devi, an Indian gang leader who was murdered in 2001, to drive the plot of the “biopic.”

Phoolan Devi herself did not authorize the making of the film depicting her life and filed a lawsuit against the filmmakers. In a 1999 interview with AkasaMedia, she bemoaned the fact that more people talked about the mythology of Phoolan Devi than of Phoolan herself: “It’s unfortunate that they don’t talk much about me, they don’t write much about me, the real Phoolan Devi. Of course the movie is also a part of the story of my life, but it’s not the real thing. I wish they could have done it more realistically. I also wonder why they focus so much on the movie, instead of on the real person.” When explaining why she filed the lawsuit, she explained, “The case is over, I’ve withdrawn it. What I wanted was that, in India, they shouldn’t show four scenes of the movie. One was the rape scene. They should not show that, because people feel very disturbed about it–society can’t take it.” Devi herself did not want the rape scene shown. This scene (and other shorter scenes of brutality against the character of Phoolan) works to transform the film from a biopic to a rape-revenge film; the protagonist’s actions are motivated by a desire to make her rapists suffer, leading to the climax of the film.

Halfway through the film, Phoolan is captured, thrown on a boat, and taken to an enemy’s hideout where her bloodied body is tossed into an outbuilding. The first man enters the building (1:14) and the viewer is on the floor with Phoolan as she watches him approach. A beam splitting the screen makes us feel trapped with her. Her feet are untied so her legs can be splayed. Her cries continue as the other men come to watch her being raped. The camera lingers on rusty debris between the rapists’ entrances and exits. The light softens on her battered face while the rest of the room is dark and dusty.

Man after man enters the building during the three-minute scene pierced by her cries and their grunts. The audience is to assume that the assaults last for another three days until the bloodied, naked Phoolan is forced to walk in front of the village, arriving at the well where she must fill the urn thrown at her feet.

Her main perpetrator, Thakur Shri Ram, grabs her by the hair and drags her through the square while young girls watch and receive the message that no woman should ever dare to desire a position of power in a gang.

From this point in the film, Phoolan becomes larger than life. As her body heals, her desire for revenge grows. She cultivates a new gang. She collects weapons. She earns the moniker of the hero, “The Bandit Queen.” When she arrives at a wedding attended by Shri Ram (1:37), she exacts her revenge. She has her gang line the men up so she can harass and beat them.

The sound of a girl child’s screaming permeates the scene. As Phoolan shoots the men, the camera cuts to the naked child wandering the scene. She and Phoolan are the only females present. The audience sees Phoolan’s intense desire for revenge in her eyes as she punches and kicks the men who raped her or stood by as she was raped. As the child screams, Phoolan’s gang shoots the men dressed in white, pulverizing them into bloody mounds. Gunshots are juxtaposed with the toddler’s cries. The camera follows Phoolan’s eyes as she watches the men being executed. The naked child stands at the well, an empty bucket behind her, forcing the viewer to connect the screams of Phoolan to the screams of the child, linking this scene to Phoolan’s rape earlier in the film. The scene ends as the child walks alone across puddles of blood.

Again, Phoolan Devi herself did not want the rape scene in the film. Yet the final rape scene becomes the defining moment in the film, the turning point when the character Phoolan begins her trajectory to becoming the legendary Bandit Queen. In the film’s depiction of Phoolan, she acts out of revenge and also helps other lower caste people along the way. Her motivating desire is to gun down those who raped her, who demeaned her, who humiliated her. Arundhati Roy, an Indian writer and activist, wrote a scathing piece in which she claims those responsible for the film silenced their subject and disallowed Devi from even having a claim to her own life story. In “The Great Indian Rape Trick,” she says the film should be entitled Phoolan Devi’s Rape and Abject Humiliation: The True half-Truth?, arguing that the “centerpiece” of the film—the rape scene—is exploitative and not “tasteful” as the critics have said. Mala Sen, the film’s screenwriter, told The Independent in a reply that Phoolan did give consent for the film and signed the contract willingly and argues that Roy herself is using Phoolan as a pawn in another ideological debate.

All of the debates leave me with the same questions: Why does Phoolan Devi need to be repeatedly raped in the film? Why does the film shift into the rape revenge genre instead of acting as the biopic that the filmmakers claimed it to be?

Is it so “unnatural” to see a woman leading a violent gang that we require a monstrous reason to allow us to rationalize her existence? Would audiences be unable or unwilling to go along with the narrative if there weren’t some reason, some thing we could all point to and say “Aha! That is why she isn’t acting like a woman anymore. Because the thing that made her a woman was taken away from her,” as if a woman cannot have access to violence as a form of resistance?

I teach The Bandit Queen along with Teeth and ask students to consider both as rape revenge films. While the latter is a little easier for students to connect with contextually, they are able to see the former for what it is: a rape revenge film. While not a successful biopic, as a rape revenge film The Bandit Queen offers the audience a satisfying conclusion following the genre’s plot and character development. Phoolan finds agency in violence and is able to make those who wronged her regret their actions.

Colleen Lutz Clemens is assistant professor of non-Western literatures at Kutztown University. She blogs about gender issues and postcolonial theory and literature at http://kupoco.wordpress.com/. When she isn’t reading, writing, or grading, she is wrangling her two-year old daughter, two dogs, and on occasion her partner.

Women As Perpetrators of Violence in ‘Freeway’

In films, as in life, women aren’t supposed to be violent. Women make up the majority of violent crime victims (domestic violence, assault, rape, and murder) but they don’t usually retaliate in kind. Even in the relatively rare film where a woman seriously injures or kills a rapist, like ‘Thelma and Louise’, she does so with lots of tears and anguish–in that film from both from the woman pulling the trigger and the one whom the man attempted to rape. The unwritten rule in movies seems to be that in order to justify a woman killing or even assaulting someone, we need to see her or some other woman suffer, a lot, beforehand. Contrast that rule with the male heroes of action films who leave dozens of corpses in their wake, and not one of the dead has raped or otherwise tortured the hero beforehand–though the hero may be avenging some great wrong the dead guy (or guys) did to his wife or daughter.

