*We're never asked to pity the wives and we're never given a cheap thrill at the sight of their suffering. We are asked to **_respect_** them.* EXACTLY THIS
Considering this series has been 4+ months of work, "we're asked to respect them and take them at their word," hits really, really hard after the last week. I suspect this is gonna be the most shared of the individual parts, so before the comments get too nutty, let me just say: damn, this is really good. Well done, and I hope you get the copyright stuff figured out for the complete video.
Except, we're never asked to take them at their word. We don't even need their word. The mountain of visual evidence tells us everything we need to know.
it feels like most movies treat rape and degradation something you have to witness to believe, and it needs to be extreme. no woman is going on a revenge because a coworked groped her. he has to demolish her.
@@blackmanwithcomputer yeah, but real talk; how common or prevalent is it when women are the supposed perpetrators of such things, both sexual and non-sexual? Not very common or prevalent. Speaking as a man myself: when it comes to cruelty and manipulation, on average and as a whole nothing can beat the degrees, extremes, extents and general regularity of what men do on the daily. That's just an observation and statement of objective fact.
@@kindbrute4640 I'm saying that the dissent I'm expressing, spoken from the position of a man is valid, but that the position of my thesis and reasoning shouldn't be hinged as being valid on the auspice alone of being a man over that of a women who may and often has expressed a position identical or equivalent in nature despite the fact that people such as yourself treat women's statemnts and thesis of reasoning for such positions as being worth less than a mans simply on the auspice that the position being expressed is being expressed by a women than it was expressed by a man. My acknowledgement of this fact is nothing more than an acknowlagement of my rather existant male privilage and recognizing how you probably would dismiss my position out of hand and arbitarily and in the extreame if I were a women and drawing attention to that fact. However your new position seems to indicate your just a bad faith contrarian.
Now, obviously I believe that to be a good writer you must show different kinds of evil in your works but yeah... the fact that the bad guy hurts people on screen doesn't make the writing bad.
@@LimeyLassen It is however planting its "seed" into the person.... So its a case where the rape is both metaphorical and litteral. Because lets face it: when it comes to Xenomorphs: no one wants a face full of alien-wing-wong forced inside them.
It's good that a movie shows the withholding of resources and the inherently violent system as evil, without having to show individual victims beaten up, starving etc. Because sadly even in real life people often don't realize that this form of "passive" violence is as bad as active violence!
I agree so hard. Hollywood turns compelling discussions of violence into cartoons by having people responsible for great suffering be over-the-top monsters, when in reality, lots of evil people through history were really nice face-to-face. Which helped them not see themselves as evil. Slave owners who beat their slaves LESS than others got to look down on slave owners who beat their slaves MORE, and would actually make this very argument - that THEY were responsible slave owners, and shouldn't be thrown in with those other guys. And yes, they were a little less awful But they got to feel morally clean while benefiting from a monstrous system, because they weren't UNNECESSARILY cruel.
Okay but what about scarce resource management? Water is clearly in short supply. And it also needs to be traded with Gas Town and the like. It looks like Joe takes care of those who earn their keep like breeders/milkers/war boys etc. The citizens do jack shit to earn the water. Economics are very important
@@kindbrute4640 Why should you need to _earn_ what's required for survival? Why do you need to _earn_ the right to live? And if there isn't enough to go around, _how is everyone alive?_ This isn't a "scarcity" of pogs or whatever, it's a scarcity of something whose absence kills you within _days._
@@timothymclean "And if there isn't enough to go around, how is everyone alive?" - This is where you fucked up. Clearly Joe gives everyone enough to survive, but only just. It blows your own argument out of the water. Joe ensures these people's 'survival' for free. But if you wanna thrive, you'll have to contribute more than just "oh please pity me" to the man who controls the resources Edit: The water pun was a happy accident lol
@@timothymclean As for why you need to earn your keep, I'm amazed each time someone bring up this argument. As if expecting someone to maintain their own right to live instead of lazily expecting someone else's charity is some insane proposition. Maybe you can help explain it to me but for the life of me I've never understood that
I'm interested in why you didn't include Maleficent in this as an example. It's a rape revenge story without explicitly mentioning rape...because it's a kids movie. I love that movie because it takes the trauma she experienced and not only vilifies her attacker, but her as well for taking her anger out on an innocent. She then becomes a Mama Bear and makes up for her sins. Her compassion is what saves both her and Aurora. It's a great movie, and a very cool mixing of troupes. (I think i worded this very poorly but I hope my point came across)
The beginning of the film where he steals her wings as the act of violation really broke my heart and was hella well acted, but the film on the whole did not make much of an impression on me.
This series is great. Thanks. While I realise there was no way you could know how topical this section would be, where you describe the sexual predators(from 2:13) and you say: "sexual violence is rarely about the woman, but jockeying for status with one another. It's performative: Men proving they're alphas." I couldn't help but think of Judge Kavanaugh. Even if no other claim about him proves true, your final line about performance brought immediately to mind his Year-book "...alumni" claim. Here is a man lying without compunction, jockeying for alpha status.
tintinaus He’s talking about gang rape scenes in films. Very little (almost no) sexual violence has to do with what you just stated. Unless your definition of “sexual violence” has gone into some bizarro land.
@@WhatDoesEvilMean A: I only said that Kavanaugh came to mind when hearing the last line. "It's performative"(Kavanaugh lies about having sex with a girl in his year-book), which considering how many of his friends also did, makes it seem that claiming this "conquest" was a mark of (alpha?)status among them. B: One of Kavanaugh's other accusers states he was at or took part in at least one gang-rape of female college students who had passed out from either alcohol or drug use. Does the fact that the woman wasn't tortured before her rape really make a difference to you?
tintinaus Again, I think it’s too muddy - “sexual violence”. Sexual violence can literally be consented. So this conversation is probably more in depth that I’m feeling up for. Haha
@@WhatDoesEvilMean Sexual violence, by definition, is not consensual sex since violence is considered acts of assault, battery and malicious harm and violation of a persons body by means of physical aggression and attack. Sexual Violence merely takes that malicious violation of person against others and gives it a more sexual overtone and undertone and makes it more grotesque than it already is. Sexual violence is, by definition of the World Health Organization: any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work. Basically by definition; Sexual Violence is not consent. The only people who try and redefine words from their actual meaning are Misogynist incels that want to enable and normalize violence and sexual assault against women, including outright rape. So what does that say about you trying to redefine words from their actual meaning to enable such a traumatic, pervasive and grotesque human rights violation?
brano13177 Well, I wouldn’t define words as violence, so we already have a pretty wide chasm there. In America, words are not defined as violence. In other countries with fewer freedoms words are defined as violence. I don’t live in those countries and would never want to live in those countries. As far as what violence is - your definition doesn’t align with any English definition. Violence is defined unanimously and consistently across every text as “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy”. The definition of violence in the English language does not depict personal agency or agreement as it pertains to wanting or not wanting the thing that is violence done to you. If you whip someone (as a for instance) you are injuring them. When you step on someone’s hand with a pointed heel, you are injuring them. Someone can ask to be injured as it pertains to sexual encounters. A person can ask for violence to be done to them. If that’s confusing to you, it’s only because you’re lacking a fundamental understanding of the English language. You no longer have that fundamental lack of understanding in this regard.
Actually, a movie where the bad guy is really nice and kind, but still an evil tyrant would be super interesting to watch and a cool inversion of the trope.
Game of thrones is an example. I think there were many reason that people didn’t like the ending so much, expedited writing was one. But a lot of people just didn’t see how Daenerys became a tyrant until she was full on burning the capital. They thought it made 0 sense for her character, but it did... They didn’t see it before, not because the signs weren’t there, but because they were rooting for her and her cause. She showed major character flaws from the very beginning, and soon it became entitlement to conquer a country she had barely ever set foot on, messiah complex, black and white thinking, an entitlement not only to people’s submission but to their love... But everyone loved her, because she was charismatic, visionary and had strong values. Hitler had those qualities too. It makes me think that’s how everyone who helped a tyrant gain power must have felt at some point, before they realized what that person really was.
@@Nooom91 this is a bad take, they didn’t build actually tyrannical things up for her while waving them away, she kept doing what every leader in GoT did - fighting battles and punishing those who went against them. The main difference was that she was pretty universally doing bad things against those who mistreated people like slave holders. But because she’s a woman, killing is bad maybe? Worse than for all the other leaders in the series? Not a great take to comment under this series of vids!
