Rape on Film: Is it Justified ?

Baise-Moi (Kiss Me) was a French film released in 2000 about a sex/murder rampage by 2 women. It features very very sexually explicit, with an 18 certificate. It is on the viewing list for one of my modules at university and I watched it on Friday night for the first time, after renting it.

I still do not know what to make of it as a film. Part of me thinks it is extremely brave in how it deals with female sexuality but I am extremely anti-pornography or anything pornographic so I just felt ambivlent towards how it showed sex. The 2 women (Rafaella Anderson & Karen Bach, 2 ex-adult film actresses) were sublime and very good when they actually had dialogue and interacted with each other. Time magazine reportedly said that Anderson had star quality and was ‘part seraph, part slut’. Yet, the extremely graphic sex scenes were off-putting and disturbing for me.

However, they were not nearly as disturbing as the rape scene. I have not seen the Accused with Jodie Foster but I will rent it today but according to viewers on Amazon, the scene there is very graphic. Having not seen it, I can’t compare but the rape scene in this film is incredibly difficult to even bear to think about watching. It happens early on in the film but in fact, I think it forms a core of the film. However, the explicit nature of the rape scene has made me wonder — is it justified ?

I think the directors that tackle rape are brave and should be commended. In this case, I think in Baise-Moi, the rape scene fundamentally shows that it is something which will always haunt men and torment women. Not all men are rapists of course but rape scenes remind us that we should never think it may never happen to us. Because it may.

Side Note: I was absolutely appalled reading one review on Amazon of The Accused. Some philistine called Betty La Fongga noted that “no one deserves to be raped, but she plays a real low-life in this movie. I actually liked that about the film. It wasn’t some innocent virgin who just got mauled. It was a really trashy girl, so trashy that no one in the bar did anything about her rape because she was such a loose scumbag that everyone just thought it was her usual antics.”

What the fuck is wrong with this person ? I haven’t seen the film true but ANY WOMAN regardless of who she has slept with or not does not deserve to be raped. I hate that this comment is implying all these tired bullshit stereotypes about the ‘madonna/whore’ complex.