This post by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

In films, as in life, women aren’t supposed to be violent. Women make up the majority of violent crime victims (domestic violence, assault, rape, and murder) but they don’t usually retaliate in kind. Even in the relatively rare film where a woman seriously injures or kills a rapist, like Thelma and Louise, she does so with lots of tears and anguish–in that film from both from the woman pulling the trigger and the one whom the man attempted to rape. The unwritten rule in movies seems to be that in order to justify a woman killing or even assaulting someone, we need to see her or some other woman suffer, a lot, beforehand. Contrast that rule with the male heroes of action films who leave dozens of corpses in their wake, and not one of the dead has raped or otherwise tortured the hero beforehand–though the hero may be avenging some great wrong the dead guy (or guys) did to his wife or daughter.

Any experienced moviegoer will see all the signs in the beginning of Freeway pointing to the eventual degradation of its protagonist Vanessa (played by a pre-stardom Reese Witherspoon). She’s an “illiterate” (a script this uneven should be careful about throwing that word around) high school student in a midriff-baring halter top (the film is a runway of 90s fashion that would best be forgotten) who fights off her meth-head stepfather’s advances while her mother does sex work to support her own meth habit. After both her parents are arrested the movie takes off (and finds its comic horror tone) when Vanessa is left alone with her social worker, who doesn’t see any other option but foster care. While addressing the woman in the most respectful manner (“I’ll leave the keys on the TV”), Vanessa chains her to the bed and escapes.

As she sets off, Vanessa wears a red leather jacket and carries her things (including cans of beer) in a wicker basket, evoking Little Red Riding Hood (as do the tacky, sexist illustrations under the opening credits). She makes her way along the freeway to where her grandmother lives.

The family shitbox car breaks down, and Bob (a pre-24 Kiefer Sutherland), who is driving by, sees her ass bent over the open hood and stops to help. When he can’t fix the car, he offers her a ride, which she accepts. Bob, in his shiny SUV, pleated khakis, and glasses, talks like Mr. Rogers and works as a therapist. He gets Vanessa to speak at length with him about her troubled background, including her stepfather’s sexual abuse. But when (while still driving) he initiates a “powerful new” therapy in which he asks Vanessa to detail her feelings using explicit language and humiliating details she figures out that, like many men who pretend to help women, he’s a creep. When she tries to get out of the car, she finds the door handle is missing, which Bob dangles in front of her and then uses to hit her. We find out Bob is the freeway rapist and killer Vanessa has seen reports about on TV.

Bob holds a razor to her throat and tells her to take off her pants. She stalls him by telling him she will have to unlace her boots first, but kicks him in the head, rolls into the backseat and holds a loaded gun to his head while shrieking at him to drop the razor out of the window. She hits the back of his head with the gun more than once while he drives, then instructs him to pull over into a middle-of-nowhere exit. When he tries to talk her out of it, she shrieks, “You want to get shot a bunch of times?” Vanessa’s rage in this and later scenes is like an altered state from her usual manner, but she’s not hysterical. When they stop, Bob plays the role usually played by a woman in a movie, crying and pleading for his life while Vanessa decides what she should do with him. “The time for talk is over now,” she tells him, adopting his therapist demeanor. She asks if he’s accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, and when he says he has, she says in a thoughtful way, “That’s good. That’s really good.” At this point I thought she would let him go, because of the unwritten rule: we hadn’t seen her subjugated, and she could probably get away without further violence. Instead she shoots him in the neck and leaves him for dead.

She makes her way to a truck stop diner, covered in blood (again part of the Red Riding Hood motif). She’s arrested as she leaves. We see her entering the juvenile detention facility, her face scrubbed of her heavy eye-makeup, so she looks young, vulnerable, and angelic. When one “chola,” Mesquita (Alanna Ubach), and her companions start to threaten her (as, we learn later, a first step in getting Vanessa to “put out”) we think the movie will turn into Born Innocent (this film even has, as Born Innocent did, a weird young lesbian inmate, but this one is a character, not a predator, and is played by an excellent Brittany Murphy) or any of the other women-in-prison films in which the new inmate is assaulted–except Vanessa’s the one who attacks first–and keeps on punching. She yells at Mesquita all the while, beating her into unconsciousness and turning her face into a bloody mess until the staff grab Vanessa and throw her into solitary–where she uses her time alone to make a shiv.

In her preliminary hearing Vanessa sees that Bob isn’t dead, but is left with permanent disfiguring injuries. He, of course, is posing as an innocent victim of a robbery, and just as he predicted–before she shot him–the authorities believe his word, not hers. “Holy shit,” she says, her eyes opening wide as she sees him across the courtroom and we steel ourselves for her inevitable tears, anguish and suffering, but we don’t get them. Instead, Vanessa taunts him in her thick Southern accent, “Look who got hit with the ugly stick!” When he and his wife later appear on television (to lobby for juveniles like Vanessa to be tried as adults) she watches with the other girls at the facility and taunts him further, imitating his electronically aided voice and alluding to his grotesquely distorted mouth, “My dick may not function, but I haven’t lost my smile.”

Women in films and in life are sorry for so many things, all the time, even those things that aren’t their fault; a film heroine (or antiheroine) like Vanessa, so hilariously unrepentant about her acts of violence, is a triumph. Also refreshing for the audience is being in the position of cheering on a woman threatening and assaulting men (Mesquita is Vanessa’s only female victim, and they become feminist allies by the end) when so much film and television continues to offer up men’s abuse of women–sexual and otherwise–as entertainment.

