If we're going to start banning shit from movies, let's start by banishing the shakycam.

Don't see that correlation at all, unless it's the venerable notion that sex in cinema stops men who would otherwise have raped. That's a far hotter potato, particularly in Ron's native land, than anything in this piece.

If it bothers you, don't watch it

Who expected that it'd be there? Thirty years of slasher films since Halloween have personally not prepared me for the very recent influx of rape in horror films. Lots of horror fans, particularly female horror fans, have been taken by surprise at having a species of movies they enjoy ramp its classic misogyny up from second gear to fuel-injected.

In the UK, the BBFC, which provides the ratings and advisory notices for theatrical and disc releases, has 'violence' as a category and also 'sexual content'. It has no category for 'sexualised violence' or 'rape', as opposed to certifiers in countries like New Zealand. It will occasionally mention 'sexualised violence' in the subdescription, but that's it. If they institute a RAPE category, it'll be easier for me to give it a miss.

And I would. I'm not interested in watching rape in a rubber-necking context in a movie that is intended to be escapist, and I'm sorry for people who either are or who don't give a shit. This isn't like serial killers or vampires - it's too fucking close to the more common horrors of real life. And it's too politically contentious to be handled in this way.

This criticism makes no sense. If he thinks it's good then it means he thinks it has merit, and that he already has favourable opinions regarding what influence it might have on society.

I think even loosely using the term 'let's ban this' will make the majority of us visualise a Daily Mail headline and become automatically defensive of our freedom to see what we want, Matt isn't saying he loves watching rape movies, but that it's his choice.

I think you (Jenny) have had a really unfortunate run of movies that have not only been rape themed, but also been terrible to watch. Like all subgenres it will no doubt come and go again, but trying to ban it won't actually help anything. I can tell you that as a zero budget short filmmaker I am currently looking to try and make a feature, although I'm trying to avoiding the cheap exploitation route it is very tempting. I could pour my heart and soul into an artistic endeavour and get nowhere, or try and make a cheap movie that relies on nastiness and controversy to sell it and get it sold. I'm not defending the recent films you've seen because I haven't seen them, but it's certainly understandable that it's a cheap and easy way to get recognition as a filmmaker...

Hostel is by far the most underappreciated comedy of the last decade (falling on a chainsaw is so over the top I couldn't help myself), but Hostel 2 is dire, I wouldn't worry about whether Part 2 was uncut or not, I didn't even clock the violence as the film was so damn bad. Besides when it comes to a sequel most people are even better informed in choosing whether to see it or not, just leave Roth to his childish whims and let the box office do the damage.

From the article:

I don't want to see the removal of all vaguely unpleasant content from the shelves and can't see any good reason for doing so. But equally I can't sit and watch the blatant and unchecked use of women being violated for 'entertainment'....[apparently] I've either got to allow it all or be completely against everything, otherwise my opinion doesn't count. If that's not a reflection of the desire for conflict we seem to have in this world, I don't know what is.

So at one end of the cultural spectrum we have far-right fundamentalism of all kinds, Yashmaks, beheadings, the compulsory teaching of 'intelligent design' and the end of any movies that anyone would want to watch. At the other end we have Holocaust Rape Porno, Rollerball and webcam-murder on demand.

Midnighter - the bit between these two extremes is what's known as 'society', where we have to work out where the boundaries should be. It's not reasonable to quote the fucking Simpsons anytime anyone dares ask a question.

You do this, I now know, without even reading the article and having any idea what the discussion really is. That's my point. I think most people would have picked it up.

No-one said rape should be removed from all films. That is a rocky road. But the way rape is handled in a film like The Accused, Boys Don't Cry and even a thriller like The Debt Collector is very different from what's currently becoming a trend - the use of rape as titillation in horror movies and even - God help us - a horror 'comedy' like Otis. It's just 'rape porno' by proxy: the same way that 'lads mags' became 'skin-mags for cowards' in the late nineties applies here. Rape-porno, where the actors are allowed to portray rape-scenarios in a pornographic context, is legal in the US, albeit subject to very strict guidelines. And since it is legal, that's where this kind of material belongs when it is approached as 'entertainment'.

The rape scenes in A Clockwork Orange and Frenzy were, to my mind, in the same class as this current spate of rape in horror movies, even though I generally like those films, which were directed by Kubrick and Hitchcock respectively. In that period, movie-makers were revelling in the sudden and hard-won freedom from decades of repression and censorship under the Hayes Convention and the MPAA; and that explains a lot of the sex and gore between 1968-78. And a lot of the rape in movies like Straw Dogs, as well as the aforementioned. They were getting it out of their system. Quite why it has returned now is less clear, at least to me.

To my mind, you or I might be able to stick watching a horror film, even The Accused, with our mums, though it would be uncomfortable. But I bet neither of us would want to watch Otis with her. We'd be ashamed, and quite bloody right too.

Check out the editorial treatment at FilmDrunk of news that The Watchmen will have a 'brutal rape scene'.

ANd I think real-life murder, rape, and torture is a lot more worthy of spending money to try and stop or prevent than anything that happens on screen in a movie theater (or straight to DVD film).

I was under the impression that the sexualized violence tag was regularly used there. If we have a qualifier for rape, then the fact that the land of the Video Nasties doesn't have one is a bit stunning.

Who wanted to take federal funding away from the police to tackle this? This has absolutely nothing to do with the issue.

That kind of shit is what keeps so many women from participating online (without a false male identity anyway.) Comments like that, about a subject like rape, for the smirky-sick thrill of getting a laugh out of other anonymouse sick fucks is.... unbelievable.

Yes, Jenny. i'm squirming too. :(

I feel really ill right now. And worried. And despressed.

