The Sociology Video Project

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Title: Rape is…

Rating: 2.9 out of 4

Reference: Directors, Margaret Lazarus & Renner Wunderlich.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge Documentary Films, 2002.
34 minutes
Call number: video 6576

Abstract:Looks at rape from a global and historical perspective, but focuses mainly on the domestic cultural conditions of this human rights violation.

Library of Congress subjects:
Rape
Rape--United States
Rape victims
Rape victims--United States

Sociology subjects:
The body
Criminal justice issues
Feminisms & feminist analyses
Identity
Women & violence

Reviews and Numerical Ratings

(3.5) This is a very nice mix of personal testimony and analysis. It is very well put-together and thought provoking. It covers rape in a variety of situations and contexts. It is engaging and quite powerful. Unfortunately the sound quality is somewhat poor. Brian Fuller

(1) I was hoping to learn a little something here but didn’t. The emphasis is heavily on the psychological effects of rape on four people who provide their accounts, with some narrow pornography=rape and prostitution-is-a-rape-based-industry analysis. Women overseas, we learn, get raped en masse in Bosnia as part of genocide, end of story (though just how it figures in ethnic cleansing actually would’ve been interesting to address), or as “comfort women” (we do hear an account of this), or in voiceless victim photography shown with a North American author’s poetry reading in the intro. I’m disconcerted by the generalization from “us” to “them” here. I think people could feel like different kinds of crap depending on whether they were experiencing day-to-day seeping patriarchy at home vs mass planned action in an environment with drastically reduced social support & economic resources. Kathy Bischoping

(3) The title right away told me what the video was about, which I like – it helps to know though sometimes the content justifies an unclear title. In the beginning, there was a very poetic influence: one of the interviewees was expressing how she felt in this way, which I felt was very creative. Like Just Children, this video provoked my emotions: I was disturbed, troubled, able to connect with the interviewees. I felt I could really understand their pain. Right away I could get a sense of the seriousness of the issue through the interviewees, their stories, and how this act of being raped translates into serious consequences such as depression, spending a lifetime trying to get over rape. This video did an adequate job of identifying the structural elements that encourage rape, e..g., pornography and the media, and the idea that women are passive and sexually objectified. But I was hungry for more deconstruction of these elements that promote rape, e.g., the role of the justice system, the ways in which we are socialized. Again, I don’t think they did much justice to that. The video promoted awareness but I was hungry for more. One thing I did like is that one of the interviewees who’d been raped repeatedly was now able to empower herself despite the fact that she went through this experience, and that she was able to educate others, both men and women. What I would like to see is – though the video addresses issues of rape within the home, and rape related to war…I’m battling with the sense that the video was biased against men. It showed one experience of a man being raped, but the idea that women are mostly the ones who are raped was heavily focused on. Not that I’m discounting the importance of rape related to women, but I feel that if we’re going to find any solution to eradicate this, we have to look at every avenue, and have more focus than this video does upon raped men’s experiences. Marsha McQueen (undergraduate)

(4) Although I found the new-age interpretive poem at the start of the film very moving, it may not set the right tone in the classroom and could probably be skipped. The rest of the movie provides a very good analysis of what rape is (in all its various manifestations) and why it happens. It takes the politics of rape from the very micro and individual level to the macro level as a tool for warfare. The connections between various sorts of sexual violence are made by interweaving personal testimonials with clips from academic lectures, which should provide students with both an intellectual and emotional understanding of what ‘rape is’. Sarah Newman

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