Finals Week: I Spit on This Movie: Rape in Day of the Woman/I Spit On Your Grave

That's right, folks! It's Finals Week again, when we post academic articles about horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action flicks written by our extremely educated staff. All week long you can read these slightly modified but always theory-filled papers and do your best to follow along.

I Spit on This Movie: Rape in Day of the Woman/I Spit On Your Grave by Heidi Martinuzzi

In the recent remake of the 1980 exploitation horror film “I Spit On Your Grave”, some scenes involving the protagonist, Jennifer – a young woman brutally raped by 4 men who seeks a violent and bloody revenge – were written out because the director felt that it was unrealistic that Jennifer would actively seduce each rapist before killing him. Not only did the director feel that taking out this almost insulting aspect of the original movie made his new version more realistic, he felt that it also eliminated the ‘exploitation’ factor from the movie. The ‘exploitation’, he insists, was in the unnecessary extra sex and nudity that he doesn’t show in his 2010 release.

However, just like the original, there is a prolonged and agonizing scene of Jennifer (played by Camille Keaton in the original and Sarah Butler in the new one) being gang-raped repeatedly. Originally released in 1978 as “Day of the Woman”, reissued in 1980 as “I Spit on Your Grave”, Meir Zarchi’s rape/revenge story prompted strong reactions from mainstream moviegoers and critics alike. Roger Ebert reviewed it as “a vile bag of garbage…sick, reprehensible, and contemptible” and “an expression of the most diseased and perverted darker human natures.” Ebert concluded that “because it is made artlessly, it flaunts its motives: There is no reason to see this movie except to be entertained by the sight of sadism and suffering.”

Carol Clover, in her milestone work about gender and horror films "Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Film", says she hated the film but acknowledged that it “at least problematizes the issue of male (sexual) violence” (Clover, 1992, 115). Clover researched viewer’s reactions and saw that women wanted to rationalize the violence by focusing on the revenge and “went so far as to call it a radical feminist film; another (male) found it such a devastating commentary on male rape fantasies and also on the way male group dynamics engender violence that he thought it should be compulsory viewing for high school boys” (Clover, 1992, 115-116).

However, making something as violent and violently sexual as “I Spit on Your Grave” (either version) may not be wise. Studies have shown than when shown sexually violent material, college-aged men “are more likely than other men to believe that the victim of an actual rape deserved what they got… Messages of sexual violence cause callousness towards victims of violent crimes in college-aged males.” (Bass, 1995).

As if to further blur the lines of rape and consensual sex, both films utilize some questionable techniques. In the original, Jennifer seeks out each rapist one by one and engages in sexual activity with him to presumably lure him into a false sense of security before actually killing him. Though there is no real need for Jennifer to seduce the men before killing them, the general idea was to get as much nudity and sex in the movie as possible; to make it as ‘sexy’ as possible. Though in real life the idea of having consensual sex with her rapists, even as a ploy to eventually kill him, is more than abhorrent to a real rape victim, it was enthusiastically used.

In the remake, these seduction scenes are taken out but are replaced with a variety of inappropriate one-liners spoken by Butler‘s Jennifer right before she dispatches her rapists via a set of increasingly elaborate and painful death traps. “It’s date night!” and “You fucked me, now I’m going to fuck you!” delivered by an angry woman moments before she violently and painfully kills a man who raped her carries some difficult to ignore implications of a date-gone-wrong, bad sex regretted by an angry woman, or a very close connotation between forced gang-rape and a ‘date’. Despite being in poor taste, this writing reinforces the seductive aspects of Jennifer’s killing spree he was so eager to avoid in his remake in order to insert more realism into the character’s desire for revenge.

Most likely the film that shows the most sexual violence towards a woman at the hands of men than any other horror film in existence, “I Spit on Your Grave” can arguably have a very negative impact on the way women and men perceive their own sexuality and interactions.

“Social Inequality is substantially created and en-forced- that is, done- through words and images. Social hierarchy cannot and does not exist without being embodied in meanings and expressed in communication.” (McKinnon, 1993, 13). Surely there is no greater imagery of social (and by default, sexual) inequality than the prolonged, ten-minute rape of a young women by 4 men, one of whom is a member of law enforcement and has decided to take part in the rape rather than acknowledge it as a crime?

McKinnon would argue further that it isn’t simply true that we’re only watching a fantasy. She makes a case that even though the actors are acting; physically they are going through with the acts. Physically, the actress (either Camille Keaton or Sarah Butler) are naked and are being touched sexually by the men. Even though no penetration occurs, the motions of rape take place and the actress calls upon those feelings to make the scene as believable as possible. In essence, McKinnon would say, she is ‘experiencing’ the rape, and by watching it, so are we. Except that the males watching it will have the experience of rapist while the women will understand the idea of women as sexual victims.

Sarah Butler reveals her deeply emotional appreciation of being someone who was raped based solely on the performance in the film. Keeping in mind McKinnon’s words while Butler relates her story of emotionally and mentally changing from healthy woman to sexual victim throughout the course of the movie is unnerving.

