not only will i stare

{embed Flickr image: '<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/193920705@N05/51722046713/in/dateposted-public/" title="timeline for draft"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51722046713_3b5531715e_h.jpg" width="1600" height="225" alt="timeline for draft"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>'} [align center] production code era _[[The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan)->The Virgin Spring]]_ exploitation era _[[The Last House on the Left->Last House on the Left]]\ [[I Spit On Your Grave (Day of the Woman)->I Spit on Your Grave]]\ [[Ms .45 (Angel of Vengeance)->Ms .45]]_ postfeminist era _[[Thelma & Louise->Thelma and Louise]]\ [[Law & Order: Special Victims Unit->SVU]]\ [[The Keepers->The Keepers]]\ [[Promising Young Woman->Promising Young Woman]]_ [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

[align center] {reveal link: 'content warning', text: 'this page contains graphic images of rape. [[go back->start]]'} [continue] The crux of the persistent controversy surrounding Meir Zarchi’s 1978 low-budget exploitation film _I Spit on Your Grave lies_ in the need to evaluate and re-evaluate the ethics of the rape scene, which is unique even in the context of exploitation films for its brutality. The scene occupies a substantial portion of the film, roughly 40 of the 102 minute runtime, which in most available cuts has been abbreviated to 96 minutes. In it, protagonist Jennifer Hills is abducted while sunbathing by a group of four men. Over the course of an afternoon into an evening, each of them take turns raping her, encouraging each other and assisting in physically restraining her. In between several of the rapes, she makes escape attempts: the audience is allowed brief moments of reprieve that are repeatedly shattered, placing each subsequent rape in a liminal space between inevitability and shock. The sound throughout the course of the scene is entirely diegetic, silent but for the attacker’s encouragement of each other and Jennifer’s screams. Because the rapes are spectatorial and collaborative, the external perspective continually implicates the viewer, with the camera spending most of its time moving between the point of view of different participants. In the following [[four-shot sequence->rapelust note]], we first embody Matthew, who is being encouraged to join in; then Johnny, who is actively raping her; then Jennifer herself, in the briefest shot in the sequence; finally, an ambiguous shot that could be from the perspective of either Matthew or Andy, both of whom are restraining her at this point. Throughout this sequence, the sound remains the same: Jennifer struggling, and Johnny making sounds of enjoyment. {embed Flickr image: '<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/193920705@N05/51477797695/in/dateposted-public/" title="i spit on your grave"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51477797695_857a025213_k.jpg" width="2048" height="1280" alt="i spit on your grave"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>'} In his 2018 book on the film’s legacy, David Maguire repeatedly praises Zarchi’s commitment to diegesis as a refusal to give the audience an out. His amateur, almost anti-aesthetic-aesthetic, implies that mainstream cinematic aesthetics fail to either accurately or adequately convey whatever makes rape “true rape”. Quoting Henry, Maguire argues that “The failure to either induce or convey the horror of rape is both a generic and feminist political failure”, implying that a feminist politic would demand an explicit representation that is alienating to and uncomfortable for the audience. A cinematic rape that is insufficiently brutal “fails to motivate and justify the protagonist’s brutal retribution”. He is making a series of important propositions here: first, that in order for audience to be on the victim’s side they need to see violence enacted to a sufficiently extreme degree. Second, that a film that is ethically representing rape must place the audience on the side of the victim regardless of their subsequent actions. Third, crucially: that there is a type of rape that justifies (or is perceived to justify) revenge and a type that doesn’t. Filming something changes it - you want the camera to feel like part of the violation. You want to feel like you are witnessing something you were never intended to see. What does it mean to seek out that experience - even under the guise of seeking to understand it? What does it mean to work to create that experience for an audience - even under the guise of fostering greater understanding of it - is the only adequate way to represent a violation to violate your audience? And yet, there is further debate about even framing it in these terms. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

_Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU)_ is the all time longest-running primetime scripted live-action series in the United States. It has run on NBC since 1999, currently standing at 494 episodes, and has been renewed through its 24th season. It follows a straightforward procedural structure: in each episode, the NYPD’s sex crimes division investigates, catches, and justly prosecutes a criminal, heroically removing them from the mean streets of New York City. SVU exists in a world where rape is a fundamentally solvable problem: clues can be followed to a perpetrator, the perpetrator can be taken to court, the court can convict. But the show continually undermines its own assertion through this consistent repetitive structure: time is always looping back on itself. There is always another case. There is always another victim. There are three main conflicts that persist over the course of the show: the uncooperative victim, the detectives’ internal conflict, and the systemic barriers to conviction. One of the most striking elements of the show is the extent to which the victims are presented as problems to be solved: they are by and large not sympathetic characters. Their reluctance to testify or make intimate details of their lives and assaults fully available as they are demanded is presented as a betrayal to themselves and to justice: the primary job of the detectives, parallel to their investigation, is to convince the survivors that this is the best path to healing. This healing process, however, is beyond the purview of the show: after the conviction is secured, the victim disappears and is replaced. Captain Olivia Benson, the central character, acts as the primary representation of internal conflict and lasting impacts of trauma. Her motivation in becoming a detective is her own birth as a result of her mother’s rape: in season 9 she is assaulted by a correctional officer while undercover in a prison and in season 10 she is shown to have PTSD as a result. Benson frequently acts as the most empathetic officer, whose capability to connect with victims allows for better testimony and greater success. As a survivor, she is aware of the retraumatizing nature of the system and the damage she is asking the victims to do to themselves by testifying, even as she is the driving force in convincing them that it will undo the damage of abuse. As an officer, she is aware of the necessity of this testimony in securing a conviction, which she believes to be a matter of both potential healing for the survivor and increased safety for potential future victims. The burden of proof is presented as just that - a burden. Due process comes up frequently as an issue, with victims often acting as mouthpieces, questioning why their abusers haven’t been arrested, and forcing the detectives to explain that lived experience isn’t enough evidence to arrest or convict: this problem persists despite the consistently stated importance of survivor cooperation and testimony. The characters, and by extension the show itself, can never fully resolve its relationship to the legal system it portrays. The closest it gets to a conclusion is in the implied decision that the detectives, and the audience, make: we keep coming back to watch the same thing happen over again. Even as the system is presented as coercive, damaging, and inadequate, it is also presented as the only viable path to justice. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 historical drama _The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan)_ is frequently cited as one of the earliest and most influential examples of the rape-revenge genre. The film demonstrated the mainstream artistic potential of rape: it was screened at Cannes and won the 1960 foreign language Oscar despite censorship of elements of the rape scene for American audiences. It is not a film that could have, at that time, been made in an American production context, but became incredibly influential when the end of the Hays code allowed for more direct portrayals of violence and morally complex narratives. It introduces the [[narrative structure->VS Narrative Structure]] maintained through to the start of the exploitation era, and served as inspiration for other paradigmatic examples of the genre: _[[The Last House on the Left->Last House on the Left]]_ is a direct adaptation. It also [[engendered controversy->VS Critical Response]] for its explicit portrayal of rape. >[[narrative structure->VS Narrative Structure]] >[[critical response->VS Critical Response]] [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Wes Craven’s 1972 exploitation film _The Last House on the Left (LHOTL)_ opens with an assertion that the story you are about to see is real: “Names and locations have been changed to protect those individuals still living.” This assertion, which is completely false, asks the viewer to situate the film in the context of the real, playing on cultural fears about the ever-present possibility of sexual violence. It took the generic tropes established in Bergman’s critically acclaimed 1960 film, _[[The Virgin Spring]]_, and paired a conservative political sensibility with low-budget exploitation aesthetics, which included far more violence than had previously appeared in the genre. The film was initially conceived and written by Craven as a soft-core pornographic horror film, but the script underwent edits during shooting to remove some of the more sensationalistic scenes and redirect focus onto the story. This was ultimately completely ineffective in terms of audience reaction: the film was hugely controversial on release, where it was banned in a number of countries and many cinemas chose to destroy or re-edit reels because of negative audience response, leading to a number of competing cuts and lost scenes. The film follows Mari and Phyllis, teenage girls who are going to a concert in a city for Mari’s 17th birthday. When they attempt to buy marijuana, they are held hostage by a gang of criminals, led by Krug, who has newly escaped prison. The gang puts them in the trunk of their car, drives out of the city, and playfully abuses and murders them. Krug’s gang then accidentally stays in Mari’s parents house: when her parents realize what they have done, they murder them. Throughout the film, violent scenes are counterbalanced by comedic ones. Footage of Mari’s parents preparing her birthday cake and flirting with each other, complete with lighthearted slapstick music, is intercut with Phyllis pleading for her and Mari’s release, after which she is gang raped. This rape is not shown: instead, we hear it, while the camera zooms in on Mari as she watches. The criminals constantly bicker with each other, separated from and disinterested in the violence they are perpetrating. Their violence is cartoonish and arbitrary in its extremity: they are playing a game, without clear motivations or benefits. While the film clearly condemns their actions, it also luxuriates in them. Mari’s rape occurs as the culmination of a sequence of torture and abduction: it only begins at 46:22, well over halfway through the film’s runtime.By the time Krug gets to the point of raping Mari, he has already carved his name into her chest: the rape is his final act of domination before her death. It is for Mari specifically that rape holds this level of significance: the film treats Phyllis’ abuse as a precursor to Mari’s. While there is no outright victim blaming, Mari’s parents do worry at the start of the film about the corrupting influence of Phyllis and the city, and the abduction happens as a direct result of the girls’ attempt to buy drugs. Phyllis is already corrupted at the outset, encouraging Mari to come to the city instead of spending her birthday with her parents. The film therefore argues that rape is a more significant crime depending on the innocence of the victim, as it is only Mari’s rape and murder that precipitates and justifies the revenge. Craven argued that his intention in making the film was to depict violence without valorizing it, as a response to both the jingoistic valorization of violence against youth in service of American ideals of the Vietnam war and the general rise in ultraviolent aesthetics in film. The violence in _LHOTL_ can be separated into two types, a separation that carries forward into other rape-revenge films that it influenced. There is violence enacted upon the victims by the villains, and what is enacted upon the villains by the avengers, in this case Mari’s parents- in later cases, more often by a combined victim-avenger figure. In many rape-revenge films, the former justifies the latter, and they are marked by visual and tonal differences. Craven’s perception of his own film as antiviolent and antirape is undercut by a number of factors: that the film was originally conceived as pornographic; that among the “lost scenes” that were cut by censors are multiple additional lesbian rape scenes, as well as a scene of Mari naked in her bedroom, which were presumed to serve the sexual gratification of the viewer over the plot of the film; but perhaps most notably that the tone does not shift significantly in terms of the revenge violence. Mari’s parents match Krug and the gang in terms of creative, humorous, humiliating violence, including Mari’s mother seducing Weasel in order to bite off his penis. At the core of the film is a sense that violence is fun: to enact, and to watch. Mari and Phyllis don’t feel like motivating factors in the violence, merely objects of it, and ultimately excuses for it to continue. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

