Rape is not Entertainment” Some years ago I sat frozen in my seat through “ Straw Dogs.” A tense thriller movie that was based around the brutal rape of a young woman and the defense of a house under siege. The “happy ending” was the various and often imaginative killing by the hero, of all the attackers. Leaving the theater I was numb for days and felt so bad I resolved never to watch that kind of movie again. I have kept that resolution to this day and avoid even horror movies-- un-fashionable though that may be. In particular I just can’t find any “entertainment” in watching the rape of a woman. Why offer a how--to tutorial for perverts on the physical overwhelm and degradation of women? I like things to make sense and for the life of me I can’t make sense of this. Around the world we see that Rape is often not recognized for the vicious criminal act it really is. The repeated showing of the images associated with rape change the perception. We seem willing to accept the abuse of women as part of a movie, something we would never do if the victim were a child Yes I know it’s just a movie but when the theater closes and we are driving home with the terrible images of what we have seen being replayed in our heads, what then? The theater has doors marked EXIT but there are no such doors in our minds and we are left trying to process the impossible. As true as it may be that the brain is like a computer there are no or buttons in our minds. We are stuck with what we take in. This being the case I want to decide for myself what I have to process. Ok so you can say I’m not cool, but I stay away from those movies and if I’m suddenly faced with one on TV and I can’t get to the remote to hit the off, I’m gone from the room. I’m showing my age now but I suggest we follow the advice of Nancy Sinatra who once sang, “These boots were made for walking.”
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 02:24:48 +0000