“Going from being a normal woman – a young woman on the verge of a great career, having everything going for her, never believing that anything like this could ever happen to her,” begins Butler, “and then just the shock of, ‘Oh my God, this really did happen to me?’ And so she finally gets to the point where life isn’t worth living anymore. She throws herself off a bridge. When she doesn’t die after doing that, I think it’s just kind of like, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do? I can never go back to a normal life.’ I think she still has to fight her human urges to want to forgive these guys, not to want to hurt them. There’s a moment in the film where you’ll see, right before the torture and the murders, she wants to be able to move past it but she knows she can’t. It’s more like this personal journey of the loss of meaning of life after this trauma than a feminist film. It’s not like, ‘Go women! We can overpower men!’ It’s almost more like it’s the very sad truth of what happens to a woman whose life can never be the same again.”

Director Monroe definitely wanted to make his rape scenes as realistic as humanly possible. “I can only come at it from a director/man’s perspective. She [Butler] had to do all the work. I didn’t want to set this as a ‘movie’. There are no cuts when we shot the rape scene. We only changed angles. She went through the whole scene.”

The long, drawn-out rape scene as shot by Monroe and acted by Butler is pornography and sexual exploitation in real life, according to Giobbe, in the sense that Butler physically experienced everything (she was nude, she was held by the men, she was forced to the ground, she was spoken to and slapped, etc.) short of actual penetration. Taking into account that Butler was a ‘willing’ participant (insomuch as she agreed to act out the scenario for money), what ends up on screen is an actual rape, filmed and deemed ‘entertainment’. (Giobbe, 1995).

Monroe unknowingly admits the deep impression his film has on real rape victims because it is, in a sense, an actual rape, when he describes an audience member and rape survivor’s intense reaction:

“At a test screening of “I Spit on Your Grave”, there was a woman who wrote a blog who happened to be a victim of rape. She was very affected, emotional and upset during the rape scenes. She stood up and cheered during the revenge scenes when horrific things happen to the men. I couldn’t tell anyone how to feel. These subjects have to be appreciated on the screen; the real drama and emotions of what happens to a woman.”

The movie, both versions, isn’t based on a true story. It was originally written as a grind house exploitation movie for purely entertainment purposes. And it has only been viewed as such. Even though there are many people who find the film completely devoid of any redeeming qualities or too disturbing to watch (see Ebert, 1980), it remains a low budget cult favorite seen as nothing more than an expression of some of the grittier and less pleasant artistic sensibilities of filmmakers.

McKinnon doesn’t think movies like “I Spit on Your Grave” are only effective as pure entertainment. She believes they reinforce women’s sexual abuse at the hands of men as much as any violent ‘real’ pornography does. She argues for a very real danger of women being abused because of a consistently reinforced violent sexual message against women in the media.

“Sooner or later, in one way or another, the consumers want to live out the pornography further in three dimensions. Sooner or later, in one way or another, they do. It makes them want to; when they believe they can, when they feel they can get away with it, they do.” (McKinnon, 1993, 19).

And without knowing, director Steven R. Monroe agrees with her. “Horrible people aren’t born,” he says, describing why he thinks the four male characters in “I Spit on Your Grave” rape Jennifer, “they become. They are people, they’re lost. I blame the men’s nonexistent parents. This is a growing problem in the US. They grew up in a culture that doesn’t see outside their front yards. They are full of hate, anger, and confusion.”

If McKinnon is right, this "hate, anger, and confusion" could be created by mixed messages about women’s equality and men’s place as sexual aggressor and dominator. Violent pornography and images like the ones in “I Spit on Your Grave” stem from the perpetuation and justification of rape and prostitution, from which male supremacy is derived in our culture. (Dworkin, 1995). Everything from women’s pleasure and desire to their rights to say no or exist as equals in a male-dominated world come into question when what is shown on film screens says that they are definitely not equals, are not supported by society in their fight against sexual oppression, and have only one recourse: a violent “Thelma and Louise”-like death spree that very often ends in the obliteration of their own will to exist. As Sarah Butler describes it perfectly,” it’s the very sad truth of what happens to a woman whose life can never be the same again.”

References

Bass, A. (1995). “Do Slasher Films Breed Real-Life Violence?” In Dines, G., Humez J.M. (Eds)
Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Butler, S. (personal interview, March 2010). Retrieved from http://www.planetfury.com/content/sarah-butler-i-spit-your-grave-remake

Clover, C.J. (1992). Men, women, and chainsaws: Gender in the modern horror film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Dworkin, A. Bass, A. (1995). Pornography and Male Supremacy. In Dines, G., Humez J.M. (Eds) Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader. Thousand Oaks: Sage

Ebert, R. (1980). Review. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved from http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19800716/REVIE...

Giobbe, E. (1995). Surviving Commercial Sexual Exploitation. In Dines, G., Humez J.M. (Eds) Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

McKinnon, C. (1993) Only words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

S. R. Monroe (personal interview, Oct 2010).