Free Will

If there is anyone here who still needs convincing that we live in a Rape culture that sympathises with and enables rapists then this is the perfect example. I would encourage you to make your voice heard Joey. Are any of the reviews online where you can comment about them? Is there anyway that you can get in touch with other women who feel the same way about the movie? An even bigger tragedy than having this film shown, is having it widely accepted without any opposition being heard. Good Luck, and this is a great article

Reading just the teaser paragraphs from the main page, I thought it might be an intriguing movie; I'm very interested to rehabilitating all criminals for the rest of the world. But you make a really great point when you say "that's an explanation, not an excuse." Treating rape as a sensational crime for the viewing audience is incredibly demeaning and wholly inhuman to those who have suffered it.

The rapist is such an interesting criminal because we want to put him or her in a mold--but there is no mold. I can see why people would want to find sympathy with the rapist in the film, but film and TV rapists aren't the bad guys out the realy world, which makes for a comfortable break from dealing with an uncomfortable subject. When the bad guy tries to be good in a movie, we root for him; he must be the hero, right? In real life, over the wall that we create for "art", the same people who feel for a character could press for life without parole or even death for a convicted rapist. It sounds like a classic case of "oh, well that's not real life, what are you getting so worked up about." But we all should be furious when a filmmaker is trying to make us love a rapist; what kind of a message is that sending?

"A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be women."

I think that it is important to study, psychologically and socially, what creates and even encourages the sort of violent behavior that rapists commit, so that it can be curtailed or maybe eventually remedied. But at the point where people start feeling sympathy for the aggressor instead of the victim, you're right...that's despicable.

If the act of rape were a mental handicap - if it weren't a conscious decision that men/women make for themselves and thus other people - then I may understand some form of sympathy. But it's not.

If this film in any way explores what the social conditions are that allow rape to happen, then I think that maybe it's a step in the right direction. I mean that if it points out that misogyny is the culprit for everybodies unhappiness and makes a *strong* point, at that, then I could see why people aren't up in arms about it.

But I'm uncomfortable with movies that gravitate towards the subject of rape, to begin with. I think that if there's one thing that people aren't desensitized from due to the media, then let it be rape. Sometimes, I get the awful feeling that particular audiences enjoy rape scenes...because logically, if an audience likes violence, and if the same audience enjoys sex, then rape is just a combination of the two. And I'm a firm believer that the more people see it on screen, the more it's going to happen in life.

Everyone has the right for their point of view to be expressed. Yes, rape is a horrible thing and rapist are horrible people who have ruined women's lives. But that doesn't make their perspective on life any less valid. Sometimes it helps to look at the life of a person who committed horrible acts against other people, to help us understand why. That doesn't mean those people have an excuse to do what they did, but it helps people make sense of really screwed up situations.

...that if, by some scenario, I could know "why" my rapists raped me, it would help me to make any more sense of that situation.

In fact, having spent a whole lot of time researching that -- including from first-person perspetcives -- over many years, I gotta say, has helped me in exactly no way at all.

I've no doubt that sounds terribly bitter, and perhaps in part it is, but mostly I'm just being plain. I think plenty of us know a lot of why rapists feel they rape, but I rarely find that to be very helpful to anyone, particularly survivors. And I'm not sure how aiming to evoke sympathy for rapists is...you know, something like this just leaves me wordless, to be frank. I just plain don't get that one at all, and I'm very much inclined to feel what Kampire and Joey expressed here.

Yeah, Rape culture is the word I'm looking for here. I mean, it's not like there are movies out there exploring the psyche of a serial killer and aiming for understanding and sympathy (not to mention that serial killers don't usually get out of jail after 9 years).

But most of all, I feel that this movie is a slap in the face of every survivor. It's basically saying "Look, I know this guy hurt you, but he has had a really tough life. Plus, he's been to jail for it, and now that he's out he has a really difficult time adjusting to life again. I mean, everyone is suspicious of him now. You understand how awful that situation must be, right?" Right.

What bullshit. I'm so tired of this "new" movie story and tactic that's actually as old as the freaking hills, they're just getting more pushy in their "let's empathize w/the rapist" tactics.

This identification/empathy has been and is told in so many movies past and present, just the new fad is to be more more aggressive and specific in the telling. He was spurned/abused/controlled/horny/sweet to his dying father/kind to kittens, yaddayadda and we get to see it pontificated on the whole movie long now. Men and women both are already good at empathizing w/sexual abusers in general w/out this type lame rape-culture bullshit to further degrade survivors. And when it's artful it's all the more disengenious. As if they're saying anything new. Damn straight people want to get into rapists heads. When haven't they? It's the survivors' heads people arre less interested in, quite obviously. This is why biographies on serial rapists and killers fly off the shelves.

