On rape movies and gazes

I Spit On Your Grave, in both its 1978 and 2010 incarnations, is a horror film with a deceptively simple premise: a woman named Jennifer Hills retreats to a house in the middle of nowhere all by herself, is sniffed out and raped by locals and then exacts murderous revenge on them. I say that it's deceptively simple, because what sounds cut and dry has been the fodder for 32 years of debate -- is the film merely an excuse to depict a prolonged and brutal group rape sequence with tit-for-tat redemption thrown in to obscure the exploitation, or is it a feminist statement of the enduring strength of woman? (The original film's director, Meir Zarchi, has always contended the latter reading was his intent...although maybe that's more lip service to get him off the hook.)

In the spirit of this discourse, a friend, writer and hip-hop aficionado whose opinion I respect very much, Sean Fennessey, and I discussed the newly released remake, which comes at an unsettling time. With the release of this film, the controversy over a Pitchfork writer casually dropping the contrived genre name "rape gaze" in his review of Salem's King Night and World Star Hip-Hop's posting of a cell-phone video in which VH1's Tough Love star Taylor Royce appears to be sexually violated while passed out in a hotel room, it's been a disturbingly big week for rape in pop culture. (That Taylor Royce video, incidentally, has since been removed, though its page is still up, proving that World Star Hip-Hop is too dumb to be as slimy as posting the video initially suggested. I don't expect that or any site to have many standards, but I also didn't realize it was a vehicle for atrocity.) Two white guys investigate ("investigate") what the hell is going on below...

