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Jun. 8th, 2019 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat Thought Provoking Review of the Netflix horror flick The Perfection
It does spoil the movie, although I'd more or less chosen to pass anyhow -- since gross-out body horror/torture flicks are decidedly not my cup of tea. Also, I can do without watching people vomit bugs and think bugs are crawling out of their arms.
That and there are apparently graphic and brutal depictions of rape. So, hard pass.
But...I have seen a lot of films like it. And it is a popular story trope -- basically male mentor or cult leader who systematically victimizes the women under him, raping, and brainwashing them. There's another movie out at the moment -- Them That Follow, which looks like it is going down that route.
Anyhow, what she says here is interesting:
On the surface, The Perfection emulates many other horror films that claim feminist cred: It uses its basic conceit — in this case, competition — as a gateway to exploring how women are victimized by a patriarchal society. Over the course of the story, the women must either succumb to that victimization or learn to navigate, survive, and perhaps overcome it. This is the aspect of The Perfection that appreciative critics point to when hailing it as an empowering vengeance fantasy — glossy, thrilling, more than a little zany, and entertaining from start to finish.
But The Perfection has nothing new to say about women’s experiences of sexual violence. In fact, it offers us a fetishized vision of female vengeance, one that ultimately seems far more like an extended male fantasy of domination than an authentic vision of female characters overcoming systemic rape culture.
A big reason for this is that rape revenge stories are nothing new in horror. They typically involve victims of sexual violence going on a murderous rampage after the incident, in order to destroy their rapists. Many rape revenge films kill the victim instead, in order to encourage her family or friends — nearly always men — to embark on this rampage after her death. A graphic subgenre often dubbed “rapesploitation” tends to center on sexual violence, filtered through the male gaze as a titillating form of entertainment, and then using that sexual assault to fuel the ultraviolence that follows.
At the same time, it’s especially tempting, and understandably so in the #MeToo era, to read some of these films as offering a vision of women’s empowerment that respects their autonomy without exploiting them. After all, they do offer us female characters who overcome sexual assault, and that’s at least aspirational. But in many ways, films like The Perfection are anything but feminist — in fact, they’re often actively regressive.
Rape revenge films are nearly always written by men and directed by men. (The Perfection was co-written by Shepard with Eric C. Charmelo and Nicole Snyder, who have both worked in the writers’ room of the decidedly less-than-feminist Supernatural, among other shows.) These mostly male-driven productions position sexual violence against women as a story told by men and meant to be consumed by men. It’s a structural trope of cinema that employs violence for an appropriated cause.
I think of this as the ”Tarantino vengeance fantasy”: You have a white male director/writer (in this case, Shepard) attempting to tell a hyper-fetishized tale of violent retribution on behalf of a marginalized group not his own. Stories like these set up a plot built around systemic violence — whether slavery, the Holocaust, or violent misogyny, to name a few. Then they posit that the remedy for that violence is a progression of deliberate, even gleeful acts of violence in return.
The problem with this model is that stories of revenge and overcoming abuse often look much different when they’re told by the people who’ve actually experienced abuse. All the Tarantino vengeance fantasy does is allow the white men who perpetuate these abuses to begin with to express their guilt. And they do so through a celebration of violence that ultimately just validates it as a tool of oppression.
So the rape revenge film fetishizes both the sexual violence itself and the male guilt surrounding that violence, turning the latter into a vehicle to celebrate yet more violence. Meanwhile, the stories of rape revenge films tend to use a bunch of other ridiculous sexist tropes, because of who’s usually telling them.
Horror is a fascinating genre, it seems to be the opposite of romance. If we had a diagram, horror would be facing romance, with mystery and sci-fi and fantasy floating somewhere around them.
It's meant to be offensive. You are supposed to be horrified, often by your own reactions to it. That's what I find interesting. Horror will often put the viewer in the uncomfortable position of taking a hard look at their own nasty sensibilities.
After all, what is scarier than the monster looking back at us in the mirror in the morning? Or the monster inside our own head? It's why I love psychological horror -- because that's basically the point of it.