_Ms .45_ is not technically a genre-defining moment, nor could it be said to be particularly influential, or even exceptionally good. Abel Ferrara’s 1981 exploitation film follows Thana, a mute seamstress who begins to murder men after being raped twice in an afternoon. _Ms .45_ is significant to this project primarily because it is significant to me: it is far and away my favorite rape-revenge film, and anchored me to my love of the genre through my exploration of its (many, many) problems. The film gets to the point extremely efficiently: Thana’s second rapist appears in her apartment 4 minutes and 56 seconds into the film: her first rapist appears less than thirty seconds later, at 5 minutes and 23 seconds. The first rape is over by 6:30; the second, and final, by 11:40, when she kills the rapist. The rest of the hour and 20 minute runtime is occupied by a sequence of murders, the frequency increasing until the film culminates with a mass shooting at a halloween party. Her first murder is to prevent what she believes will be another rape: each successive murder is increasingly sought out, with Thana intentionally putting herself into situations where opportunities for men to abuse women will arise, before murdering them if they take the opportunity. In _Ms .45_, Thana’s transformation is complete not when she makes her final kill but when she prepares to make it. She is shown alone, in her room, loading her gun in costume for the Halloween party where she will kill her abusive boss. As she admires herself in the mirror, she begins to playact shooting imaginary enemies. {embed Flickr image: '<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/193920705@N05/51586686303/in/dateposted-public/" title="thana 1"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51586686303_077bc59c94_k.jpg" width="2048" height="1280" alt="thana 1"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>></script>'} {embed Flickr image: '<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/193920705@N05/51586686563/in/dateposted-public/" title="thana 2"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51586686563_182094d45b_k.jpg" width="2048" height="1280" alt="thana 2"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>'} To allow Thana not only a moment of post-rape happiness but of genuine joy and freedom, one that is not intercut with flashbacks but allowed to stand entirely on its own, is at the core of what makes this film (and the rape-revenge genre more broadly) so cathartic as a survivor. When rape acts as a narrative engine to question the nature of revenge, especially when that revenge is coming from people other than the survivor (as in _[[VS->The Virgin Spring]]_ or _[[LHOTL->Last House on the Left]]_), there is a necessary questioning of the severity of the initial crime and proportion of revenge. _Ms .45_ is simple: Thana’s rage is not only reasonable, but consequential. There is no prevarication about whether her response is proportional: she shows no internal sense of guilt. Her rapes allow her to come into a sense of herself. This acknowledges what all survivors know: that rape is transformative. You are forced to confront changes in yourself that you did not consent to being made, a constant redoubling of the initial violation. What has always drawn me to the rape-revenge genre is its existence as a space that valorizes these changes. Survivors are not expected to recover a sense of self, but rather to forge a new one through embodied rage. The new one is not abhorrent or foreign, but empowering. Not only empowering, but cool. Watching Thana makes me feel like my rage can destroy the world - that feels much better than the fear that my rage will destroy myself. This is not to say that the film is without its [[problems->Ms .45 A]]. It is not to say, either, that rape is or should be seen as a [[productive, transformative experience->Ms .45 B]]. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Ridley Scott’s 1991 _Thelma and Louise_ is far and away the most successful rape-revenge film of all time. Both a critical and box-office success, it grossed 45.4 million dollars in its initial run, and received 6 Oscar nominations, winning for original screenplay. The film has become a cultural touchstone, with the final scene in particular ripe for reference and parody. This icon status in the canon of feminist film - or even just films about women - makes it difficult to write about in a way that isn’t overdetermined or reactionary. Importantly, however, while the film has become diversely canonical within multiple genres— feminist, buddy comedy, crime, and road film— it is far less frequently identified with rape. Reviews on initial release set the trend that largely continues in discourse to this day, to identify and dismiss the presence of rape as an inciting event before focusing on the latter half of the film, particularly Thelma’s sexual relationship with J.D. Roger Ebert’s review describes the scene as: <blockquote>“They’re almost looking to get into trouble, in a way; they wind up in a saloon not too many miles down the road, and Thelma, a wild woman after a couple of margueritas, begins to get caught up in lust after a couple of dances with an urban cowboy. That leads, as such flirtations sometimes tragically do, to an attempted rape in the parking lot.”[[15->works cited]]</blockquote> Janet Maslin, in the New York Times, makes a similar rhetorical move, if less blatant: <blockquote>“Thelma insists on stopping at a honky-tonk bar despite Louise's protestations, the gun comes in handy. It is used, by Louise, to settle a dispute between Thelma and a would-be rapist (Timothy Carhart) in the parking lot, and it forever changes the complexion of Thelma and Louise's innocent little jaunt.”[[24->works cited]] </blockquote> Both reviewers engage in precisely the kind of victim-blaming that the film is working to indict, not only through the women’s belief that the cops won’t recognize that they were acting in self-defense, but also through Louise’s initial anger and blame of Thelma for what she’s experienced. While they praise Louise’s eventual character development into a “much more moving and thoughtful figure” (Maslin), they miss that this development centers on Louise’s increasing willingness to be vulnerable and empathetic with Thelma. In the final chase scene, as they drive towards the Grand Canyon and begin to realize that their fate is sealed, Louise clarifies her position when Thelma tries to apologize for the situation: “Damn it Thelma, if there’s one thing you should know by now it isn’t your fault.” In the same scene, Thelma identifies herself as better off on the run or dead than facing a system that would not have believed her: “My life would have been ruined a whole lot worse than it is now. At least now I’m having some fun.” Sarah Projansky, in _Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture_, identifies this final scene as “oscillating between tragedy and utopic fantasy, both precipitated by rape”[[29->works cited]]- not attempted rape, as is implied by reviewers that would lead you to believe the scene is ambiguous, but actual rape, not less traumatic for having been cut short. The rape at the bar that is shown onscreen is not the only rape that underlies the narrative: the pair’s ability to escape is undercut by Louise’s refusal to drive through Texas, a state where she has previously been raped, although she is unwilling and unable to say this out loud even when Thelma asks directly. _Thelma & Louise_ is emblematic of a complicated moment of change in representation of rape and its aftermath throughout the late 80’s and into the early 90’s. The rape-revenge genre, or perhaps more accurately the graphic representations it portends, had definitively moved out of the grindhouse and into the mainstream through a diverse set of genres: notable film examples include _The Accused_ (1988, Kaplan) and _Showgirls_ (1995, Verhoeven), while notable television includes _Twin Peaks_ (1990, Lynch/ABC) and the made-for-TV movie genre of “women in jep”. Increasingly, media about women’s revenge against misogyny, even if it was framed textually by rape, was reframed by viewers and critics as primarily about revenge, as in the case of _Thelma & Louise_. Alternatively, media framed as centered on rape became much less likely to include revenge in the vigilante sense, but rather turned towards a hopeless sense of reliance on a failing legal system. _Thelma & Louise_, in the text of the film itself, sits somewhere between the two impulses that some contemporaneous and particularly later media tend to side more definitively with. The freeze frame ending is utopic in its absolute joy: the film is hugely unusual for its dual victim-avengers, who exist in a community of two. Even their limited agency - they choose suicide over death by police fire or imprisonment - feels expansive because they choose it together. The film is tragic in its refusal to provide hope: the best it can offer is the ambiguity of frozen time - we see them choose to fall, but we never see them crash. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

_The Keepers_ represents a different outcropping of the same post-revenge paternalism, this time in the form of the true crime genre. Like _[[SVU]]_, true crime is predicated on a demand for performed victimhood in exchange for access to the dangling possibility of justice. Unlike _SVU_, true crime has much greater stakes: the victims are real, and the effects of the performance on their lives is material. _The Keepers_ is a Netflix limited series that initially presents itself as an investigation of the unsolved murder of a Baltimore nun in the 1960s but quickly expands its scope to examining the extreme sexual abuse occurring at the school where she worked and its potential relation to her death. This switch is teased at the end of the first episode, where Jane Doe, the first survivor, is mentioned immediately before it ends. At the start of the second episode, she is introduced in disjointed fragments (her voice, her hands), before switching back to the context of the Baltimore diocese and the school. This move, in which the survivor’s testimony is teased as a reward for engaging with context, is common in abuse documentaries (it was also used in _Allen V. Farrow_): it communicates the filmmaker’s knowledge of exactly what the audience wants to see. The language directors use when discussing the production of abuse documentaries is similarly uniform: they are “providing a platform” for the survivor to “tell their story”. While I am sure that this is not technically untrue, positive intentions are frequently undermined by sensationalizing narrative structures. _The Keepers_ actually does a better job than most true crime at giving the survivors narrative primacy as more than fuel for an investigation. Director Ryan White interviewed about 40 survivors over the course of his research: only 5 appear. He encountered the story through his mother, who had been close friends with Jane Doe during the period that the abuse occurred, and met with her for three years before production started. What was most compelling to me about this documentary is the time that it spent placing the survivors in relation to one another, asking questions about what it meant to come forward anonymously, to enter the legal system, and to enter mediation with the church. The survivors do not present a unified front on these issues, and have difficult questions and expectations for each other regarding whether they can or want to exist in community with each other now, and whether they could or should have protected each other or come forward when the abuse was occurring. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film _Promising Young Woman_ bills itself as an update to the rape-revenge genre: a rape-revenge film that does not need to be reclaimed but is truly feminist in a textual sense rather than an interpretive one. The title references the 2018 People V. Turner rape case, during which Judge Aaron Persky famously referred to rapist Brock Turner as a “promising young man” before sentencing him to six months in prison: the posters carry the slogan “revenge never looked so promising”. The film was near-universally critically acclaimed upon release, and was nominated for 5 Oscars, winning for original screenplay. It follows Cassie, a medical school dropout who is in emotional limbo, working a low-wage job and leading a double life. At night, she goes to bars and pretends to be severely inebriated, allows a man to take her home with the intention of having sex with her, and then reveals her sobriety and forces them to confront their behavior. (This mode of revenge, to intentionally put oneself in situations that have the potential for violence with the aim of punishing the (potential) perpetrator recalls Thana’s modus operandi in _[[Ms .45]]_) If the core appeal of a rape-revenge film lies with witnessing transformative rage - and this is a big, generous if- then Cassie’s transformation is missing. She is not, directly, the victim: it is implied (though never outright stated) that her childhood best friend, Nina, was gang-raped by other students in their medical program. Nina never appears: the film picks up Cassie’s narrative several years later, focusing on her inability to move forward and her cyclical attempts at half-revenge. Spending time with former classmate Ryan allows her to come out of herself, breaking this routine and engaging more fully with her life. When Cassie receives the video and undergoes her final transformation, it does not feel like catharsis so much as regression. Falling in love with Ryan has allowed her to begin to move on: hearing his voice on the video, realizing that he was complicit, prepares her to burn everything down. The question is not whether we are meant to believe that the rapists deserve the revenge she plans to enact, but rather whether the revenge is worth its cost to her. If justice is impossible through traditional avenues, the film argues, isn’t the healthiest thing just to move on? In an interview with Collider, director Fennell repeatedly describes Cassie’s revenge as impossible to complete: <blockquote>“… if I wanted to make a revenge thriller that felt like it was from a real woman's perspective who was acting in a way that I thought maybe a real woman might, a big and important part of that was that I don't believe that women resort to violence very often… maybe we are less violent by nature... But also it's because…when we do, we don't win… There was no happy ending to this movie. All there is, is somebody who needs to show people, to deliver justice. And she does do that, but at a very, very heavy price. I didn't believe that a woman of Cassie's size would be able to physically overpower a very strong man. All of that stuff. And it was important that it interrogated the myth of the revenge journey.” </blockquote> This quote is illuminating: I would argue that the cathartic feminist appeal of the genre lies in the mythologizing of revenge. Rape-revenge is frequently extremely bleak in its presentation of rape as inevitable and institutional justice as impossible to obtain: this is balanced by the fantasy of successful revenge . To not only defang the revenge but assert that the nature of womanhood makes it impossible to successfully obtain is, perhaps, meeting its intention of mounting a critique of rape culture, but to reinforce and enshrine this impossibility is just another mythologization. Also undercutting this intention is the presence of the twist ending: after Cassie is overpowered and killed by Nina’s rapist, it is revealed that she has ensured in the case of her death that the police will receive evidence that allows them to convict the rapists, including the video that drove her to attempt her final revenge. Not only is her vigilante justice shown to fail, but the institutional justice that the film has attempted to critique is shown to be the only possible avenue, albeit requiring her assistance. If this is an update to the rape-revenge genre, it is an update that assimilates revenge into legal structures even as it acknowledges that they are largely failures that demand extreme sacrifice and retraumatization on behalf of the victim. This is the same [[post-revenge paternalistic impulse that appears across contemporary rape media->terms]], particularly in crime television such as _[[Law & Order: SVU->SVU]]_ or _[[The Keepers]]_. To see this film receive the level of effusive praise for it’s perceived reinvigoration of the revenge element of the genre demonstrates the extent to which expressions of unfiltered revenge have become absent. _Promising Young Woman_ identified accurately this vacuum that audiences are looking to fill - even to the point of watching past the text of the film to fill it - but it fails to do so of its own merit, choosing instead to undercut any hope of [[catharsis.->catharsis 2]] [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

