Damsels in Distress

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By Rabia Belt

In a year cluttered with blockbuster movies, it is hard to tell which one reigned supreme-Lord of the Rings, XXX, or Attack of the Clones. In terms of actual film scenes, however, there is one clear victor: the wet t-shirt scene in Spiderman. For the two people who have not seen the movie or just the scene (it takes about thirty seconds to find it online) it occurs about halfway through the movie. Mary Jane, or MJ (Kirsten Dunst), has just been saved by Spiderman (Tobey Maguire). Without taking off his mask entirely (he's hanging upside down) she kisses him. Oh, and it's been pouring rain for about thirty seconds and she's wearing a thin pink shirt.

Despite the impressiveness of this scene to (some of) the movie's viewers, what has remained unnoticed is the scene immediately preceding MJ's wet t-shirt display, where she is stalked by a group of men who seem as if they are going to rape her. Spiderman's successful vanquishing of the bad guys is the impetus for the kiss. While I found the juxtaposition of an attempted rape scene and a makeout scene strange at the very least, my opinion does not seem to have been shared by either the media or the general public. While critics such as Roger Ebert panned the movie's special effects, the unreality of this particular aspect of the plot has gone unnoticed. The only critic that I have found who even noticed the two scenes was Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, but it only warranted a brief (one sentence) mention.

Of course, Spiderman is not the only film in which this dynamic has occurred-and been ignored. In Back to the Future, George McFly has to save his future wife, Lorraine, from being raped by Biff the bully. Once George decks Biff, he gets a kiss from Lorraine (and a future marriage). In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere saves Julia Roberts from being raped by an unsavory friend, and he gets a kiss as well. A variation of this theme occurs in Braveheart, where Mel Gibson's wife defends herself against an attempted rape (because Mel's not around) and pays with her life, a violation that arguably drives the rest of the movie. Mel has to make up for not being around to defend his wife from the English by fighting against them. He also gets to sleep with the English princess and impregnate her, in effect violating “the English's woman” even more than the English violated “his woman.” In probably the most egregious example, Kevin Costner's Robin Hood saves Maid Marian from being raped by the Sheriff of Nottingham and then immediately starts making out with her. Conveniently, she's already half-dressed, as the Sheriff has forced off some of her clothes.

While there are films where women have saved themselves from rape-G.I. Jane, Charlie's Angels, and even Showgirls-none of these movies provide actual counter-examples. Put simply, there are no guys involved in the saving. In Back to the Future, Pretty Woman, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Spiderman, the attempted rape serves to bring the female and male main characters closer together, and, usually, it sparks the beginning of their sexual relationship. The male character uses violence in a controlled, acceptable manner, to protect the sexual “virtue” of the woman he loves, and he uses it against a man-or men, in the case of Spiderman-who can now be considered unequivocally bad. The bad male characters lose because they are physically weaker than the good male character. In addition, their weakness-physical and otherwise-is played for laughs. Julia Roberts' attempted rapist is Jason Alexander-George Costanza from Seinfeld-a far cry from Richard Gere who saves her. The impotence of the Sheriff of Nottingham is drawn out for comedic effect. Biff the bully is also an idiot, in comparison to George McFly, who becomes a successful novelist. This comedic treatment of the bad guys minimizes the acts of violence that they are perpetrating, and also underplays the fact that while they may be “weaker” than the male characters who eventually overpower them, they are still stronger than the women they are attempting to rape.

On the one hand, the woman doesn't even really matter; she's just the excuse for a fight between a good guy and a bad guy, and the good guy wins. On the other hand, the woman's presence allows for a significant motif to repeat in all these movies. In all of these cases, the women who are attacked are very independent. They have independent careers, they speak their minds, and in most cases, especially with Pretty Woman, they are very cognizant of their own sexuality: Julia Roberts is a hooker, Lorraine tries to seduce her son, MJ is wearing a skanky shirt for her waitressing job. This all changes, though, when they are almost raped. At that point, the woman becomes part of a conventional, “safe,” monogamous relationship. Julia Roberts stops being a hooker and dates Richard Gere, Maid Marian marries Robin Hood, Lorraine becomes Lorraine McFly. In a way, the attack serves to get the women under control and provides a warning to women that they need to have a man around to protect them from other men's sexual interests, since they can't defend themselves. In the only movie that differs from the pattern-Braveheart, where a woman does fend off her attacker by herself-the woman pays with her life. The attacks allow the female leads to reclassify themselves as “virtuous,” monogamous, heterosexual women, since they put their pasts behind them as they date their saviors. Moreover, they are never actually raped, which allows the men to feel capable of saving “their women” and prevents the women from being considered “damaged goods.”

One would think, though, that even without actual penetration, an attempted rape would leave a considerable amount of emotional damage. Or, at the very least, a woman probably wouldn't want to have sex, say, thirty seconds afterwards. Yet, none of these films seem to share that assumption. In a way, the movies suggest that the attempted rapes in fact do the opposite-that they stimulate the woman sexually even as she protests her violation, a visual rendition of a perceived rape fantasy. Moreover, it seems as if the audience, too, is supposed to see the woman sexually during these attempted rape scenes. How else can we explain MJ's wet t-shirt? While the attacks are treated seriously in that the women have to be saved from them and protest loudly while they are happening, once the attacker is physically vanquished, the assault becomes no big deal, either to the rest of the movie's plot or to the characters themselves. The same contradiction, I would think, takes place for the audience, where it is not assumed that watching a sexual assault, and in the case of Robin Hood, a prolonged one, is traumatic to the audience members. Since the sexual assaults are not classified as rape by the Motion Pictures Association of America and since the critics don't mention the scenes, someone who avoids rape scenes in movies would not even know to avoid these films. After all, half of them are considered family films anyway, not movies where an assault against a woman would be assumed to take place.

While I enjoyed Spiderman in general, the juxtaposition of the attack and the kiss unsettled me for the rest of the movie, especially when it was clear (from the cheering) that I was relatively alone in my opinion on the bizarreness of the two scenes. It is disconcerting to think about how easily violence against women can be minimized or used as part of a script to keep women under control and turned into territory for men, and that it happens under our noses. Perhaps part of the reason why we don't notice is that it happens in movies all the time, but I would hope that at the very least it would make us think about the pervasiveness of sexual violence against women, its potential emotional impact, and strategies for awareness and prevention.

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu