Representing Rape Trauma in Film: Moving beyond the Event

Amanda Spallacci

doi:10.3390/arts8010008

Abstract

Trauma theorists foreground the unrepresentability of trauma; however, with modern innovations in visual representation, such as the photograph and cinema, depictions of trauma have begun to circulate across different mediums for a variety of audiences. These images tend to problematically present the traumatic event rather than the effects of trauma, such as traumatic memory. Specifically, some contemporary Hollywood popular films and television series that include rape as their subject matter often include a rape scene that can evoke affects such as disgust or empathy, and while these affects can last the duration of the film, they fail to shift popular discourses about rape because affect is more productive when it focuses on effects instead of events. As trauma studies has shifted to memory studies in the Humanities, and rape has become more prominent in popular culture through the circulation of personal testimony on social media and memoir, depictions of rape in cinema have slowly started to change from presentations of rape scenes to representations of rape trauma that highlight different affects, such as shame. Using Monster (2003), Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Room (2015), and the television series, 13 Reasons Why (2017) and Sharp Objects (2018) as case studies, this paper argues that, for an audiovisual depiction of rape to shift popular discourses about rape, it would have to function rhetorically to widen the cultural understanding of rape trauma beyond the event, and demonstrate that rape trauma should be understood as part of the personal, unconscious, cultural, and visual mediation of traumatic memory.

Highlights

(2018) as case studies, this paper argues that, for an audiovisual depiction of rape to shift popular discourses about rape, it would have to function rhetorically to widen the cultural understanding of rape trauma beyond the event, and demonstrate that rape trauma should be understood as part of the personal, unconscious, cultural, and visual mediation of traumatic memory
Current theories of trauma stress the impossibility of its representation (Meek 2009, p. 6) and, as a result, a significant number of contemporary Hollywood popular films and television programs present the traumatic event as opposed to representing trauma itself
Rather than adopt the trauma studies approach that insists on the impossibility of representing trauma—and, as a result opting to focus on the traumatic event—some recent cinematic depictions of rape represent the trauma resulting from the sexual violence through the concept of cultural memory, which “can best be understood at the junction where the individual and social come together” (Hirsch and Smith 2002, p. 7)

Summary

Introduction

Current theories of trauma stress the impossibility of its representation (Meek 2009, p. 6) and, as a result, a significant number of contemporary Hollywood popular films and television programs present the traumatic event as opposed to representing trauma itself. 6) and, as a result, a significant number of contemporary Hollywood popular films and television programs present the traumatic event as opposed to representing trauma itself. This essay argues that event-based representations of rape—meaning that they focus on the rape rather than trauma—such as is the case in Room (2015); 13 Reasons Why (2017); Monster (2003) and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), keep affects contained within the movie or television viewing experience, whereas a television program like Sharp Objects (2018), in representing traumatic memory, can produce a multitude of affects, widen cultural understandings of rape beyond the event, and “shed light on the chronically trauma-producing social structures so as to forge the will to change them”

Trauma and the Image

Rape Scenes as Representations of Survivors’ Trauma

Sharp Objects and Traumatic Memory