[align center] [[introduction]] [[notes on format & navigation->navigation]] [[timeline->timeline intro]] [[theory]] [[conclusion]] [[works cited]] [[acknowledgements]]

Produced in Sweden, its export to America was met with mixed critical responses and required censorship: frames were cut from the rape scene showing the victim’s naked legs around the body of the rapists. In his review for the New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther describes <blockquote> “scenes of brutality that, for sheer unrestrained realism, may leave one sickened and stunned. As much as they may contribute to the forcefulness of the theme, they tend to disturb the senses out of proportion to the dramatic good they do… when they ravish her, the act is imaged — well, almost too candidly… The response of the father to this violence, when he learns of it, is of equal ugliness and terror”[[13->works cited]] </blockquote> Crowther argues that the choice to depict violence explicitly must be justified through clear intention, with the filmmaker’s responsibility lying in striking a balance between provoking productive discomfort and causing distress. Central to this analysis is the belief that [[viewing violence has the potential to cause harm.->catharsis theory]] Crowther views the film as narratively “direct and uncomplicated”: the rape scene acts, in his understanding, as an aesthetic tool to underscore a point that is already made by the plot more appropriately and successfully. Bergman’s response to Crowther’s and other similar critiques was to argue that <blockquote>“We must not hesitate in our portrayal of human degradation, even if, in our demand for truth, we must violate certain taboos.”[[47->works cited]] </blockquote> The explicit depiction of rape is central to the project of the film: [[it would not be possible to adequately portray its brutality in an indirect manner.->audience rape A]] [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

_The Virgin Spring (VS)_ introduces the basic narrative structure that defined rape-revenge into the exploitation era. A (young, beautiful) woman is introduced; her virtue is demonstrated; she is raped and killed; a loved one mourns, then takes revenge. The victim is not the avenger - while there is what could be read as a protofeminist message (that rape warrants revenge) - there is always the caveat that the virtue of the heroine must be unimpeachably demonstrated. _VS_ constructs a straightforward oppositional relationship between Karin and Ingeri, with the former as virtuous and the latter as “spoiled” by virtue of her pregnancy. This relationship is directly hierarchical and class-based: Ingeri is Karin’s servant, and is not allowed to deliver the candles to the church due to her non-virgin status. In conversation, Ingeri states that a man will “take” Karin before marriage, and they argue about whether or not she will be able to resist. Rape is presented as a backdrop: an inevitability if one doesn’t consent to or seek out sex. It is unclear if Ingeri’s pregnancy is a result of rape. The film, which is based on a 13th-century ballad (_Töres döttrar i Wänge/Töre's daughters in Vänge_) - does not necessarily make a statement on the contemporary acceptability of rape. Rather, the medieval setting allows the audience a layer of distance, and the frank discussion of sex and rape becomes a reflection of harsh historical realities. The revenge, enacted by the father with assistance from the mother, is instantly regretted: rather than ending the film after the revenge, the family return to the site of the rape to retrieve Karin’s body, and the father prostrates himself to god, promising to build a church on the site as penance for his murder of the rapists. While the portrayal of the revenge is justified by the portrayal of the rape, neither depiction of violence is pleasurable for the audience. The film is an [[intentionally provocative->VS Critical Response]] indictment not of rape, but of revenge: rape serves as a narrative locus through which questions of religion, class, revenge, and human nature are examined. Karin has to die, because her experience is not relevant to the questions Bergman wants to ask: the victim becomes redundant once her victimhood has been demonstrated. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

The development of the rape-revenge genre into the exploitation era sees more control placed in the hands of the victims: this is paralleled by fewer questions being asked about the ethics of doing violence. What does it mean that once the victims get revenge the ethics are less interesting to the directors? American post-code ultraviolent aesthetics and increased focus on killing mean that revenge aesthetics become more central - by the point of _Ms .45_, the rape is coming right at the beginning and instead of the revenge being a singular act it becomes an encompassing worldview - at that point, I wonder, is the rape even part of the violence? What has been lost by the 80s where the ultraviolence reaches a point where the focus is neither the victim nor the villain - when violence becomes a character in itself, with its own ends. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

There are certain social scripts that as a survivor you are supposed to follow in order to “heal”, or perhaps more accurately to perform healing. To discuss the ways that rape has changed you for the better is taboo, [[perceived as apologia for your own pain.->fanfiction]] To say that I have a different perspective for having been raped, and that I believe that perspective to be worthwhile, is not to say that it was worthwhile to have been raped. Ann Cvetkovich’s _An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures_ begins to theorize the ways that sexual trauma has been represented and those representations have contributed to personal and community identity formation.[[14->works cited]] Cvetkovich’s identification of “trauma cultures” and of trauma as something most effectively represented as a collective comes out of nonhegemonic understandings of rape and recovery as both individual events and collective gendered trauma. In her conclusion, she discusses “feelings materialized in and around objects and performances, feelings that are often incommensurate with what we customarily consider to be traumatic experiences.” This is a different kind of identification and catharsis: through the process of identifying with a representation of an experience, the survivor comes to process their own and thus re-identify with themselves. A crucial element of this is the “incommensurate” feelings: elements of the experience that are inconvenient to hegemonic narratives of rape must also be represented. Difficult, ambivalent, or imperfect representations of rape are particularly important in their specificity. Thana’s response to being raped is decidedly ethically imperfect, if aesthetically compelling. The film’s tagline, “It will never happen again” speaks to both her goal of self and community protection and the impossibility of achieving it. Rape and abuse are endemic to the society represented: removing any one rapist will not end rape - it just might make you feel a little bit safer. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

The film is not readily available online: the easiest way to access clips is through fetish sites such as rapelust.com. The screenshots of the above scene are taken from a clip that has been retitled “Beautiful Girl Raped In The Forest” and tagged with the title of the film. It currently sits at 123.3K views, and is the second most popular clip: the most popular has 159.3K views. None of the available clips show the scene in its entirety, but rather separate each individual rape. Even more popular are the clipped scenes from the 2013 sequel, where the most popular one has almost 300K views, and is titled “Girl Tied and Anal Forced Violently While Screaming in Pain”. Unrelated clips from pornography are also tagged with the title of the film, which assumes that the title is a popular enough search term that the uploaders believe it will get their videos more traffic. The site bills itself as the “Best Forced Porn Videos & Movie Rape Scenes”, flattening the context of the films to parallel them with pornography. This is strikingly similar to the [[arguments made by many critics of rape-revenge films->VS Critical Response]], particularly in the exploitation era, that explicit depictions of rape glorify and sexualize it. Given this context, it is difficult to argue that, even if it runs contrary to the filmmaker’s intentions, a significant portion of their contemporary audience is not watching it for that reason. The explicit visual portrayal and diegetic sound, which Zarchi argued would function as a condemnation of rape due to the difficulty of watching, [[is at the very center of the appeal in a fetish context.->fetish]] In a very real sense, directors do not have control over whether or not their rape scenes will reappear in a fetishistic context: the only way to truly ensure that this does not happen is to not portray rape. The question that remains, then, is [[whether the project of portraying rape is important enough to outweigh the ways these portrayals get repurposed.->audience rape]] This question is further complicated by the assumption of antirape intent on the filmmaker’s behalf: is it reasonable to accept Zarchi’s stated antirape politic at face value given the explicitness of his portrayal and the wider context of exploitation films as celebrating and sexualizing violence? [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Rape-revenge films live in a state of necessary ambivalence: did she deserve it? Did he deserve it? Does the liberation make the rape worth it? Does the film’s condemnation of rape outweigh the violence of its visualization? Has the film earned the rape? Has the audience? This sense of uncertainty, a suspended reality in which rape is an underlying, constant presence without a defined end or outcome is discomfiting in the didactic “rape is bad” mode of much popular media, but as a survivor it is familiar. Once you are raped, that is the space where you live: post-autonomy (or appearance thereof), post-identity, pre-healing. Survivors will often talk about having lost their sense of self: this implies that a sense of self is, on some level, constructed around an illusory sense of control over one’s body. Foucault’s _History of Sexuality_ describes the mechanisms by which a range of sexual behaviors were first codified and subsequently pathologized as a form of capitalist control.[[17->works cited]] In it, he argues that “It is through sex… an individual has to pass in order to have access to his own intelligibility.” Rape, therefore, can be read not only as loss of control of the body but of loss of identity or access to the means of body-identity formation. If we understand identity as discursive, and rape as co-constitutive with identity, it necessarily follows that rape is discursive. I say this not to affirm this line of thinking in a positive sense but rather to affirm it as a dominant strand of thought that largely goes unacknowledged. What does it mean, therefore, to have rape exist both as a discursive provocation in this manner and as a bodily disruption/actual event? [[Would rape be considered in the same uniquely/singularly violatory manner if it was not tied to identity in a contemporary sense and property in a historical one?->discursive provocation]] Rape-revenge films frequently fall into this construction of rape as identity formation: women come into themselves through their codified rage in response to rape. The question is whether this valorizes rape (or at the very least surviving it). As a survivor who has spent a lot of time engaging with rape media and discourse around it, I am often struck by the ways that the actual voices and experiences of survivors are presented as marginal to the conversation. My goal is to work towards an understanding of the way rape operates that centers the knowledge that survivors hold, explicating it in a way that does not work to simplify or streamline the complexities and contradictions of this knowledge. There are two primary ways to enter this project: through the timeline, which identifies specific important media in historicizing the project of rape-revenge, or through the index of passages that examine historical and theoretical issues. >[[timeline->timeline intro]] >[[theory]] [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

