“What Makes a Good Rape Scene?” by Natasha Vargas-Cooper
TW: sexual assault
WHAT MAKES A GOOD RAPE SCENE?
If we are to believe that a rape scene is used in a movie to demonstrate a ferocious moral transgression against a character then a good rape scene, and there are only a few, should repulse you. If we believe that rape is a true act of violence and cruelty, then a scene depicting rape should feel ugly and leave us cringing, disgusted, perhaps even a little violated ourselves for having witnessed such a thing .
A bad rape scene, which many are, will contain too much eroticism. The exposed breast is perfectly powered and lit and lingers on camera before it get pumps up and down. The panty tear happens in slow motion, adding to the greater intensity. If the camera only showed the woman’s face you’d only be able to guess that at worst, she was having rough sex, and best, GREAT SEX.
The rape scene in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was so lovingly done, it was downright arousing. Rooney Mara’s bare ass and almost exposed crotch — the eye is immediately drawn to the shadowed crevasse between her thighs. It’s impossible not to stare, out of arousal or prurience, or both— as she violently jerks her waif body on a mattresses with mouth duct taped shut. Perhaps Fincher meant to shock us by showing us all angles of a naked, writhing Rooney, bucking and screaming with all the lights on, but rather than shocking, it was somewhat arousing. It certainly was the most thrilling scene in a very dull, joyless movie. The rape was done with glee, that verve on screen was impossible to ignore, so instead of looking away while an emotionally disturbed, malnourished woman is being forcibly sodomized, my animal parts started wriggling. Instead of cringing, I leered. At no point does Rooney drop her boot camp tested toughness, she’s robust and aggressive during her attempts to throw her rapist off of her as well during the actual rape. The toughness we love in her before is again on full display now. Had she broken, started to beg or wilt, perhaps it would have been too pitiful, the rape scene would have felt gratuitous instead of enticing.
Fincher provides the perfunctory scene, where we can exhale and feel the grief in the shower, where our heroine sits. Bruised, sobbing, and alone, tits covered up.
When I think of a good rape scene I think of Dr. Melfi on the parking lot stairwell. I remember crossing my legs and pressing them together out of terror from that scene. Not a shred of eroticism in that scene. You knew, in your gut, that you were witnessing something that inspires disgust— not arousal.
Some directors try to play that trick, and few do this one well, where a rape scene is purposefully ambivalent. This tricks us into being aroused then promptly punished for our lust. Take the infamous 8 minute rape scene in Irreversible, like most, I felt it was titillating at first, watching Monica Bellucci in a nude cocktail dress, with her nipples hard as diamonds, pressed up against the subway wall but then director Gasper Noe delivers on the full promise of A Rape: an unedited, one angle, howling, excruciating act of violence committed in real time. It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen on film.
The Rooney Mara scene will be at best forgettable and at worst arousing. It’s a scene played out thousands of times in on porn sites, its called ‘rapeplay’, its not snuff or actual footage of rape. Its main purpose is as a masturbatory aid, a simulation, minus all the psychic carnage. Every one there is professional and they are ‘playing’ with the notion of rape — rough sex, resistance and force, saying no no, while every one looks great. That’s what tonight’s little scene was, rape play, done by an Oscar Nominee.
