So… Devin Faraci is getting torn-apart on Twitter and on his own website for posting (well, more for posting and being enthusiastic about it) a “no texting during the movie” bumper from FrightFest (horror movie festival) that is, to put it mildly, pitch-dark stuff.
I’m not going to embed it here – not because I believe in “censorship” necessarily but because I DO take things like “Trigger Warnings” seriously and I’m not comfortable putting it up where someone might click it without wanting to. But, this IS one of “the” movie-geek discussions of the day, so if you want to see Devin’s original article, the video itself and the subsequent blowup in the comments click HERE. (incredibly NSFW, obviously.)
Description of said video (as said, Trigger Warning) and some thoughts after the jump…
Okay, so…
The basic idea of the clip is as follows: A woman is texting during a movie. The guy behind her asks her to stop. She blows him off. He stabs her in the back of the head with a pencil, killing her (this is, I stress, a horror movie festival dedicated to the extremes of the genre – think “A Serbian Film.”) He then unzips his pants and proceeds to perform a sex-act on the stab-wound, literally climaxing with his semen running out of the dead girl’s mouth and onto the screen of her smartphone. The End.
Yeah.
Well.
Do I have a problem with this? Kind of, yeah.
I’m not against shock-art, and I don’t think the overriding idea of the piece (a bloody version of the “dont text or something bad will happen” bit because it’s a horror festival) is out of bounds at all. And, while I’m at a loss to imagine HOW it could ever be done “right,” I suppose that if every other form of horrible violence can be fodder for “fun” horror-exploitation rape is “on the table.” And while I don’t share Devin’s enthusiasm (it’s not well-executed, enough, frankly – goes on too long) I “get” where he’s coming from in appreciating the sheer audacity of it.
What bothers me about this isn’t necessarily the rape (though, obviously, that’s unpleasant as all hell and goes on WAY too long for it to have any hope of being “clever” or “funny” in even a black-comedy way) but the misogyny behind it. Yes, naturally, male-on-female rape is always automatically misogynist in nature… but the conflating of it HERE with “don’t fuck up our movie-watching experience” angle and the “girls are the ones who theater-text” stereotype puts a (likely unintended) extra dimension onto the whole thing that makes it feel like her “crime” was less specifically texting and more being a woman in a traditionally male space – i.e. “stupid girl doesn’t know how to act at our Hardcore Horror-Geek FilmFest” with rape/murder as a “put her in her place” corrective.
I’m not saying that was the INTENT of the filmmaker, but it’s how it comes off – so, yeah, in that context I can see why people reacted so negatively to the way Devin presented this.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 
@ Andrew.
You were clearly being pedantic. I was saying things like “…a re-tread of a long established cinematic tradition, wherein females are threatened with rape,” you counter it with “She was not threatened with rape.”
Oh wait, you're right, she wasn't threatened with rape…She was raped. Because that totally refutes my point. Pedant.
“Why are comic depictions of heinous acts not entitled to the same defense as other forms of humor?”
Good question. Not all heinous acts are the same. Rape is pretty much up at the top, and you'd have to have been born yesterday to not know how seriously people take it. So whenever you defend a rape joke, you're essentially defending what many see to be the utmost offensive and tasteless humour.
This is in constrast to your “racist joke”, which isn't a big issue, and people probably wouldn't mind you defending in the first place. Perhaps if you told an actual racist joke instead of a goofy non sequitor, people might have a problem with you defending it.
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“Oh wait, you're right, she wasn't threatened with rape…She was raped. Because that totally refutes my point.”
Yes, it does. Here's what you said: “[If the victim were male] it wouldn't be stereotypical. It wouldn't be a re-tread of a long established cinematic tradition, wherein females are threatened with rape.”
The woman in the video was not threatened with rape (she wasn't even threatened) and she wasn’t raped either. It can't be stereotypical of that filmic trope if it doesn't actually happen in the video.
But what the hell, let’s examine it anyway!
Being threatened with rape is completely different from actually being raped. The distinction between the two is not insignificant and while I don't think “women getting raped” is prevalent enough in mainstream film to be considered a stereotype (although being threatened with rape certainly is), I would say the way rape is typically used is certainly a trope.