[align center] Would rape be considered in the same uniquely/singularly violatory manner if it was not tied to identity in a contemporary sense and property in a historical one? [continue] A focus on defining and classifying rape can be weaponized as a way to preclude this question. Using this foucauldian understanding of rape as a discursive position means that doing work to historicize definition(s) of rape is the same thing as historicizing representation of/representivity of rape, because rape is defined by the way that it is represented, as opposed to the way that it is experienced. There is a tension between understanding rape as singularly or uniquely violatory (in a bodily sense) because it is constructed as such and understanding (one of) the fundamental violation(s) of rape as being disbelieved: rape both does and does not exist, and is constantly doubled back on itself as defined, undefined, discussed, deconstructed, but never experienced. Discursive constructions of rape are the most visible constructions because they preclude lived experiences of survivors. How can we understand surviving rape or build any meaningful empathy towards the lived experiences of these survivors if we haven’t even decided what it is they’ve survived? We can’t possibly listen to them until we’ve worked this out. \ In this way, dominant discursive constructions of rape are fundamentally anti-survivor, whether it is acknowledged or unspoken. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

_not only will i stare_ was coded in chapbook and twine. it is hosted on neocities the project was advised by jen malkowski and lily gurton-wachter thank you to all the writers whose work i am building on and inspired by: bell hooks, audre lorde, leslie feinberg, anne carson, shelley jackson, vivian sobchack, susan stryker, and innumerable others thank you to my family: sofia canale-parola, alex gouvin-moffat, loren stephens, paige bosler, and [[jstor]] [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

In December of 1968, Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), spoke before the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence regarding the transition from the film production code to the less restrictive rating system that remains in place today. In his testimony, he argued that the increase in cinematic violence not only had a limited negative effect on viewers, but may have positive ones: <blockquote>“I am personally convinced that there is genuine validity in the belief that disturbing emotions may be purged through the vicarious experience of aggressive acts on screen.”[[40->works cited]]</blockquote> This is what Stephen Prince terms the “catharsis hypothesis”, a theory which holds that the viewing of mediated depictions of violent acts work to satiate violent impulses in the viewer, thus effectively expunging them and rendering the viewer less likely to commit violence. It is important to note when approaching catharsis theory that it is not and has never been underpinned by evidence, but rather as a presence in the popular discursive consciousness to either defend or argue against. This theory remains one of the dominant rhetorical tools for proponents of direct representations of violence. It is particularly powerful for its unique construction of these representations as a direct societal good, where other arguments, most notably those for free speech, are more abstract. In the questioning period following Valenti’s testimony, a commission member quoted the 1966 revision of the production code, which stated that “… the important objective must be to avoid the hardening for the arteries, especially of those who are young and impressionable, to the thought and fact of crime. People can become accustomed even to murder, cruelty, brutality and repellant crimes if these are too frequently repeated.” While Valenti dismissed this perception as outdated, it was a major point of contention in the public discourse around film of the late 1960’s, with films such as _Bonnie and Clyde_ (1967, Penn), which is also referenced throughout the Commission testimony, being variously cited as causing and preventing violence, particularly in young people. _New York Times_ film critic Bosley Crowther discussed the phenomenon in a 1967 op-ed titled “Movies to Kill People By”, concluding that <blockquote>“There have been previous films of this order, and there are going to be many more. Even though they merely purge aggressive spirits, which some people say is all they do, they seem to me as socially decadent and dangerous as LSD.”[[12->works cited]]</blockquote> This editorial provoked so much controversy that Crowther wrote a follow up several weeks later responding directly to his critics. In “Another Smash at Violence”, he writes that <blockquote>“It is the fallacious idea that violent movies are playing an important cultural role… offering release for anxieties and torn emotions with their excessive fantasies that some thoughtful critics and philosophers use to rationalize this trend…habituating the public to violence and brutality.”[[11->works cited]]</blockquote> Crowther’s argument is that even if catharsis theory is true, that would not adequately justify the excesses of onscreen violence. He returns to the concerns invoked in the production code, that audiences will get used to violence and become incapable of caring about it, a concern that felt particularly salient against the backdrop of the Vietnam war and its news coverage. Throughout both articles, however, he wavers on the fundamental question of the truth of catharsis theory. Since the late 60s, much more information has become available to discredit catharsis theory (although it still occasionally crops up as a rhetorical tool). Leonard Berkowitz’s research on media consumption and violence, published in 1984, indicates that <blockquote>“the observation of aggression evokes aggression-related thoughts and ideas in the viewers… the initial communication had evidently primed aggression-related ideas which then affected the subjective interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus,"[[4->works cited]]</blockquote> That is, that viewing violence will make you more likely to respond with violence should an opportunity arise. However, these effects have diminishing returns: on repeated exposure to cinematic violence, viewers became habituated to the violence, as Crowther worried, but this habituation made them less likely to have violent impulses following their viewing. More significantly in this context, Berkowitz concurs with Malamuth and Check’s 1981 research indicating that “movies portraying sexual violence against women increased the male viewer’s belief that this type of violence was sometimes acceptable.” Richard B. Felson’s 1996 meta-analysis of this and other studies showed that this effect was more significant when subjects viewed rape scenes from films over rape scenes from pornography.[[16->works cited]] Felson does take pains to emphasize, parallel to Berkowitz, that years of research have not produced evidence that a significant percentage of viewers of violent films will go on to commit violent acts, merely that they have a temporary impact on thinking that could potentially in some cases lead to violent acts. A further study by J.B. Weaver in 1987 compared the impacts of sexually violent pornography and sexually violent slasher films on empathy towards survivors of rape.[[43->works cited]] Weaver concluded that the group viewing slasher films experienced a significantly higher rate of degradation of empathy towards victims: in his 1989 analysis of this and similar studies, Daniel Linz hypothesized that this is due to the aesthetic coupling of (ostensibly) non-sexual and overtly sexual violence in slasher films.[[22->works cited]] Contemporary research has largely shifted in focus to the impacts of violence in video games: Valkenburg and Piotrowski’s 2017 book _Plugged In: How Media Attract and Affect Youth_ merges meta-analysis of hundreds of historical and contemporary studies of film, television, and video games with original research, concluding that “media violence influences aggressive behavior, but that aggressive behavior has just as much influence on youth’s preference for media violence.”[[41->works cited]] They argue that any given instance of media violence cannot be viewed in conceptual isolation, but should be understood in the context in which it is presented, identifying five contextual features that are likely to increase aggression: perpetrators are appealing, violence is rewarded, violence is justified, violence has no consequences, and violence is arousing (ie visually and sonically compelling). This reinforces the hypothesis constructed by Linz several decades before: the aesthetic character and narrative framing of the violence matters significantly. While affects of media violence in terms of actual incidences of criminal or aggressive behaviors are limited, it is clear that viewing violent images does not make a viewer less violent, as Valenti’s catharsis argument suggests. The rape-revenge narrative structure involves two distinct types of violence. Discourse around them tends to focus on one type or the other, with criticism focusing primarily on the idea of excess, implicitly expecting filmmakers to navigate a nebulous and contextually variable idea of “too much”. Direct depictions of rape frequently receive criticism on the basis that they are [[sexualizing->fetish]] or glorifying it: the most common defense on the part of the filmmakers is that [[these depictions are antirape->audience rape A]]. Given the research discussed here, particularly Malamuth and Check, this defense is if not outright false at the very least limited. If an explicit portrayal of rape is more likely to evoke positive than negative feelings about rape, what purpose does that portrayal then serve? [[Is it possible to make an antirape film?->audience rape B]] The research indicating that these depictions negatively impact viewer’s ability to empathize with survivors of rape more broadly is particularly concerning, not only because it runs entirely contrary to filmmakers self-conception of their work but also because it implies the possibility for real harm to be done. Explicit depictions of revenge violence tend not to receive the same level of specific critique because they are not exclusive to the narrative structure of rape-revenge, and therefore tend to be stylistically similar to other violent but thematically unrelated films made contemporaneously. However, the revenge elements do tend to fall into several of the contextual features that may increase aggression, particularly in terms of justification and perpetrator identification (in this case, the perpetrator being not the rapist but the survivor or the survivor’s surrogate avenger). While it is not inconceivable that rape-revenge films could increase incidences of vigilante justice against perpetrators of sexual violence, concerns about the potential harms of direct portrayal of sexual violence strike me as much more pressing. Additionally, the research available is severely limited by gender: there is a great deal of concern about how troubled young men will perceive and respond to cinematic violence, underpinned by an assumption that they are its primary audience. This hegemonic discourse of concern serves to obscure other potential reasons for viewers to engage with violence, and assumes that films act on viewers in a specific limited set of ways that is precluded by the assumption that the violence enacted onscreen is foreign to the viewer. If, as the evidence suggests, we should discard this narrow definition of catharsis as inaccurate, it is worthwhile to consider the ways that the term continues to be associated with the rape-revenge genre. In contemporary analysis, it tends to be applied in the context of feminist reclamation, [[arguing that viewing these films can provide a sense of healing for survivors.->catharsis 2]] [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

{embed Flickr image: '<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/193920705@N05/51713576572/in/dateposted-public/" title="JSTOR"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51713576572_5b75fd5857_k.jpg" width="1536" height="2048" alt="JSTOR"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>'} [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

config.style.page.font: "Iowan Old Style/Constantia/Georgia/serif 18" config.style.page.color: "gray-9 on white" config.style.page.link.font: "Iowan Old Style/Constantia/Georgia/serif 18" config.style.page.link.color: "blue-9" config.style.page.link.lineColor: "blue-8" config.style.page.link.active.color: "blue-8 on blue-0" config.style.page.header.font: "16" config.style.page.header.link.font: "small caps" config.style.page.footer.font: "16" config.style.page.footer.link.font: "small caps" -- not only will i stare [after 1.5 seconds] i want my gaze to change reality. [after 3 seconds] [[enter->start]]

