Sadistic scopophilia in contemporary rape culture: I Spit On Your Grave (2010) and the practice of “media rape”

Abstract

This article revisits earlier theorisations of cinematic voyeurism and gender-based violence in considering the cross-media connections between cinema and non-consensual pornography online. In particular, it looks at how the remake of a significant rape-revenge film, I Spit On Your Grave (1978/2010), explores the role of technology in the perpetuation of female victimisation. By making a visible connection between the female character’s physical rape and the violation of her subjectivity performed through filming her without her consent, the film raises a larger social/media issue, which I call media rape. In offering a theorisation of this phenomenon, the article analyses the operation of the website creepshots.com, which distributes non-consensual photos of women. The comparison between these two texts promotes an understanding of the visual and discursive continuities between cinema and online spaces in relation to media rape and rape culture more generally. At a time when the distinction between the creators of and audiences for media content is less straightforward within the context of online media, sadistic scopophilia needs to be reconsidered in relation to medium specificity. Although it is already problematic in the cinematic context, when it extends to online media sadistic scopophilia becomes a human rights violation.

Keywords:

• Media rape
• film
• sadistic scopophilia
• misogyny
• rape-revenge

Notes

1. Although Mulvey’s work has received considerable criticism for its psychoanalytic limitations resulting in the development of feminist film theory beyond her original formulations in “Visual Pleasures,” my use of psychoanalytic terms in the context of media rape intends to acknowledge the continuous validity of some of these early observations for understanding the psychodynamic positions inscribed within film and other media texts. Gendered ways of looking within these products of Western patriarchal society are very much influenced by race and class factors, but it is beyond the scope of this article to address these. The analyses that follow therefore consider two different inflections of gender-based violence exercised through the technological advances in contemporary screen culture while contributing to an update of screen theory.

2. My access to the website has been restricted to its freely available content, but this is sufficient to discern how the creators and some users make sense of and promote their practice.

3. In her first encounter with Johnny, Jennifer effectively bruises his masculine ego by responding sarcastically to his attempt at flirting with her and embarrasses him in front of his friends.

4. In the original film Jennifer sets off from New York and travels to the nearby countryside in Connecticut. Clover (1992) analyses the representation of the city/country dichotomy and the accompanying social class implications also relevant here.