Can We Stop Showing Graphic Rape Scenes In Movies Like 'Luckiest Girl Alive'? It's More Damaging Than Helpful To The Real Victims Of Sexual Assault

In recent Netflix releases Blonde and Luckiest Girl Alive, both film’s protagonists are plagued by sexual assault in their past; it’s an integral part of each woman’s story, conflict, and development. Both films’ depictions of said sexual assault are nothing short of extremely graphic and sensational. Blonde’s could basically be classified as softcore pornography, and Luckiest Girl Alive depicts full-on sexual assault in the context of gang rape, yet with all the underage characters covering their privates. Both films suffer for having such depictions of rape.

Don’t Rape Scenes Communicate the Horror?

While rape scenes certainly make the audience feel uncomfortable and provide a sense of how degrading and horrifying rape is, being so graphic and unabashed about it isn’t the most effective or helpful. The focus goes from being on the women’s emotional and psychological damage to the forced, nonconsensual sex: the physical act itself. The trauma and all but permanent damage to the woman’s self-worth, her sense of safety and belonging, or how much she’s willing to trust or believe in people? They become quiet, subdued points of her development, and instead, the audience remains reeling at the immediate, visceral violence.

The thing about rape is that its impact comes in two parts, much like atrocities that result in a victim developing PTSD. The first is the initial, physical assault: the act of someone violating you and rendering you powerless, reducing you to an object instead of a human being. The second is living with the aftermath of that: reliving the experience in nightmares or in a newfound/forced wariness of the world and people, the sensation of wanting to crawl out of your own skin, having people doubt your experience because the words “sexual assault” and “rape” are conflated or misused by certain people so they don’t carry the weight they should.

Rape scenes shift the focus from the women’s psychological damage to the physical act itself.

In the case of Blonde or Luckiest Woman Alive, there is an end to the first part – neither protagonist is murdered after being victimized or otherwise made to remain in that state. They live to see the second part of that pain, which can be more painful than the first. In Blonde, Marilyn Monroe is raped by a studio executive during an audition for a role: We see her reading her lines, the executive grabbing her by the back of her neck, forcing her down, and forcing himself upon her. This is before she is raped again later in the movie by JFK, leading to one of her forced abortions. In Luckiest Woman Alive, we see the protagonist, Ani FaNelli, relive her trauma of waking up to a sexual assault at a high school party by a boy she thought was her friend, and then proceeding to be gang raped by two other boys.

Having a haunting depiction of physical violence makes that the movie’s highlight. The ways in which a victim is left suffering are muted. When an audience member goes to talk about the movie with someone, the highlight becomes the rape scene itself, not how the character journeys through the aftermath.

In the case of both movies, much discussion online was around just that. “There should have been trigger warnings” and “don’t watch if you have a trigger.”

These comments are just a few of many, and they’re demonstrative of how something so jarring can derail the discussion around sexual assault. The chance to discuss what it truly is, and how it can plague someone’s life for a very long time (if not forever), is effectively thrown away. What remains is a dark spot on mental health for viewers that serves no productive purpose. Even worse, it could be damaging to real victims of sexual assault that are forced to essentially relive their trauma by watching a movie like this without any fair warning.

Are We Being Overly Sensitive?

On the other side of the coin is the idea that this take is just too sensitive. Rape is a real thing that happens, and apprehending and punishing a rapist involves witnessing the physical act, making note of who the abuser is and how it happened. In the case of Luckiest Girl Alive, the plot was based on a book and the author's personal story of her experience and it serves a purpose: to understand and reject victim-blaming. The idea is that people may be more willing to step up against something so abhorrent, seeing how horrifying it is for on-screen characters.

Having a haunting depiction of physical violence makes that the movie’s highlight.

This is certainly not the first movie to cover graphic rape scenes; we have seen an increase of them year over year. So by that logic, we should have expected to see people act more heroically in recent years in the face of witnessing other kinds of violence inflicted on passersby. Yet the reality is that too many people still act indifferent toward that. One woman was raped on a Philadelphia subway as recently as last year with as many as 10 witnesses present, some of them filming the occurrence. Something similar happened in New York City not long ago either, on a subway platform.

If nothing else, routine depictions of rape in film and TV may “normalize” it. After all, many of us watch action or horror films where someone is beaten, mutilated, or killed, and if you watch these kinds of movies enough, it no longer feels real. It’s made a part of the fictional media, and you’re not thinking about how real people get mugged, beaten, or murdered every day.

Closing Thoughts

Is there a right way to depict rape in media? Simply pretending rape doesn’t happen in fictional stories or adaptations of real events is unrealistic, especially now that it’s presently being depicted graphically in film and TV.

Take horror storytelling, for example: In many of the best stories, the monster, entity, or subject of the horror is far more terrifying because you don’t know exactly what it looks like or how to identify it. The human imagination is powerful at conjuring fear and monstrous images and ideas that are inevitably deeply personal. Someone else’s idea of the most terrifying monster may be vastly different from your own, but when presented with the idea, both of you will be fearful.

Perhaps something similar could be done when depicting sexual assault. Instead of telling people what’s happening by way of softcore porn or clothed sexual explicitness, showing it in a way that’s more suggestive and implicit is the way to go. An exposition of the scene and what’s supposed to be happening without anything that could be misconstrued as pornographic, followed by a character dealing with the aftermath. Perhaps she’s shunned and vilified instead of supported by her family, perhaps she’s not believed, and the rapist doubles down on the damage by furthering the isolation.

When rape or sexual assault is a part of a story, it’s worth taking the time to explore the effects of it on a character and his or her development. Frankly, if it seems like too much work to take the time to illustrate that in a story, perhaps the assault is just there for shock value and sensationalism.

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