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July 12, 2017 11:08 AM   Subscribe

Rape Choreography Makes Films Safer, But Still Takes a Toll on Cast and Crew by April Wolfe, LA Weekly
With this many on-screen rape scenes being produced, people like MacNair are needed more than ever on set to supervise. "These actresses are playing a vulnerable part, and they're half naked, so I'm assisting for safety reasons," MacNair says. "If [the production] didn't have a choreographer, I would not trust it."
[CW: numerous descriptions of fictional and real sexual assault; several still images of sexual assault scenes from films]
posted by melissasaurus (18 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
"I never meant to be a specialist in rape scenes," MacNair says with a touch of incredulity. "But I really am, because I'm a female stunt coordinator."
Fuck everything.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:43 AM on July 12, 2017 [44 favorites]


Directors weren't trusting women actors to act.

This stood out among many screwed-up things in this article. If you can't get a good enough performance without actually hurting someone, you need to either hire a better actor or get better at giving direction.
posted by straight at 12:03 PM on July 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


Directors weren't trusting women actors to act.

Recurring theme in the piece. Another part that leapt out at me:
MacNair is focusing on a new cause these days: pushing filmmakers to actually hire women stunt actors to double for female actors.
There are a lot of worse stories that are recounted in that piece, but that feels like an underlying theme to me: women aren't even fit to stand in for women in action scenes. They're not only being treated as props, but inferior ones at best. :(

I was also particularly struck by how obligatory this all seems to be:
(Anecdotally, when I was a script reader, I found that 46.7 percent of the 30 scripts I'd read in a three-month period contained rape.)
and especially:
Rachel Feldman was starting her career, in the late '80s and early '90s, the demand for rape stories was high. She'd been working in television — The Commish; Picket Fences; Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman — and wanted to break into features with a Lifetime movie. The producers were receptive to the script she had written but demanded one big change: "The only way it was going to go into production was to take this direction where they wanted [the character] to be raped."
Like... 'Didn't write a story with an onscreen rape? Better fix that.'

It's my observation that the stories that stick with us - the ones that are the most popular, the longest lasting - best reflect our inner life. They reflect either how we think the world does work, or how it should work. The notion that a lot of those men in suits literally cannot accept a world where women aren't raped for their titillation, even if someone brings it to them all gift-wrapped is... well, we know what it is. :(
posted by mordax at 12:19 PM on July 12, 2017 [39 favorites]


CAN WE PLEASE JUST NOT INCLUDE SEXUAL ASSAULT IN OUR FICTIONAL STORY TELLING FOR PROFIT? HOW ABOUT THAT IDEA, ASSHOLES?

FUCKING FUCK.
posted by ZakDaddy at 12:55 PM on July 12, 2017 [39 favorites]


WHAT? HOW COULD THAT EVEN HAPPEN?

This comment from director Jessica M. Thompso is an excellent differentiator: making a distinction between rape-filmed-as-rape and rape-filmed-like-sex. I'm already sick of excessive rapiness in my media, but extra tired of SALACIOUS rapiness in my media.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:28 PM on July 12, 2017 [17 favorites]


Oh, and now my crush on Evan Rachel Wood has grown larger.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:31 PM on July 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


CAN WE PLEASE JUST NOT INCLUDE SEXUAL ASSAULT IN OUR FICTIONAL STORY TELLING FOR PROFIT? HOW ABOUT THAT IDEA, ASSHOLES?

FUCKING FUCK.


This.

I have been so often blindsided in dramas or other "extremely serious shows" by what feel like gratuitous rape or scenes of sexual assault. It is rarely handled with care, and the portrayed depiction rarely feels actually necessary to the story. Instead it often feels like, "Oh, we need to add some drama to why this woman character is having some serious issues. INSERT RAPE SCENE."

It's really fucking upsetting, and it's a huge part of why I immediately stop watching a lot of Very Serious Movies and Television Shows Serious Cultured People Enjoy.
posted by mostly vowels at 5:19 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


What if every actor and actress just totally, 100%, full-out refused to STOP FILMING RAPE SCENES.
posted by mostly vowels at 5:22 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh, and now my crush on Evan Rachel Wood has grown larger.

Yes. She seems like an extraordinary person. Last November, she spoke to Rolling Stone about her own experience as a survivor of rape. In particular she spoke about West World, which I kept thinking about while reading this article as a show that relies heavily on rape as a trope even as it tries to comment upon or undercut that trope.