Keeping violence against women off-screen can stumble into its own problematic implications (search TV Tropes for "beauty is never tarnished"). As with many things, being respectful to other kinds of people means walking a thousand tightropes. For that matter, writing an engaging story-even one written without concern for prejudice or privilege-is all about that kind of tightrope. Nobody said writing was easy.
The top comment on this video is a "but what about" regarding portraying violence against women on-screen. I'm not saying this is what the commenter is arguing for, just pointing out that this is the top comment. This video did not require this comment. This video was not making an argument that portraying the violent exploitative acts onscreen was good or bad or should be encouraged or banned, just discussing the ways it has been done in the past and giving a desperately rare example of the violence NOT being shown in center frame. But still, the very top comment is immediately reminding everyone that we definitely should show it sometimes.
@@sharkofjoy The video pretty clearly uses the term "hack writers" for people who use it so...it's certainly not saying it's a good thing. It's also nice how the author calls explicit depictions of male suffering a "safe space". Not only failing to acknowledge it's normalisation as opposed to female suffering which is usually considered abhorrent (and hence used for shock value) but doubling down on almost appreciation for the double standard. Also avoiding depicting explicit violence towards woman is not rare it is the norm. Hell most of the time there is no violence at all nevermind explicit.
joaov2 joaov2 The entire video series covers male violence as the default in action films. That’s part of the very basis for the essay. How you came to the conclusion that depictions of male violence was being ignored is ridiculous. The very idea of explicit women violence is also covered entirely across the essay. Did you actually watch any of it?
@@DrOctatonic I watched the whole series. If by "male violence" and "female violence" you mean "violence against men" and "violence against women"; then I fail to see the part in which the author says that "violence against men" is disproportionately represented and that this should change. If you have a timestamp of it, and if you explain how it's not contradicted by the praise of the movie for only explicitly showing "violence against men" in this video then I'll take back what I said. If by "male violence" and "female violence" you mean "violence perpetrated by men" and "violence perpetrated by women"; then I could agree that the author says that "violence perpetrated by men" is disproportionately represented and that this should change. Or a bigger motif of the series that "violence perpetrated by women" should have a greater variety of motivations and contexts to at least match the variety of motivations and contexts for "violence perpetrated by men".
I have a LOT of feelings on this and I'm not sure how exactly to put them into words, because the idea that rape is the most heinous crime you can commit has been thrown back in my face in defense of Kavanaugh a lot this week (as in "he's being accused of the most heinous crime you can commit, why should he not be upset about that")... it just makes me wonder just how much damage this cultural propensity for gratuitous depictions of sexual violence has done to our understanding of what rape is, what rapists look like, and how often it happens.
Rape is not the worse crime someone can commit. The person doesn't even die. It's really bad, but murder is objectively worse. Our sympathy to female victims of anything can just get irrationally extreme. It's like we're only allowed to say that rape is infinitely bad or we get shouted at. So we get terms like "rape survivor", even though in the vast majority of cases, the woman's life was never in danger. She's objectively not a "survivor". Someone in a life-threatening situation is a survivor. But it's not politically correct to call female victims out on their bullshit. Again and obviously, rape is terrible, and I have to keep stating that because I'm not kowtowing to female suffering like I'm supposed to, but it's objectively wrong to say that rape is worse than murder or mass murder or spraying someone with acid or stabbing some badly or shooting off someone's leg etc. It screws with one's thinking to infinite sympathize. And the reasons that men and women will sympathize with women's suffering (as apposed to men's suffering) aren't exactly innocent. Sometimes it's because of sexual attraction. Sometimes it's because she's pretty and as a society we value pretty people more than ugly people. It could be because we think of women as innocent children. The extra sympathy generally comes from an unpleasant place.
Contrapoints made a great video about how gratuitous depictions of sexual violence creates this weird, cultural cognitive dissonance between what we think we think about rape, and what we actually think. On the one hand, we think of rapists as the most contemptible people on the planet that aught to be strung up and executed (hence the rape revenge genre.) On the other hand, we're squeamish about delivering justice in actual cases of rape because real-life rapists are rarely, if ever as extreme or off-putting as the fictional ones we create. So you get cases like Brock Turner who's definitely a rapist, but not the scary, back-alley kind we're trained to be afraid of.
@@jonathansalvador5037 Yeah they're always depicted as evil. We never see that they're people too. People would complain that we're "humanizing" a rapist otherwise. People want to understand reality with minimal effort: the truth is usually more complex. We are told that they're psychopaths and we never hear why they raped someone or how they were raised; I don't know of any movie that has a rapist redeeming himself or learning to sympathize more or handle his urges appropriately, etc.
@@JohnSmith-td7hd I try and draw a fine line between "humanizing" a rapist and "sympathizing" with one. To humanize someone is not to make a moral judgement, but to have a realistic sense of what you're up against. When we overwrite movie rapists to be drooling, irredeemable monsters, we let the actual, real-life monsters off the hook. Especially when they're charming, have otherwise clean records, friends who will vouch for them or when they're actual crime isn't "as bad" as the connotations of the word "rape" imply (see: the Brock Turner case.)
@@jonathansalvador5037 I was going to totally agree with you, but I wanted to know precisely what he did (What made him a "monster"), and according to Wikipedia, Brock Turner stuck his fingers inside an unconscious woman's vagina. When I heard that he was charged with rape (which were dropped due to that never happening) and felony sexual assault, I thought that he must have done something terrible, all without being told exactly what "felony sexual assault" even means. Did you know that you can be put on the sex offender registry for urinating in public? Our legal system over-reacts a lot with sex (partly because there's so little sex education, so sex itself seems scary). ...And drugs, and prostitution, and probably a lot else. The United States has 25% of all prisoners globally. We put people in prison for really stupid reasons. And now our news outlets are misleading us on purpose to generate more clicks, making us believe that Brock Turner got away with rape.
Just wanted to share that I saw another rape-revenge film not too long ago, called "American Mary," which features probably the most brutal/violent revenge ever depicted in film... and the nice part is that it's only a sub-plot of the film, which mostly features the female protagonist's budding medical career.
This was absolutely the best episode of the series, and I accidentally watched part 8 before this one so i didn't even realized i had missed an episode!
Thanks for linking 2017's Revenge to this larger trope. I saw it earlier this year and loved it, but was wondering why it had such gratuitous objectification of the protagonist when the plot seemed to be mostly trying to be empowering to women. Now I have a lot more to chew on
Infinite Mess I actually thought it was nearly unfair to place it among the others for how it alters things. The protagonist is shown to be exactly the kind of woman we’ve been conditioned to not support, sexually active and even the mistress to a married man. Regardless, the movie is adamant that she’s the hero and doesn’t deserve any of it and rightly so. The rape itself is nearly entirely off screen and she’s clothed completely (well as completely as possible for a rape). As the film goes on, she’s shown in greater states of undress, but never once to titilate and always to empower. She even reaches her strongest point by literally branding her womb with an eagle symbolising freedom. The final shot of the film has her looking toward the camera with a shiny, hollow, pink, star-shaped earring, a feminine image if ever there was one, front and centre of the shot regardless of all the grime. Not to mention that the rape itself isn’t shown as a way for the men to jockey for power, but one pathetic man looking for love(? I’m not sure of this one, I was originally going to say companionship, but it’s definitely not power). And he’s even the figure of the men that’s humanised the most throughout the rest of the film! (Not advocating for rape or anything like that, just pointing out how this movie is different) TL;DR Revenge does a lot that’s incredibly different and feels to me that it’s harsh to place with the others.
This was an incredible and honestly challenging episode. I was pretty convinced that equal violence between men and women was the right way to go in film, but you make really good points and I’ve changed my mind
I don't think "Alien" fits into this category. Yes, the Alien's life cycle is a rape metaphor. But the revenge part is missing. The characters only enact violence to survive not to revenge their dead crew mates. One exception is when Parker burns Ash's remains. But he's a male character. The rest of the violence is for survival's sake only.
It's one of the reasons why I personally never liked Kill Bill (yeah even before I knew about the falling out between Thurman and Tarantino). Yeah it might not focus much on the rape part, but to me it's an example of being celebrated when to me it didn't succeed in subverting the clichees. Maybe some people see it differently, but to me it was just a standard example. I wish you had mentioned/discussed Kill Bill in this series (with the movie named after the villain and the heroine having a title for a name).
crazy how men enjoying the death of rapists is not that far from a mirror of that competition among men you mentioned when whoever they're inflicting violence upon is secondary, are the viewers really commited to some form of justice or just to knowing that someone they think is worse than them is on the recieving end of violence
What's it called when the male protagonist kills thousands of men in battle but when it comes to the one and only woman fighting him he always spares her?