[align center] {back link, label: 'go back'} [continue] 1"Beautiful Girl Raped in the Forest." Rapelust. https://rapelust.com/video/beautiful-girl-raped-in-the-forest/ 2"Selective data dump for fan statisticians." _AO3 News_, March 3 2021. https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/18804 3“Girl Tied and Anal Forced Violently While Screaming in Pain." Rapelust. https://rapelust.com/video/girl-tied-and-anal-forced-violently-while-screaming-in-pain/ 4Berkowitz, Leonard. "Some Effects of Thoughts on Anti- and Prosocial Influences of Media Events: A Cognitive-Neoassociation Analysis." Prince, pp. 205-236. 5Brown, Jeffrey A. “Torture, Rape, Action Heroines, and _The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo_.” _Beyond Bombshells: The New Action Heroine in Popular Culture_, University Press of Mississippi, 2015, pp. 24–53, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17mvh6x.4. 6Busse, Kristina. _Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities_. University of Iowa Press, 2017. 7_Celluloid Crime of the Century: The Last House on the Left._ Eds Tom Corman and John Cregan. Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2003. 8centreoftheselights, "AO3 Census Masterpost." October 5 2013. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17019228 9Charity Heartscape, Porpentine. "Hot Allostatic Load." _The New Inquiry_, May 11 2015. https://thenewinquiry.com/hot-allostatic-load/ 10Clover, Carol J. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film." Prince, pp. 125-174. 11Crowther, Bosley. "Another Smash at Violence." Prince, pp. 54-56. 12Crowther, Bosley. "Movies to Kill People By." Prince, pp. 51-53. 13Crowther, Bosley. "The Screen; Ingmar Bergman's Study in Brutality:'The Virgin Spring' in Premiere at Beekman Von Sydow Starred in Ulla Isaksson Script." _New York Times_, November 15 1960. 14Cvetkovich, Ann. _An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures_. Duke UP, 2003. Print. 15Ebert, Roger. "Thelma and Louise", 1991. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/thelma-and-louise-1991 16Felson, Richard B. "Mass Media Effects on Violent Behavior." Prince, pp. 237-266. 17Foucault, Michel. _The History of Sexuality_. London: Penguin Classics, 2020. Print. 18hooks, bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” _Media Studies: A Reader_, edited by Sue Thornham et al., Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2009, pp. 462–470. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvxcrv1h.54. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020. 19_I Spit on Your Grave_. Dir. Meir Zarchi. The Jerry Gross Organization, 1978. 20Jackson, Shelley. "Stitch Bitch: the patchwork girl." Transformations of the Book Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 24-25, 1998. Conference Presentation. https://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/articles/jackson.html 21_Law & Order: Special Victims Unit_. NBC. 1999. Television. 22Linz, Daniel. “Exposure to Sexually Explicit Materials and Attitudes toward Rape: A Comparison of Study Results.” _The Journal of Sex Research_, vol. 26, no. 1, Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1989, pp. 50–84, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3813050. 23Maguire, David. _I Spit on Your Grave_. London: Wallflower, 2018. Print. 24Maslin, Janet. "Review/Film; On the Run With 2 Buddies And a Gun." _New York Times_, May 24 1991. 25Miller, Liz Shannon. "'Promising Young Woman': Emerald Fennell Explains Casting TV Boyfriends as Bad Guys and Goes Full Spoilers on That Controversial Ending." _Collider_, January 16 2021. https://collider.com/promising-young-woman-emerald-fennell-interview-ending-spoilers/ 26_Ms .45_. Dir. Abel Ferrara. Rochelle Films, 1981. 27Prince, Stephen, editor. _Screening Violence_. Rutgers UP, 2000. 28Prince, Stephen. "Graphic Violence in the Cinema: Origins, Aesthetic Design, and Social Effects." Prince, pp. 1-46. 29Projansky, Sarah. _Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture_. New York: New York UP, 2001. Print. 30_Promising Young Woman_. Dir Emerald Fennell. Focus Features, 2020. 31Read, Jacinda. _The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and the Rape-Revenge Cycle_. University of Manchester Press, 2000 32Sarkar, Jaya. "Reading Hypertext as Cyborg: The Case of Patchwork Girl." _Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities_, Vol. 12, No. 5, 2020. pp. 1-7. 33Sendlor, Charles. "Fan Fiction Demographics in 2010: Age, Sex, Country." _FFN Research_, 18 March 2011. http://ffnresearch.blogspot.com/2011/03/fan-fiction-demographics-in-2010-age.html 34Smith, S.G., Zhang, X., Basile, K.C., Merrick, M.T., Wang, J., Kresnow, M., Chen, J. (2018). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2015 Data Brief – Updated Release. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 35Sobchack, Vivian C. "_No Lies_: Direct Cinema as Rape." _Journal of the University Film Association_, vol. 29, no. 4, University of Illinois Press, 1977, pp. 13–18, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687385. 36_The Keepers_. Dir. Ryan White. Netflix. 2017. Web. 2021. 37_The Last House on the Left_. Dir Wes Craven. American International Pictures, 1972. 38_The Virgin Spring_. Dir Ingmar Bergman. SF Studios, 1960. 39_Thelma & Louise_. Dir Ridley Scott. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1991. 40Valenti, Jack. "Statement before the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence." Prince, pp. 62-78. 41Valkenburg, Patti M. and Jessica Taylor Piotrowski. _Plugged In: How Media Attract and Effect Youth_. Yale UP, 2017. 42Van Der Kolk, Bessel, M.D. _The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma_. New York: Penguin, 2015. Print. 43Weaver, James B., III. "Effects of Portrayals of Female Sexuality and Violence Against Women on Perceptions of Women (Pornography)" Indiana University. _ProQuest Dissertations Publishing_, 1987. 8727475. 44Yarrow, Allison. "Why Was 90s TV Full of Violence Against Women?." _LitHub_, July 9 2018. https://lithub.com/why-was-90s-tv-full-of-violence-against-women/ 45Bogost, Ian. Excerpts from “Preface,” “Procedural Rhetoric,” “Political Processes.” In _Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames_, vii-xi, 1- 3, 82-89. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. 46Henry, Claire. _Revisionist Rape-Revenge: Redefining a Film Genre_. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Print. 47James, Deveryle. _"A Zoo of Lusts... a Harem of Fondled Hatreds": An Historical Interrogation of Sexual Violence Against Women in Film_. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'} 48 49 50

In her essay “Hot Allostatic Load”, hypertext artist Porpentine discusses her experiences with coming forward about abuse and being disbelieved: <blockquote>“You know how movies are realer than reality? How the sound effects and physics become so normalized to us that reality seems flat and fake? Talking about abuse is kind of like that. Abusers know what sounds ‘real.’ They are like expert movie-effects artists. Victims are stuck with boring fake reality.”[[9->works cited]]</blockquote> Cinematic depictions of rape are just that - cinematic. [[They move.->audience rape B]] My experience of rape and survivorship has been largely restricted to the private and unsaid: the inability to change what happened, [[the loss of control over my brain and body,->catharsis 2]] the impossibility of finding justice. This is not visually or narratively compelling. If construction of empathy for survivors is [[dependent on compelling images of survivorship,->audience rape A]] but those images can never exist exclusively in that mode and are frequently [[reinterpreted in ways that are harmful to survivors,->catharsis theory]] then I don’t know that it is possible for a film to make someone understand rape. This is not a call for abolition of the rape film: it is perhaps a call for honesty of intention within the rape film. A narrow critical lens informed by wider societal tendencies to talk constantly about rape as a way to elide understanding of it puts pressure on filmmakers to define the intention of their portrayal as purely condemnatory, whether they approached it that way or not. This produces the type of dissonant work that I have outlined throughout this project, which repeatedly states that it is antirape while objectifying and sexualizing either [[rape itself->fetish]] or victimhood more broadly. Alternatively, it produces media that is about rape while being [[too uncomfortable with its own topic to state it outright.->terms]] It feels similarly important to acknowledge that the industrial machine that produces these images of women being abused systematically abuses women in the process, making the espoused politic behind the images feel even more disingenuous. How do I counterbalance the drive towards nihilism that I feel given the material realities of the industry and the media it produces? How do I reconcile the disturbing knowledge of these media texts that I’ve developed through this project with my continued enjoyment of them? I love these films. They are doing me harm. This work contains unresolved and unresolvable internal contradictions. For example: I believe that in order to portray rape less exploitatively, the focus should be primarily on the aftermath and not the event itself. I also have very little interest in texts that do this. I think that they tend to be aesthetically dull and luxuriate in the performance of trauma as opposed to moving on from it. There is the heart of the matter: in my own consumption, I want to be able to move on— and in large part because I can’t, watching these films makes me imagine that I can while making it more difficult for me to do so. If you have never been raped, I want to force you to see and feel discomfort, to understand the ways that rape is inescapable, touches everything. And I also want you to never watching anything about rape because I don’t trust you (or the media in itself) not to only feel pity or revulsion or fascination. I want you to feel uncomfortable, but if you seek out that discomfort I will suspect you find it pleasurable or are watching from within your own sense of superiority. I don’t think this is fair to the imaginary viewer. I don’t think that I represent the correct or universal victim perspective. Ultimately I think that this project is not about defining “good” and “bad” or “exploitative” and “ethical” rape media but rather about taking a broad view of both the possibilities in and issues with representing rape, negotiating ethics and affection. [[Is it because rape is discursively constructed that it resists representation?->introduction]] To have an experience constantly re-codified and talked through and around in the way that rape is and has been makes it very difficult to look at it directly. To have said experience be one that is desired and fetishized means that looking at it directly becomes suspect, perverted. I have tried to read texts and audiences with both suspicion and generosity, working to understand both the creator’s intention and the ways that the text is used and reinterpreted by distinct groups of people. If there is a correct way to represent rape, I have not found it. If there is an accurate way to represent rape, I have not found it. I want to stress that finding one would not necessarily mean finding the other. What I have hoped to identify are some of the ways that these media can be reinterpreted, can function differently in survivor’s understandings than dominant narratives around survivorship would suggest. Rape media is triggering— but to read that fact as resultant in complete avoidance is to ignore a wide variety of experiences and approaches. In “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,"[[18->works cited]] bell hooks suggests a different approach to marginalized viewership— one that underlies this entire project. In circumstances of domination, one method of control is expecting the subjugated population to look away from what is being done to them because it is too painful. To look directly, to see the ways that people see you, no matter how harmful they are, is to exercise agency. Even if the director, the producer, and every member of the audience that they imagine their work to be for have a harmful view of rape, for a survivor to engage with that work on their own terms through their oppositional gaze is a way for that survivor to reclaim agency that was taken from them — whether the method is healthy or not. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

[align center] What is hypertext and how do I use it? [continue] Hypertext is a format for structuring interconnected digital texts through hyperlinks. It underlies many of the ways we navigate the internet: every time you click on a link that takes you from one part of a website to another, you are engaging with hypertext. This particular hypertext was made using the Chapbook story format for Twine, an open-source tool for building online text-based games. In this hypertext, the vast majority of links are internal, meaning that words or phrases highlighted in blue will take you to other passages within the text. There is no correct order in which to read the passages: click through to links that interest you. The back button will take you back to the most recent page you were on. Superscript numbers will take you to the works cited page, which contains external links to the sources I used. >[[Why hypertext?]] >[[enter->start]]

