This is a follow-up to an an earlier review, which I would like to amend after recently seeing GRAVE again and listening to the commentaries on the Millennium edition DVD.
In that review, I sided with the folks who defend GRAVE for portraying the true ugliness of rape, and thus refuting some offensive and downright dangerous myths that have caused women so much grief over the years. I haven't changed my mind, but I have come to realize that in the process of refuting some of those myths, GRAVE has unintentionally supported several others.
On the one hand, GRAVE tells you men who commit rape are NOT simply decent guys who got carried away by their impulses. Johnny, Andy, and Stanley are sadistic bullies and Matthew is a mentally challenged misfit who's willing to deny his conscience in order to keep his friends. On the other hand, these guys are all members of a lower social class -- a class with manual laborers at the top and unemployed deadbeats at the bottom. Johnny runs a service station, Matthew is a grocery boy, and Andy and Stanley do nothing but loiter around Johnny's service station all day. The tacit message seems to be that members of this class are more likely to be rapists than are college graduates, white collar professionals, university professors, and men from similar classes.
Of course, you can argue that one shouldn't make such a general inference from only four characters in only one movie. I concede that I don't have proof, but I do have evidence over and above the movie itself. First, there's Meir Zarchi's commentary. Zarchi comes across as intelligent, articulate, even compassionate, but also as a bit of an intellectual elitist -- the kind of person who would feel that the white collar/academic community couldn't possibly contain any rapists. My suspicion is fueled by Zarchi's description of the four actors who played the rapists. He claims they're all nice, decent guys, and supports the claim by saying they're college educated.
And regardless of what Zarchi's intended message might have been, research has shown -- I'm thinking in particular of the work of Dr. George Gerbner -- that what people see in the media affects their opinion of the real world. Gerbner's work concerns mainly television, but I think it can be applied to movies viewed through the medium of video.
To counteract this bias, I'd suggest reading YOU MUST BE DREAMING by Barbara Noel, with Kathryn Watterson. This is a true story of a woman who was allegedly raped by a respected member of the academic community. (To be fair, I should point out that it took me a long time to see this bias and identify it as a problem with GRAVE -- probably because I have two masters degrees and a white collar job.)
Now, lets move from people to circumstances. On the one hand, GRAVE shows us that rape is an experience women DO NOT invite and DO NOT enjoy. As film critic Joe Bob Briggs points out in his feature-length commentary, Jennifer continues to try and fight these guys off, even when she's been injured to the point where she can hardly walk. On the other hand, GRAVE suggests that rape is always the culmination of an unsolicited and unwanted encounter with a total or comparative stranger. In fact it can often be the case that rapist and victim are not strangers, and that the rape was an unexpected consequence of an encounter the victim entered into willingly. This is in fact where the term `date rape' came from. Getting back to YOU MUST BE DREAMING, the alleged rapist was the victim's therapist.
Again, there's that argument about making a general inference from one example, and again I cite the media's power to influence the viewer's perception of the world. And, according the Meir Zarchi's commentary, the experience that inspired the movie involved a woman raped by a gang of strangers.
Moving on to other matters, I originally complained that GRAVE degenerates into a simplistic slasher movie because Jennifer becomes a one-dimensional killing machine. I am now inclined to agree with Leonard Wolf that the point is to show how rape injures the soul as well as the body.
But I'm afraid I have two new complaints about the revenge portion of GRAVE. The first one occurred to me as I was listening to various statements in both commentaries about this being a pro-feminist film. I find myself wondering if the murderous Jennifer Hill is really what women want people to think of when they hear the word `feminist.' Yes, feminism's want women to be considered equal to men, and some of the more extreme ones do advocate female superiority and a matriarchal society. But do they really want women to be perceived as sadistic, ruthless monsters who achieve their goal through torture and murder? If they want any kind of constructive, positive relationship with men, they're not going to get it that way --
Which leads to my second new complaint, which occurred to me when it was pointed out the Jennifer uses sex as a tool to exact her revenge. This actually undermines the anti-rape message by associating consensual sex with danger. When Matthew and Johnny enter into sexual contact that was initiated by Jennifer, in which she's allowed to have control, they get themselves killed. This could possibly make some male viewers wary of entering into any sexual relationship where the woman is given any control whatsoever. Again, you may say I'm making an unjustified inference, but again, I cite the power of the media.