The writer-director Matthew Bright doesn’t exactly have a magic touch with all the actors (Michael T. Weiss as the stepfather and Brooke Shields as Bob’s wife are particularly execrable), and some of what passes as “satire” in the script, especially before Vanessa gets on the freeway, falls as flat as the worst Saturday Night Live skits. But Witherspoon’s Vanessa shows off the expert comic timing she would later become famous for. She also gets all the best lines. Her scenes with Sutherland (who is great at projecting both creepiness and “normalcy”) when she has her gun on him are a stellar parody of the therapist-patient relationship, with the roles reversed. Her Vanessa also uses her voice to make up for her small stature when she intimidates her victims, the way Ben Kingsley’s character did in Sexy Beast. With Dan Hedaya as one of the police detectives on her case it’s easy to see Vanessa as the violent, class-conscious, NC-17 (the film was censored to finally receive an R rating) version of the main character, Cher, in Clueless (Hedaya played Cher’s father in the film, which was released one year before Freeway). Both of them are headstrong Southern California blondes whom audiences at first underestimate, but by the end come to respect. Freeway is far from a perfect film but well worth seeing, even for those who don’t count themselves as fans of Witherspoon.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eQbglH0FJ4″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane, and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

The Fractured Rape/Revenge Fantasies of Julie Taymor’s ‘Titus’

Julie Taymor’s contemporary approach to creating a film of ‘Titus Andronicus,’ then, has to address a variety of factors: 1) she has set up for herself the challenge of filming a Shakespeare play that has been called both an “early masterpiece” and an “Elizabethan pot-boiler”; 2) she’s a female director approaching a play that has, at its center, a ritual killing, a rape, and revenge cannibalism; and 3) she’s creating this piece of art during a historical moment during which entertainment media is rife with violence and there much alleged desensitization, as well as within a culture full of complex and problematic attitudes about rape.

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

It might seem a bit archaic to look to a Shakespearean text for an answer to any question about rape/revenge fantasies—that is, unless you’re a student of Shakespeare. As Leigh Kolb has already usefully pointed out, it seems the Bard knew a thing or two about the deeply affecting rage felt by survivors of sexual abuse, and how patriarchy perpetuates that rage by blocking their ability to feel that justice is served in their honor. He knew about it so well, in fact, that even during the time of performances of Titus Andronicus, a play penned relatively early in Will’s career that revolves around rape and revenge, stage productions included a strange conglomeration of historical periods, all of which were oppressive to women in varying degrees. Witness the Peacham drawing, an early-modern representation of the costuming and staging of Titus Andronicus, and you’ll see a combination of classical Roman and Elizabethan garb, where Titus Andronicus, the play’s titular general, appears in traditional Roman costume, and his soldiers appear in armor worn in Shakespeare’s day. Both the classical Roman and Elizabethan periods were two moments in time when women (with the possible exception of the Queen) were literally the property of their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and had little recourse of their own if they were misused in any way, except through these societally approved male allies.

So it’s not truly surprising that the raped woman in this play, Titus’s daughter Lavinia, has to rely on her male relatives to enact revenge for her violation. After all, this isn’t I Spit on Your Grave. It’s more like The Last House on the Left, which—like Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring—is after all based on a 13^th century ballad about a girl raped by ruffians who then arrive for a respite at her family’s home. When her parents find out about her rape, they torture and kill her rapists in retaliation. If this origin story tells us anything (at least initially) about rape revenge narratives, it’s the unfortunate fact that sexual violence has been around for a long, long time.

Julie Taymor’s contemporary approach to creating a film of Titus Andronicus, then, has to address a variety of factors: 1) she has set up for herself the challenge of filming a Shakespeare play that has been called both an “early masterpiece” and an “Elizabethan pot-boiler”; 2) she’s a female director approaching a play that has, at its center, a ritual killing, a rape, and revenge cannibalism; and 3) she’s creating this piece of art during a historical moment during which entertainment media is rife with violence and there much alleged desensitization, as well as within a culture full of complex and problematic attitudes about rape.

Taymor’s answer to these challenges is to mimic the pastiche represented in the Peacham drawing, with a bit of updating: her film, Titus (1999), is a lush visual mash-up of classical Roman architecture, iconography that vaguely recalls both Stalinist Russia and Hitler’s Germany, avant-garde symbolism, Fellini-esque mise-en-scene, and even Degas ballerinas. The influence of the Peacham sketch draws attention to the fact that the classical setting of Titus Andronicus reflects the violence of the Elizabethan period of the play’s production, as well as bringing to mind the violence of classical Rome, the coliseum as a theatre of violence, and the excessive, often despotic rulers of the classical period. The overall look of Taymor’s film, with its naturalistic color palette, its blending and layering of historical periods and iconic imagery, and its direction and photography lends itself to a mode in which the grotesque is presented with utmost beauty, unsettling the viewer and increasing the tension between what the audience knows to be real and fiction. Each of these symbols, referents, and cultural touchstones emphasize the powerlessness of women in those cultures (and, by extension, our own), and the fragility and repression that can characterize the feminine experience. But perhaps most importantly, this approach destabilizes any complicity the audience might bring to these representations of violence. Taymor wants her viewers to FEEL these wrongs, and feel them deeply.

Enter what Taymor calls the “Penny Arcade Nightmares.” Although the film is brimming with gorgeously realized but horrifying images happening in the play proper—such as Marcus’s discovery of Lavinia that has been much discussed—these sequences are the most obviously symbolic, and are meant to illustrate the intense emotions surrounding the events that drive the revenge plot: the supposed honor-killing of Goth Queen Tamora’s eldest son; her younger sons’ subsequent rape of Lavinia in retaliation; Titus’s murder of Chiron and Demetrius in vengeance; and finally the epically terrifying final scenes, where Titus has ground the boys’ bones “to dust” and baked them into pies, which he’s fed to their mother Tamora, whose enraged husband slaughters Titus (but not before Titus kills his own daughter to save her from “surviv[ing] her shame”)… yeah. Pile of bodies on the stage at the end of the play: check. Taymor takes these remarkable cruelties, mingles them with horror’s libidinal audience reactions, and controls those reactions through unexpectedly stunning imagery to produce an increase of empathy. In Taymor’s adaptation, each act of violence is an image that is hauntingly beautiful and still highly disturbing. The Penny Arcade Nightmares illustrate not only acts of torture, dismemberment and cannibalism, but also their internal consequences, their effects on those who execute them, and how victims and those close to them are changed by such extreme violence.

