do films showing rape glamourise it?

[darleneoconnor]

Watched Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I found the rape scene quite disturbing. I am of the opinion that having rape scenes in films glamourises it, leads to copycat behaviour and creates a demand for more (ie porn). Other feminists, though, disagreed with me.

Another probelm I have with rape scenes like that is that they perpetuate the myth that the only real rape is violent rape as opposed to acquaintance rape. (I felt the rape scene in Mad Men was well done, as it showed a more common rape scenario and aftermath).

What do MN feminists think of this?

I do not agree that the linkage to s&m bar or gay angle was exploited in this way. I felt that the aim was to take the viewer the level of extreme discomfort and it achieved it. My pov of course.

I'm sorry, I'm not really sticking to the title of the threa here, strictly.

But I have to share how I felt, at the age of 13 watching the Robert De Niro version of Cape Fear. My family were staying with another family at the time and there was me and another girl of 13 plus my brother of 15 and another lad of 15.

I watched the film (parents otherwsise engaged) and didn't understand why the De Niro crazy rapist character had been 'unfairly' conviceted. And this other lad, the 15 year old started barking at me about how the girl who helped to secure the guys conviction "WAS PROMISCUOUS, and how that makes it TOTALLY DIFFERENT! Becuase SHE WAS PROMISCUOUS!!!"

And even then, at the age of 13 when I had NO fucking clue what promiscuous actually MEANT I couldn't understand what the excuse was - that film features a man who rapes schoolgirls.

Sweet jesus.

SGM, out of interest, why do you feel that those scenes were voyeuristic, as opposed to just using the vulnerability and tragedy of a dead female body for dramatic effect?

I found A Clockwork Orange incredibly disturbing because of the portrayal of women.

I think it is to do with the way rape is filmed, most films still adhere to the theory of the male gaze so women remain passive and rape scenes filmed in this way tend to reinfource mythys and/or be voyeuristic in nature.

I did like Thelma and Louise, except the ending where the women were just left frozen.

I think clockwork orange is a really horrible film, a woman is murdered by a giant penis.

My general feeling about A Clockwork Orange is that it is basically just self-indulgent twaddle, but it is violent, extremely nasty twaddle that portrays women in a very damaging way. It needed the shock factor because otherwise it would have been unbelievably dull, but the 'shock' just made it a horrific film as well as a horrifically bad one. IMO.

I was asking about both. I don't know, but when i am forced to look at a naked dead body for a very long time, it makes me more uncomfortable than if it were a snapshot, or a shorter frame. I haven't seen the General's Daughter, so I don't know. But I can't see why many directors would try to pornografise (sp?!) a female body that is supposed to be dead. Necrophiles are fairly rare (thankfully) so I don't see that this would necessarily increase viewing figures.

As for schindlers. Again, I think that maybe the director was trying to evoke as much of a visceral and disgusted emotion as possible in the audience, to such an atrocity. For those without second or third generation knowledge of the holocaust, the true horror is always going to be somewhat diluted. As that scene was through the eyes of a Nazi prison guard, my reaction to that scene would be to be more enraged by the fact that he was able to view their nakedness. Although this may not have happened, it seems quite effective, and that is what film-making is about surely.

neepsntatties can you explain filming from the 'male gaze'? I am very much a feminist at heart, but a bit new to some terminology

I am wondering, in most RL rapes, don't many women remain passive? I don't know if there is any reality to this, but in my professional knowledge, many do due to a freezing response, dissociation, etc. Obviously, some will retain consciousness and the capacity to physically struggle, but I had thought this was a minority.

Male Gaze

Caution: You will never see any media in the same light again after reading it.

thanks AyeRobot so that confirms what I thought the term meant. I guess I had a kind of implicit understanding of this idea. But, i still don't see how this necessarily applies to most rape scenes. I think most films I have seen that include rape, tend not to be directed at any one gender, such as schindler's list

It applies to most rape scenes because most films are made in this way - from a male perspective. So rape scenes are often filmed using the codes and conventions assosiated with a sex scene, reinfource rape myths or are voyeuristic in nature. Narrative wise rape often takes place after a female character has asserted some kind of independence, the rape is punishment for stepping out of their allotted roles.

I feel quite glad that I haven't seen many rapes in films or tv programmes because I find them all horrible to watch. Of the ones I saw I hated the way they were simply used to show how awful the person(s) committing the rapes were.

In Halloween (remake) a girl is raped by 2 men simply to give Michael Myers a reason to kill them, not because of the rape which he totally ignores, but becaused they messed up his masks. But it was OK that he killed them because they were 'bad men'.

Battlestar Galactica also used rape as an unnessesery narrative tool, a (pregnant) cylon female was imprisoned and a man tried to use rape to intimidate her, but again it was OK because then her 2 male friends came and killed the rapist who was a 'bad man'.

The General's Daughter is an interesting one. The rape takes place in flashback to explain why how the general's daughter gets to where she is found in the present day (which is the naked dead body SGM is referring to). The rape itself is horrific but what the film does well is show how betrayed the woman is afterwards by the reactions of her superior officers (including her father) who all basically insist that she never reports the rape and never speaks of it again to avoid bringing the army into disrepute. I saw it much more as a powerful indictment of the army's attitude towards sexual assault than I saw it as a glamourising of rape.