Rich: Our screening of I Spit on Your Grave was an EXPERIENCE. Watching a remake of a grindhouse movie in a renovated grindhouse theater -- the AMC Empire in Times Square -- in the middle of the day with a vocal, frequently laughing audience really added another dimension. And we didn’t need special glasses or anything.
Sean:  Sort of a great one in that we saw this film in the middle of a Monday afternoon with no more than seven other people.
Rich:  We were among enthusiasts!
Sean:  They were all evil in delightful tourist-y ways.
Rich:  Revenge enthusiasts!
Sean:  To their credit, they totally got all the jokes. They knew when to laugh and when to shriek. You and I didn't laugh much though.
Rich:  Did you hear the old one about the guy who was taped to a tree and had hooks put through his eyelids to keep them open so crows could peck out his eyes after they were smeared with fish guts? We didn’t laugh ‘cause it wasn't not funny! That Real World Los Angeles/sexual harassment reference may sound like a joke, but seriously, it wasn't not funny.
Sean:  The set pieces were basically wonderful. Really creative and about 10x smarter than the rest of this movie.
Rich:  You mean the Rube Goldberg-esque torture schemes? This movie could have been titled Saw Sex. Did you think it was otherwise dumb?
Sean:  Not so much dumb as dull.
Rich:  You know, I actually appreciated that. Torture porn, by definition, is devoid of suspense. I appreciated director Steven R. Monroe’s attempt to inject that here.
Sean:  Well, it shared the plodding pace with the original. But it has none of the oddness. I'm not necessarily looking for narrative. Just something in the way of a conversation I enjoy. Watching the original you get the sense that Meir Zarchi is sort of a comedian. Steven Monroe seems like just another dude who loves these movies.
Rich:  That’s interesting. Talk about the sense of comedy of the first one. It's been a while since I've seen it, and that's a surprising observation.
Sean:  For starters, the mentally disabled character is straight Jerry Lewis. It's slapsticky. He has pratfalls, he wears dork glasses, a silly hat. Zarchi seems to be mocking an archetype that barely even existed at that point--the local retard.
Rich:  Oh yeah. I mean, that’s cheap cheap cheap comedy, but you could certainly find some kind of relief there if you were so inclined. This remake was devoid of comic relief.
Sean:  Well, depends how you feel about lye melting skin.
Rich:  That is true. I thought that was a Fulci reference.
Sean:  Probably! Did you find yourself enjoying the first 2/3rds?
Rich:  Of course not! I didn't enjoy it at all! But I did appreciate it.
Sean:  What worked best?
Rich:  The overall bleakness.
Sean:  It was despairing.
Rich:  It's as hard to watch as a movie about brutal gang rape should be. At least, it’s hard to watch as far as the action goes – in stark contrast, it also looks great, like a love letter to the deciduous forest. Also, I feel like this movie places at least a bit more ambiguity on culpability. Maybe that’s what worked worst.
Sean:  That seemed like your first instinct walking out.
Rich:  It's not saying, "She deserved to be raped," but there seems to be a lot of suggesting like, "Well, if she hadn't done that, maybe it wouldn’t have happened."
Sean:  She seems more vicious in this version. I thought her mocking [her to-be-rapist] Johnny's advance at the beginning weirdly set a precedent for her lack of innocence.
Rich:  Yes! She was savvy!
Sean:  In one way, that's impressive, she's not some wallflower. But in another, it makes her a classic "hot girl."
Rich:  Also complicating things was her knocking over a barrel of water on him during their first meeting at the gas station. It was kind of like, "Well, you could see how he'd be pissed off..."
Sean: "She deserved it."
Rich:  Right. This version suggests that more than the first.
Sean:  Really muddled message there.
Rich:  Yes. And really, the first half of the movie is just a series of bad moves on her part. Take her renting a cabin in the woods by herself. Thirty-two years of horror cinema have occurred since the original I Spit on Your Grave to show what a bad idea that is. Seriously, would you do that? I sure as hell wouldn’t. And then there's running by yourself in unfamiliar woods. And checking out an abandoned house that's even scarier than the one you're staying at. And investigating strange noises. And saying, "Hello?" into the darkness. And what about her defense tactic once invaded: "My boyfriend's on the way"? That alone made it much more difficult to give this movie the feminist reading that many did the original.
Sean:  There was too much convention in the beginning, for sure. The original doesn't have much of that. It feels more alien. Did you think there was any intentional philosophy at work other than, "How rad is this kill scene, bro," in the last half, after she is done being brutalized and seeks her revenge?
Rich: I think it's intended as catharsis for the viewer. However, it’s a lopsided payoff. If we're following the supposedly gritty realism of the first half, it makes little rational sense. There’s no gritty realism in having your raped woman character turn into a strange amalgamation of a Japanese ghost girl and Jigsaw.
Sean:  I don't understand why they humanized the sheriff character at all.
Rich:  Oh! I loved that, actually!
Sean:  He's shown with a pregnant wife, and an "angel" daughter.
Rich:  I loved that he got that call from his daughter during the rape. That felt really real – like a cheater who misses his loved one’s call because he’s busy fucking someone else.