Lavinia’s rape, though it occurs “off-stage,” is represented in one of these stylized vignettes. Bathed in icy hues of blue, white, and grey, Lavinia appears at once as a sort of Old-Hollywood female icon, a suitable eye-rest for the male gaze, but also as a wounded deer, with a deer head placed atop her head, and deer hooves replacing her dismembered hands. Twisting and cowering on a pedestal as if she’s trapped within a snow globe, she dodges the sharpened claws of Chiron and Demetrius, represented as man-tigers bent on consuming their herbivore prey. Chaotic rock music and fast-paced editing underscores the brief scene, highlighting the jagged edges of Lavinia’s memory of her trauma, evoking her anger and her frustrating helplessness. It’s also significant that this moment appears in the film as her male allies encourage her to write the names of her rapists in the sand, revealing their heretofore elusive identities in order to facilitate vengeance—by performing an act that will lead to justice for the violated girl, she is violated again by her own memory of the event.

But what can this film teach us about rape culture? The film and its source material are chock full of horrible acts of violence, including rape. The problem is not that Lavinia doesn’t get justice—she does. The problem is that this justice is achieved through additional violence, a fact that Taymor emphasizes by placing the final bloodbath in the setting of an arena, populated with viewers. They signify us, those watching at home, and implicate this violent justice through their blank faces and silent stares. They do not cheer. Lavinia’s plight is finished, but the cycle of violence has claimed nearly everyone on “stage.” Taymor’s revision leaves the children to potentially clean up the massacre. Taymor’s insistence on unmooring our expectations of representational violence through her painterly compositions, and her use of the audience suggest that she not only wants to change our ideas about rape culture and revenge, but about violence in general. The very construction of the term “rape culture” includes that word, “culture”—a concept that is all-inclusive, encompassing all people, regardless of your place on the sexual spectrum.

Lavinia’s attack and subsequent mutilation is a horrifying, physical manifestation of how broken we are as a society in regards to rape and other forms of sexual violence, and Titus’s attempt at justice—however well intentioned—doesn’t really solve the problem. The problem is not only rape culture. In Shakespeare’s text Lavinia is our center of empathy, the character through which we experience tragedy on a grand and grotesque scale. But Titus himself is guilty of perpetuating the cycle of revenge that ends with that pile of (albeit mostly despicable) bodies on stage, and the layered representation of various historical moments in original performance and the contemporary film speaks to the agonizing continuation of these flawed approaches to healing. Extreme? Sure. But this text seems to ask audiences through the centuries: is more violence really how we want to handle terrible, soul-crushing, self-negating violence? With everyone dead, does anyone really learn a lesson? In her modern re-vision, Taymor’s use of the coliseum audience seems to refute the idea that rage unleashed in additional violence is any kind of cure for deeply felt pain. Their silence, and perhaps ours, is a thoughtful one, one that might include some consideration of alternatives to perpetuating the cycle of violence that leads down a deep rabbit-hole to oblivion.

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University. She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is currently a lecturer in Film/Media Studies at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

“I’ll Make You Feel Like You’ve Never Felt Before”: Jennifer’s Power in ‘I Spit on Your Grave’

No movies ever had to justify a cowboy going on a rogue revenge kick after his log cabin was burned to the ground or his family was killed; certain sufferings of injury, murder of loved ones, robbery, etc., have been accepted throughout cinematic history to merit revenge at all costs. ‘I Spit on Your Grave’ was a large part of a relatively new phenomenon, possibly born out of the feminist movement, to add rape—based on the woman’s experience of rape, whether validated by law or not—to that list of worthy harms, which is an important statement in our rape culture.

Jennifer, before she murders the final man

This guest post by Sophie Besl appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

I got into exploitation films through Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. I liked the Bride’s unapologetic rampage, and was thrilled to learn that Tarantino’s work emerged from a rich tradition of female-fronted films starting in the early 1970s. What interested me most was that this tradition was created by men for the entertainment of a predominately (young, urban) male audience. Yet these exploitation films, such as Coffy, Foxy Brown,[1] Lady Snowblood,[2] and dozens of low-budget slasher films[3] where the “last man standing” was almost always a woman, felt like some of the most empowering, pro-women films I had ever seen. No subgenre of exploitation films brings up the question of whether these films empower or exploit more so than the rape revenge genre. While there is evidence on both sides, as a feminist woman, I greatly enjoy films that follow this plot formula, seeing them as explorations of women’s potential to be fierce and powerful in the face of horrific abuse.[4]

I Spit on Your Grave, originally released as Day of the Woman[5] in the late 1970s, is to me the flagship film of the rape revenge genre. A woman named Jennifer rents a house in the country to spend some quiet time to herself writing and relaxing, but is trapped, tormented, raped, and almost killed by a group of four men from the small town. She then plans and exacts gruesome revenge on each of them. The film was torn apart by critics, yet decidedly not from a feminist angle. A review decrying the scene where Jennifer castrates one of her rapists as “one of the most appalling moments in cinema history,”[6] also calls out the double standard of sexual violence in film–rapes in other films, or even the rape of Jennifer earlier in the same film, did not rile up even close to the same level of distaste at the time it was released.

But while reviews were mixed for an understandably disturbing horror/exploitation film, this film importantly caused viewers to identify with a rape victim in ways previous films did not allow. In her book Men, Women, and Chain Saws, Professor Carol Clover suggests that I Spit on Your Grave is an example of the movement away from how rape was treated in films prior to the 70s, which typically caused the viewer to adopt the rapist’s point of view, such as with somewhat titillating close-ups of a woman’s face as she is strangled.[7] In this film, the viewer adopts Jennifer’s perspective. The camera reveals the ugliness and uncouthness of the male perpetrators from her point of view, and the acts are depicted in such a violent and unpleasant way that there is little discernable sexuality in the assaults. The filming reverses prior conventions in a way that could cause even male viewers to side with the victim rather than the rapists.

