I can’t say with certainty why dramatized rape scenes turn my stomach the way they do. As of this writing, I have not been a victim of rape. It is not for personal experience or personal connection that I often look away
for the duration of a rape scene. I look away because I find rape, as represented in film, to be gratuitous in particular ways that other acts of violence are not.
I am uncertain as to whether the gratuitousness of a rape scene is because of the way it is portrayed in popular cinema, or because it is portrayed period. It may also be that I find rape gratuitous, and that cinema is a faultless reflector of this dark reality.
Rape, as a real-life act of violence rather than a narrative arc, is something that men do, mostly to women and children[1]. (Although, this is not to say that men do not suffer as a result.) In the western world rape is most often committed by someone known to the victim. In the act of rape familiarity and trust transforms into an intimate and enduring violation. It is not like being shot or stabbed. It does not blow one back, it pulls the victim toward the violation. It has an intimacy and duration unlike any other act of violence and it is specifically directed at women.
Rape is a weapon, and a cheap one at that. There are socio-economic issues embedded in the act of rape. “War Rape,” as it is officially recognized by the United Nations, is an effective weapon used in genocide because it destroys its victims and entire communities. It causes social isolation, depression or suicide in its victims. It creates unwanted pregnancies, spreads disease, and destroys social units. It is a simple weapon, easier to obtain and operate than bombs or bullets. It attacks physically, psychologically and socially. It has the potential to affect entire communities for generations. [2]
I cannot think of another violation or weapon that encompasses the spectrum of damage and hurt, both political and personal, as rape. However, I don’t know that rape is a gratuitous act for
this reason alone. It is highly damaging, yes. But to ask whether it is gratuitous – that is, being without apparent reason – is a difficult question to answer.
The first rape scene I confidently looked away from was in the film Boys Don’t Cry. Before that I had (with difficulty) seen others in Deliverance, The Accused and The Prince of Tides, among others.[3] Until Boys Don’t Cry I thought of the rape scene as a test of endurance, a hyper-vigilant sensorial preparation perhaps. If I looked away, it meant that I couldn’t handle rape. It chagrins me to say it, but my reasoning was that if I couldn’t watch i
t then I definitely couldn’t survive it.
The film Boys Don’t Cry is based on the true story of a 21-year-old transgender man living in Nebraska, named Brandon Teena. When he was discovered to be biologically female, he was beaten, raped and later killed by acquaintances. I saw this film in 1999 at the Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco. I was 23. I went with my friend Lisa.
I remember that when I looked away I stared indignantly, but wide-eyed at the ground. I plugged my ears so that I couldn’t hear the awful sounds of rape. To watch and listen passively – obeying the path of sounds and visuals - felt too much like being complic
it in an act, or at least a dynamic to which I objected. Shutting my eyes was not the gesture I wanted to make. To continue watching would have been a gratuitous act.
The thing about rape is that, unlike murder, the intention of the rapist is not to eradicate a person, to remove the victim from the world. Instead, the victim is forced into a humiliated, miserable and devalued existence. It is not a hopeful violent act, like murder can be considered, although it is distasteful to do so. Murder, in some respects, is a violent act of idealism. By eliminating an undesirable life, the murderer can exist unchallenged. Rape is the opposite. No one dies, but both rapist and victim coexist in an unspeakable hell of violation and humiliation.
To watch those men a
ttack Brandon Teena with this intention was unbearable to watch. Just as actors dramatize real-life events, so too does an audience member dramatize her reactions as a spectator to the event portrayed. As an audience member my role was a “rape-watcher.” All audience members are subjected to this dynamic, and this – if not anything else – is gratuitous. I just don’t see the reason for it.
The act of watching a film, just like the act of rape, has a socio-economic implication. Those who buy movie tickets are not those who are victimized. They purchase the privileg
e of spectatorship. They will watch a dramatization of someone else’s suffering. All the while the dynamic of the spectacle reassures them – based on their vantage point - that it is not them who suffers. They are, however, learning something about the suffering of the other. This information might be summarized as this: these are the conditi
ons under which one is raped and this is the kind of person who is raped.
My objection to the use of film to dramatize rape is that it inherently puts the
audience in the role of “rape-watcher.” The rape is happening now and yet you are in a position of inaction, of complacency. Compare this with rape dramatized in renaissance p
ainting, or in documentary photographs. The viewer, or the observer of someone else’s suffering, can only be a retrospective witness. It happened. It is in the past. There is nothing you can do about it now. You may contemplate or internalize it, but the medium itself is not provoking you into action.
The scene in Boys Don’t Cry is uncomfortable because I want to intervene but cannot. My sensory systems are telling me that something terrible is happening, and my suspended belief as a movie-goer tells me that it’s real. But reason restrains me. This event already happened many years in the past. There is nothing you can do about it now. Still, I am provoked in real time, and I am uncomfortable that I have no agency.
After the film was over, I clearly remember waiting in line in the women’s restroom. It was crowded with women and it was completely silent. No one made eye contact, there were no audible civilities. We had all been subjected to something that left us beyond words or action. Did it render us impotent? Why were we not outraged and conversant in the matter?
It is worth mentioning that the film dramatized a rape scene, but it cut a scene in which Brandon Teena made love to his girlfriend. The two were kissing and just as clothing started to come off, the camera faded and dissolved into a scene where the couple was nude, reposed and relaxed. Brandon Teena, as a character in this narrative, was not to be seen engaged in an act of love, but one of hate and violence.
Today, the Democratic Republic of Congo is known as the “rape capital of the world,” with an estimated 200,000 surviving rape victims. South Africa has some of the highest incidences of child and baby rape in the world. A woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read.
It seems to me that because rape is clearly an epidemic reality in parts of the world, that to portray it within a medium that renders people speechless and immobilized – stunned in general – is ineffectual. Is the cinematic rape scene reinforcing an attitude of powerlessness when it comes to rape in general? It happens, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
[1] 99% of rape offenders in the US are male. 91% of rape victims are female.
[2] Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi women and girls were raped during the Rwanda genocide in 1994. 200,000 Bengali women were raped by the Pakistani Army during the Bangledesh Liberation War in 1971. 80,000 Chinese women were raped by Japanese soldiers during the Nanking Massacre in 1937. During the colonization of the Americas, rape of native women was not considered a crime because they were not Christian.
[3] Unbelievably, there is a top 10 most disturbing rape scenes list on rottentomatoes.com.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=342768