Sean:  And he seems to be really hard-working! When the sheriff blurts, 'I'm a God-fearing man," I weirdly felt a pang of sadness for him. I know I shouldn't, but it was complicated in a way that these things typically aren't. That's mostly indefensible, but I'm accustomed to absolutes.
Rich:  That's another layer of the ambiguity.
Sean:  Maybe it was better than I thought?
Rich:  That Monroe humanized the sheriff and made him at least slightly harder to hate. Also notable is the fact that at least two of her rapists are hot – I know you can’t relate, but Jeff Branson is a good-looking, nicely proportioned Hollywood beauty. That complicates things. I’m not saying rapists can’t be conventionally good-looking, but it certainly makes him harder to hate than if he appeared to be out of The Hills Have Eyes. Monroe's giving us less to work with than someone taking an adamant moral stance would. But about the discord between the realism-obsessed first half and the fantastical second, the thing is that Jennifer becomes not just monstrous as her attackers (which is maybe understandable), but also just as stupid (which is ridiculous). The element of the video camera is new to this version, obviously. And look, when you're beat and raped senselessly, maybe you can't be counted on for strict logic.
Sean:  The video camera is pretty lame, I thought.
Rich:  But when you have evidence, you take it to the authorities. And not the rapey local sheriff, the actual authorities. She had that choice -- legal revenge was an option with the irrefutable evidence she had, unlike in the first, when her only seeming outlet was to take justice into her own hands. But instead, the 2010 Jennifer lashes out with violence AND ALSO TAPES IT. Dumb. How could you root for her?
Sean:  I was trying to figure out if there was any way she could have copied the tape and sent the sheriff a dupe. Literally a month passes between rape and revenge.
Rich:  Oh yeah, that's totally what I thought happened.
Sean:  It seems more plausible that she didn't. We're led to believe she lived in the woods subsisting on fried rat for 30 days. Which, why? And if that's true, where'd she get the jeans she's wearing when she tortures them? I realize I'm parsing something that needn't be parsed, but it speaks to this weird collision of realistic empathy and standard-issue splatter flick.
Rich:  That's the biggest problem with this film from a formal perspective -- it wants things both ways. I don't see a problem with depicting heinous acts on film, and if you're going to do a movie about rape, it seems almost disrespectful to whitewash and sugarcoat it. Show people how fucking disgusting it is. Torture them with bleakness. But maintain that level of realism, or it all starts to feel like it's for fun. And this movie wasn't fun.
Sean:  Save the whole fish hook thing.
Rich:  It really struck me that she was doing this torturing for us, in the whole it's-only-a-movie sense. It wants you to invest emotionally (and cringe) but at the same time, feels self-consciously cinematic.
Sean:  It was too performative, especially for a movie that seemed to be working hard to show a dark vision of the worst thing anyone can do to a person.
Rich:  Right. But at the same time, that does speak to me somewhat, even if it's convoluted in this case. I don't really attend horror cinema for the visceral experience. I watch it AS CINEMA to see how it's going to try to freak me out. I've been saying, "It's only a movie..." all my life. And that's where I find Ebert's criticism to be faulty.
Sean:  He's programmatic about the phoniness of the politics. He famously hated the original, and defied the notion that it was even slightly feminist. The very act of portraying rape immediately made it vile to him. He echoes some of that in his review of the remake. But the case for the original -- the director's chosen title was The Day of the Woman -- at least exists. It's arguable.
Rich: To act like it wasn't capable of starting a dialogue is just disingenuous. "The audience is very, very quiet. Some share Jennifer’s terror. Some, I am afraid, may be aroused or entertained by it." That's from his most recent review. You could beat off to anything. You could beat off to Toddlers and Tiaras or Sesame Street. That's not those shows' fault!
Sean:  Right, and it's all a matter of context. Enjoying her terror is different from watching her get raped. Being scared is a legitimate aphrodisiac. Though, again, rape is not. Rich, it's probably important that I ask: Is there any more you want to share about Toddlers and Tiaras?
Rich:  I'm saving it for the book. But you know what I mean. The idea of there being one emotional interpretation for a thing is just so...weird for someone who's essentially paid to be emotional. "There is no reason to see this movie except to be entertained by the sight of sadism and suffering." That's from this first review.
Sean:  Wrongheaded for a guy who has been good about celebrating seedy culture in the past.
Rich:  Yeah, for the guy who wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which, I think was referenced, by the way, in the Spit remake. (“Marijuana cigarettes!” is a refrain of the sheriff.) Maybe that’s a wink at Ebert?
Sean:  From other Ebert reviews: "If you think being addicted to cocaine is wonderful, then Scarface is the movie for you, a-holes!" "Do you like murdering deer? Enjoy, Bambi, sadists!" "Do corporate malfeasance interest you? Then you will 'like' The Social Network."
Rich:  How do you feel about rape as a taboo? That the mere mention of it gets people upset? I'm referring to Rapegazegate, of course.
Sean:  It's a tough one, obviously. Of course rape is loathsome. Everyone knows this.