I could actually name several movies in which the film gets inside the head of a serial murder and sympathizes with them - Capote, for instance, and the book In Cold Blood, for that matter. (And to think they're remaking the movie *already!*) Or what about the trilogy 'Saw'? Then there's of course all three of Hannibal Lector's films. And pretty much a prototype for all of them is Fritz Lang's 'M.' So I don't think that it's so rare to have films that sympathize with serial murderers. Film has been doing it for decades, because I suppose it's a topic that people find interesting or intriguing. Personally, I kind of like 'M,' and Silence of the Lambs.

But I think what makes on-screen rape, and furthermore sympathizing with the rapist so disgusting as opposed to serial murder is that where murder isn't specific to any one type of person, rape (predominately) is. Again, a good point made by that Herbert article - rape is gender-specific, and so it would be like making a movie about racism, or anti-semitism and sympathizing with the aggressor. It's the same thing, but for *some* reason more acceptable.

I don't think these types of movies demand sympathy. Anyone who would sympathize with a sexual or physical abuser has serious issues. To me, such films can however make a rapist real, not just some name and face on a news report, with no background information about the person. For those of us who have not been raped, its really easy to get this idea in our heads that rapist are a certain way or live a certain lifestyle. Movies about abusers can end that kind of stereotyping. I used to think that knowing why certain people did certain acts against me would make it easier to get over what they did and forgive them for their actions and let go. But in the end I have realized that there is no excuse for any type of violence a person commits against another person. So... I think these movies are safe as long as the people watching them, victims and most importantly people who would consider raping another person, know that there is no excuse for such behavior. But I can also understand how people who have been victimized can feel like their story is not being told.

...Joey talked very explicitly about the makers of this movie saying quite expressly that they WERE looking to garner sympathy: that was the whole of her second paragraph, and part of what has her (and the rest of us) so up in arms.

And for the one in three of us who HAS been raped, what Joey -- and others of us were addressing -- is that we do not feel safe with more and more of this stuff. Hell, I'd likely be unable to even watch this, despite all the reading I've done on these issues, and I'd also feel more than a little deranged/masochistic seeing it when pretty clearly, nothing at all has been done to make this something more proactive and sound, such as say, talking to one effing victim or donating some of the funds from the movie to rape prevention, either of which would have been easy, and would have been things someone earnestly interested in making something to forge cahnge for those hurt most by rape would have done.

(Which actually leads me to an idea about some proactive reistance: how about if should this movie be screened at a theater near any of us who are surviviors, we sit outside with a sign making clear that if someone wants to find out about rape SURVIVORS, as well as rapists, we're glad to answer questions?)

And given that time and time again, we all get to live in a world where it's not just a matter of us being made invisible as surviviors, rapists are apologized for? Bigger issue.

I guess I'd ask this: for you who have not been raped, why don't victims stories make rapists real? How do YOU benefit vastly from knowing how a rapist lives -- just like anyone else, mostly, and you already know that, and having his raping "explained" by him? What does that actually accomplish, especially in a world where we have explanations left and right, and yet, rape rates are still what they always were?

So freaking mad. I think, for me, this film would make me physically ill. They bother to make a movie to make rapists look like they just need help and make them seem like better human beings than they are. But every film I have seen which is about the victim, focused on how weak the victim was, and how oh so sad it is that the women had that happen to them because they were in the wrong place or dated the wrong guy... When really... its their RAPIST who is to blame. It was their choice to rape, not like we have a choice whether to be raped or not, they make that choice for us. So why are we trying to make things easier for them in the long run? Even if he suffers when he gets out of a pathetically short sentence, their victims live with what they did to them for the rest of their lives. Why not make a fim about THAT.

And also, Andrea - of the movies you named, I've only seen the Hannibal movies, and while I can see how someone might come away finding Hannibal intriguing as far as characters go, I don't know anyone who's felt sympathetic towards him. Nor was the movie meant to explain how someone would become a cannibal and to advocate that people look at the person behind the cannibal and wonder what made him who he is.

(And as far as actually watching the rape scene goes: every single reviewer -all of which have been male- expressed anything from shock to horror to disgust at it. Apparently, it's shot in real time and the camera never looks away. One even suggested "If you're a guy, don't bring your girlfriend to the movie. If you're a woman, don't see this movie". I honestly do not see the benefit of having that scene in there, no matter what the intention of the movie.)

This is what a rapist looks like.

This is what a rapist thinks, how he acts, how "troubled" he is. This is how NOT complex his motives are. THIS is what he has to offer us, this is how his family and friend's "sympathy" benefits us and women like Julia.