Well, that's more of a main antagonist syndrome. The big villain is often shown mercy, but the villain's minions? Ha! Those are the equivalent of video games monsters.
A great series and I really like it, but there is one small problem I feel with it, especially in this episode, that.... violence, be it rape, domestic violence, or any similar form of violence is assumed to be male on female. For example the, that is what domestic violence usually looks like. But woman can be violent towards men as well, they often are. Female on mal rape is a thing, and not just some borderline cases. I know it is not relevant for this video...but it is still such a common misconceptions.... that intergender violence....or better bad intergender violence is always male on female. Female on male violence is either sexualized or celebrated.
If interested in how that is represented in media (in the rare cases it is) and that it comes with its own bag of problems there is a video by pop culture detectives about sexual assault on men in movies. Here is the one focused on the examples with female perpetrators ua-cam.com/video/9nheskbsU5g/v-deo.html
This is true, however, the points of this series is a deep dive into female tropes, not male. This episode talks about the particular exploitative film about rape victims' revenge. Of course there are male who suffers from rape, too. But he is talking about the movies and tropes that depicts female suffering (which there are A LOT), so of course he wont focus on male suffering. That s another essay for another time.
I love this series of videos and have re-watched it multiple times. After seeing “Revenge” and watching this again if decided you are the only cis straight(?) white guy id love to hear talk about that film 💜
y’all, come on... if he listed every r@pe revenge movie we’d be here all day. this series is specifically about how MMFR subverts common media tropes about women
I know this is gonna sound weird, but I don't think the original "I Spit On Your Grave" should be treated the same as the rest of the sub-genre/archetypes it spawned. It tends to get dismissed as trashy exploitation, and I avoided it because I believed that... but then I saw it, and I realized something, it was was far deeper than it's often given credit for. A very intelligent story about the horrors of American Misogyny and how it feeds American rape culture. I recommend checking out Count Jackula's 2 part series (technically 4 on the subject of misogyny in horror) on the film. It's very interesting. (Quick edit, I know Jackula can be problematic at times and I do not agree with everything that he says.)
I actually wrote a short piece in defense of the original I Spit on Your Grave and criticizing the remake: innuendostudios.tumblr.com/post/176646814132/i-spit-on-your-grave-1978-vs-2010 I tried to stress in the video that, for all the qualms I have with the rape revenge film, the genre actually makes some of the boldest statements about toxic masculinity and rape culture of any of the genres discussed. Also, last year's movie Revenge was SHOCKINGLY good.
Alien is about rape, but Ripley does not act out of revenge... She actually did care very little for the Nostromo crew, who were even undermining her authority and often mistreating her.
It's not that she didn't care or hated them, it's that it was a job, and vice versa. When talking about the relationships in the first Alien, I always ask to imagine you and your office co-workers suddenly thrust into THAT situation one morning. Minus some people who are maybe your friends and people you've shared more intimacy with, it's mostly people who are familiar, who you see almost every day, but who you often know pretty little. You're not super attached to them personally, but seeing someone you were seeing every day and saying "hello" to, maybe even bickered a little over some petty office shit, gutted, might fuck you up more than if it was a complete stranger. And that's why the protagonists' relationships are completely unique in Alien compared to any other horror movie. Not complete strangers, not loved ones, just other people like you who are tired, wanna finish the shift and go home, and instead get thrust into a nightmare with zero preparation.
Rape isn't quintessentially male on female. Heck, Alien is about rape of the *male* for the most part. Furthermore, female on male violence is never given the serious tone it deserves.
I agree, female-on-male violence isn't given the serious tone it deserves. In particular, male rape victims tend to get swept under the rug... because the dominant stereotype of what "rape" looks like is male-on-female. The video is talking about stereotypes, cultural assumptions, not reality.
Not even a mention of Kill Bill? Maybe it's not the best example, I can see that, because KB plays in slightly different space? Would love to see how KB stacks up against this trope.
I think your analysis of the lack of female violence in the film is somewhat problematic. I agree that showing rape flashbacks would be objectifying, but some of the violence you mention doesn't seem like it would have those connotations, and I worry that not showing it serves to reinforce our society's disproportionate concern for female suffering. Anherod's falling off a vehicle is just an accident, so I doubt that people would read social context into that. Furiosa is a competent warrior, so I don't see why people would consider showing her being injured combat as objectifying.
while I agree with most of it, I'm deeply uncomfortable by the idea of male on male violence being "okay" and even a "safe space", sounds not that different from "it's a tragedy when a woman is sexually abused, but it's a comedy if a man is", personally not a fan of Fury Road's decision to treat the suffering of woman as more uncomfortable or taboo than the suffering of man, I think this movie is more than capable of portraying that sort of stuff without appearing edgy or exploitative like all the B movie examples provided
Enjoying the breakdowns. Do you think that it's possible for our society to actually get to a point where violence inflected upon men is viewed with no different connotations than those inflicted on women? Presumably, there's also similar lack of subtlety for race, sexual orientation, etc - similar question?
The same way how the n-word will not be a slur anymore: systemic deconstruction of the harmful hierarchy that made that discrimination in the first place. For racial slurs, the deconstruction of white supremacy and racism. For gendered violence, the deconstruction of gender expectations and patriarchy.
@@aegis_knight Thanks - I'm skeptical that deconstruction alone will provide this balance. I also wonder if we won't keep evolving as a society to vilify some other form of visceral exploitation - that it might just be in a our nature. I don't say this to excuse such a perspective - in fact, we should as a 'civilized' society actively better ourselves to see beyond the 'pornography' - merely that it we might still need to accept some level of failings on our parts and have empathy for ourselves when we are not capable of completely letting go of bias or the enjoyment of various visceral 'base instincts'.
"The most quintessentially male against female act of violence" eh? Are you implying that women cannot rape men? Or that men can't rape men? Or women cannot rape women? Problematic....tsk tsk tsk I did enjoy the series
@@jonathansalvador5037 I am sort of being snarky. But even if I assume that female victims were to outnumber male victims, it would still be a bit of a problematic statement to call rape QUINTESSENTIALLY a male against female act of violence. A lot of people who have this attitude do not even take male victims seriously. Even heard of cases where male victims are laughed at or told that it's somehow a good thing because fosters an understanding of female victims somehow...Someone got raped and there are people out there who would either not care or call it a good thing. Regardless of sex, that is a problem. Furthermore to say that there is a greater degree of female victims therefore it is a female problem even though it can happen to anyone is dangerously close to implying that female victims matter more and deserve more attention.
@@Mixinnitup I didn't mean to suggest that male-on-male, female-on-female or female-on-male rape is less heinous or deserving of attention. Just that the ubiquity of rape as a demonstration of masculine dominance makes it as close to a quintessential male-on-female form of violence as it gets. Coding doesn't need to be quintessentially or even statistically accurate to push a coherent cultural narrative. Vikings probably didn't wear horned helmets, but if I wear a horned helmet for Halloween, it's safe to say I've adopted a quintessentially Scandinavian aesthetic.
Jonathan Salvador i understand but, in implying that the dominance is masculine and that being dominated by it is feminine, you are assigning those roles to aggressor and victim are you not? It does seem that speaking this way codifies our idea of what a rapist is and is not. Put another way, if I were to assert that masculinity is tied to leadership because most powerful leaders in our world were men it would be tantamount to my saying men are better suited to tje role. Even if I acknowledge that women can be leaders and should be taken seriously as such Id still be reinforcing the idea that when you think of a leader you think of a man by default...see where Im going? If I define rape as an act of the masculine against the feminine then am I not implying that to rape is to act as a man and to be raped is to be acted upon as a woman?
Jonathan Salvador and this has some messed up implications on how we treat aggressors and victims depeding on what sex characteristics thet display. Despite that rape can happen to and is traumatic for anyone.