Rich:  Right. And anyone with so strong of a reaction that they can't bear mention of the word probably has reasons that make him or her entitled to it. So even in extreme cases, there's a need for sensitivity. But clearly, no one is pro-rape, except rapists, and even some of them are at least conflicted, I’d presume.
Sean:  But as a dramatic tool, it's obviously useful. As subgenre title, it's a joke. And it was meant to be a joke.
Rich:  Also, isn't "rape gaze" a thing? :  Not two minutes into I Spit on Your Grave, there is rape gaze. I mean, as a phrase, it’s descriptive. It's also a clever pun on “shoe gaze.” And yes, obviously a joke.
Sean:  Well, it gives you a sense of something. But as a rule, microgenre names are idiotic. We just escaped the tyranny of chillwave. People actually say "chillwave " out loud.
Rich:  Yeah, I don't get that. I don't hate "witch house," though, since Salem invented it themselves probably with a similar irony in mind.
Sean:  It's also weirdly more evocative. Like, if the witches from Macbeth made music, they might make that Salem album.
Rich:  With sizzurp in their cauldron. That album is Dummy '10 to me.
Sean:  The alarming thing to me about Salem has little to do with rape -- it's race.
Rich:  Just like with Portishead, though, right?
Sean:  I don't usually think of them together, but they have a lot in common.
Rich:  I mean, I guess those were less examined times, but there'd be a debate on appropriation if Portishead came out today. Or rather, if the Internet were what it is in '94. Just as they took hip-hop loops and extrapolated them for maximum bleakness, so do Salem with Southern hip-hop.
Sean:  It's not so much appropriating sound or voice as it is misinterpreting what those things mean. Salem's album is intentionally dark, bordering on openly misanthropic. And it seems obsessed with Screw and Three 6 Mafia and Gucci Mane and a vision of rape that to an outsider seems like "Devil's music." But that is definitely not the goal of any of that. It is party music, or club music, or drinking music, or even lonely music. But it's got little to do with the insular creepiness of Salem. And while I'm not against the mashing of two disparate sounds at all, I'm against reframing without context to white kids who don't know any better.
Rich:  That's interesting, and in many cases so right on the mark. But plenty of Southern hip-hop is really, really dark. I mean, Birdman had a radio hit about murder.
Sean:  Well, it depends on what you mean by “dark.”
Rich:  I mean being pro-murder is dark!
Sean:  That is true, but there's a looseness with murder in rap. He "killed" the game, etc. This is a more supernatural evil we're talking about, like a monster raping an innocent woman while jamming a Big Moe album.
Rich:  But isn't "What Happened to that Boy" literally about killing a snitch?
Sean:  It's not that it isn't. It's just that people don't feel that when they listen to it.
Rich:  But it’s there and Salem tease that element out to its extreme and adding layer after grim layer of atmosphere. There is Jeezy stuff that sounds straight up gothic to me.
Sean:  Give me an example.
Rich:  I was always really impressed with how heavy The Inspiration is. “The Realest” is so hard, and “Streets on Lock” features a funeral organ! I feel like Salem took that album title literally.
Sean:  Right, but the first lyrics are about cars! It goes both ways. "What Happened To That Boy" sounds like Fat Tuesday in N.O. Jeezy raps mostly about drugs and wealth and power.
Rich:  I'm convoluting things a little here. I guess I mean to say that Salem skim Southern hip-hop for its grimmest elements. Scary-ing up already brooding music sounds like a natural progression. It’s at least a rational bend in the river. Lyrically, I do think that there is enough violent material in hip-hop to work with. I mean "a looseness with murder," is indicative of a lot, even if it isn't explicitness ABOUT murder.
Sean:  You're right.
Rich: I just appreciate King Night as a whole. I fucking love it. It's so settled into its sound but so willing to explore it. Electronic albums like this are few and far between to me -- and they were commonplace in the '90s. I don’t know if I’d be as wild about it without that nostalgic association I’m drawing, but I always say that nostalgia is a narcotic. If you're slanging that kind of brick, I'm buying.
Sean:  Maybe the violence in rap is endemic to me, and with Salem it feels like poaching. Unearned.
Rich:  I'd have a hard time arguing otherwise in that respect.
Sean:  It sounds really big and impressive. But that's as far as I go.
Rich:  That's further than I expected.
Sean:  As soon as I think about it--though I recognize that may not be the point--it loses me. Kinda like I Spit On Your Grave.
Rich:  What do you mean?
Sean:  As set pieces, the ending is fun. As any sort of morality tale it's a disaster. It's possible to openly dislike her brutality at the end. The only thing you admire is her cleverness, but even that is eradicated by videotaping the whole thing.
Rich:  She used the powers that she got from being raped for bad instead of good.
Sean:  Well, maybe. Ultimately, they're for good, because those were bad dudes. But the means was probably damaging in its own right.
Rich:  But maybe now she'll get arrested for torturing them, especially since there’s a document of it?
Sean:  Hard to know how someone lives after a month like that. That's the movie I want to see.
Rich:  Yeah! I think you should write the fanfic!
Sean:  The prison drama about the waifish novelist who torture-murdered four bumpkins who raped her.
Rich: It could revive women-in-prison exploitation. I bet Ebert would like that, as long as the tits were big enough. Seriously.
Sean:  Caged Heat is a pretty good name for Salem's next album.

