Is the message to this a depressing one?
so you get gangraped and one way or another go nuts and become evil? So in a strange way, the bullies, or in this case her attackers, had the last laugh, in that her very soul was torn apart by them.
shareThat happened in the first film.
In the third film, we see what happens after you have revenge and yeah, it's depressing. Yet at the same time quite informative. Don't take revenge. Get help.
What's sad is that despite what she has done, Jennifer Hills is still a human being. She still feels emotion and has empathy for others.
Yet there is hope. There was one crucial difference in the second film: Katie did get help in the end; the Bulgarian Detective and the Priest. Did she realize that what she did was wrong? I don't know. But she got and accepted help (yes, she still took revenge, but in the end, she was stopped).
I don't know how being a human being and having empathy is supposed to be a sad thing, and I don't remember the dragon tattoo girl having a hard time after getting revenge. yet in number one she managed to get the tape of the men assaulting her. she could have used that to expose them. I didn't see to much of number 2, I just know that she almost killed the female collaborator but was stopped (darn)
shareBeing a human being not a sad thing, I'm saying that it's not all bad news for Jennifer; she still has a chance. But without help, people willing to help her and her own willingness to accept that help, she's not going to recover. She'll kill again.
The message is that revenge doesn't make things better. It's not justice. If you do take revenge, then what we saw is the result.
In the second one, Katie was going to leave Anna to die in the same box she was left in. She was actually torturing one of her assailants when Kirill (the police Detective who originally took her case) stopped her. Then the assailant tried to strangle her, Kirill ordered him to stop and when he didn't he shot him in the head. After that, he allowed Katie to walk away, leaving him to deal with Anna (who by then was practically catatonic).
I do agree, that no matter what she did to those men in the first, it wasn't going to be enough. Personally I think she should have taken the tape she stole to the internet or press. The sheriff would have suffered so much more in prison, for example, but then there would be no movie and I can't blame her for not trusting the system. The real problem is that justice is a hard thing to know when you see it. The issues dealing with the retarded guy, for example, was a grey area to put it nicely. Sadly though, I felt I didn't learn from the first movie because it just seemed like a torture film. This film at least showed the after effects on a victim's psyche but the violence and brutality of all three films made it feel as if I was watching torture porn, which kind of blurred the true message if there was one.
shareHence the debate. Everyone has a different opinion on the films. Personally, I never saw any of the films as torture porn. I saw them as the very brutal reality of rape as well as sex trafficking (in the second film only).
Despite what the characters did, I also thought Jennifer and Katie were amazing. Rape is a horrific crime that can leave survivors unable to function in the worst of cases. These two got back up (in Jennifer's case, more than once) and ultimately escaped their assailants despite horrific trauma and injuries. Then they went back and faced their rapists which is very difficult to do (as I am to understand).
I do agree that either of them could have gone to the authorities. With that tape, any State or Federal Prosecutor worth their salt would have had the Sheriff and his accomplices dead to rights.
Jennifer did escape and ran into the Sheriff and reported the matter. In Katie's case, she did escape and talked to the police. In the former's case, the Sheriff (for reasons I can't fathom) ended up being a participant. In the latter's case, the Detective didn't entirely believe her and handed her off to someone he thought he knew and trusted. You can't really blame either of them for not trusting law enforcement after that.
I was surprised that Jennifer/Angela actually talked to Detective McDylan. Whether that was to get information about Marla or due to McDylan's friendly demeanor, I don't know. I'm guessing the latter considering that he never got angry with her, was patient with her and actually saved her life. Not that she'd ever agree with that since he had to shoot her. But he did ultimately save her from a life sentence or death row.
"In the former's case, the Sheriff (for reasons I can't fathom) ended up being a participant."
Being a Texan, I think I can help you with that: It's the typical Yankee's stereotypical view of Texans and/or people in the Deep South -- Louisiana included -- as being a network of "good ole boys" who will cover each other's backs and brush away any crime, no matter how severe the crime may be. By Sheriff Storch's own admission, he had known Johnny and the gang since the latter were kids. He and they were all part of the same tightly knit community, and so he allowed his personal feelings for Johnny and the gang to corrupt him when faced with the choice of either helping Jennifer and upholding the Law (which could have meant guilt at arresting his little buddies and facing ostracism from his community, particularly from the criminals' families and friends...), or protecting Johnny and Company by making Jennifer disappear (even going so far as to make Jennifer's landlord Earl disappear as well, despite Storch and Earl being old hunting buddies...the needs of the many and all that). So in the end, he wasn't quite willing to let his duty as a lawman invite the sociopolitical whirlwind he would reap by ruining the lives of four young men whom the rest of the town had always known to be...well, good ole boys.
Forcing himself on Jennifer was likely just his way of proving his solidarity to Johnny and the Gang, the assurance of loyalty through mutual culpability, a nasty mixture of "We're good enough friends to share this woman with each other" and "Y'all don't rat on me, and I won't rat on all y'all. Got it?". In Storch's eyes, Jennifer was going to disappear anyway, so why not show up the boys and have a little fun with her first?
(Of course, the Yankees are sadly mistaken about us Texans being "good ole boys;" 180 years since the Republic of Texas came to be, and our Texan sheriffs are still forming posses of licensed Texan civilians to hunt down whichever of their fellow Texans figure that they can turn outlaw without consequences. The Law always comes first here in Texas. Yup.)