[align center] Why hypertext? [continue] One of the major problems of a project about representations of rape is that it demands sensitivity and nuance in the face of painful and contradictory texts. I feel constantly aware of the impossibility of covering all the relevant information and the potential harm of making totalizing statements about the experience of surviving rape even as I intend to foreground that perspective. Through hypertext, the reader’s experience is further limited to all the information they access on their individual path through. Thus an awareness of limitation is built into the experience of reading, just as it has been fundamental to my approach to writing. Pioneering hypertext author Shelley Jackson alternatively describes the appeal as “everything is there at once and equally weighted,” that is, that the structuring of text as experiential allows for an understanding that does not overvalue any specific aspect[[20->works cited]]. No single piece of information is prioritized over any of the others. In allowing the reader a subjective experience, the writer acknowledges that the text is a product of subjectivity: that there is no inherent “correct” way to approach it, even their own. While I have provided start and end points, they are only really suggestions — and I have very little control over what path you take between them, or if you touch either of them at all. This functions as an alternative to a traditional argumentative structure. Ian Bogost terms this practice procedural rhetoric[[45->works cited]], arguing that the construction of computational processes constitutes rhetoric as it limits and structures the user’s experience, as in video games. Instead of an ordered argument for the interconnected nature of the issues I am addressing, Twine allows me to highlight the connections as they come up. A linear structure presupposes the possibility of a singular, coherent narrative. By allowing the reader to limit and structure their own experience, I intend to press on this claim to representability. In her analysis of contemporary hypertext practices[[32->works cited]], Jaya Sarkar argues that <blockquote>“Interpreting a ‘cyborg’ hypertext requires a 'cyborg reader,' not only because the reader shares a posthuman connection with the narrative in terms of involving their gestures through touch and click, but also because <code>the hypertext forces the reader to adopt a gaze that is equally modular and fragmentary.</code>”</blockquote> Again, I am not trying to capture the totality of a genre or the totality of the problems with it, but rather the contours of what those problems might be. Hypertext affords ambivalence, a sense of both too much information and too little: a traditional essay structure may gesture towards the unknown or irreconcilable, but it ultimately demands an authoritative voice. While hypertext is historically and conceptually rooted in pre-internet academic and literary work on semiotics, it has largely been disseminated as serialized online narratives: after a brief moment of popularity in the 90s, there has been a contemporary resurgence following the development of Twine as an accessible way to build these narratives. Both past and present iterations of hypertext narratives have frequently been centered in marginalized communities, with many writers being queer and trans. Hypertext is a powerful format because it asks the reader and the writer to question not only dominant narratives but dominant modes of communication: it is fundamentally grounded in making connections visible, in demanding self-consciousness from the reader about what they choose to engage with. My use of this format is a structural mode of engagement not only with the intellectual tradition that I am interested in contributing to, but with the marginalized communities that I am a member of. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

[align center] [[introduction: what is rape?->introduction]]\ [[post-rape and post-revenge: defining my terms->terms]]\ [[do rape films rape audiences?->audience rape]]\ [[catharsis theory i: history->catharsis theory]]\ [[catharsis theory ii: survivorship->catharsis 2]]\ [[rape fetishism->fetish]]\ [[fan fiction and profit->fanfiction]]\ [[conclusion: on contradiction->conclusion]] {back link, label: 'go back'}

The term rape-revenge is most commonly used to refer to a temporally specific subgenre of exploitation film, mostly made in the 70s and 80s. In her book Revisionist Rape-Revenge: Redefining a Film Genre, scholar Claire Henry argues that given the diverse range of media that fall under rape-revenge, it could more accurately be considered a narrative structure than a genre in itself.[[46->works cited]] For the purposes of this project, I am using the term rape-revenge in Henry’s sense, and have roughly identified several eras in the development of the narrative structure. This timeline includes a number of works of film and television that represent different important moments in the evolution of rape-revenge: how their importance is defined varies based on the individual media. The “code era” designation refers to the period during which the Hays Code restricted what was acceptable to be shown in American film: it was in effect from 1934 to 1968. The breakdown of the Hays Code and the introduction of ratings allowed for the shift into what I have termed the exploitation era, during which developments in film technology and increasingly permissive attitudes led to significant increases in onscreen violence throughout the 70s and 80s. The late 80s and early 90s marked the beginning of what film scholar Sarah Projansky identifies as the postfeminist era, during which a cultural perception that gender equality had been achieved emerges as a dominant ideological approach to depictions of rape.[[29->works cited]] It is during this era that I see two primary contemporary tendencies begin to materialize: [[what I have termed post-rape and post-revenge.->terms]] I want to be careful to note that this is an extremely broad strokes approach to film history, intended primarily as organizational shorthand rather than prescriptive absolutism. The proliferation of formats allowed for by the expansion of television following U.S. federal deregulation in the 80s, the introduction of home video beginning with VHS, and the massive decentralizing and democratizing of media due to the internet have created a hugely stratified and complicated landscape that is difficult to break down into distinctive eras in the way that I have done. This timeline functions as a useful, albeit necessarily reductive, entry point into major discursive moments in the history of rape-revenge. >[[enter timeline->timeline]] [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

<blockquote>Through my research in this project I have identified two distinct tendencies that have emerged from the rape-revenge structure in the postfeminist media landscape. Taken together, these distinct generic tendencies represent a bifurcation of approaches to narrativizing rape, and of the impulses this narrativizing serves (or are perceived/intended to serve). Both tendencies are distinctly postfeminist and exploitative, but manifest in different directions and to different ends.</blockquote> [align center] post-rape: [continue] Media that follows the rape-revenge structure while removing the physical act of rape, instead implying some kind of nonspecific gendered and/or sexualized violation. Examples of this include _Sucker Punch_ (2011, Snyder), _Gone Girl_ (2014, Fincher), _Assassination Nation_ (2018, Levinson) and _[[Promising Young Woman]]_ (2020, Fennell). All of these films borrow tropes from the hyperviolent exploitation-era rape-revenge films, particularly in the sexualized and hyperfeminized nature of the protagonist’s approach to enacting violence, but without the specificity of rape as a motivator, following naturally from the generic trends of rape-revenge in which the actual rape played a diminishing role in comparison to the revenge. By focusing on the aesthetics of revenge without the inclusion of rape, these films elide the potential accusations of exploitation that many rape-revenge films face, while still serving the same desire of viewers to identify with perpetrators of justified violence through their implications that this violence represents a symbolic or actual victory against sexism. [align center] post-revenge: [continue] Media that eliminate the possibility of revenge from the rape narrative, focusing instead on the emotional and logistical aftermath. These tend to place particular emphasis on the legal system, whether in support or as a critique. The most popular contemporary generic iteration of this tendency is true crime: limited streaming documentary series _Allen V. Farrow_ (2021, Dick and Ziering/HBO), _[[The Keepers]]_ (2017, White/Netflix), _Leaving Neverland_ (2019, Reed/HBO), media that dramatizes true stories, such as _Spotlight_ (2015, McCarthy), or media that is “plucked from the headlines”, such as _[[Law & Order: Special Victims Unit->SVU]]_ (1999-, NBC). Post-revenge “true crime” is more likely to exist in a serialized format, which acknowledges both the durational nature of survivorship and the viewer’s desire to safely bear witness to and, in a limited way, identify with victimhood through a durational experience. While the creators of post-revenge media frequently identify their intention as pro-survivor, privileging the victim’s experience and exposing systemic barriers to justice, their approach is fundamentally objectifying and sensationalistic. <blockquote>Both of these generic offshoots serve to defang the elements of the genre that initially drew me to it, preserving the exploitative nature while removing the radical possibility. Post-rape examples become pure fantasy, as without the uniquely violatory crime of rape the extreme violence becomes unmotivated: even when we are on the victims side there is an implicit condemnation not necessarily present in the original genre. Post-revenge preserves only the violent voyeurism without the catharsis, producing only sickly pity or ineffectual rage in the viewer, communicating that while the problem cannot be solved by the means the media displays, nor could it be solved by any other option. In post revenge, the rape does not precipitate revenge or transformation but rather more suffering. Both post-rape and post-revenge tendencies betray a bleak perspective on survivorship, irrespective of the feminist terms they may be couched in. </blockquote> [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