Comments

[Chaely]

Rich, have you seen the movie Blindness? I believe it was from 2008 with Julianne Moore & Mark Ruffalo. I don't have a weak stomach or offend easily, but that was definitely the type of movie that I would have demanded my money back had I seen it in the theater & that sort of thing NEVER usually crosses my mind. I've never walked out on a movie before in my life but this one was asking for it.

The premise is cool - people start going blind with no warning & suddenly pretty much everyone in the world is going blind & getting back to some primal shit in order to cope with it. The government starts rounding these people up & locking them away for some reason but nobody is really there to take care of the blind so it turns into a Lord of the Flies sort of situation. Moore's character never goes blind for some other unknown reason but she acts as such so she can stay with her husband & hopefully help the people around her.

Anyway, there's not one but SEVERAL very drawn-out, very graphic rape scenes that are so thinly veiled as some sort of lesson or study of humanity that I got upset as I sat there watching it. Upset that I was compelled to sit through that hoping there would be some point to it all, upset that an actress I really enjoy would agree to such a movie, upset that nothing really redeemed the film to the point where those scenes felt justified... it could have been a really poignant movie like Children of Men but those scenes sullied the whole movie to the point where the few people I knew who had seen it didn't even want to discuss it.

After seeing & discussing I Spit On Your Grave that might be an interesting flick to follow up with even though it's more thriller than horror. If anyone can handle it I'm sure it's you.

[Lucy]

The reason using "rape gaze" as a phrase is not okay is that it was intended as a joke. Rape should never be a joke! It's a real thing, and making a joke, or normalizing it to the point where you aren't offended by the word flippantly used, contributes to a pop culture where rape is a normal thing! It's why Antoine Dodson's fame is so abhorrent. He probably got $40k for the entire world to mock a really fucked up thing that happened to his family. Hide yo kids, hide yo wife...haha? No.

[Yourmom]

Let's talk about the scariest rape films of all time. My choices: Irreversible and Dogville. These are not horror films but the way in which the scenes were painfully elongated had me burst into tears and I've never even been raped. Rape is scary as fuck.

[claire]

@Chaely. It's worse in the book version of Blindness. TRUST ME.

Rich, this is really interesting. I still go back and forth on the portrayal of rape in the media. This adds a new perspective on it (and certainly from a movie that I will never in a million years see)

[veg]

I didn't know that you identified as a "white" guy.

Perhaps it is terrible that I identified you as Puerto Rican or "mixed" after seeing your photos.

Why did you choose to identify yourself as a "white" guy before this dialog rolled after the jump?

[z]

since you're talking about Salem I thought I'd share this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZetW6bQ7Q

I'm sure the album is way better but I haven't heard it yet. Still, this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Audience all standing in rapt attention. Mesmerizing.

[Kate]

This is a fascinating discussion. I'm almost the direct opposite of you: I go to a movie strictly for the in-the-moment experience, but it's really interesting to get a deeper look at these movies.

In following up on your "rape gaze" links, I found that they've taken that phrase out of the original article and added this:

Editor's Note: This review contains a list of the various names that have been used to describe the music of SALEM and/or other similar artists, among them "drag" and "witch house." It originally also listed "rape gaze", a term coined by Michigan band CREEP, as formerly listed on their MySpace and reported in the New York Press. The band today disowned the phrase and will no longer be using it, expressing to The Village Voice, they "would never want to advocate sexual violence against any human being. It was a play on words which we never expected to be used as an actual genre."

[Jen]

oooh gosh...i just saw the picture of the woman fade in and out and it spooked me! yikes!

[Emily H.]