Another element that enables male viewers to identify with Jennifer is her victim-to-hero character, not commonly seen fully realized in female characters. Films from earlier in the century tend to have “victim” and “avenger” as separate characters—and often female- and male-gendered, respectively—but in rape revenge films, these roles are unified in one character. Without the “assumption that all viewers, male and female alike, will take Jennifer’s part, and…‘feel’ her violation…the revenge phase of the drama can make no sense” (Clover, 1992). If viewers want to cheer for Jennifer as a hero in the second half of the film, then they have inherently sided with her during her victimization in the first half.

Other than these new and progressive ways of considering female rape victims in film, I Spit on Your Grave provides three fantastic and thought-provoking elements:

The entire movie operates outside the realm of the law

Unlike many other rape revenge films (such as Last House on the Left, where the rapist is a criminal actively hunted by police; The Accused, which is entirely about the legal system and rape; or even the 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave, where one of the four men is a police officer), I Spit on Your Grave takes place without any sign of law enforcement. Jennifer does not go to the police after her attack. There is an interesting scene where she prays briefly at a church, but mostly the film recounts, somewhat objectively, the play by play of her attack, followed by the play by play of her revenge killings (though the trailer does proclaim “There isn’t a jury in this country that will convict her!”). No movies ever had to justify a cowboy going on a rogue revenge kick after his log cabin was burned to the ground or his family was killed; certain sufferings of injury, murder of loved ones, robbery, etc., have been accepted throughout cinematic history to merit revenge at all costs. I Spit on Your Grave was a large part of a relatively new phenomenon, possibly born out of the feminist movement, to add rape—based on the woman’s experience of rape, whether validated by law or not—to that list of worthy harms, which is an important statement in our rape culture.

Jennifer uses feminine seduction to exact her revenge

In rape revenge films, the feminine experience of rape often, notably, is the cause for the hero-victim to take on masculine qualities, such as low emotionality and physical brutality. However, in I Spit on Your Grave (while she is undoubtedly brutal in committing murder), Jennifer gets her first “victim” by softly entreating him, “I’ll give you something to remember for the rest of your life.” She actually begins to have intercourse with him (interestingly, he was the only one of the four men who did not want to assault her—he had been a virgin, is cognitively challenged, and caves to peer pressure) so she can slip a noose around his neck and hang him. She simply drives up to her next “victim” and beckons him into her car. He goes willingly because he believes she wants some more. When she pulls a gun on him, he tries to talk her out of shooting him. She complies and invites him back to her house, which he also willingly does due to her coy demureness. At her house, they take a bath together, and while touching him underwater saying, “Relax, I’ll make you feel like you’ve never felt before,” she subtly slips a knife into the tub and cuts his genitals off. Jennifer swims up to the next man’s boat in her bikini and seductively climbs in. Caught off guard, he is pushed into the water, and Jennifer kills him and the last man with an axe and the boat’s motor as they flounder. Her sexuality is her means of entering the situations that enable her to execute each man.

I find it interesting that the castration scene was removed in the remake (as was another such scene in the remake of Last House on the Left), and I’m not sure why. Castration seems to be on an equal plane with the level of violence in these films. (Was it too distasteful to male viewers? Something to think about.) There is also no seduction during the revenge in the remake, with Jennifer instead relying on torture/murder tactics similar to the Saw movies. While perhaps this rewrite to agendered violence is feminist in that she can use the same cunning, engineering, and brutality as men, I think the significance of 1978’s Jennifer using female sexuality, the root of her attack, as part of her revenge technique should not be overlooked.

All four of the men must die, no matter their physical role in the gang rape

During their attack on Jennifer, three of the men constantly “offer” her to the cognitively challenged man, who is visibly horrified by what his friends are doing and avoids participating at all costs. The other three men commit different acts trying to impress and show off to one another, sickly showing that this is more of a sport or game to them than a sexually driven act. When Jennifer confronts each man alone, he pleads and blames the other men. The group dynamic may have caused the men to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have, and the film could serve as a sick warning to men in our rape culture. However, it is important and noteworthy, especially because some reviews at the time described “three rapes” and “three rapists,”[8] that there is no doubt in Jennifer’s or the viewer’s mind that all four should be punished.

I don’t believe the anti-feminist trope that women need attacks like this to make them strong. Many of these films involve gang rapes, or other situations where the woman is at a serious disadvantage due to the men’s weapons or physical strength. To me, the message in these films is that if men choose to take advantage in these sick ways, they will be punished beyond their imagination. A common question is, What do men get out of watching these films (made for men, by men)? I think, because rape is based in extreme powerlessness, degradation, and humiliation, it gives audiences a free pass to fully experience and enjoy the revenge half of the film. In a rich history of movie characters avenging murders of loved ones and all types of suffering, the rape revenge fantasy should only take second place to someone being able to avenge their own murder. Anything the media or society can do to enforce the idea that rape is a paramount crime is a step in the right direction, and I Spit on Your Grave played a large role in building that case through film.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Rape as a MacGuffin: The Hollywood Cop Out

Recommended reading: I Was Wrong About I Spit on Your Grave

Sophie Besl is an exploitation film fanatic with a day job in nonprofit marketing. She has a Bachelor’s from Harvard and lives in Boston with her feminist boyfriend and three small dogs. She tweets at @rockyc5.

[1] Coffy (which Tarantino cites as a direct precursor to Kill Bill) and Foxy Brown, both star Pam Grier, a darling of Blaxploitation whom Tarantino later directed in Jackie Brown. (For more on the fantastic Pam Grier, please read these Bitch Flicks articles on her unfinished legacy and her time in another exploitation subgenre, women in prison). A similar discussion of racism is relevant with Blaxploitation movies—while these films use excessive nudity and do confirm stereotypes, they star Black protagonists who are in themselves empowered in fighting personal battles, and viewers of all backgrounds identify with these protagonists.

[2] Lady Snowblood stars a fierce female protagonist, and is part of the chambara subgenre of exploitation, a revisionist, non-traditional style of samurai film popular in Japan in the early 1970s (Wikipedia).

[3] Slasher films are an exploitation and horror subgenre. While they too are arguably feminist, in that the murderer is usually defeated by the “Final Girl,” in these films, the female protagonist fights because she has to. Rape revenge plots have women calculate revenge, then choose to engage in violence as an avenger, rather than a continuation of being a victim.