[align center] Do rape films rape audiences? [continue] Setting aside the question of what a responsible visual depiction of rape looks like, any film that deals with rape must first face a decision on whether or not to directly depict the rape itself. There are two lines of thinking on this topic: one argues that [[the film cannot adequately represent the pain of rape or get the audience to empathize with the victim without depicting their experience in the moment.->audience rape A]] The other argues that [[the depiction of rape cannot adequately represent the pain of rape, and that this inadequacy leads to minimizing and irresponsible representations.->audience rape B]] Both arguments are predicated on ideas about the responsibility of the filmmaker to victims of rape and to their audience, and make a fundamental assumption that the primary or exclusive acceptable reason to make a film about rape is to make a morality play about victimhood. These questions clarify the belief that the ethics of rape films lie in their relationship to the reality of rape. Because rape becomes subsumed into general violations, depictions of rape sometimes lead audiences to feel that they have been harmed or violated in some way. While there is evidence that cinematic depictions of violence generally and rape specifically may be harmful - in terms of creating or encouraging violent thoughts and reducing capacity for empathy- this construction of harm is different, involving a specific and personal violation, implicitly or explicitly paralleling the experience of watching a rape film with the experience of being raped. It assumes a relationship with a film that involves the viewer placing trust in it, and assumes that this is something that a viewer should be able to do, that a filmmaker is obligated to provide. This is also distinct from the harm that viewing these films may cause to survivors in the form of being triggered: [[triggering is the activation of already present neural pathways developed as a result of past trauma.->catharsis 2]] Viewing a film may be furthering this harm, but it is not creating it. This is not, however, the accusation of betrayal that non-survivors make when they feel a sense of violation from a rape film. It is perhaps that they have been made aware of their position as a potential survivor, that they are imagining a situation in which they could have been triggered by a film (and by extension imagining a situation in which they have been raped and are managing post-rape trauma), and are experiencing real discomfort in being forced to imagine this. I wonder about the extent to which this is a productive emotion, especially as it is more likely to be provoked by media with a direct depiction of rape rather than media that involves significant secondary description of rape without actually showing it, such as true crime. Who feels betrayed by which narrative? Survivors hold different perspectives to (those who identify as) allies. While a direct and accurate portrayal may be triggering, representation that creates unreality (rape-revenge) or objectifies reality [[(post-revenge)->terms]] largely serves to further separate me from my own experiences. This feeling is particularly reinforced by the self-congratulatory ways that those involved in production speak about the importance of producing constant reminders of the impossibility of justice while fetishizing images or narratives of violence. [[The exploitative media starts to feel to me more appealing because it is open about what it is doing and not invested in its own defense.->Ms .45]] I do not have to negotiate [[my oppositional relationship:->conclusion]] it is straightforward. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Defenses of onscreen violence tend to either argue for the filmmaker’s right to free expression of violence regardless of impact on audience or to deny that a negative impact is being made at all. The argument for direct depiction runs counter to this, insisting that it is not only possible but in fact desirable to inflict emotional harm on an audience through depictions of violence. In theorist Jeffrey A. Brown’s essay on torture and rape in contemporary action films,[[5->works cited]] he examines several rape scenes that he determines to be textually antirape for the discomfort they provoke, identifying in particular the “laborious realism” of the rapes in both the Swedish and American adaptations of _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ (2009, 2011; Oplev, Fincher), as well as _Monster_ (2003, Jenkins). This argument charges that not directly showing a rape when it is clear that a rape is occurring functions as a form of avoidance, allowing the audience to escape the discomfort that would come from viewing rape, and therefore preventing them from fully accessing the empathy that they would be able to build through this discomfort. In Brown’s understanding, an antirape rape film has to involve structural antirape qualities that precede and therefore contextualize the rape itself: the victim should not be sexualized, and we should have knowledge of their pre-rape life that allows us to understand and empathize with them in a broader way than just in the moment of rape. While it is imperative that the filmmaker depicts the rape within this framework, the actual depiction has additional expectations. In describing the rape of Aileen in _Monster_, he states that <blockquote>“The staging prevents a clear view of what is being done to Aileen’s body: we access the violence not through its spectacle (which risks sensationalizing or eroticizing the event) but through glimpses of Corey’s instruments of torture and, much more importantly, Aileen’s facial reactions; her struggle for comprehension; her silent cry as she experiences the physical and mental agony of the rape”</blockquote> While the visuality is important, it should be focused on visual markers of the victim’s pain and fear, as opposed to a wider sense of the physical events that are transpiring. In this way, the impulse to aestheticize assault is undercut, preventing it from becoming an “erotic spectacle”. This does, of course, assume that the image of a person in pain is an inherently non-erotic image, that the intimate depiction of a person in pain will provoke empathy and discomfort rather than pleasure. In this, Brown is making significant unstated assumptions about the audience, about their underlying antirape politic that could potentially be reinforced by the filmic depiction. Is it possible to directly depict rape in a way that is exclusively antirape? [[While explicit and brutal depictions remain frequently considered feminist for their straightforward engagement with the brutality of rape, they also remain the most commonly repurposed for sexual gratification.->Ms .45]] If we take the desired emotional harm argument to be true, it is with the knowledge that it is only effective if the audience already feels negative or possibly ambivalent towards rape, and that the possibility of some audiences eliciting pleasure from a rape scene is outweighed by the potential empathy it can provoke in the existing antirape audience. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Mitchell Block’s 1973 short film _No Lies_ depicts a significant violation in the aftermath of a rape: in a faux-cinéma vérité style, the audience is put in the position of a filmmaker who begins to interrogate a friend about her recent rape until she breaks down. The film presents itself as documentary, revealing only (implicitly) in the credits that the events were fictional. In her essay on the film, “_No Lies_: Direct Cinema as Rape,” theorist Vivian Sobchack notes that many viewers felt betrayed and violated by the experience of viewing the film, and argues that the film is paralleling the experience of being raped, making rape “interchangeable with an act of cinema.”[[35->works cited]] In this, she constructs an understanding of the sense of betrayal and violation that may be produced by a rape film as productive of empathy: Block’s film undercuts any sense of superiority and removal that an audience may have felt towards the victim portrayed, not only victimizing them but also forcing them to confront their sense of superiority. The film makes the audience aware of its own vulnerability, placing itself in the morally superior position and thus inverting the usual film-audience relationship of a rape movie. This relationship can only be produced through betrayal and discomfort, in this context through subversion of expectations, but importantly not through direct portrayal of rape. Sobchack argues that <blockquote>“The movies have always had an affinity for that which moves; and, all moral and social judgements aside, one has to admit that <code>scenes of sexual and physical assault move</code>. They are a veritable frenzy of activity, both in the content in the frame and in the cutting. Thus, on a visual level alone, it is nearly impossible for even their brief presence in a movie not to inform and often overshadow the entire film, and particularly the relatively more quiescent and internal scenes of emotional and psychological turmoil which, though they may occupy more screen time, <code>make much less mark on one’s visual memory</code>.”</blockquote> Film is a visual medium, and it is easier to make a rape scene visually compelling than to make the aftermath so, especially in a film that is invested in presenting the aftermath realistically. Importantly, an exploitation-era rape-revenge film is likely not particularly invested in representing the aftermath realistically: the graphic violence of the aftermath is also intended to move. In many cases, the revenge portion is significantly more aesthetically compelling than the rape portion: does this then imply that the rape and the revenge are out of balance? A counter-example to this is the 1978 exploitation film _[[I Spit on Your Grave]]_. The durational extended rape scene has been described as feminist for its direct and unflinchingly graphic approach, but this same approach allows it to appeal to those who explicitly identify with fetishizing rape. Does accurately and responsibly depicting rape, then, require focus on the aftermath rather than the event itself? Sobchack argues that in order to evoke the feeling of rape you cannot portray it, because its aesthetic qualities in an aesthetic medium will outweigh the intentions of the film. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Even if [[the research has established that rape-revenge films have the potential to do harm,->catharsis theory]] enjoyment tends to involve some amount of willful ignorance or belief in the positive possibilities: catharsis theory is compelling not only as a rhetorical strategy but as a way to maintain identity. If your sense of yourself is not as a person who fetishizes rape but as someone who respects and supports victims, it feels good to believe that you are engaging with and understanding their experience. In her seminal essay “Her Body, Himself”, which examines gender and identification in the slasher genre, theorist Carol J. Clover argues that <blockquote“Our primary and acknowledged identification may be with the victim… but the Other is also finally another part of ourselves, the protection of our repressed infantile rage and desire (or blind drive to annihilate those toward home we feel anger…) that we have had in the name of civilization to repudiate.”[[10->works cited]]</blockquote> Because in rape-revenge the victim gets to enact the most aesthetically compelling violence, which has been justified through her prior victimization, this identification with perpetrator and victim may be wrapped into a single character, resolving the moral dilemma of identifying with a perpetrator while maintaining the satisfaction it engenders. Not only do you care about and understand victims, you get to have that experience coupled with a sense of reclaimed agency and power. How, then, does this change if it _has_ happened to you, if the identification with victimhood was literal rather than theoretical? The reality of being a survivor is that you have very little external power over your reality both in terms of what happened and in terms of how your body responds to the trauma of it. In many cases, you have very little power over whether anything happens to your rapist at all. If catharsis was achievable through media, it would follow naturally that the impulse to consume rape-revenge is about enacting your own revenge fantasies. Even if consumption does not have this effect, the illusory appeal that it might is a powerful draw. I found myself drawn to rape-revenge films the second I had control over which films I was watching: certainly before I ever conceived of myself as a survivor or began to confront my experiences of sexual violence. All I knew at 13 was that no matter how sick they made me feel after finishing them, I came back to watch the same films over and over, and sought out new ones. The films were serving an impulse, albeit an unhealthy one: I later came to realize I had been seeking out ways to trigger myself as a method of disengaging from my surroundings. I want to emphasize that rape-revenge films are not unique in this— that I identified this impulse through my own consumption of these films does not mean either that this use of media is unique to me or that rape-revenge films have an exclusive pull. Other survivors I spoke to about my research identified a diverse set of media that served the same purpose, ranging from sexually violent pornography to hit British reality dating show _Love Island_ to [[fanfiction.->fanfiction]] To say that media can be and is used in this way is not necessarily an indictment of that media— identifying particular roles that it plays in viewers lives, healthy or unhealthy, should not be read as a moral judgement on form or content. I sought out rape-revenge films because they triggered me, but also because they had other elements I loved: practical effects, campy costumes, angry women. When I say that I am a survivor who loves rape-revenge, I feel pulled to defend that interest, to justify the films as good aesthetically or morally (many are not), or, at minimum, meriting detached academic engagement. I feel like identifying myself as a survivor in some way entitles me to my enjoyment of the films: I am not (I am exempt from) fetishizing rape, regardless of what other viewers [[(the frequently assumed audience of disturbed young men)->catharsis theory]] or the text of the film itself are doing. It is providing me catharsis. It is making me feel better. The films, especially those of the [[late exploitation era->timeline intro]] that border on genre parody, have always been my [[favorites->Ms .45]] because they get to the point efficiently: with the rape out of the way in the first few minutes and my ability to engage with reality suspended, I can relax into the bloodbath. If you know exactly what is going to trigger you and how it will do so, you can engage with your brain on your own terms: a luxury that post-traumatic stress disorder makes scarce. In _The Body Keeps the Score_, Bessel Van Der Kolk’s study of the ways trauma changes the brain, he examines the reasons someone may choose to self harm, arguing that it is resultant of an impulse to regain or assert control over your brain or body, an impulse that is particularly strong in survivors of sexual trauma. Traumatic memories exist in a sense of hyperreality: <blockquote>“If elements of the trauma are replayed again and again, the accompanying stress hormones engrave those memories ever more deeply in the mind. Ordinary, day-to-day events become less and less compelling. Not being able to deeply take in what is going on around them makes it impossible to feel fully alive.”[[42->works cited]]</blockquote> If the only way to access a sense of reality is through re-experiencing trauma, self-harm behaviors may be understood as a way to manufacture that experience: seeking out triggering media is a particularly effective way to do this for its broadly available nature and relative safety and passivity as compared to other self harm behaviors. It does not even need to be consciously understood as such. What would it mean to understand the impulse to consume these films [[not as expunging or creating violent impulses->catharsis theory]] but as enacting them (or being used in such a manner) at least in part as a way to mitigate further harm? [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

