Girl with a Dragon Tattoo Rape Scene
Although somewhat late to the party, I recently viewed the American adaptation of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. Like many viewers, I establish the unapologetically graphic and confrontational rape scenes to exist troubling. Popular blogs such as The Stir echoed a ordinarily-held sentiment that the scenes were too graphic or as well disturbing, making information technology difficult to enjoy the moving-picture show as entertainment. My initial reaction to the scene was like. It is difficult to participate every bit a spectator when watching the scenes in which Lisabeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is raped or coerced into performing sexual acts in render for authorities support. The revenge scene is equally agonizing. Although Lisabeth subjects her tormentor to the same torture she endured, in that location is no sense of triumph and the victory feels hollow. Moreover the passive audience feels implicated for "enjoying" a movie with such intentionally agonizing fabric. 1
Having never read whatever of Stieg Larsson's novels, I cannot speak to the means in which the text differs from its cinematic interpretations. However, later reconsidering the means in which the scenes affected me every bit a viewer, I could not assistance but feel manipulated. At the stop of the motion picture, Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and Erika Berger (Robin Wright) rekindle their extra-marital relationship and Lisabeth is left to lookout coldly from afar. My initial impulse, in writing this reflection, was to talk over the use of rape as a plot device that simultaneously evokes feelings of guilt, pity, fear, and daze in the name of amusement. Knowing that Lisabeth'south moment of revenge is fleeting, and she is ultimately left alone at the determination of the film, the viewer is not afforded the opportunity to retrieve of Lisabeth beyond the context of her treatment past male characters as an object of exotic eroticism and sexual subordination.
Google search for "daughter with the dragon tattoo rape scene"
Piqued past my ain feet over the same scenes, I decided to go a better sense of how others reacted to the scenes. I noticed something disconcerting when I performed a Google search "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo rape scene," the first ii results yielded by the search are far more troubling than the scenes in the moving-picture show.
The first link brings visitors to a sequence of spliced footage from the film which includes: Lisabeth in the shower afterwards an encounter with her tormenter Niels Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen), Lisabeth in bed after a one night stand, and Lisabeth and Mikael having sex. The 2nd links brings visitors to an uninterrupted shot of Lisabeth and Mikael engaged in consensual sexual practice. Google'due south algorithimc conflation of rape and consensual sex, besides as the removal of whatsoever of the ability dynamics apparent in the relationship betwixt Mikael and Lisabeth obscures the fashion in which the dynamics of sexual power function equally essential aspects of the picture. The ability for viewers to reduce Rooney Mara to the aforementioned blazon of sexual objectification endured by her graphic symbol is shocking. The scenes are described as "hot sex scenes" or opportunities to see the real Rooney Mara nude and on motion picture. When enveloped in the plot and engrossed in the filmic experience, the scenes accept a profound result on the viewer. However, when scenes are decontextualized and removed from the film, it becomes all likewise piece of cake for the scenes to be reduced to their nigh base attributes – namely nudity and eroticism.
What disturbs me most nearly the recontextualization of the scenes online is the way in which viewers are able to subject Rooney Mara to the same reductions suffered past her character in the film. In because the context of ane's viewing, and the position of the viewer with respect to the work, I am reminded of a comment made by ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall. In describing the multiple positions occupied by the audition, he writes, "as members of an audience we readily take the illusion of entering into the world of picture. But nosotros exercise and so in complete safety, because our own world is as shut as the nearest light switch." ii
Although MacDougall is speaking specifically virtually observational cinema in the context of ethnographic moving picture, our experience equally viewers of popular cinema is largely like. Nosotros identify with characters in a fashion that allows united states of america to exist affected by the things that happen to them. Our emotions get very chop-chop tied to theirs. Even so, we are granted prophylactic through distance. We are not bearing witness in any tangible sense, but our want to append atheism and engage in a particular mode of viewing allows u.s.a. to oscillate betwixt reality and fantasy.
What happens to the rape scene when its reproducibility decontextualizes information technology to the bespeak where information technology can get an erotic snapshot on the cyberspace? If something so profoundly disturbing to many audience members can be so readily reduced to an opportunity to meet Rooney Mara naked instead of Lisabeth Salander being raped, how can filmmakers proceed to use sexual violence as a plot device? Is there something inherently manipulative and problematic about such an employment in the first place?
What began as a meditation on a moving picture became a marvel most of the travel of the disembodied scene and how such decontextualizations can touch our reading of the films from which they are poached. It is as well of import to think about the ambiguous representation of sexual violence in popular movie theatre, and its touch on viewers. Moreover, nosotros need to consider the ways in which the filmic experience is no longer relegated to the multiplex and abode theater. Now that scenes can be removed from the larger body of work, they more easily function in unintended and problematic ways.
Chris Patrello, PhD student in the Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at The University of Rochester
Source: https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-and-the-problem-of-the-rape-scene/
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