[4] When a female character is the attacked avenger, I prefer films that focus on rape revenge fantasy as the entire plot, as opposed to a story like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where it is a part of a larger story. A story where it is simply part of the plot sends me the message that rape is part of what women have to deal with on a daily basis; it is inescapable. The extreme treatment of and sole emphasis on rape in films like I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left enables these films to be an exploration of power plays and humanity’s darker sides, rather than a statement about the prevalence of rape in women’s lives.

[5] The original title of this film is significant. The “day of the woman” to me clearly refers to the day of her vengeful murders. By using the phrase “the woman” instead of the character’s name, this seems to imply that her revenge is not just on behalf of herself against her attackers, but on behalf of all women against all men who have perpetrated crimes like this.

[6] Review from Mick Martin and Marsha Porter, Video Move Guide: 1987, as cited and described in Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, by Carol J. Clover (Princeton University Press 1992).

[7] See Clover (1992, p. 139) for more. She argues that, in films made before 1970, rape was “construed as an act of revenge on the part of a male who has suffered at the hands of the woman in question (to have been sexually teased, or to have a smaller paycheck or lesser job, is to suffer).”

[8] Clover, 1992.

‘Irreversible’: Deconstructing Rape Revenge

‘Irreversible’ deconstructs the ethically dubious pleasures of the rape revenge genre through its structure as well as its plot. Its reverse chronology inverts the formula of rape-then-revenge, thereby robbing the viewer of any sense, however questionable, of justice done, and subverting the whole economy of violence.

Written by Max Thornton as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

This piece contains spoilers.

Confession: I didn’t actually rewatch Irreversible before writing this piece. Back in 2007, it was included in an A.V. Club article on “24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice,” and if I was ever going to try to prove that piece wrong, it certainly wouldn’t be during the most important week in my religion’s calendar. (Rape revenge movies are kind of the antithesis of Jesus in basically every respect.)

But I feel no real need to rewatch this movie, because one viewing is all it took to sear it into my memory. Gaspar Noé’s second feature is a technically superb film, with a hook that would snag any cinephile: it happens backwards, with the scenes occurring in reverse chronological order. Like any rape revenge movie, this is a nasty, brutal film, telling a nasty, brutal story – and it does so deliberately, brilliantly, and harrowingly.

It’s probably fair to say that most rape revenge films have a female character doing the revenge part, whether it’s the rape survivor herself (as in I Spit on Your Grave) or her friend/relative (as in Last House on the Left), which makes the questions of morality, agency, message, and point of identification extremely complex (and no doubt my esteemed colleagues will have some incisive comments about this as the week goes on). There are elements of wish-fulfillment in the rape survivor’s violent vengeance – Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws is, of course, the classic text on the gendered complexities of viewer identification in films of this kind – and this entails all the moral quandaries of any grim fantasy: is it catharsis or titillation? Empowerment or exploitation?

In Irreversible, though, there’s no question of empowerment or catharsis, because here it’s a man who does the revenge as well as a man who does the rape. Monica Bellucci, as the film’s ostensible protagonist, doesn’t actually get to do a whole lot apart from get horrendously assaulted and viciously beaten. Her partner’s bloody revenge isn’t cathartic or gratifying for the viewer at all, not only because it’s not carried out by the survivor of the rape (nor, it turns out, against the actual rapist), but also because we see it before we see the rape.

From now on, I'm just going to use pictures of kittens and puppies who are friends, to try to mitigate the horribleness of what I am talking about. Source — From now on, I’m just going to use pictures of kittens and puppies who are friends, to try to mitigate the horribleness of what I am talking about. Source

In this way, Irreversible deconstructs the ethically dubious pleasures of the rape revenge genre through its structure as well as its plot. Its reverse chronology inverts the formula of rape-then-revenge, thereby robbing the viewer of any sense, however questionable, of justice done, and subverting the whole economy of violence.

To drive this point home, the vengeance takes place in a male gay bar, underscoring the total absence of female agency in this story. Men have all the agency here, and everything they do is awful. Women qua humans are irrelevant to the characters and the actions they take, whether those actions are nominally on behalf of them or against them.

Unfortunately, the final scene unintentionally reinforces the very dehumanization of women that the rest of the film so trenchantly unveils. The revelation that Bellucci’s character is pregnant serves only as a cheap additional twist of the knife, making her even more of a cipher by essentializing her to an incubator. It’s unnecessary, and only there to make an already devastatingly nasty film even more devastating. It’s a bit of emotional manipulation that weakens my ability to perform a feminist reading of the film, because it doesn’t let the awful violations of the protagonist be awful just because she’s, you know, a human being. Suddenly they’re extra awful because she had a BABBY inside her, and now her value as baby-maker/incubator is diminished. For the most part, Irreversible is deliberately grueling and horrible as an attempt to convey some of the true awfulness of a rape victim’s experience, but the choice to end the film on this moment seems to send the message that it was especially bad for both Bellucci and her partner because they were about to be a happy heteronormative family, which would have enabled her to find true fulfillment as a woman!!1

Despite this regrettable choice of ending, Irreversible is a valuable deconstruction of rape-revenge tropes. It’s an excruciating experience, but a crucial one for anybody interested in cinematic portrayals of sexual violence.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Revenge Is a Dish Best Served … Not at All?

This guest post by Angelina Rodriguez appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

The words “female hero” are likely to fill one’s media-enthused mind with images of scantily clad, predominantly white women wielding weapons–like Lara Croft, Xena, or Wonder Woman. Quentin Tarantino contributes many modernized reincarnations of this caricature in his films. One of his most famous films Kill Bill, starring Uma Thurman as Beatrix Kiddo (also referred to as The Bride) is a prime example. As a result of the male gaze, female heroes that fit a format created by men often fail as heroes in their own right as a result of the male gaze. Even though The Bride is a fierce warrior and martial artist, she is repeatedly raped and must step over the bodies of other women, specifically women of color, on her way to her implied equal, a man.