(Sadly, the Yankees may be right about Mississippi and the rest of the Deep South. Case in point: The murder of Jessica Chambers from a year or two back. That god-awfully evil of a murder, with so many witnesses and nationwide attention from the media, and the case went unsolved and ignored for how long? A case like that doesn't get swept under the rug unless someone in Law Enforcement's protecting someone else...maybe out of loyalty to that someone else, or maybe they just didn't like a white girl getting a little too cozy with all those blacks and Hispanics and didn't want the Law's justice getting in the way of their "justice". Having been stationed at Biloxi during my years with the Air Force, I'm sad to report that, aside from some spit and polish, Mississippi's social climate hasn't really changed all that much over the past century or so.)
Many people would choose not to go to the internet or the press with the tape because they don't want to be in the spotlight. They don't want the attention of the world, they'd rather just be done with it.
And they don't go to the police for similar reasons. First, she's already inclined not to trust police, seeing as the first time she trusted a police officer he ended up raping her and trying to kill her. Furthermore, I don't know if you've ever tried to press charges against someone, but it is a VERY LONG, annoying, stressful, and time-consuming process. I can definitely understand why rape victims wouldn't want to go through all of that and would prefer to just be left alone.
If it were me, I would've just made copies of the tape and then blackmailed the men into paying me their life savings and everything they own, so I could at least get something positive out of it. Of course I'm not saying that rape is "worth it" if you get paid, I'm just saying if she already went through it and had proof of it she might as well make the best of it.
Another point I'd like to make is that killing them isn't necessarily a bad thing. In her case she is doing it solely for revenge which isn't healthy as you pointed out, however if she had done it for another reason (such as just wanting to get rid of them as a preventative measure so they don't keep coming after her, or so that they don't keep raping other girls) then that would be fine (ex. Dexter).
Be that as it may, blackmailing people out of their life savings or killing rapists isn't a long-term solution. This movie illustrated the result of the latter; the police found her within days of the second murder and quickly caught her.
Yes, going to the authorities and reporting it is tough, but you can't forget about being raped or commit more crimes. Rape victims need help. They need to get up, point the finger at their rapist and say "he/she/they raped me". Even if they aren't convicted, it's public record. There will be people who will know.
Also, the DOJ and Courts take a dim view on people who use their badge or law enforcement knowledge to commit crimes. A very dim view. A DOJ prosecutor would jump at the chance to go after a corrupt Sheriff and his cohorts with that tape.
Let's say that Jennifer continued on her path as a twisted vigilante (which given her performance is not promising), another fifty years. She'll either end up dead or in prison for life or the death penalty within a year.
On the other hand, fifty more years of life with the support of friends and family, the public supporting you for coming forward.
Sure, I agree that Jennifer specifically was on the wrong path, acting out of revenge and just hurting herself in the long run, etc. But I meant more in general terms, not her specifically. I don't think all rape victims "need help." Why rely on someone else to help you (especially people associated with a system that was the cause of you needing that help in the first place) rather than just helping yourself? Of course by "helping yourself" I don't necessarily mean killing the rapists. But I really dislike the common view that "victims of crimes need other people to help them get over it" as opposed to just figuring out a solution and going through with it on their own.
If I somehow were in exactly the same situation as her (but still had my own personality, not hers) I think I would go with the blackmail route, not out of revenge but because it's just an easy opportunity to make the best of the situation. I wouldn't "hold a grudge" against the rapists but since I have easy blackmail material on them and they chose to put themselves in that situation anyway, I might as well use it. Why not? The only reason I can think of not to use it is if you'd just rather be completely done with it and not have to spend time interacting with them anymore, which I suppose would be a legitimate reason.
Everyone is different. What might work for Jennifer wouldn't work for you and me. Everyone has a different reaction to being raped (as I understand). The reaction could range from just being pissed off to dying.
I'll put it this way: the police investigated the murders in the film not because they cared more about rapists than their victims. It was because murder, besides it being a terrible crime, is a public safety matter. The police have to investigate and given the rather brutal ways those men were killed, they can't ignore it. Jennifer was clearly getting nuttier and sloppier and got to the point where she was willing to kill anyone who looked at her funny (okay, that Jerk from the park was dumb and harassed her three times before, but he didn't rape anyone).
Rape, besides the obvious trauma, is also a public safety matter. Rapists aren't going to stop on their own and not arresting and prosecuting them is basically saying "we've got no problem with it" when it is a major problem. If you want to stop a rapist, short of killing them, people have to report it otherwise someone else will get raped. Ignoring it won't make it go away and killing people isn't going to stop another rapist. Awareness and saying "this is wrong" and enforcing laws is what helps.
It's still up to a victim to accept help or not, but there are some things that we can't do alone.
Eff the law! I remembered watching this other movie Don't Cry Mommy. The girl gets gangraped and the four boys don't get prison time because there's no witness or "video evidence" to prove that they did it. Apparently their sperm inside her doesn't prove it was rape. The rapists' parents even had the nerve to try to pay the victim's mother to not press charges against their sons. Then the boys rape the girl a second time and she finally kills herself the day after. Then her mom gets revenge for her by killing all the boys but the mom dies because a cop shot her for witnessing her kill the last boy. Eff the law! Those boys deserved to die by the mother's hands just like how Jennifer's rapists deserve to die.
shareAnd look what happened to her? She died. She lost her life. Her daughter is still dead, she destroyed what little she had left to rebuild and had she not died she'd have to live with what she had done. Not much consolation.
share