That is a huge problem in cinema, if male on female violence and female on male violence were portrayed in the same way, I think it would be a great social leap, women aren't automatically helpless when it comes to violence, and men aren't automatically tough when it comes to violence. Men being viewed as expendable and women being viewed as perfect pure beings is harmful to both genders. Obviously violence is horrible, and no violence should be shown as fine or just expected, so it's sad to see that a lot of the time violence against men is often viewed as not a big deal, especially comparatively with violence towards women. (If I haven't made my point clear, I'm not advertising violence towards women as no big deal, or a good thing)
This isn't subtext. Innuendo explicitly says that this is a tactic on the filmmakers part; that male-on-female violence has been coded in films for too long as titillating or hyper evil, that the director didn't trust men to sympathise without objectifying in the wake of physical suffering. We sympathise with what happened to Furiosa in the 'safe space' of watching it happen to a man (Max) so that when we see it's happened to her too none of that baggage is present. We just empathise. It's not that male-on-female violence 'shouldnt' be shown. It's that the director didn't trust people to empathise with Furiosa they way he wanted otherwise.
It's not the male-on-male violence is acceptable, so much as films don't generally try and cast male-on-male violence as titilating or weirdly gratifying. The male-on-female violence in Mad Max is treated as if it were Male-on-Male violence.
Context, Jeffrey!! Context!! If you even feel that male on male violence is as equitable to male on female violence, then you're part of the problem!!!
Is this video saying its moraly better to show male harm them female on screen? Isn't that sexist? I find it strange that this video seems to clame that when a man suffers on screen its just violence but if it just so happens to be a woman then it's special. Should't our socity view the suffering of men and wemon as both being equaly bad?
@@kindbrute4640 If someone pretends someone else said something and it's not true, then you only have to say "that's not true". Like it's not something that requires arguments.
No, the video is saying that creators shouldn't feel the need to resort to depicting shocking acts of violence against women, because this is a cheap and exploitative method of creating empathy for the female character. Innuendo posits that empathy towards the character should be created though deep and human characterisation, and that portraying gratuitous violence against women in order to pander towards the social narrative that women are weaker and should be protected, is ultimately its own form objectification.
Archer It's not just about what's normal, though. Male on Female violence is often shown to be titillating and Innuendo Studios was essentially just saying that he doesn't trust filmmakers to portray it in their movies with any sort of seriousness. Not that I agree with him entirely, but he meant that directors shouldn't bother trying to show male on female violence onscreen because they'll mess it up.
I think this is by far the weakest entry. Without going point-by-point, we can just look at the closing line: "We don't need to see or even know how Joe treated them to know he's a tyrant" We don't need to *see*, but we do need (to some degree) to *know how*, which you spent a good part of the video explaining. You do a lot of this self-contradiction in trying to wind down the video. You try to distance the guilt of Joe from cruelty while simultaneously giving evidence of his cruelty. The important thing is not whether or not cruelty's presence is necessary, just the degree to which it is made visible. I don't think you articulated this very well at all.
But Joe had a self sustained civilization. He gave people water. He gave them food(probably but it might be false), he protected him and he made sure there was law and order. He made sure that they would have water(which is not infinite) and also he wanted a son who would not be as stupid as others, a son that could rule the citadel after his death.
@@InnuendoStudios It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Resource management is a thing you know. Just because you don't like the manner in which it's done, doesn't make it fascism
Why is it ok to let male on male violence just be violence? That's pretty dehumanizing to men... Like the series as a whole though and understand this is female centric but a critique of how men are portrayed in media should be implicit in feminism for it to truly be about equality of gender.
Actually, feminists do care about men's issues and how male on male violence is perceived because those issues result from problematic ideas about masculinity that have bad consequences on both men and women. Innuendo Studios isn't saying that HE believes that male on male violence is ok but rather that the film writers, who are mostly MEN by the way, and society at large sees it that way and that's not his fault, or women's fault or even feminism's fault. That's the status quo or, dare I say it, Patriarchy (I hope you are not triggered) 's fault. That's part of toxic ideas about masculinity. Male on female violence is titillating as he explained in the video, Female on male violence is funny because the victim is emasculated since women are considered inferior which means he is even less than a woman. Male on male violence, however, is a lot more neutral because violence is considered to be a male thing so if they do it to each other it's kinda the norm. Those aren't eternal truths that everyone should agree with, those are ideas about masculinity that are accepted by society at large most of the time and very present in our media but THEY ARE WRONG. If anything Feminism aims at changing those toxic ideas but it has to start with acknowledging that violence is HUMAN, not male, therefore woman have to take back their right to be violent. It's an issue that affects both men and women but the effects on men are pretty much collateral damages as I think we can agree that those ideas about masculinity are mostly entertained by men for men and then repeated by some women too but they didn't come up with them. Women didn't brought up ways to further their own oppression, some (even many) of them can participate in furthering that oppression, but they aren't the source of it.
Any and all problems can be solved with good character writing. Sure these tropes exist and so do many others. People like them because they resemble real life. And in real life there are exceptions. People tend to like those even more, seeing as they are usually much harder to execute. I don't think this was ever a gender thing, more to do with the artform really, but to each his own
Akron162 go back to the first one, and watch them all again. They aren’t difficult to understand. It’s a look at the tropes commonly displayed in action movies when it comes to how they portray women. And then the tropes are contrasted with how the women in Fury Road don’t comply to those tropes. The concept is simple. Watch the series again.
The video is saying that creators shouldn't feel the need to resort to depicting shocking acts of violence against women, because this is a cheap and exploitative method of creating empathy for the female character. Innuendo posits that empathy towards the character should be created though deep and human characterisation, and that portraying gratuitous violence against women in order to pander towards the social narrative that women are weaker and should be protected, is ultimately its own form objectification.
Bro, whatever you do, NEVER write a screenplay. As audiences we like characters to earn the emotions we feel for them, not have them assumed. You seem to think this is an issue. Which is why I'm 100% certain you'd write a shitty movie
Explicit violence can be useful(game of thrones, particulary the books), but it doesn't need to always be there. And if you can't feel something for someone unless their suffering is shown in your face, then that's your fault lol.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 What are you on about? He was talking about female characters and so was I. What does race have to do with it? If you want me to feel someone's suffering but refuse to depict it how am I supposed to understand and relate? That's idiotic. I think this entire series is a production of severe brain dysfunction but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Having said that, I agree with this dude that the makers of this film pulled off a pretty sweet move beating the shit out of Max then transferring all that pain and empathy we felt for him over to the women, without them earning it. It's a pretty sick storyline move capitalising on the disposability of men and pleasing the feminists by not touching their precious women, while still moving the story forward within context
*We're never asked to pity the wives and we're never given a cheap thrill at the sight of their suffering. We are asked to **_respect_** them.* EXACTLY THIS
Considering this series has been 4+ months of work, "we're asked to respect them and take them at their word," hits really, really hard after the last week. I suspect this is gonna be the most shared of the individual parts, so before the comments get too nutty, let me just say: damn, this is really good. Well done, and I hope you get the copyright stuff figured out for the complete video.
Except, we're never asked to take them at their word. We don't even need their word. The mountain of visual evidence tells us everything we need to know.
Much prefer evidence to someone's word. Show don't tell, as they say
@@kindbrute4640 evidence gets buried under mounds of words. You can't see evidence the same way you can't hear words. Ignorance is bliss, as they say
@@moodist1er If that's true I guess that makes you a happy man
it feels like most movies treat rape and degradation something you have to witness to believe, and it needs to be extreme. no woman is going on a revenge because a coworked groped her. he has to demolish her.
@@blackmanwithcomputer yeah, but real talk; how common or prevalent is it when women are the supposed perpetrators of such things, both sexual and non-sexual?
Not very common or prevalent.
Speaking as a man myself: when it comes to cruelty and manipulation, on average and as a whole nothing can beat the degrees, extremes, extents and general regularity of what men do on the daily.
That's just an observation and statement of objective fact.
@@brano13177 Cruely and manipulation. I can assure you we try but chicks seem to have a natural affinity to that shit
@@kindbrute4640 Speaking as a man (not that it should matter): I sense your engaging in projection
@@brano13177 You say it shouldn't matter but you've mentioned it in 2/2 comments in this thread. I'm not sure I believe you anymore
@@kindbrute4640 I'm saying that the dissent I'm expressing, spoken from the position of a man is valid, but that the position of my thesis and reasoning shouldn't be hinged as being valid on the auspice alone of being a man over that of a women who may and often has expressed a position identical or equivalent in nature despite the fact that people such as yourself treat women's statemnts and thesis of reasoning for such positions as being worth less than a mans simply on the auspice that the position being expressed is being expressed by a women than it was expressed by a man.
My acknowledgement of this fact is nothing more than an acknowlagement of my rather existant male privilage and recognizing how you probably would dismiss my position out of hand and arbitarily and in the extreame if I were a women and drawing attention to that fact.
