I hear more of the argument of "does this movie promote rape?". Rape has been occurring since the beginning of time, so I do not think that a movie like this promotes rape. If anything, movies like these show it's severity.
The rape culture that we live in, however, promotes rape greatly, and I find oppresses women a lot more than movies like this. For instance, in one of the sex scenes in "Basic Instinct" Michael Douglas' character turns the girl around, bends her over and rips her underwear off. You can clearly hear her say "no" more than once. He penetrates her after she has said no and all of a sudden she's enjoying it. It's scenes like this that makes men think that "even though she says no, she doesn't mean no" and that these women are "only teasing". Scenes like that show that women are the weaker sex: both physically and not, and that all they need is a man and his penis.
Rape is a crime that has no real deterrent: rapists are getting less time than thieves these days. Look at the man who raped and murdered Jill Meagher here in Melbourne: he had BROKEN parole and had 22 convictions for raping women before - yet he was on the street a free man able to rape and murder an innocent woman? Stricter penalties for rapists, less victim blaming and less rape culture are the only things that will potentially lessen rape. Hell, bring back the death penalty for them.
In my honest opinion, it's movies like these that make me able to watch some rape scenes in movies: as the woman is getting her justice and empowering herself. They took away her freedom, her ability to choose what happens to her body, her control of her own body. In some ways it is the absolute lack of power that can be more painful than the rape itself. And she took it back and used it against them. I find this movie as an empowerment of women.
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mikelepost
8 years ago
Well, considering the audience for this film is almost entirely men and that at least half of the film focuses on the needlessly protracted and graphic abuse of the main female character, I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
You can also look this title up on Amazon.com and check out the other titles in the "Customers who bought this, also bought that" section at the bottom. I think what you'll find is the profile of an exploitation movie watcher, not a feminist.
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TheMan18 (12502)
7 years ago
2 iceskater - but do you at least think that the fact that this film features equally albeit of different kind brutal acts of revenge that succeed in having those guilty perpetrators get what they deserve, that this speaks volume of the fact that it is actually an ANTI rape film and that it kinda at least implies that men will think twice about pulling off stunts like this as in if the law DOESN'T successfully punish them, then the vengeful victim WILL?
Another thing I wonder is...
Given how you speak about rape culture, the fact that laws are deliberately ineffective etc at prosecuting rapists, the reference to Basic Instinct (but its same director Paul Verhoeven's film "Robocop" had our hero shoot a rapist in the nuts at one point) that suggests there is MORE to the problem of rape than the fact that it HAPPENS in the first place (and I gather you are only talking about America and mostly refer indeed to rapes carried out by men against women or sometimes other men rather than the world or our humanity in GENERAL), it kinda makes one wonder...
What IF and why CAN'T we have more vengeful acts of vigilante justice carried out against guilty sex offenders if the law is so lenient and ineffective and society in general doesn't give a damn?
I know we don't live in a world that's perfect or generally civilized. But sometimes one can't help but wonder - why don't we just kill rapists and be done away with them like that, and why DOESN'T law even CONSIDER going down with the civilized public's desire to eliminate them like that?
Granted, it would indeed be better if it didn't happen in the first place, I agree. But sadly it does happen and has been so throughout human history ever since, ooh, dawn of humanity for thousands of years.
I just wish we started coming more on the theories of a SOLUTION to this kind of problem since we have debated the various aspects OF this problem umpteenths of time for many years, the ignorant portions of society, bad laws aside.
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