In that review, I sided with the folks who defend GRAVE for portraying the true ugliness of rape, and thus refuting some offensive and downright dangerous myths that have caused women so much grief over the years. I haven't changed my mind, but I have come to realize that in the process of refuting some of those myths, GRAVE has unintentionally supported several others.
On the one hand, GRAVE tells you men who commit rape are NOT simply decent guys who got carried away by their impulses. Johnny, Andy, and Stanley are sadistic bullies and Matthew is a mentally challenged misfit who's willing to deny his conscience in order to keep his friends. On the other hand, these guys are all members of a lower social class -- a class with manual laborers at the top and unemployed deadbeats at the bottom. Johnny runs a service station, Matthew is a grocery boy, and Andy and Stanley do nothing but loiter around Johnny's service station all day. The tacit message seems to be that members of this class are more likely to be rapists than are college graduates, white collar professionals, university professors, and men from similar classes.
Of course, you can argue that one shouldn't make such a general inference from only four characters in only one movie. I concede that I don't have proof, but I do have evidence over and above the movie itself. First, there's Meir Zarchi's commentary. Zarchi comes across as intelligent, articulate, even compassionate, but also as a bit of an intellectual elitist -- the kind of person who would feel that the white collar/academic community couldn't possibly contain any rapists. My suspicion is fueled by Zarchi's description of the four actors who played the rapists. He claims they're all nice, decent guys, and supports the claim by saying they're college educated.
And regardless of what Zarchi's intended message might have been, research has shown -- I'm thinking in particular of the work of Dr. George Gerbner -- that what people see in the media affects their opinion of the real world. Gerbner's work concerns mainly television, but I think it can be applied to movies viewed through the medium of video.
To counteract this bias, I'd suggest reading YOU MUST BE DREAMING by Barbara Noel, with Kathryn Watterson. This is a true story of a woman who was allegedly raped by a respected member of the academic community. (To be fair, I should point out that it took me a long time to see this bias and identify it as a problem with GRAVE -- probably because I have two masters degrees and a white collar job.)
Now, lets move from people to circumstances. On the one hand, GRAVE shows us that rape is an experience women DO NOT invite and DO NOT enjoy. As film critic Joe Bob Briggs points out in his feature-length commentary, Jennifer continues to try and fight these guys off, even when she's been injured to the point where she can hardly walk. On the other hand, GRAVE suggests that rape is always the culmination of an unsolicited and unwanted encounter with a total or comparative stranger. In fact it can often be the case that rapist and victim are not strangers, and that the rape was an unexpected consequence of an encounter the victim entered into willingly. This is in fact where the term `date rape' came from. Getting back to YOU MUST BE DREAMING, the alleged rapist was the victim's therapist.
Again, there's that argument about making a general inference from one example, and again I cite the media's power to influence the viewer's perception of the world. And, according the Meir Zarchi's commentary, the experience that inspired the movie involved a woman raped by a gang of strangers.
Moving on to other matters, I originally complained that GRAVE degenerates into a simplistic slasher movie because Jennifer becomes a one-dimensional killing machine. I am now inclined to agree with Leonard Wolf that the point is to show how rape injures the soul as well as the body.
But I'm afraid I have two new complaints about the revenge portion of GRAVE. The first one occurred to me as I was listening to various statements in both commentaries about this being a pro-feminist film. I find myself wondering if the murderous Jennifer Hill is really what women want people to think of when they hear the word `feminist.' Yes, feminism's want women to be considered equal to men, and some of the more extreme ones do advocate female superiority and a matriarchal society. But do they really want women to be perceived as sadistic, ruthless monsters who achieve their goal through torture and murder? If they want any kind of constructive, positive relationship with men, they're not going to get it that way --
Which leads to my second new complaint, which occurred to me when it was pointed out the Jennifer uses sex as a tool to exact her revenge. This actually undermines the anti-rape message by associating consensual sex with danger. When Matthew and Johnny enter into sexual contact that was initiated by Jennifer, in which she's allowed to have control, they get themselves killed. This could possibly make some male viewers wary of entering into any sexual relationship where the woman is given any control whatsoever. Again, you may say I'm making an unjustified inference, but again, I cite the power of the media.