However your new position seems to indicate your just a bad faith contrarian.
Cruelty is the hack writer shorthand for evil. Well said.
I think cruelty is the ultimate expression of evil for everyone
Now, obviously I believe that to be a good writer you must show different kinds of evil in your works but yeah... the fact that the bad guy hurts people on screen doesn't make the writing bad.
the rape in Alien is... quite literal.
The alien isn't a person tho.
@@LimeyLassen It is however planting its "seed" into the person.... So its a case where the rape is both metaphorical and litteral.
Because lets face it: when it comes to Xenomorphs: no one wants a face full of alien-wing-wong forced inside them.
It's good that a movie shows the withholding of resources and the inherently violent system as evil,
without having to show individual victims beaten up, starving etc.
Because sadly even in real life people often don't realize that this form of "passive" violence is as bad as active violence!
I agree so hard. Hollywood turns compelling discussions of violence into cartoons by having people responsible for great suffering be over-the-top monsters, when in reality, lots of evil people through history were really nice face-to-face. Which helped them not see themselves as evil. Slave owners who beat their slaves LESS than others got to look down on slave owners who beat their slaves MORE, and would actually make this very argument - that THEY were responsible slave owners, and shouldn't be thrown in with those other guys. And yes, they were a little less awful But they got to feel morally clean while benefiting from a monstrous system, because they weren't UNNECESSARILY cruel.
Okay but what about scarce resource management? Water is clearly in short supply. And it also needs to be traded with Gas Town and the like. It looks like Joe takes care of those who earn their keep like breeders/milkers/war boys etc. The citizens do jack shit to earn the water. Economics are very important
@@kindbrute4640 Why should you need to _earn_ what's required for survival? Why do you need to _earn_ the right to live?
And if there isn't enough to go around, _how is everyone alive?_ This isn't a "scarcity" of pogs or whatever, it's a scarcity of something whose absence kills you within _days._
@@timothymclean "And if there isn't enough to go around, how is everyone alive?" - This is where you fucked up. Clearly Joe gives everyone enough to survive, but only just. It blows your own argument out of the water. Joe ensures these people's 'survival' for free. But if you wanna thrive, you'll have to contribute more than just "oh please pity me" to the man who controls the resources
Edit: The water pun was a happy accident lol
@@timothymclean As for why you need to earn your keep, I'm amazed each time someone bring up this argument. As if expecting someone to maintain their own right to live instead of lazily expecting someone else's charity is some insane proposition. Maybe you can help explain it to me but for the life of me I've never understood that
I'm interested in why you didn't include Maleficent in this as an example. It's a rape revenge story without explicitly mentioning rape...because it's a kids movie. I love that movie because it takes the trauma she experienced and not only vilifies her attacker, but her as well for taking her anger out on an innocent. She then becomes a Mama Bear and makes up for her sins. Her compassion is what saves both her and Aurora. It's a great movie, and a very cool mixing of troupes. (I think i worded this very poorly but I hope my point came across)
The beginning of the film where he steals her wings as the act of violation really broke my heart and was hella well acted, but the film on the whole did not make much of an impression on me.
This series is great. Thanks.
While I realise there was no way you could know how topical this section would be, where you describe the sexual predators(from 2:13) and you say: "sexual violence is rarely about the woman, but jockeying for status with one another. It's performative: Men proving they're alphas." I couldn't help but think of Judge Kavanaugh. Even if no other claim about him proves true, your final line about performance brought immediately to mind his Year-book "...alumni" claim. Here is a man lying without compunction, jockeying for alpha status.
tintinaus He’s talking about gang rape scenes in films. Very little (almost no) sexual violence has to do with what you just stated. Unless your definition of “sexual violence” has gone into some bizarro land.
@@WhatDoesEvilMean A: I only said that Kavanaugh came to mind when hearing the last line. "It's performative"(Kavanaugh lies about having sex with a girl in his year-book), which considering how many of his friends also did, makes it seem that claiming this "conquest" was a mark of (alpha?)status among them.
B: One of Kavanaugh's other accusers states he was at or took part in at least one gang-rape of female college students who had passed out from either alcohol or drug use. Does the fact that the woman wasn't tortured before her rape really make a difference to you?
tintinaus Again, I think it’s too muddy - “sexual violence”. Sexual violence can literally be consented. So this conversation is probably more in depth that I’m feeling up for. Haha
@@WhatDoesEvilMean Sexual violence, by definition, is not consensual sex since violence is considered acts of assault, battery and malicious harm and violation of a persons body by means of physical aggression and attack. Sexual Violence merely takes that malicious violation of person against others and gives it a more sexual overtone and undertone and makes it more grotesque than it already is.
Sexual violence is, by definition of the World Health Organization: any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.
Basically by definition; Sexual Violence is not consent.
The only people who try and redefine words from their actual meaning are Misogynist incels that want to enable and normalize violence and sexual assault against women, including outright rape.
So what does that say about you trying to redefine words from their actual meaning to enable such a traumatic, pervasive and grotesque human rights violation?
brano13177 Well, I wouldn’t define words as violence, so we already have a pretty wide chasm there. In America, words are not defined as violence. In other countries with fewer freedoms words are defined as violence. I don’t live in those countries and would never want to live in those countries.
As far as what violence is - your definition doesn’t align with any English definition. Violence is defined unanimously and consistently across every text as “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy”. The definition of violence in the English language does not depict personal agency or agreement as it pertains to wanting or not wanting the thing that is violence done to you.
If you whip someone (as a for instance) you are injuring them. When you step on someone’s hand with a pointed heel, you are injuring them. Someone can ask to be injured as it pertains to sexual encounters. A person can ask for violence to be done to them.
If that’s confusing to you, it’s only because you’re lacking a fundamental understanding of the English language. You no longer have that fundamental lack of understanding in this regard.
This series is so important and i love this movie. Thank you for this
Actually, a movie where the bad guy is really nice and kind, but still an evil tyrant would be super interesting to watch and a cool inversion of the trope.
Game of thrones is an example. I think there were many reason that people didn’t like the ending so much, expedited writing was one. But a lot of people just didn’t see how Daenerys became a tyrant until she was full on burning the capital. They thought it made 0 sense for her character, but it did... They didn’t see it before, not because the signs weren’t there, but because they were rooting for her and her cause. She showed major character flaws from the very beginning, and soon it became entitlement to conquer a country she had barely ever set foot on, messiah complex, black and white thinking, an entitlement not only to people’s submission but to their love... But everyone loved her, because she was charismatic, visionary and had strong values. Hitler had those qualities too. It makes me think that’s how everyone who helped a tyrant gain power must have felt at some point, before they realized what that person really was.
@@Nooom91 this is a bad take, they didn’t build actually tyrannical things up for her while waving them away, she kept doing what every leader in GoT did - fighting battles and punishing those who went against them. The main difference was that she was pretty universally doing bad things against those who mistreated people like slave holders. But because she’s a woman, killing is bad maybe? Worse than for all the other leaders in the series? Not a great take to comment under this series of vids!
On the off chance you get this, three years later:
The dragon age anime has a guy that qualifies.
This was the hardest section to watch, especially after the Kavanaugh hearings...
Keeping violence against women off-screen can stumble into its own problematic implications (search TV Tropes for "beauty is never tarnished"). As with many things, being respectful to other kinds of people means walking a thousand tightropes. For that matter, writing an engaging story-even one written without concern for prejudice or privilege-is all about that kind of tightrope. Nobody said writing was easy.
We can see the scars and effects of the tarnishing in Fury Road - we didn't need to see the actual tarnishing
The top comment on this video is a "but what about" regarding portraying violence against women on-screen. I'm not saying this is what the commenter is arguing for, just pointing out that this is the top comment.
This video did not require this comment. This video was not making an argument that portraying the violent exploitative acts onscreen was good or bad or should be encouraged or banned, just discussing the ways it has been done in the past and giving a desperately rare example of the violence NOT being shown in center frame. But still, the very top comment is immediately reminding everyone that we definitely should show it sometimes.
@@sharkofjoy
The video pretty clearly uses the term "hack writers" for people who use it so...it's certainly not saying it's a good thing.
It's also nice how the author calls explicit depictions of male suffering a "safe space". Not only failing to acknowledge it's normalisation as opposed to female suffering which is usually considered abhorrent (and hence used for shock value) but doubling down on almost appreciation for the double standard.