Some critiques hold that a [[fetishistic depiction of rape->fetish]] is particularly pernicious because someone is profiting off of it: that not only is harm being done, but that harm is compounded by the fact that it is for-profit. Knowing that [[any media that directly depicts rape holds the potential for causing harm,->catharsis theory]] and accepting that this is made worse by the presence of profit, it follows that rape media that is not producing profit for anyone is more ethical. It is, however, somewhat difficult to find rape media that isn’t made for-profit, particularly media that could be defined in a broad sense as “entertainment”, as opposed to “educational”, such as anti-rape PSAs. One of the most popular of these marginal forms of entertainment-focused rape media is fanfiction. Fanfiction functions as critical discourse with the media it is based on, extending and warping narratives into how fans want them to be. This engagement exists in a dual mode, with critique and affection both inherent. Fanfiction, or fic, communities are largely populated by subaltern groups, who not only are less likely to have power in traditional commercial media spaces but are also frequently aware of and identify with their lack of power through this discursive mode, which is likely to be dismissed by people outside of the community. Fan communities are disproportionately populated by survivors: while it is difficult due to the largely anonymous nature to get a full sense of demographics, most studies have shown the large majority (78[[33->works cited]]-95.8%[[8->works cited]]) of users of fanfiction archives such as Archive of Our Own (AO3) and FanFiction.Net are non-men, a group which experiences sexual violence at a rate of 43.6%.[[34->works cited]] Within this space, fics dealing with rape are hugely popular. The most recent publicly available data scrape provided by AO3 in March of 2021 showed 9,511,539 works, 192,479 of which were tagged with an archive warning as Rape/Non-Con.[[2->works cited]] This makes rape fan fiction a massive presence on the archive, representing just over 2% of works. While the archive has not published a more recent data scrape, the tag has grown to 221,121 works as of this writing. This indicates a broad and active cross-fandom appeal: the most popular works in the tag have well over a million hits apiece, in fandoms ranging from the _X-Men_ films to _Harry Potter_ to Chinese tv drama _Unbeatable You (逆流而上的你)_. Dominant fandom politics around this kind of fic suggest that anything goes as long as it is appropriately tagged: because users are asked to add warnings, and because AO3 exists specifically for fanworks, it is unlikely you will encounter a rape fic unless you are specifically seeking it out. Additionally, the anonymity provided allows for writers to post and readers to engage with very little concern for real-life repercussions that they could potentially experience if sharing rape media in a wider forum, such as commercial film production. Fanfiction, therefore, represents a more honest picture of the way subaltern groups think about and represent rape- not only because it is private, but because of its secondary function of critique. By adding rape to a wide variety of media that do not initially include it, fans are not only communicating what kinds of representations they are seeking, but also the fact that these representations are appealing and not adequately present. On AO3, the tagging and archive warning functions work both to filter in what a reader is looking for and filter out what they don’t want. The Rape/Non-Con tag therefore functions both as a trigger warning and as a way to opt in to reading works that appeal to you. Broadly speaking, there are two different genres of rape fic. In rape recovery, a rape happens and the aftermath drives a romantic recovery narrative. This could be paralleled with [[filmic depictions of rape as positively transformative->Ms .45]], albeit changing one’s interpersonal relationships as opposed to internal sense of self/external presentation. Rape recovery fic may or may not explicitly depict the rape but it is explicitly condemned. A rarer subset or intergenre of this would be the rape-revenge fic, which occasionally adds some kind of secondary (to romance) plot involving the rapist facing justice — sometimes institutional, sometimes interpersonal. Also often present is a critique of institutional futility — textually rejecting a possibility of justice in favor of focus on healing, through romance and/or rediscovery of sex. Rape recovery is largely aligned with the narrative structures of broader genres of angst or hurt/comfort. The second genre is open fetishism: explicit erotica depicting rape for the sexual gratification of readers. In this genre, the primary pairing that the writer is placing in a relationship, or “shipping," may be recast as rapist and victim. Long-form iterations often include multiple rape scenes over a period of time, and therefore frequently involve descriptions of kidnapping or torture that are either precursors to or part of the sexual experience. Some fics will additionally use the term dub-con, meaning dubious consent, to allow for the presence of enjoyment on behalf of the victim. This includes a range of tropes such as the victim being in an altered state that renders them unable to give consent, or non-consensual acts that the victim later admits to enjoying, retroactively justifying the events as consensual. It is important to note that the latter trope, while frequently condemned in contemporary discourse, has a long history in mainstream romantic narratives. The two genres tend to be stylistically different but are not necessarily mutually exclusive: some rape recovery fics will include extended descriptions of the initial rape. While these descriptions may be tonally distinct from the later, non-rape erotica, they are often strikingly similar to the rape erotica seen in the openly fetishistic genre. In fanfiction, as in film, it can be difficult to distinguish narratives that are fetishizing rape from those that are condemning it. This is especially true because a large part of the appeal for habitual readers lies with particularities within repetition: you know what you like and you know what will happen and the pleasure is in watching how it gets there. Repetitive tropes and narrative structures must be taken to show cumulative appeal, which is to say that it is likely that a reader who enjoys any given rape fic will seek out more. In order to understand the distinctive appeals, it is helpful to question who the reader may be identifying with: academic Kristina Busse argues throughout her book _Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities_ that identificatory practices are one of the primary appeals of fic reading.[[6->works cited]] In rape recovery, the identification could lie with the victim, with the primary fantasy being taken care of. This may function as a way to process survivorship, imagining a pleasurable rediscovery of sex as transcending victimhood and reclaiming a sense of self that is lost through rape. Importantly, the enjoyment of that sex is in some way predicated on the knowledge of what it is like to not enjoy it: the suffering of surviving rape is rewarded, and the author thereby justifies the need to depict the suffering of a character they care about, as the reader experiences the satisfaction of witnessing healing. Alternatively, if the reader identifies with the person in relation to the victim, the fantasy depends on being able to take care of someone. Both fantasies depend on the belief that recovering from rape is a controllable experience, with the defined methodology and endpoint of romance and the (re)enjoyment of sex. In open fetishism, one potential identificatory fantasy is being the rapist, allowing for complete control over a sexual situation and the ability to enact power and pain over another person. Alternatively, identifying with victimhood allows the reader to have an extreme sexual experience without feeling culpable for it and therefore guilty about their own desires. Both fantasies may hold powerful appeal for groups who feel disempowered or marginalized by normative sexual practices. This is assuming that the primary pleasure in reading this is about identification, rather than witness: the appeal for either could instead be in seeing the way that the characters relate to each other within this narrative framework, lying more with voyeurism than identificatory fantasy. Fanfiction communities often talk about their non-con works in BDSM terms while simultaneously acknowledging that if this were real life it would not be within the limits of accepted (consensual) BDSM. Busse’s understanding of this is that rape fantasy and fetishism is accepted because it is not perceived to be a substitute for enacting fantasies but that the writing or reading of it is enacting the fantasy in itself. She argues that fan fiction becomes a safe place for rape kink because there is an external frame of condemnation of actual rape, within which any engagement with depiction of rape is assumed to be consensual on the part of both the writer and reader. Rape fics that include retroactive consent or enjoyment on behalf of the victim frequently net accusations of victim blaming, to which the creator will respond with either a public declaration of their antirape politic, or a declaration of their status as a survivor, or both. This betrays an assumption about who has the “right” to talk about these things publicly without criticism. The critics are cast not only as censorious, but as impeding a survivor’s healing. These are sometimes called “vent fic,” with the assumption that you are writing about things that happened to you as if they happened to someone else— possibly as a way to regain control over them. If you recast your rape as consensual or sexually gratifying, that can be a way to narrativize consent even as it is a way to (self)victim blame. If you recast your rape as equally nonconsensual and violent but happening to someone else (particularly a character you have independent emotional attachment or connection to), that can be a way to have empathy for yourself: if the character proxy didn’t deserve it, perhaps you didn’t either. Assuming that writing these fics is a form of healing, however, the question that remains is what it means to post them publicly and make them searchable on a platform like AO3. The catharsis, then, must lie not only in the writing but in the sharing, and so any analysis of harm must likewise examine both. As Busse notes, the metatextual content such as information about the author may not actually change the text itself: <blockquote>“there is little difference in whether the scene is framed as consensual sex within the story, given that the entire text portrays a nonconsensual, violent sexual encounter. The delayed information of diegetic consent changes the meaning of the story, but it doesn’t ultimately affect the rape’s erotic effects on the reader. After all, regardless of whether the scene within the story is consensual, the sexual scenes are exactly the same, and no real people are hurt in either case.”</blockquote> It seems clear that subaltern groups or noncommercial media are not exempt from the same type of negotiations between a drive to represent rape, particularly in a sexualized manner, and a stated antirape politic. If anything, the combined noncommercial and largely nonvisual space allows for more extreme depictions with fewer consequences, in part because of this belief that it is not harming “real people”. This belief assumes that readers share and agree with the contextual frame of the writers. While research suggests that viewing rape films, regardless of their antirape narrative contextual frame, erodes empathy for actual survivors, research on fanfiction largely focuses on validating the expressive possibilities of the form. Understanding the impacts that engaging with rape fic practices may have on survivors, whether as cathartic and healing or triggering and harmful, would require significant further study. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}

If catharsis is the way that enjoyment of rape-revenge may be construed as a societal good, rape fetishism is how it is most commonly constructed as a societal evil. The straightforward understanding of this is that to enjoy rape-revenge is to not only to enjoy images of rape, but to have your enjoyment be sexual in nature. This argument makes a number of assumptions, with the fundamental implication being that there is no way to enjoy images of rape _without_ the purpose being sexual gratification. [[This further assumes that the only type of person who _could_ be compelled by these images, who would seek to create or engage with them, is a person who finds sexual pleasure in rape.->fanfiction]] To say that a film fetishizes rape is to make a statement not only on the morality of the text itself, but also the viewer. Do we define fetishism, then, as the act of imagining rape to be pleasurable (as opposed to actually raping)? The accusation of fetishism, which was most commonly leveled at films of the exploitation era, tends to come with the implication that someone who fetishizes rape is likely to enact it: does it make sense to instead view engagement with or production of these films as enacting the fetish? If the fetish is not about rape, but about the fantasy of it, then engaging with an aestheticized depiction, as in film, could be read as in some sense as consummating that desire, rather than manufacturing, increasing, or temporarily satiating it. The necessity of this level of clarification makes clear that the judgment of rape fetishism, while condemnatory, does not function as a clear or specific accusation but rather as a kind of generalized shorthand for an inappropriate depiction of rape. These depictions may cause the viewer discomfort because they feel that the depiction is projecting an expectation onto them— not one of the “correct” expectations, such as revulsion or pity, but rather an expectation of enjoyment. This produces dissonance with what they feel that they are supposed to feel about depictions of rape- whether they actually feel that way or not- producing an awareness of what the filmmaker expects of them, arousing a defensive need to make assumptions about the filmmaker, because they don’t like what the filmmaker is assuming about _them._ It is important to note that aesthetically compelling depictions of rape that condemn the rape are not always accused of fetishism, even if they could conceivably function in a fetishistic context, as long as the audience feels secure in their sense of the filmmaker’s (and thus, their own) morality. Different audiences will perceive the filmmaker’s morality differently: thus, films that are often accused of fetishism, such as _[[I Spit on Your Grave]]_, are also the most ardently defended as antirape, with the exact same images being used to support the diametrically opposed arguments. It is worth asking: if films are being accused of fetishism, what unique qualities distinguish them as such, and not as merely a film about rape? Is fetishism defined by stating the unspoken: acknowledging the potential sexual pleasure of rape rather than working to preempt any accusation that the filmmaker (and by extension the viewer) is enjoying it? With all this in mind, the level of concern about rape-revenge films fetishizing rape strikes me as if not overblown, at the very least unfairly targeted. This is not to say that rape-revenge films do not sexualize rape (many do) or violence (almost all do), but rather to say that the level of critique they receive could lead you to believe that they are uniquely heinous in this respect. Any film that depicts rape could potentially be used by any given viewer in the fetishistic sense (ie, specifically sexually gratifying for being a stated depiction of rape). The question is how much that potential reflects on the internal feelings of all viewers, or of the creators themselves. To term a film fetishistic carries the weight of wide ranging and simplistic assumption, intended less as analysis and more as moralistic edict. The harm that rape films have the potential to do is real, but discussion of it that is limited in terms of genre and aesthetics to rape-revenge or exploitation films is necessarily limited in understanding and intellectually dishonest. [align center] {back link, label: 'go back'}