While The Bride is comatose, the hospital orderly rapes her and accepts money from people in exchange for access to her room so that they can also rape her. It is suggested that he has done this a number of times and the dialogue is delivered as darkly humorous. Why do we rape our female characters? Is it to show exactly what women must overcome? It is concerning that this is seen as an empowering message. Watching a woman, such as Beatrix, repossess her body is moving, but all reactions to rape are valid and require strength. During the film, Beatrix must overcome her foes in an order that mirrors the racial and gender hierarchies that exist within our culture. Her rapist is the first to die; he is at the very bottom of the barrel. His offense transcends race and gender and he is the lowest of the low.

Tarantino’s narrative requires The Bride to murder her rapist and to defend herself with some of the masculine characteristics that are used as institutionalized power to oppress women, such as physical strength and aggression. The film insists that she seek revenge, instead of demanding that men simply do not rape. This is barely better than teaching rape avoidance. It dictates that women must assimilate to a male culture of violence in order to have autonomy over their own bodies. In this scenario responsibility remains on the victim. If she does not prevent her rape she must avenge it. Although rape revenge fantasy can be cathartic, we must question the messages at work within these scenes. This scene, in particular, delivers her rape in a way that is almost humorous. It is disrespectful to our hero and to the countless victims of rape that have viewed the film. Despite Tarantino’s belief in the necessity of rape on the heroine’s journey, our female characters do not have to be raped to find liberation from the chains of rape culture and patriarchy.

Angelina Rodriguez studies Sociology at Fairmont State University. In her free time she thinks about things and pets puppies.

Ellen Page Is Like the Coolest Actress We Know, and She Doesn’t Even Have to Try

This guest post by Angelina Rodriguez appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

Ellen Page already had an acting career in Canada when she came to the states to make her debut in Hard Candy. The young, bright actress kicked off her career in America with a controversial role that many found to be extremely unsettling. Teenage honor student Hayley decides to take justice into her own hands when a local girl goes missing. She uses her wit to overpower the voyeuristic pedophile character played by Patrick Wilson. Page sports a red hoody as if to conjure images of Little Red Riding Hood but, she is somewhat of a wolf in Red’s clothing. She is not to be underestimated.

Hard Candy movie poster — *Hard Candy* movie poster

Hayley is intelligent, confident, and sure of herself in a way that I had never seen before in a character her age. It was extremely empowering to watch the film as a 12-year-old girl with my nose in a book and 90s girl punk blasting in my ears.

Page delivers a layered performance as she commands vulnerability and even turns it into a strength. Her acting skill is obvious as she carries the film with her co-star Wilson. The majority of the scenes are dialogue-rich and only contain the two actors and a single house as the set. Both characters are complex, relatable, and completely human. This movie is unique, in that it does not do the work for you; it really makes you think. Hard Candy drove audiences to play out their own scenarios and call their own ideas about morality and nature vs. nurture into question. It was a daring role selection for the young Page.

Page’s character Hayley declares with tears and determination in her eyes, “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.” This role was for survivors, for women, for those that have simply had enough. Although violent justice isn’t something that all survivors necessarily wish for, the film brought attention to the subject of rape culture during a time when its existence was completely ignored. The dialogue confronts victim-blaming and addresses that law enforcement, along with society as whole, don’t do their part to stop terrible things from happening or seeking justice when they do.

The film is multifaceted, but it is definitely a comforting story for every girl in need of a good revenge fantasy.

Ellen Page had a smaller part as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand. Although her part is small, Kitty Pryde uses her ability to phase through walls to assist the team of mutants. She is a badass when she faces off against The Juggernaut, a much larger enemy, and manages to be a hero. Hopefully we will be able to see more development in the Kitty Pryde character in X-Men: Days of Future Past, set to be released in summer 2014.

Her biggest role and somewhat of a fame catalyst was Juno MacGuff in Juno. This heartfelt comedy follows a quick-witted high schooler through an unplanned pregnancy. This adult issue is handled well by Juno as she tries to continue to be a teen. She takes the disapproval of her classmates in stride with clever, sarcastic humor. Her parents are accepting and nurturing and help her through the process. Although character Juno makesthe choice to go through with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption, some people were upset about the message in the film, claiming that it was pro-life. Page responded publicly to these concerns when she told The Guardian, “I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what’s funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don’t love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don’t want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do – go back to clothes hangers?” Page’s skills in Juno earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Her performance runs the gamut of emotions from side-stitch humorous to deeply moving.

The next underrated film Page starred in was Whip It; she plays Bliss Cavendar. Whip It is a story about a girl from a small town trying to find her niche and navigating the murky, adolescent waters of self discovery, early romance, friendship, and parental approval. Her mother wants her to devote her time to beauty pageants, and Bliss wants to find herself and hang out with rough, tough roller derby girls.

This film shows women being aggressive, competitive, and joining together over the love of the game and in the spirit of sisterhood.

Roller derby is a sport that allows women an outlet to express their athleticism, excludes men, and takes all kinds. Women of all shapes can find a home in the pack. Not only can any body type find a place, but any body type can be an asset. I’m glad the film was made and that it brought derby into the public eye, but it’s unfortunate that there was little diversity shown in the cast. Whip It is definitely a fun, inspirational girl power flick.

Later, Page played the role of Ariadne in Inception alongside star Leonardo DiCaprio. Page plays the intellectually driven, adventurous architect who is necessary to complete the team that illegally searches the sleeping consciousness in order to obtain information.

Recently Page delivered an incredible speech at a Human Rights Campaign about her struggle as a closeted gay person and her hopes for a better future. Although I do not fully support Human Rights Campaign for many reasons, mostly their lack of dedication to the queer community as a whole, Page gave an important speech worth listening to.

She made me proud of my generation and very sure that she is one of the great actresses of my time. Page said in her speech, “I’m here today because I am gay and because maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.”

