Filmme Fatale

JUST IN CASE: POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING (DISCUSSION OF RAPE IN FILM AND TV)

Rape is the ultimate violation, so in film it’s always used as a way of harming the character. As I’ve seen it, rape as a plot device is written to damage the character so severely that their “retribution”, “revenge” or “ascent” is all the more “powerful” (see: rape-revenge) and the audience feels a sort of catharsis. I understand completely that catharsis is a personal thing, so I am only speaking for myself when I say that I do not experience any catharsis from rape-revenge, and I have never not been mortified by this film convention.

In reality, though, violent, graphic rape scenes, especially ones of length, have one main purpose: to appall. It is a shock tactic meant to upset the audience. Cinematic depictions of rape, no matter how “gritty” or “true-to-life” the scene is, romanticize rape simply by depicting it on film or in hi-def, with color correction and sound production and scripted lines and camera movement and the most subjective of editing. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall if I’ve ever seen a rape scene that I fully understood the purpose of. For me, these scenes are used as a catastrophic event that turns the character’s life around and either dominates the rest of the film or hangs over it like a shroud, waiting for the audience to almost move on only to come back and remind us that our protagonist is now “damaged” and has been charged with a mission of “redemption” and/or to exact gruesome revenge. Because their rape was intentional and because these characters are not real people (merely facets of real people), we buy this convention as simply something that needed to happen for the story to advance. We don’t question it because obviously the writers saw a purpose in it, and we must endure it to remain invested in our protagonist. Sounds kinda sociopathic, doesn’t it? Rape and sexual violence unto females (and, to a much smaller degree, males) has become so prevalent in film and TV as a plot device that the audience has numbed itself to it, which absolutely does not bode well at all for real-life rape victims.

Since I haven’t seen Irreversible, I can’t give an opinion on the film itself, but I am pretty sure that rape scene is not meant to educate anyone.

(Rape is also used in film and TV, by the way, as a gag for feminizing/emasculating men, and as punishment for an evildoer’s crimes. These instances are so offensive and blatantly one-dimensional, though, that they’re not even worth analyzing.)