Most good horror films show the protagonists struggling with each other, pointing the finger at each other, and not trusting anyone including themselves. A really good horror film makes it difficult for the protagonist by extension the viewer to trust themselves, or their own actions. (See "Haunting of Hill House", "Get Out", "US", for examples.)
Horror is also a means of reassurring the viewer that they will react well in a crisis and it will be averted. But the horror that sticks with you, often won't end on that clean a note. And demonstrates that we most likely will screw things up.
It does spoil the movie, although I'd more or less chosen to pass anyhow -- since gross-out body horror/torture flicks are decidedly not my cup of tea. Also, I can do without watching people vomit bugs and think bugs are crawling out of their arms.
That and there are apparently graphic and brutal depictions of rape. So, hard pass.
But...I have seen a lot of films like it. And it is a popular story trope -- basically male mentor or cult leader who systematically victimizes the women under him, raping, and brainwashing them. There's another movie out at the moment -- Them That Follow, which looks like it is going down that route.
Anyhow, what she says here is interesting:
On the surface, The Perfection emulates many other horror films that claim feminist cred: It uses its basic conceit — in this case, competition — as a gateway to exploring how women are victimized by a patriarchal society. Over the course of the story, the women must either succumb to that victimization or learn to navigate, survive, and perhaps overcome it. This is the aspect of The Perfection that appreciative critics point to when hailing it as an empowering vengeance fantasy — glossy, thrilling, more than a little zany, and entertaining from start to finish.
But The Perfection has nothing new to say about women’s experiences of sexual violence. In fact, it offers us a fetishized vision of female vengeance, one that ultimately seems far more like an extended male fantasy of domination than an authentic vision of female characters overcoming systemic rape culture.
A big reason for this is that rape revenge stories are nothing new in horror. They typically involve victims of sexual violence going on a murderous rampage after the incident, in order to destroy their rapists. Many rape revenge films kill the victim instead, in order to encourage her family or friends — nearly always men — to embark on this rampage after her death. A graphic subgenre often dubbed “rapesploitation” tends to center on sexual violence, filtered through the male gaze as a titillating form of entertainment, and then using that sexual assault to fuel the ultraviolence that follows.
At the same time, it’s especially tempting, and understandably so in the #MeToo era, to read some of these films as offering a vision of women’s empowerment that respects their autonomy without exploiting them. After all, they do offer us female characters who overcome sexual assault, and that’s at least aspirational. But in many ways, films like The Perfection are anything but feminist — in fact, they’re often actively regressive.
Rape revenge films are nearly always written by men and directed by men. (The Perfection was co-written by Shepard with Eric C. Charmelo and Nicole Snyder, who have both worked in the writers’ room of the decidedly less-than-feminist Supernatural, among other shows.) These mostly male-driven productions position sexual violence against women as a story told by men and meant to be consumed by men. It’s a structural trope of cinema that employs violence for an appropriated cause.
I think of this as the ”Tarantino vengeance fantasy”: You have a white male director/writer (in this case, Shepard) attempting to tell a hyper-fetishized tale of violent retribution on behalf of a marginalized group not his own. Stories like these set up a plot built around systemic violence — whether slavery, the Holocaust, or violent misogyny, to name a few. Then they posit that the remedy for that violence is a progression of deliberate, even gleeful acts of violence in return.
The problem with this model is that stories of revenge and overcoming abuse often look much different when they’re told by the people who’ve actually experienced abuse. All the Tarantino vengeance fantasy does is allow the white men who perpetuate these abuses to begin with to express their guilt. And they do so through a celebration of violence that ultimately just validates it as a tool of oppression.
So the rape revenge film fetishizes both the sexual violence itself and the male guilt surrounding that violence, turning the latter into a vehicle to celebrate yet more violence. Meanwhile, the stories of rape revenge films tend to use a bunch of other ridiculous sexist tropes, because of who’s usually telling them.
Horror is a fascinating genre, it seems to be the opposite of romance. If we had a diagram, horror would be facing romance, with mystery and sci-fi and fantasy floating somewhere around them.