Also avoiding depicting explicit violence towards woman is not rare it is the norm. Hell most of the time there is no violence at all nevermind explicit.
joaov2 joaov2 The entire video series covers male violence as the default in action films. That’s part of the very basis for the essay. How you came to the conclusion that depictions of male violence was being ignored is ridiculous.
The very idea of explicit women violence is also covered entirely across the essay. Did you actually watch any of it?
@@DrOctatonic
I watched the whole series. If by "male violence" and "female violence" you mean "violence against men" and "violence against women"; then I fail to see the part in which the author says that "violence against men" is disproportionately represented and that this should change.
If you have a timestamp of it, and if you explain how it's not contradicted by the praise of the movie for only explicitly showing "violence against men" in this video then I'll take back what I said.
If by "male violence" and "female violence" you mean "violence perpetrated by men" and "violence perpetrated by women"; then I could agree that the author says that "violence perpetrated by men" is disproportionately represented and that this should change. Or a bigger motif of the series that "violence perpetrated by women" should have a greater variety of motivations and contexts to at least match the variety of motivations and contexts for "violence perpetrated by men".
I have a LOT of feelings on this and I'm not sure how exactly to put them into words, because the idea that rape is the most heinous crime you can commit has been thrown back in my face in defense of Kavanaugh a lot this week (as in "he's being accused of the most heinous crime you can commit, why should he not be upset about that")... it just makes me wonder just how much damage this cultural propensity for gratuitous depictions of sexual violence has done to our understanding of what rape is, what rapists look like, and how often it happens.
Rape is not the worse crime someone can commit. The person doesn't even die. It's really bad, but murder is objectively worse. Our sympathy to female victims of anything can just get irrationally extreme. It's like we're only allowed to say that rape is infinitely bad or we get shouted at. So we get terms like "rape survivor", even though in the vast majority of cases, the woman's life was never in danger. She's objectively not a "survivor". Someone in a life-threatening situation is a survivor. But it's not politically correct to call female victims out on their bullshit. Again and obviously, rape is terrible, and I have to keep stating that because I'm not kowtowing to female suffering like I'm supposed to, but it's objectively wrong to say that rape is worse than murder or mass murder or spraying someone with acid or stabbing some badly or shooting off someone's leg etc. It screws with one's thinking to infinite sympathize.
And the reasons that men and women will sympathize with women's suffering (as apposed to men's suffering) aren't exactly innocent. Sometimes it's because of sexual attraction. Sometimes it's because she's pretty and as a society we value pretty people more than ugly people. It could be because we think of women as innocent children. The extra sympathy generally comes from an unpleasant place.
Contrapoints made a great video about how gratuitous depictions of sexual violence creates this weird, cultural cognitive dissonance between what we think we think about rape, and what we actually think. On the one hand, we think of rapists as the most contemptible people on the planet that aught to be strung up and executed (hence the rape revenge genre.) On the other hand, we're squeamish about delivering justice in actual cases of rape because real-life rapists are rarely, if ever as extreme or off-putting as the fictional ones we create. So you get cases like Brock Turner who's definitely a rapist, but not the scary, back-alley kind we're trained to be afraid of.
@@jonathansalvador5037 Yeah they're always depicted as evil. We never see that they're people too. People would complain that we're "humanizing" a rapist otherwise. People want to understand reality with minimal effort: the truth is usually more complex. We are told that they're psychopaths and we never hear why they raped someone or how they were raised; I don't know of any movie that has a rapist redeeming himself or learning to sympathize more or handle his urges appropriately, etc.
@@JohnSmith-td7hd I try and draw a fine line between "humanizing" a rapist and "sympathizing" with one. To humanize someone is not to make a moral judgement, but to have a realistic sense of what you're up against. When we overwrite movie rapists to be drooling, irredeemable monsters, we let the actual, real-life monsters off the hook. Especially when they're charming, have otherwise clean records, friends who will vouch for them or when they're actual crime isn't "as bad" as the connotations of the word "rape" imply (see: the Brock Turner case.)
@@jonathansalvador5037 I was going to totally agree with you, but I wanted to know precisely what he did (What made him a "monster"), and according to Wikipedia, Brock Turner stuck his fingers inside an unconscious woman's vagina. When I heard that he was charged with rape (which were dropped due to that never happening) and felony sexual assault, I thought that he must have done something terrible, all without being told exactly what "felony sexual assault" even means. Did you know that you can be put on the sex offender registry for urinating in public? Our legal system over-reacts a lot with sex (partly because there's so little sex education, so sex itself seems scary). ...And drugs, and prostitution, and probably a lot else. The United States has 25% of all prisoners globally. We put people in prison for really stupid reasons. And now our news outlets are misleading us on purpose to generate more clicks, making us believe that Brock Turner got away with rape.
Just wanted to share that I saw another rape-revenge film not too long ago, called "American Mary," which features probably the most brutal/violent revenge ever depicted in film... and the nice part is that it's only a sub-plot of the film, which mostly features the female protagonist's budding medical career.
This was absolutely the best episode of the series, and I accidentally watched part 8 before this one so i didn't even realized i had missed an episode!
Thanks for linking 2017's Revenge to this larger trope. I saw it earlier this year and loved it, but was wondering why it had such gratuitous objectification of the protagonist when the plot seemed to be mostly trying to be empowering to women. Now I have a lot more to chew on
Infinite Mess I actually thought it was nearly unfair to place it among the others for how it alters things.
The protagonist is shown to be exactly the kind of woman we’ve been conditioned to not support, sexually active and even the mistress to a married man. Regardless, the movie is adamant that she’s the hero and doesn’t deserve any of it and rightly so.
The rape itself is nearly entirely off screen and she’s clothed completely (well as completely as possible for a rape). As the film goes on, she’s shown in greater states of undress, but never once to titilate and always to empower. She even reaches her strongest point by literally branding her womb with an eagle symbolising freedom. The final shot of the film has her looking toward the camera with a shiny, hollow, pink, star-shaped earring, a feminine image if ever there was one, front and centre of the shot regardless of all the grime.
Not to mention that the rape itself isn’t shown as a way for the men to jockey for power, but one pathetic man looking for love(? I’m not sure of this one, I was originally going to say companionship, but it’s definitely not power). And he’s even the figure of the men that’s humanised the most throughout the rest of the film! (Not advocating for rape or anything like that, just pointing out how this movie is different)
TL;DR Revenge does a lot that’s incredibly different and feels to me that it’s harsh to place with the others.
i weirdly started crying in the end of this particular part
I don't think it's weird.
Not weird at all, what with all that's going on in American politics at the moment. It's very resonant.
Not weird in the slightest, especially not in this current context.
Me too. You are not alone.
This was an incredible and honestly challenging episode. I was pretty convinced that equal violence between men and women was the right way to go in film, but you make really good points and I’ve changed my mind
I don't think "Alien" fits into this category. Yes, the Alien's life cycle is a rape metaphor. But the revenge part is missing. The characters only enact violence to survive not to revenge their dead crew mates.
One exception is when Parker burns Ash's remains. But he's a male character.
The rest of the violence is for survival's sake only.
It's one of the reasons why I personally never liked Kill Bill (yeah even before I knew about the falling out between Thurman and Tarantino). Yeah it might not focus much on the rape part, but to me it's an example of being celebrated when to me it didn't succeed in subverting the clichees. Maybe some people see it differently, but to me it was just a standard example. I wish you had mentioned/discussed Kill Bill in this series (with the movie named after the villain and the heroine having a title for a name).
Very good point!
Tarantino just likes to pay homage to the History of movies.
crazy how men enjoying the death of rapists is not that far from a mirror of that competition among men you mentioned when whoever they're inflicting violence upon is secondary, are the viewers really commited to some form of justice or just to knowing that someone they think is worse than them is on the recieving end of violence
The most interesting and important video of the serie so far in my opinion. Thank you.
What's it called when the male protagonist kills thousands of men in battle but when it comes to the one and only woman fighting him he always spares her?
Sexism
Well, that's more of a main antagonist syndrome. The big villain is often shown mercy, but the villain's minions? Ha! Those are the equivalent of video games monsters.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 I mean, the woman in this example doesn't have to be the main antagonist.
Oh God, a small part of me was worried you'd bring up I Spit On Your Grave.
Enjoying your series so far!
This is a quality series.
