Casey Gilfillan

The artistic expression and allure of vulgar ambiguity in cinema offers a mask of plausible deniability under which subversive meaning can be hidden. This is how we find ourselves confronted with misogynistic propaganda without even realizing that we are engaging with such content. You have likely watched an episode of something, a movie somewhere, where a woman is physically assaulted with intense and graphic scene mapping, strangled nearly to or past the point of death, captured and held sexual prisoner, slaughtered in a way that makes vulnerable her naked body, or brutalized in some other glorified manner on the big screen. You have likely also heard someone defend this content with a justification along the lines of, “it’s not anti-woman, it’s just a timepiece, it’s historically accurate!”

Yes, many of these depictions are ‘historically’ accurate, in the way of reflecting an ongoing and active history rather than one of days past. And while there is benefit in maintaining historical accuracy, isn’t anyone else tired of watching women suffer? Even if it’s just a movie, even if it is to preserve historical accuracy, we know women have and continue to be harmed at the hands of men. So why are we so obsessed with recreating these traumas down to the sadistic detail?

The “we” who are obsessed does not include myself, but includes many a creepy and powerful Hollywood man – script writers, directors, even fellow actors – who ensure that these narratives are perpetuated. They facilitate this violent-fetish culture, ensuring there will be full frontal on the woman’s naked body and on her strangulation* (or *insert choice of painful death here*). Gore Porn is a more accurate genre for media that platforms such depictions, and it is clear when they do this in idolatry of the image rather than the potency of a message.

I stopped watching Game of Thrones after episode 6. Spoiler alert (!!!) but this is the episode where Daenerys’ waste of a brother meets his karmic fate by getting molten gold poured on his head. I arrived here after suffering through several episodes of him treating Daenerys as owned property, selling her off as a wife and incubator while also indulging in her rape and abuse. Before the episode began, I had already looked up when the brother dies – I was obstinate that I would not be watching the series if this man lived beyond a handful of episodes. I was relieved to see that he would be dead within the first season, so I impatiently powered through.

Once I had finally seen him “punished,” I knew I need not go on further. His punishment and subsequent death is insufficient for the agony he imposed upon Daenerys, and I knew it to be a true sign of the disappointing and unwatchable content to come. Multiple episodes of suffering and the implication of a lifetime of the same, snubbed in a 5-minute revenge window…it is unfair, to say the least. I could not continue, knowing that Daenerys and any other woman on screen would be submitted to dehumanizing subjugation and the most intimate of violations, while the pathetic karmic plots pale in comparison to their anguish. How could I enjoy the show and not think of the real and nameless women of history that have suffered at similar hands and even worse fates? I once voiced this experience to a fan of the show, who avidly promised me that “it gets better for the women at the end.” I laughed in response, because why would that convince me to watch this glorified rape porn?

Moving on to content with even less viable justification brings us to the Terrifier franchise. I have never been a fan of these movies, originally due to my distaste for heavy-gore media. Knowing and seeing what I have now, the distaste has turned into severe contempt for the franchise and those involved. It is not just a cinematic universe in which a crazy clown kills people (there are a good amount of these, and the killing more or less tends to be equally balanced, or equal in measure of severity). Rather, this cinematic universe is glamorized femicide, with women brutalized for sadistic and voyeuristic pleasure; naked and tortured and barely alive but not dead (yet), that’s how they like them. These films were made by and for those burdened with the plight of hating women while being attracted to them, for it facilitates the dual relief of watching a woman die in an ultra-sexualized manner that encourages lust to her battered body.

To the women who enjoy this movie, I know that social conditioning can be difficult to reject; enjoying this content, especially as a woman, is made out to be cool, edgy. But truly, what would any of us like about seeing a woman get chain-sawed in half, starting at the groin? Or that bedroom scene, which is unspeakably awful. To anyone reading this with an objection, I know the clown kills men too, but they do not die like the women (please entertain me with a better counter than ‘men die too’). I would be curious as to who could possibly defend this, and what they would say since Catherine Corcoran (“Dawn”) is actively suing the producers, quoting deplorable filming conditions (hanging upside down for 10 hours), distribution of sexually explicit content without consent, and unpaid royalties. It would seem that the abuse of women does not remain on-screen, which is not surprising in the slightest for a movie centered around the gorey, body-fetish slaughter of women.

Where is the line drawn between the content making a “point,” and becoming the indulgently wet dream of some sadist creep? To some, this opinion of mine might seem sensitive. Artistic expression is the most powerful when it involves crossing boundaries and taming the absurd, and I can recognize this to be true while still calling out predatory trash for what it is. I don’t find the creative liberties taken in the aforementioned content (along with many others) to be provoking in any thoughtful, meaningful, or potent way. It is my true belief that the powers, largely the men, behind these depictions do not value integrity of story, historical accuracy, or artistic expression: a naked woman being tortured will get views, a beautiful woman being thrown down forcibly by a horseback-riding barbarian will get views. They want your eyes in the way of wanting to pervert your gaze, as they encourage the normalization of the bloodied, beaten, mutilated female body. As a woman watching, I’m tired of seeing women in pain, suffering, sadness, false imprisonment, and sexual torture. There need not be escapist media, for these malicious acts happen daily to women across the globe.