You Probably Shouldn't Read This

So I just saw the movie Showgirls for the first time and it was straight up disgusting. One of the biggest complaints I hear about the film is that it's wildly sexist, and while I normally don't react that way to films about women exploring/exploiting their sexuality, even if it is presented through the eyes of a man...wow were they right about this movie. See the reason why I don't mind the sexualization of characters, female or male, as long as they still have a character to them, something that these girls don't. But that's not what this post is about, yes the movie is incredibly sexist but there's one part of the film that really got me thinking...how film deals with rape...yeah we're going there.

Whenever a movie, book, television show, videogame or pretty much anything ever tries to portray rape, it will almost always be viewed as insensitive, misinformed and above all else, offensive. My query isn't why people are offended, i completely understand why, rape is a horrifying thing and can ruin a person's life, so portraying it in a piece of fiction is a double-edged sword, if they romanticise it or play down the trauma it can cause then people will say it's insulting, but if they portray it realistically then people say it's exploitive. But why is rape seen as a more sensitive subject than death or other subjects? If a character is murdered then people aren't going to rage about it, that is unless it's a very specific manner, e.g: someone child murder for comedic purposes. If a character has an abortion then some people will complain, but these days people are more on the side of pro-choice.

What seems to be the biggest red flag is whenever a character is raped as a form of character development, whether it be for themselves or even worse, someone else. People are killed all the time in movies as a way of developing characters and for the most part, it's never a serious issue, if someone is raped and whether they become a mess or a stronger person because of it, it's almost never okay. I suppose you could argue that it's because in reality, people are more likely going to be scarred and an emotional wreck after such an experience, but you could say the same about someone you love being murdered, if a kid had to watch his parents gun downed in an alley, they're probably not going to become Batman. Again, i'm not complaining that people are upset by a life altering tragedy being resorted down to a plot device, i'm just curious on why it's okay to use one tragedy and not the other, especially when it could be argued that murder is just as bad-if not worse-than rape. But that's coming from someone who has never had to go through either experiences, myself or the people close to me, and hopefully never will.

-Danny