A great series and I really like it, but there is one small problem I feel with it, especially in this episode, that.... violence, be it rape, domestic violence, or any similar form of violence is assumed to be male on female. For example the, that is what domestic violence usually looks like. But woman can be violent towards men as well, they often are. Female on mal rape is a thing, and not just some borderline cases. I know it is not relevant for this video...but it is still such a common misconceptions.... that intergender violence....or better bad intergender violence is always male on female. Female on male violence is either sexualized or celebrated.
Personally i would say, with full confidence, that he definitely doesnt assume that. But it is a thing many ppl do assume and its good to point out.
I think he wasn't saying that that's what he personally believes but that what most people assume and that's how media usually present those issues.
If interested in how that is represented in media (in the rare cases it is) and that it comes with its own bag of problems there is a video by pop culture detectives about sexual assault on men in movies. Here is the one focused on the examples with female perpetrators
ua-cam.com/video/9nheskbsU5g/v-deo.html
This is true, however, the points of this series is a deep dive into female tropes, not male. This episode talks about the particular exploitative film about rape victims' revenge. Of course there are male who suffers from rape, too. But he is talking about the movies and tropes that depicts female suffering (which there are A LOT), so of course he wont focus on male suffering. That s another essay for another time.
this series is SO GOOD.
I really wish these were all one singular video, that way UA-cam didn't break all the time / bombard me with ads betwixt the transitions.
I love this series of videos and have re-watched it multiple times. After seeing “Revenge” and watching this again if decided you are the only cis straight(?) white guy id love to hear talk about that film 💜
y’all, come on... if he listed every r@pe revenge movie we’d be here all day. this series is specifically about how MMFR subverts common media tropes about women
Well said, Miller handled the this aspect really well imo
I know this is gonna sound weird, but I don't think the original "I Spit On Your Grave" should be treated the same as the rest of the sub-genre/archetypes it spawned. It tends to get dismissed as trashy exploitation, and I avoided it because I believed that... but then I saw it, and I realized something, it was was far deeper than it's often given credit for. A very intelligent story about the horrors of American Misogyny and how it feeds American rape culture. I recommend checking out Count Jackula's 2 part series (technically 4 on the subject of misogyny in horror) on the film. It's very interesting. (Quick edit, I know Jackula can be problematic at times and I do not agree with everything that he says.)
I actually wrote a short piece in defense of the original I Spit on Your Grave and criticizing the remake: innuendostudios.tumblr.com/post/176646814132/i-spit-on-your-grave-1978-vs-2010
I tried to stress in the video that, for all the qualms I have with the rape revenge film, the genre actually makes some of the boldest statements about toxic masculinity and rape culture of any of the genres discussed. Also, last year's movie Revenge was SHOCKINGLY good.
Count jackula has a good review of it
You missed the best of this genre. The Last House on the Left.
To me the best way to describe the lack of male on female violence is denial of fetishizing said violance.
I find most movies do a shit job of depicting violence in general, I'm glad furry road did a good job of it.
Alien is about rape, but Ripley does not act out of revenge... She actually did care very little for the Nostromo crew, who were even undermining her authority and often mistreating her.
It's not that she didn't care or hated them, it's that it was a job, and vice versa. When talking about the relationships in the first Alien, I always ask to imagine you and your office co-workers suddenly thrust into THAT situation one morning. Minus some people who are maybe your friends and people you've shared more intimacy with, it's mostly people who are familiar, who you see almost every day, but who you often know pretty little. You're not super attached to them personally, but seeing someone you were seeing every day and saying "hello" to, maybe even bickered a little over some petty office shit, gutted, might fuck you up more than if it was a complete stranger.
And that's why the protagonists' relationships are completely unique in Alien compared to any other horror movie. Not complete strangers, not loved ones, just other people like you who are tired, wanna finish the shift and go home, and instead get thrust into a nightmare with zero preparation.
Again.. thanks for this. I mean it comes off now as a lovefest for fury road, but yeah I saw it and that was in it. =8)-DX
Somebody enjoyed their copy of Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Great vid.
Rape isn't quintessentially male on female. Heck, Alien is about rape of the *male* for the most part.
Furthermore, female on male violence is never given the serious tone it deserves.
I agree, female-on-male violence isn't given the serious tone it deserves. In particular, male rape victims tend to get swept under the rug... because the dominant stereotype of what "rape" looks like is male-on-female. The video is talking about stereotypes, cultural assumptions, not reality.
The domestic violence in Vampires is random
Not even a mention of Kill Bill? Maybe it's not the best example, I can see that, because KB plays in slightly different space? Would love to see how KB stacks up against this trope.
did you forget about the last house on the left?
I think your analysis of the lack of female violence in the film is somewhat problematic. I agree that showing rape flashbacks would be objectifying, but some of the violence you mention doesn't seem like it would have those connotations, and I worry that not showing it serves to reinforce our society's disproportionate concern for female suffering. Anherod's falling off a vehicle is just an accident, so I doubt that people would read social context into that. Furiosa is a competent warrior, so I don't see why people would consider showing her being injured combat as objectifying.
But the audio and mad max lips don't match up in that one scene!
while I agree with most of it, I'm deeply uncomfortable by the idea of male on male violence being "okay" and even a "safe space", sounds not that different from "it's a tragedy when a woman is sexually abused, but it's a comedy if a man is", personally not a fan of Fury Road's decision to treat the suffering of woman as more uncomfortable or taboo than the suffering of man, I think this movie is more than capable of portraying that sort of stuff without appearing edgy or exploitative like all the B movie examples provided
I wonder what do you think of irreversible, it does several interesting things with rape-revenge formula.
...Sarah Connor, is that you?
ah yes, rosalie from twilight
Enjoying the breakdowns.
Do you think that it's possible for our society to actually get to a point where violence inflected upon men is viewed with no different connotations than those inflicted on women? Presumably, there's also similar lack of subtlety for race, sexual orientation, etc - similar question?
The same way how the n-word will not be a slur anymore: systemic deconstruction of the harmful hierarchy that made that discrimination in the first place. For racial slurs, the deconstruction of white supremacy and racism. For gendered violence, the deconstruction of gender expectations and patriarchy.
@@aegis_knight Thanks - I'm skeptical that deconstruction alone will provide this balance. I also wonder if we won't keep evolving as a society to vilify some other form of visceral exploitation - that it might just be in a our nature. I don't say this to excuse such a perspective - in fact, we should as a 'civilized' society actively better ourselves to see beyond the 'pornography' - merely that it we might still need to accept some level of failings on our parts and have empathy for ourselves when we are not capable of completely letting go of bias or the enjoyment of various visceral 'base instincts'.
Kill Bill comes to mind.
You honestly should've put a trigger warning on especially this one...
This is my comment. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
"The most quintessentially male against female act of violence" eh? Are you implying that women cannot rape men? Or that men can't rape men? Or women cannot rape women? Problematic....tsk tsk tsk
I did enjoy the series
No. Like he said in another video, it's a matter of degree, not a matter of kind.
@@jonathansalvador5037 I am sort of being snarky. But even if I assume that female victims were to outnumber male victims, it would still be a bit of a problematic statement to call rape QUINTESSENTIALLY a male against female act of violence. A lot of people who have this attitude do not even take male victims seriously. Even heard of cases where male victims are laughed at or told that it's somehow a good thing because fosters an understanding of female victims somehow...Someone got raped and there are people out there who would either not care or call it a good thing. Regardless of sex, that is a problem.
Furthermore to say that there is a greater degree of female victims therefore it is a female problem even though it can happen to anyone is dangerously close to implying that female victims matter more and deserve more attention.
@@Mixinnitup I didn't mean to suggest that male-on-male, female-on-female or female-on-male rape is less heinous or deserving of attention. Just that the ubiquity of rape as a demonstration of masculine dominance makes it as close to a quintessential male-on-female form of violence as it gets.
Coding doesn't need to be quintessentially or even statistically accurate to push a coherent cultural narrative. Vikings probably didn't wear horned helmets, but if I wear a horned helmet for Halloween, it's safe to say I've adopted a quintessentially Scandinavian aesthetic.
Jonathan Salvador i understand but, in implying that the dominance is masculine and that being dominated by it is feminine, you are assigning those roles to aggressor and victim are you not? It does seem that speaking this way codifies our idea of what a rapist is and is not.
Put another way, if I were to assert that masculinity is tied to leadership because most powerful leaders in our world were men it would be tantamount to my saying men are better suited to tje role. Even if I acknowledge that women can be leaders and should be taken seriously as such Id still be reinforcing the idea that when you think of a leader you think of a man by default...see where Im going? If I define rape as an act of the masculine against the feminine then am I not implying that to rape is to act as a man and to be raped is to be acted upon as a woman?