It's meant to be offensive. You are supposed to be horrified, often by your own reactions to it. That's what I find interesting. Horror will often put the viewer in the uncomfortable position of taking a hard look at their own nasty sensibilities.
After all, what is scarier than the monster looking back at us in the mirror in the morning? Or the monster inside our own head? It's why I love psychological horror -- because that's basically the point of it.
Most good horror films show the protagonists struggling with each other, pointing the finger at each other, and not trusting anyone including themselves. A really good horror film makes it difficult for the protagonist by extension the viewer to trust themselves, or their own actions. (See "Haunting of Hill House", "Get Out", "US", for examples.)
Horror is also a means of reassurring the viewer that they will react well in a crisis and it will be averted. But the horror that sticks with you, often won't end on that clean a note. And demonstrates that we most likely will screw things up.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-09 12:38 am (UTC)A big reason for this is that rape revenge stories are nothing new in horror.
Exactly. Where's the male revenge version? Why is there never male rape? And no surprise they namedrop SPN in there.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-09 02:17 am (UTC)(Now if only the writer hadn't gone on and had every major lead character in the story get raped...)
Also, in the romance genre, rape is often not a revenge story -- what often happens is the rapist or potential rapist falls in love with the heroine, grovels, and is redeemed through her love. (See Luke and Laura - which was written by a female show-runner.) In romance -- it's the boddice ripper, where he seduces her and well rips her bodice, but over time he falls for her and becomes kind.
I always found it interesting that the romance boddice rippers of the 1960s-1990s were not revenge tales, but survival tales, about people coming to terms with a horrible deed and finding a way to survive or cope with it -- by weirdly and not necessarily well, re-framing it.
Joss Whedon commented on this trope in Buffy, Dollhouse, and to a degree in Firefly, with mixed results.
Both the horror genre and romance genre spend a lot of time on the rape trope.
It hasn't been until recently -- I'd say within the last ten years that the romance genre has moved away from it. Mainly because the audience, which is mostly women, won't tolerate it -- and tends to rip apart any romance novel in which the hero is a rapist or a potential one. The daytime soaps -- have also moved away from graphic depictions of rape -- they may allude to it, but they won't go through it on-screen any longer, and they won't let the heroine fall for her rapist nor will they redeem him. Those days are over.
And yeah, SPN, I think has run its course, I'm not sure shows like it can survive for long in the current environment.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-10 01:20 am (UTC)I always found it interesting that the romance boddice rippers of the 1960s-1990s were not revenge tales, but survival tales, about people coming to terms with a horrible deed and finding a way to survive or cope with it -- by weirdly and not necessarily well, re-framing it.
Well that's essentially what Janice Radway found, that romance reading was, in general, a way for women to reframe troubling behavior that signalled a lack of concern or affection into something they could live with.
I think the reason it's not tolerated now is that most women won't stand for the idea of marriage as a form of sanctioned rape or purchase. As it happens we just watched the first episode of Jamestown yesterday and the state of women is pretty much that of chattel being bought and used, even if they were the ones selling themselves into marriage.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-10 01:37 am (UTC)Weirdly, Contemporary Romance Writers aren't always as advanced. I've read a lot of contemporary romances written between 2000-2018 that are...ahem, less than politically correct. That said, it's gotten better -- the last one I read, the guy was very kind and did not push things at all. And the Fifty Shades books actually had the heroine kick the rapist in the crotch. (It had other issues, but hey we had that.) So, I'd say the contemporary romance genre is dicier than the historical romance genre. Weirdly, woman in contemporary romances have less power than in the historicals, and there's more ingrained misogyny -- they are whiny, pathetic, and often need a guy to either save them or can't handle not being without a guy. There's also arranged marriages in a few of them.
It's odd. But it's why I don't tend to like them as well. That and the writing isn't as good. Contemporary romance writers are somewhat lazy with description, plot and character development -- they focus almost entirely on sex, which gets really boring and increasingly unbelievable as you go.