The notion that rape should never be a joke because "it's a real thing" is incoherent. Torture can become a joke -- during the Abu Ghraib thing & scandals about the US allowing torture, we heard tons of them. From enraged liberals, not just the pro-torture camp. Death can be a joke -- anyone who lives in a bad neighborhood has joked about the possibility of getting shot or whatever. Violence and heinous acts do get joked about, not because people think they're trivial, but for the opposite reason -- because thinking about them makes us anxious & we want to defuse the tension. There are even rape victims out there who deal with their trauma through dark humor. Hating such jokes or just finding them unfunny is a totally valid response, but claiming that serious topics can't be joked about misses the point of what humor is about.

I don't have anything to say about this movie, just wanted to respond to that one commenter, because someone ALWAYS shows up to say "rape's not funny!"

[Yourmom]

Humor lends controversial topics to discussion and that's what's most important, I think.

[kt]

thoughts on Salem-

@z i agree, i find these performances hilarious. they remind me of, say, a bad happy mondays performance, or going way back to when audiences would riot because they thought Suicide were a terrible punk band. it's not traditionally "good" but it's at least compellingly bad, and, for what it's worth, i love the album. for me, along with Sleigh Bells and even the latest M.I.A., these are the records that sound the most "now," reflecting all of the tension, anxiety, and overload of modern culture. meanwhile, most hipster musics are looking backward - lo-fi, chillwave, nu-disco, whatever (much of which i also enjoy), wrapping themsleves in the blankets of childhood and nostalgia to ESCAPE the tumultuous world we find ourselves in.

and i find fennessey's take on salem's appropriation of southern rap troubling. rappers "murder" but salem murder. huh? he's excusing violent lyrics and imagery in hip-hop because it's party music, i guess? i have never understood the modern critic's affection for southern rap (god do i hate gucci mane), which is much starker than darker, but get's a pass because it's fun to bounce to. if we're judging music on equal footing, he either has to take southern rap at it's word, or cut salem some slack. otherwise, he's clearly applying a double-standard.

[Lucy]

Hey Emily H, you are a fucking dumbass. ONE IN THREE WOMEN are raped. I was raped. Tons of my friends have been raped. One in three people aren't murdered. One in three people aren't tortured prisoners. One in three people aren't shot in the street. But yes, one in three women are raped, and often by someone they know. It's like the least funny thing I've ever heard.

[Willa]

Lucy, you're wrong. Emily H is totally right in what she says.

As someone who's been raped, and whose husband died of an accidental overdose (God, when I look at it like that, I should be a lot more fucked up), I'd like to point out I make jokes about both. And people are entitled to laugh.

It's uncomfortable for some, others get it.

It doesn't mean I don't despair at the thought of both, but don't you dare deny me my right to cope with these things as I see fit.

[Stimelex]

I haven't watch this movie, but i hear lot of about this movie,

[RP]

I thought her mocking [her to-be-rapist] Johnny's advance at the beginning weirdly set a precedent for her lack of innocence.

I don't understand how that matters. Why does she have to be a 100% perfect angel before the rape for us to sympathize with her when/after she's raped? Does it really muddle things to give her rapists a reason to be mad at her instead of the rape occurring just because the opportunity existed?

I haven't seen the movie, so obviously this is just a guess, but is it possible that by having those events in the remake they were just providing motive and not assigning blame?

[jc]

I think the line between 'motive' and 'blame' is really thin, which is what I think Rich and Sean were getting at in this post. RP, I really like how you bring up the angel/whore divide, especially because it relates to the very real ways that women were/are negotiating prejudiced court systems.
Saying that, I don't know if that is how the movie is being read. I think that any instances of identification with the rapists (as in the apparently lovable sheriff character) and any culpability for the sexual assault resting in the assault survivor simply works to reinscribe sexist imaginings of rape as sexual or deserved.
And while that may not be the director's intention, I don't think you can ever view a movie outside of its cultural reception. I think the reason why the debate over whether the "rapegaze" can be funny becomes so personal is that hearing people joke about rape still feels like a violation today. And while people do use humour to cope and distance themselves from experience, hearing a rape joke from a privileged or dominant group can be very scary simply because, at this point, rape (in many forms) continues to happen and continues to be explained away using terms like 'she/they deserved it'.