(WEST WORLD SPOILERS) In particular, since we come to find out that her character's entire role as an android in the theme park is to be raped. I kept thinking about it because there's a scene in the show where she and a guy are cornered by bad guys, and he yells at her to run, but instead she stands still and shoots them all, even though she is supposedly programmed to be incapable of violence or self-defense. Evan Rachel Wood commented on filming that scene:

“The moment that always sticks out for me is in Episode 5, when we see her take out five Confederatos that are holding Jimmi Simpson’s character hostage,” Wood told IndieWire in a new interview. “They grab him and pin him up against a wall, and he yells, ‘Dolores, run!’ The first take we did, I ran—I’m not supposed to run. Everyone was kind of looking around, confused, and then I slowly crept back onto set and they asked, ‘What happened?’ And I said, ‘I’m so used to running. I’ve never been asked to stay and save the day.’ I got a little teary-eyed, and a couple of women on the set got a little teary-eyed, and I thought, ‘Wow. This character is really important.’”

I agree that Dolores is a fantastic character. But it's so messed up that actors like her seem to have a choice between "rape victim" or "rape victim who heroically overcomes their rape."
posted by Emily's Fist at 6:30 PM on July 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


It amazes me how many TV shows are entirely based on violent-to-murderous sex crimes against women.
posted by bluespark25 at 6:34 PM on July 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Actually, this article was better than I would have expected. Go figure.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:43 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


One of those, bluespark25, is Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. I know women who don't mind watching it. They're empathetic toward the on-screen victims and understand that the plot may have come from real life, yet they watch like it was just another TV show. I've also known women who watched this kind of thing even though they themselves had been sexually assaulted. They told me that, in their cases, rather than retriggering, it helped them to deal with their experiences.

I can't watch it. I've known and loved too many women who have suffered to consider rape a reasonable plot point in every episode of a series. Or, as mostly vowels said above, to see it thrown in where it's not expected or needed just for dramatic effect. I've left the room many times when things like this appeared on the screen.

I can watch shows with murder, though, despite losing two people in my life to such violence. This seems ... wrong, somehow.
posted by bryon at 11:29 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm actually ok with rape scenes that are not designed to be titillating or create a "woman in the refrigerator" scenario. Unfortunately, that describes very few of the movies and tv shows that feature sexual assault.
posted by xyzzy at 12:00 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think a lot of women are good with watching SVU and other procedurals that focus on sexual crimes because it's a fantasyland where the victims are believed and the bad people (generally) get caught. I suspect a more realistic SVU would be less popular.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:23 AM on July 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


I think a lot of women are good with watching SVU and other procedurals that focus on sexual crimes because it's a fantasyland where the victims are believed and the bad people (generally) get caught. I suspect a more realistic SVU would be less popular.

Yeah, I like SVU because most of the crimes are completely bizarre and over-the-top and twisty and the police are (almost) always sympathetic and compassionate to victims. If every episode of SVU was about the kind of thing that actually constitutes the overwhelming majority of sex crimes--stories of women being raped by their husbands or boyfriends, acquaintance rapes with lots of alcohol involved, hazy memories, rapists who were not evil masterminds but ordinary guys with a lack of empathy and a flawed understanding of consent, unpredictable trauma reactions, a lack of physical evidence in most circumstances--and were linear stories with few prosecutions or convictions and a lot of women being doubted and antagonized at every turn, I doubt anyone would find it very entertaining. Not just because it would be realistic but also, because it would be boring. Most of the crimes on SVU are just so weird and exotic and sometimes (unintentionally) comical that it's hard to take them seriously. There's something safe about it.
posted by armadillo1224 at 7:05 AM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]




And it's explicitly about "special victims," so you absolutely know what you're going to get when you watch it. I'm a fan of all the L&O franchises, and even still there have been times where I've thought, "nah, SVU is too much for me today/this week/this month." Other times, it's on as background noise while I clean.
posted by tyrantkitty at 1:07 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Highly, HIGHLY recommend this fanvid (Women's Work) set to Hole’s “Violet” that explores the sexualization of violence against women’s bodies in popular culture. This is a partial collection from just ONE television show.

Seeing it for the first time was a real lightbulb moment for me-- the realization that not only are onscreen rapes treated as sexual and titillating, but that ALL violence against women is filmed with erotic intent really changed the way I consumed media.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:10 AM on July 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


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