Another very interesting portrayal of rape on screen is Spike's attempted rape of Buffy in BTVS. It is well done because he was her boyfriend, they broke up but he thinks that if he can just force her to have sex with him once more, he can force her to fall back in love with him. Despite the fact that she has had consensual sex with him lots of times, there is no ambiguity that what he has done is attempt to rape her - no well, she must have wanted it really because she'd done it with him before. Given that this is ostensibly a teen programme, I thought it sent out a clear, valuable message that rape is rape even within relationships where boundaries can become blurred.

neepsntatties - in The General's Daughter the rape is exactly for that reason - she is being punished by the male soldiers for not only having the gall to be a soldier but to be a good one, better than some of her male counterparts. The rape is very much: look how easily we can cut you down to size.

The farm used for the location shots in 'Straw Dogs' was just up the lane from where I grew up, but the village scenes were done in St Buryan, a few miles away. My mum told me she used to go to the farm to watch filming and my aunt was one of the children shown in the opening scenes in the village where Susan George is walking with Sally Thomsett to her husband's (Dustin Hoffman) car.

Those scenes are very, very provocative and my aunt, who would have been about 18 at the time told me she remembered the director Sam Peckinpah was shouting at the two of them to "flaunt it".

The rape scenes in the middle of the film are very violent and absolutely frightening. I have read that there was a huge controversy when cuts were made by the censor which appeared to show George's character enjoying the trauma.

I have a copy with the whole scene uncut and the emphasis changes completely when set against the rest of the story and - to me at least - the film does not glamourise rape at all, even when taken with the director's early emphasis on provocation.

It seems that the opposite is shown - in other words in spite of the way she and Thomsett were made to dress and act there was never any excuse and the savage ending, although supposedly the indirect result of Thomsett's murder was actually unknowing retribution for the rapist's dreaful act.

It is very often 'fate worse than death', justification for women's violence against men (Spit on your grave). Irl, that would mean every 4th woman would have tried to kill a man. (Almost put 'dream on' then but realised that would be wrong) There's another one with a mother avenging her daughter, can't remember title. There was a good episode of Cracker (?) where the acquaintance tried to rape the woman and she fought him off. That is very unusual, women are usually shown drumming fists on poerful male chest, then screaming, then being either a/rescued or b/raped. Unhelpful.

Very often rape is used as shorthand for 'this group of people are/were not as civilised as they liked to think. Well, fine then, use sexual vaw as a handy code for something else more significant.

I found Irreversible really uncomfortable because although it in no way glamourises rape, it is all about her male partner hunting down the perpetrator and getting his 'revenge'. To me it feels like his property has been damaged and therefore he is therefore allowed to take retribution.

Actually, I found the opposite in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Rape is shown to be one hundred percent about power and domination and those shots of Noomi Rapace after the attack will stay with me forever. I thought it sent a powerful message that many other films that portray rape don't.

I hate watching rapes in films to the extent that I now google the plot before watching films that are likely to have it in them so I know definitely not to watch them.

The rape scenes I have watched stay with me forever and I just don't want that in my head the some that really stick in my mind are
Martina Coles the take
hills have eyes (I stopped watching when it became clear what was going to happen)
A csi episode where a teenager was gang-raped while her parent were locked in a closet. She killed herself later.

Oh and that film where the guys wife and daughter are raped and he becomes a vigilante. I can't think of the name of it but I watched it when I was much too young really.

On the other hand I watch law and order svu because I feel it is much more sensitive on how it handles it than other films and tv shows are.

there is one film thats been banned because in the rape scene the victim has a change of hart and starts enjoying it, i think it's 'the wicker man' ? but i'm not sure .

The reason rape scenes are so powerful and controversial is because film makers know that every woman who watches will feel very uncomfortable and undoubtedly upset. It is arguably one of the worst crimes that can happen to a woman and potentially could happen at any time by any man. Due to the physical strength of men, we know that they could easily overpower us, and a rape scene simply points that out to us and makes us feel very vulnerable, no matter how strong we are otherwise.

Personally, I watch a lot of films and can honestly say that rape scenes are by far the most upsetting to watch. This is England left me with nightmares and traumatised me for quite some time. The girl with the dragon tattoo was also harrowing, and the book was even more graphic. However both were needed to show us what bastards the men were and therefore enabled us to empathise with the women.

My dh also finds rape scenes very upsetting which is interesting as we perhaps assume that men aren't affected as badly by them. I think it must be the thought that another man could rape his wife/partner and him not be able to stop it.

The rape scene in Leaving Las Vegas is very powerful - Elizabeth Shue is a prostitute who goes to a prearranged liaison but they want to do something she doesn't. You don't see the rape, just her fear, and then the aftermath where she is clearly injured. I think it also makes the important points that a) prior consent means nothing - if the woman changes her mind at any point it's rape b) sex workers are often victims and c) the wrongness of the actions of a group of boys actions (WASP college kids) who would usually not be assumed to be rapists