Jonathan Salvador and this has some messed up implications on how we treat aggressors and victims depeding on what sex characteristics thet display. Despite that rape can happen to and is traumatic for anyone.
I couldn't help but hear the subtext 'male on male violence is okey to be shown whereas male on female violence isn't'
That is a huge problem in cinema, if male on female violence and female on male violence were portrayed in the same way, I think it would be a great social leap, women aren't automatically helpless when it comes to violence, and men aren't automatically tough when it comes to violence. Men being viewed as expendable and women being viewed as perfect pure beings is harmful to both genders. Obviously violence is horrible, and no violence should be shown as fine or just expected, so it's sad to see that a lot of the time violence against men is often viewed as not a big deal, especially comparatively with violence towards women. (If I haven't made my point clear, I'm not advertising violence towards women as no big deal, or a good thing)
This isn't subtext. Innuendo explicitly says that this is a tactic on the filmmakers part; that male-on-female violence has been coded in films for too long as titillating or hyper evil, that the director didn't trust men to sympathise without objectifying in the wake of physical suffering.
We sympathise with what happened to Furiosa in the 'safe space' of watching it happen to a man (Max) so that when we see it's happened to her too none of that baggage is present. We just empathise.
It's not that male-on-female violence 'shouldnt' be shown. It's that the director didn't trust people to empathise with Furiosa they way he wanted otherwise.
It's not the male-on-male violence is acceptable, so much as films don't generally try and cast male-on-male violence as titilating or weirdly gratifying. The male-on-female violence in Mad Max is treated as if it were Male-on-Male violence.
Context, Jeffrey!! Context!! If you even feel that male on male violence is as equitable to male on female violence, then you're part of the problem!!!
@@michaelotis223 Shouldn't it be though?
Is this video saying its moraly better to show male harm them female on screen? Isn't that sexist? I find it strange that this video seems to clame that when a man suffers on screen its just violence but if it just so happens to be a woman then it's special. Should't our socity view the suffering of men and wemon as both being equaly bad?
No, the video isn't saying that at all...
@@legrandliseurtri7495 So what is it saying?
@@kindbrute4640 If someone pretends someone else said something and it's not true, then you only have to say "that's not true". Like it's not something that requires arguments.
It's. Not?
No, the video is saying that creators shouldn't feel the need to resort to depicting shocking acts of violence against women, because this is a cheap and exploitative method of creating empathy for the female character. Innuendo posits that empathy towards the character should be created though deep and human characterisation, and that portraying gratuitous violence against women in order to pander towards the social narrative that women are weaker and should be protected, is ultimately its own form objectification.
Violence against women in movies needs to be normalized just as violence against men is. Its stupid that there is a difference made between this.
Archer
It's not just about what's normal, though. Male on Female violence is often shown to be titillating and Innuendo Studios was essentially just saying that he doesn't trust filmmakers to portray it in their movies with any sort of seriousness. Not that I agree with him entirely, but he meant that directors shouldn't bother trying to show male on female violence onscreen because they'll mess it up.
Thats a very reckless, ignorant thing to say, Archer!! Try not to be an edgelord
Archer found the Incel
BTW Archer, it's already normalized: it's a bad thing and that's the problem.
@@hexx2211 Good thing he's not a studio exec
I think this is by far the weakest entry. Without going point-by-point, we can just look at the closing line:
"We don't need to see or even know how Joe treated them to know he's a tyrant"
We don't need to *see*, but we do need (to some degree) to *know how*, which you spent a good part of the video explaining. You do a lot of this self-contradiction in trying to wind down the video. You try to distance the guilt of Joe from cruelty while simultaneously giving evidence of his cruelty. The important thing is not whether or not cruelty's presence is necessary, just the degree to which it is made visible. I don't think you articulated this very well at all.
But Joe had a self sustained civilization. He gave people water. He gave them food(probably but it might be false), he protected him and he made sure there was law and order. He made sure that they would have water(which is not infinite) and also he wanted a son who would not be as stupid as others, a son that could rule the citadel after his death.
ok but have you considered
just hear me out
that fascism might be bad?
@@InnuendoStudios yeah it just might be
@@InnuendoStudios It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Resource management is a thing you know. Just because you don't like the manner in which it's done, doesn't make it fascism
@Alexa Smythe It was made by someone who seems to have a grasp on economics, unlike most people in this comment section
@@kindbrute4640 People can manage water without a tyrant, who probably keeps way more to himself.
Why is it ok to let male on male violence just be violence? That's pretty dehumanizing to men... Like the series as a whole though and understand this is female centric but a critique of how men are portrayed in media should be implicit in feminism for it to truly be about equality of gender.
Actually, feminists do care about men's issues and how male on male violence is perceived because those issues result from problematic ideas about masculinity that have bad consequences on both men and women.
Innuendo Studios isn't saying that HE believes that male on male violence is ok but rather that the film writers, who are mostly MEN by the way, and society at large sees it that way and that's not his fault, or women's fault or even feminism's fault. That's the status quo or, dare I say it, Patriarchy (I hope you are not triggered) 's fault.
That's part of toxic ideas about masculinity. Male on female violence is titillating as he explained in the video, Female on male violence is funny because the victim is emasculated since women are considered inferior which means he is even less than a woman. Male on male violence, however, is a lot more neutral because violence is considered to be a male thing so if they do it to each other it's kinda the norm.
Those aren't eternal truths that everyone should agree with, those are ideas about masculinity that are accepted by society at large most of the time and very present in our media but THEY ARE WRONG.
If anything Feminism aims at changing those toxic ideas but it has to start with acknowledging that violence is HUMAN, not male, therefore woman have to take back their right to be violent. It's an issue that affects both men and women but the effects on men are pretty much collateral damages as I think we can agree that those ideas about masculinity are mostly entertained by men for men and then repeated by some women too but they didn't come up with them. Women didn't brought up ways to further their own oppression, some (even many) of them can participate in furthering that oppression, but they aren't the source of it.
Ah great another straw man retorts without considering the real social history and baggage of women suffering under centuries of patriarchy
Any and all problems can be solved with good character writing. Sure these tropes exist and so do many others. People like them because they resemble real life. And in real life there are exceptions. People tend to like those even more, seeing as they are usually much harder to execute. I don't think this was ever a gender thing, more to do with the artform really, but to each his own
@@michaelotis223 Would you stop repeating the same comment everywhere? It's getting annoying.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 would you stop following comments I wrote over a year ago! Says a lot more about you lol
Frankly, i dont understand the point of this videos.
Akron162 go back to the first one, and watch them all again. They aren’t difficult to understand. It’s a look at the tropes commonly displayed in action movies when it comes to how they portray women. And then the tropes are contrasted with how the women in Fury Road don’t comply to those tropes.
The concept is simple. Watch the series again.
feminism
The video is saying that creators shouldn't feel the need to resort to depicting shocking acts of violence against women, because this is a cheap and exploitative method of creating empathy for the female character. Innuendo posits that empathy towards the character should be created though deep and human characterisation, and that portraying gratuitous violence against women in order to pander towards the social narrative that women are weaker and should be protected, is ultimately its own form objectification.
*Respect wahmen!*
Incel Meeenz
Bro, whatever you do, NEVER write a screenplay. As audiences we like characters to earn the emotions we feel for them, not have them assumed. You seem to think this is an issue. Which is why I'm 100% certain you'd write a shitty movie
Explicit violence can be useful(game of thrones, particulary the books), but it doesn't need to always be there. And if you can't feel something for someone unless their suffering is shown in your face, then that's your fault lol.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 What are you on about? He was talking about female characters and so was I. What does race have to do with it? If you want me to feel someone's suffering but refuse to depict it how am I supposed to understand and relate? That's idiotic. I think this entire series is a production of severe brain dysfunction but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Having said that, I agree with this dude that the makers of this film pulled off a pretty sweet move beating the shit out of Max then transferring all that pain and empathy we felt for him over to the women, without them earning it. It's a pretty sick storyline move capitalising on the disposability of men and pleasing the feminists by not touching their precious women, while still moving the story forward within context
If you feel the need to watch someone be violently degraded in order to empathize with them, it might be you who's got the problem. Lol.
@@a.t.3192 Not necessarily. But if your story is "this person has been violently degraded" then yes I need to see that, otherwise it's just hearsay
@@kindbrute4640 are you a Joe truther or something