I think a lot of people got fired up by words like 'ban', but let's face it guys, none of you are ever going to feel the same way about this subject - to your core - as any woman does. If you could, you might see why it was easy for Jenny to want to wipe it out.

The point I was making was to acknowledge that a female author of an article like this brings to it her own gut feelings on the subject.

I can empathise with victims of gay-bashing, race-related violence, religious persecution or any number of other atrocities, but I'd never for one second claim to understand how it would feel to be in their shoes.

1 in 60 US women are said by the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network to have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes. 90% of rape victims were women - not to denigrate the issue of male rape, that puts the focus pretty firmly on the rape of females. Also, a rape occurs every 2 minutes in the US as opposed to every 33 minutes for murder.

Unless you're an orphan with a very limited social circle, someone in your phone book has been through it. Maybe your mother or your sister...? Is it still 'just a fact of life' that's fit for puerile treatment in horror films? I bet you're a lot LOT further removed from knowing anyone who was chopped up/hacked/strangled etc.

Incidentally, the college-age women who are the strongest female demographic for the type of horror films under discussion here are 4 times more likely to be sexually assaulted.

Whichever statistics you want to believe about the under-reporting of rape, your own common-sense will tell you that there's a substantial hidden tide of rape victims. Would you want to stand up in court and let the world know what happened to you?

BTW, you think 1 in 60 US women raped is an exaggerated figure? I've taken that into account and only quoted 10% of the published figure. Which is actually 1 in 6.

This is a dismal, common and cowardly crime that is all around us, and it deserves better treatment in film than this.

Yes, rape is common. And you know what some of the most common rape is? Child rape. Shall we put that in our horror films too? Hey, since AVP2, Mother Of Tears, Funny Games and other releases of the last 18 months, killing kids has become acceptable - so why not raping them? That'd really wake us up and get our jaws dropping. After all, following some of the arguments in this thread, horror films need to keep continually pushing our boundaries or we get bored, God forbid. And it's only a movie, right? Just fiction, as you say.

I bet you don't want to watch that film. I fucking know I don't.

The restraints that stop us putting something hitherto unspeakable (or unfilmable)on screen are not necessarily like the evil old Berlin wall, nor are the - very commercial - directors under attack here usually trying to prove polemic points. They're not that kind of film-maker. It's not that kind of film and it's not aimed at that kind of audience.

As for the effects of rape, which you talk about, I am presuming and hoping that you're not talking from a place of experience. If you're not, these are pretty glib comments for an 'outsider'.

Rape is an act of violence, not sex, and it's just as brutal as murder and I'd dare to say that there are women - and men - who for a long time after, would rather have died than have lived through it.

I thank all that's good in the world that your female friend or relative has a stronger outlook on life. Something to be thankful for.

I have to wonder, if movies like Hard Candy had started a trend where castration became the new extra added attraction in every other horror film. who exactly might be bothered by that? Who might squirm a bit, protest it, and be offended when sites existed with post after post condoning and encouraging it and mocking anyone that spoke out against an established trend that used castration as a form of 'entertainment'.

I've got to move on to other pages because, although I always considered DoG to be an informative place, it was also always fun. And I'm not feeling the fun these past couple of days, although I thank Jenny wholeheartedly for being brave enough to speak her mind so publicly about this issue.

Exactly what context is there that makes it ok to show rape/torture? What are some examples here?

The Accused and Boys Don't Cry are strong contenders. Rape isn't trivialised in The Bad Lieutenent or in The Debt Collector , and is a key plot element in both, as it is in The Generals' Daughter, The Offense, Once Were Warriors, Thelma And Louise, Sophie's Choice, 10 Rillington Place and Monster . It is also used (IMO) without being exploitative in Leaving Las Vegas , L.A. Confidential , Memento and K-Pax , and is a key plot element in The Handmaid's Tale . Though not equal to each-other in merit, these are all intense movies which don't present rape in the frivolous or prurient spirit of the horror-movies discussed in this thread.

'Controversial' rape scenes include: the gruelling 13-minute rape and murder of Monica Bellucci in Irreversible , which (like the rape inWaz) is essential to a deep theme of the film but is extremely harrowing to watch; and the rape and murder of Brenda Blaney in Hitchcock's Frenzy , which has been cited as both exploitative and repugnant and - like Irreversible - lauded for showing the grisly, cowardly and non-glamorous nature of the crime.

I love that we can air these things and it's good to hear others' opinions, even if mine's set in stone. ;)

MadOvid's question was a good one, and twosheds was ready with a pretty extensive collection of examples. I can't watch many of those films, great as some are, without skipping certain scenes and that includes Sleepers and one of my ultimate favourites - Shawshank Redemption - whether anything is shown or implied. I also can't watch things where kids die - once I know - like films named here and Pet Semetary. I rely on IMDB a lot for stuff like that and I'd rather have a spoiler revealed than be caught offguard by something I didn't wnat to see. Friends who know me warn me too. But sometimes both things let me down and I'm shocked - not in a good way. Clearer labeling would help, I'd imagine.

Midnighter - I have no doubt that you never wanrted to belittle anything or anybody ;) and you're right about good debate.

I really need to wipe the filth that was the other site's comments from my mind, though. That's gonna be a tough job. I kept reading, thinking... when is somebody going to say something decent!? Who are those guys!? And how do I make sure no woman ever comes across them!? :( I just hope none of them ever makes their way here.

I'm really glad I can come here and comment, even if I may not like every comment I read. :)

It's just too tempting to introduce rhetorical motifs like 'if you say A, then you must also mean B' into a debate like this.

This last paragraph is just to see the HTML worked.

I feel like a Web design genius now ;-)