While the “threatened with rape” trope is most often utilized to put a woman in peril in order to give her or another hero an obstacle to overcome, actual rape is most commonly used either as a shorthand for “this character is really, really evil and deserves anything that happens to him or her” or as motivation for the protagonist (“They raped my loved one, I'm going to kill them!” or “They raped me, I'm going to kill them!).
Neither of these things happen in the video though. The skullfucking isn't done in order to paint the guy as evil and deserving of some epically ass-biting karma, it's done as retribution against the villain (the person texting during the film). Rape as a form of retribution against the antagonist? That’s certainly not a “long established cinematic tradition.” Also, the skullfucking wasn't a motivating factor for the video's protagonist, it was the action he was motivated to take! I don’t know about you but I can’t think of enough movies where the protagonist is motivated to rape to label that a “long established cinematic tradition” either.
Anyway, those are what I'd consider the most stereotypical applications of the rape trope but as you can see, neither apply (even if you do consider sticking your dick in a hole in the back of a corpse's head, rape.) Of course, those aren't the only ways rape is often used in film so if you think of another that better fits the video, please share it.
“So whenever you defend a rape joke, you're essentially defending what many see to be the utmost offensive and tasteless humour.”
But again, “So? How or why is that a problem? Why are comic depictions of heinous acts not entitled to the same defense as other forms of humor?”
“Perhaps if you told an actual racist joke instead of a goofy non sequitor, people might have a problem with you defending it.”
Okay, pretend my joke meets whatever your qualifications for “an actual racist joke” are. ”Please explain why that joke doesn't deserve to be defended if someone accuses it of being something it's not or claims that it says, suggests, or implies something it doesn't?”
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@ Andrew
On rape vs threats of rape – I'm not bothering to make any distinction. The point I'm making is that women are all too often associated with rape in movies. Drop the “threatened” part, if it makes it any easier to understand. This is why I don't agree with your argument about the guy's motivation. I don't think it makes any difference to the fact that women have to deal with rape far too often. Also, stop emphasising the fact that she's a corpse. It looked to me like she wasn't quite dead, during the rape.
As for defending types of humour; to put it in the most simple terms, “utmost offensive and tasteless humour” is a bad thing, and it is wrong to defend bad things.
”Please explain why that joke doesn't deserve to be defended if someone accuses it of being something it's not or claims that it says, suggests, or implies something it doesn't?”
I'm confused by the question. The only thing people will accuse racist jokes of is being racist. And if it is racist, then it would be wrong to defend the joke.
I suspect what you're trying to say is “if I don't think the joke is racist, there is nothing wrong with defending it from accusations of racism.” If that is your point, then fine. But I think it would take a particularly oblivious person to not spot the hypothetical joke as being racist.
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“The point I'm making is that women are all too often associated with rape in movies.”
I very much agree.
“This is why I don't agree with your argument about the guy's motivation.”
Just to make sure we're still on the same page, my argument is that the guy's motivation was based on her actions not her gender.
“It looked to me like she wasn't quite dead, during the rape.”
Oh? Well that's interesting. I haven't seen anyone else suggest that and it's certainly not how I interpreted it. For what it's worth, that's not how MovieBob took it either: “He stabs her in the back of the head with a pencil, killing her… He then unzips his pants and proceeds to perform a sex-act on the stab-wound, literally climaxing with his semen running out of the dead girl's mouth…”
“…”utmost offensive and tasteless humour” is a bad thing…”
I disagree. I don't think it's a bad thing for other people to find enjoyment in a joke that I regard as offensive and tasteless.
“…it is wrong to defend bad things.”
I disagree with that too. Hitler is a bad thing but I'd certainly defend him if someone said he molested children because, so far as I'm aware, that didn't happen and there's no evidence to support it.
“I'm confused by the question.”
My previous answer probably cleared it up but let's take this video as an example. I think the woman is very clearly murdered because she was texting during a movie, not because of her gender. As such, I'm asking why it's not okay to defend this video against claims of misogyny and sexism when it exhibits, in my eyes at least, no such traits.
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