[Duper]

Just some facts: The original film was sincerely intended. "I Spit On Your Grave" was a title applied after the film was bought away from the director. On the commentary track for the original film, Zarchi explains the horrifying real life event that occurred (in front of his children) which led him to make the film.
I guess if you still really want to debate whether it's exploitation or not you can, but that was never the director's intent.
It's still a great film, I have no interest in the remake. The original had it's place at a point in time in the context of changing feminist politics. The remake is context free, I don't see how even at its best it can be anything but a misguided creepily-adoring cash-in.

[Vanessa M]

I almost hate to jump into this heated discussion but for what it's worth Antoine Dodson's fame is not abhorrent to me. First, the guy rescued his sister so he's freaking awesome. I wasn't thinking, "Haha attempted rape sure is funny." But I was thinking his reaction to it and his mockery of the would-be assailant definitely was. Mockery is powerful. I had to laugh watching the original news story but despite all the hand-wringing in the media over it, I certainly wasn't laughing at him. And if his family gets economic benefit out of it (which I hope they have), so much the better. I've since heard him interviewed on NPR and he's very level-headed about the whole thing.

[Lazacor]

I'll never get over ANTM getting over me · On rape movies and gazes · "I'm here to make performance art" · Dis Lexie · Introducing: Hot Guys on Judge Judy · Crazy az uzual · Good girl gone home · If Angelina can leave, so can I http://fourfour.typepad.com.

[Leanspa]

've seen the movie and it was amazing!

[LC]

I have to also jump in re Antonie Dodson and say I too, do not find his fame abhorrent. An abhorrent thing happened to his family.

He responded heroically, and I use that word deliberately even it is overused. He put himself in physical danger to protect and help another person.

Then, I am sure still completely buzzing on adrenaline and just the "oh my god what just happened here" he was put in a position to communicate with the public. In that moment, he communicated anger, fear, defiance, so many real and raw things and did it with - since we are talking about hip hop - flow, charisma, humor and energy that people responded to.

Sure, some people probably DID like it in a racist or minstrelry way, but *I* liked that he was speaking with humor and defiance in the face of abhorrence. I admired him, were I put on the spot like that, I would have sputtered and been incoherent, he spoke and came up with something that was easy to turn into a pretty catchy song.

I don't mean to get so serious about it, but fuck, we cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to it, and I just feel strongly that Antoine responded, both during and after an attack, in a way that was entirely about making the best out of a terrible situation and snatching back some kind of positive result from something awful that neither he, his sister nor anyone else in his family asked for.

*Clambers down from soap box.*

[Erica]

@Emily H.-- Agreed with what you said about humor bringing relief to thoughts and ideas that cause tension and stress. I happen to be one of those rape victims who finds relief from making light of it. I have truly moved on from what happened, refrained from blaming myself, et al. I feel like the fact that I can hear a rape joke without getting my panties in a twist is a good sign of healing. Bad things happen to good people every day- you move on.

[Dana]

The bit about the rape victim in the movie having evidence caught my attention. You know, in real life, when it comes to rape, evidence doesn't matter. Remember Greg Haidl? They had to try him *twice.* First trial was a hung jury. They actually questioned whether what they were seeing on the video evidence was a rape. FFS. People are so unwilling to admit that rape happens unless it's excessively violent and involves someone under the age of, say, six. If you give them hard evidence they will do anything to weasel out of accepting the evidence--anything but admit that a man can act like a monster in that particular way. They'll even go so far as to claim impugned honor and kill the *victim* rather than face what happened to her, never mind *she* has to live with it every single day.

Just saying. It's not like people are rational about rape even when it does not happen to them personally. In that, it's unique among personal crimes. Anything else happens to you, people feel sorry for you and try to help make it right. If it involves genitalia, forget it--you're lower than pond scum, suddenly, and you're on your own.

[Adult Movies]

Wow... I had forgotten about this movie. Will have to watch it again...

[freetv]

Never seen this movie before. Scared to watch it just by the topic.