Page explained that she has a sense of responsibility that compels her to be honest and ethical as a person and a public figure. This same integrity will help her to continue her dedication to playing strong, interesting, dimensional characters that speak to young women. She sets her standards high with her roles and looks for stories with uniqueness, depth, and a message. Ellen Page earned her spot as a Great Actress by demonstrating a commitment to progressive roles and speaking well about the issues within her films and the issues that women face. She is an excellent role model and icon as well as a self-declared feminist.

Angelina Rodriguez studies Sociology at Fairmont State University. In her free time she thinks about things and pets puppies.

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

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.

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.

On Milk-Bones, Toothed Vaginas, and Adolescence: ‘Teeth’ As Cautionary Tale

Early in the film, Dawn is a nymph-like virgin committed to “saving herself” until marriage. She is the poster child for the “good” girl: a loving daughter who obeys the doctrines of the church and spends her time spreading the gospel of virginity. Everything Dawn knows about the world and herself changes when her falsely pious boyfriend Tobey takes her to a far off swimming hole and tries to rape her. A confused and terrified Dawn reacts by screaming and then—much to everyone’s surprise—cutting off his penis to interrupt the rape. Little does Dawn know that her lessons about Darwin in her biology classes are taking hold in her own body.

Teeth movie poster — *Teeth* movie poster

This guest post by Colleen Lutz Clemens appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 comedic horror film Teeth plays to and with the audience’s anxiety about a young girl’s burgeoning sexuality. In a town flanked by a nuclear power plant, the main character, Dawn, grows into her sexuality while coming to terms with having a vagina dentata–a toothed vagina. In a time when toothed condoms called Rapex to prevent rape are coming onto the market, Dawn’s travails force the viewer to consider what is necessary for a woman to survive as a sexual being in a climate of violence and rape.

Toby loses his penis — Tobey loses his penis

Dawn turns to the Internet to learn what has happened to her body (and I suggest you, dear reader, might want to avoid Googling “vagina dentata” if you are faint of heart) and learns that her vagina—something she didn’t want to see the picture of even before the rape—is a tool of terror, in her opinion.

In a desire to learn about her body, to confirm what is normal or abnormal biology, she goes to another man whom should be trusted—her gynecologist. During the exam, he also takes advantage of Dawn’s vulnerabilities and assaults her. When he doesn’t listen to her protests, he loses a finger, and Dawn flees screaming at the fear she now has over her own body and it sexual nature. With little to no information about her own body brought upon by her abstinence-only education, Dawn is left confused while her curiosity mirrors that of any young woman starting to learn about sex.

Dawn visits the gynocologist — Dawn visits the gynecologist

Viewers finally relax when they see Dawn in the hands of a loving partner, Ryan, who seems to care for her. With loving embraces and tenderness, Ryan takes a nervous Dawn to bed. Her vagina dentata seems to be reserved only for instances in which Dawn needs protection, so Ryan is safe in her embrace. But when Dawn learns that Ryan has bedded her as part of a bet while he is still inside of her, Dawn’s evolutionary adaptation intercedes and Ryan is punished for his use and abuse of Dawn. So now two trusted boyfriends and a doctor have initiated Dawn into the world of oppressive sex and violence, and all three times her vagina—the thing that has left her most vulnerable—has acted as a protector.

Finally, upon the death of her mother, Dawn starts to see her vagina as a tool not only for survival but also for justice. Her awful stepbrother Brad is the first to be the victim of the vagina dentata used purposefully. Having ignored the cries of his dying stepmother, Brad allows the most important woman in Dawn’s life to die a horrible death. A coy Dawn seduces Brad to punish him. His vicious dog gets to eat the spoils of the sexual encounter Brad had been taunting Dawn with for years.

Brad's penis (before the dog eats it) — Brad’s penis (before the dog eats it)

The final scene does the most interesting work in terms of considering Teeth as part of the rape-revenge genre (spoiler alert). Dawn has left her home to begin a new life as she can no longer survive in her town. After a succession of men whom Dawn should be able to trust take advantage of her, Dawn finally embraces her toothed vagina and uses it as a tool of resistance and justice as she works to protect other women from the awful men roaming the world. When hitchhiking, she is picked up by the archetypal “dirty old man” that solicits sex from her as his dry tongue licks his even dryer lips.

In the film’s final moments, the audience sees Dawn smile and go toward this encounter, and we know that Dawn will use her vagina dentata as an act of vigilante justice. She will sever the penis of this man so he cannot use it again and hurt other girls. Instead of being surprised by her vagina or using it as a form of reactive self-protection, Dawn is now being proactive and seeking out the opportunity to use her “teeth” to act as a fighter. She goes toward the encounter and accepts her body for what it is: a powerful sexual being that has adapted to a world that is often harsh and dangerous for the female species.

I have taught this film several times in my college courses. If I were to make a generalization, at the end of the film, the male students groan and the female students cheer. I suppose that is a natural response to some degree. After all, we did just witness a dog eat a severed penis as if it were a Milk-Bone. However, this film always leads me to ask the question: Is this the kind of agency that we as women want—access to violent acts? Is Dawn, as Tammy Oler calls Dawn in her Bitch article on rape-revenge films “The Brave Ones,” a “satisfying fantas[y] of power and fortitude”?

The film seems to argue that Dawn’s growth is a requirement, a form of natural selection–that a young woman growing up in a white, suburban, Christian, capitalist society MUST develop such a “mutation” in order to survive a patriarchal world. Dawn’s vagina dentata is the epitome of her biology teacher’s earlier lesson on natural selection, that along with the help of the effects of the nuclear power plant combined with the need to survive, women will start to adapt and grow vaginal teeth. Though she is still monstrous (the film isn’t called “Dawn,” but is instead named after the thing that makes her a monster), she also has access to mobility—she is leaving—and sexual power—she is about to control the sexual situation for the only the second time in her sexual life. Sadly, though this situation is one of power, not of love.

We do see earlier in the film that she can control her teeth when having sex in a loving environment, so the adaption will not hold her back from having a healthy sexual encounter that is safe for both partners. But when that safety is compromised, the audience is to assume that Dawn will always have the upper hand. Or should we say the upper jaw?