Two decades on from the beginning of the MeToo movement, more and more filmmakers are choosing to explore the lasting impact of sexual violence rather than restage traumatic events.
CW: The piece contains discussion of sexual violence.
With the Epstein files currently being drip-fed to the public as if it were an episodic television release rather than evidence of severe exploitation, the reality of misogynistic violence and the media’s insatiable appetite for it, feels painfully inescapable. Over the last decade rarely a month has gone by without a sexual assault case reaching the news. While the media grows hungrier and hungrier for stories of women’s abuse, offered in salacious detail all in the name of spotlighting predators, cinema’s stories of sexual assault have for the most part moved beyond the need for such graphic displays.
Scenes of sexual violence often stay with the viewer long after the rest of the film fades, to the extent it seems unnecessary to list instances that have left audiences and characters punished through these acts, memorable either for their success or their controversy. But as conversations around sexual assault have evolved past the limitations of slogans such as “no means no”, many filmmakers are choosing to remove acts of sexual violence from the screen entirely. This act of omission tends to give way to an exploration of what comes after the exact moment of violence, depicting life in the aftermath of such traumatising events and moving past the litany of offences described in the news.
As much as the phrase “post MeToo” feels empty due its exhaustive over use and the fact very little has materially changed for people who have endured sexual assault, it’s also unavoidable. Films such as Kitty Green’s The Assistant (2019), Jay Roach’s Bombshell (2020) and Maria Schrader’s She Said (2022) are all ripped-from-the-headlines dramas, exploring watershed moments in the media and in the case of the latter two, specifically shining a light on the predatory working environments of former T.V. executive Roger Ailes and film producer Harvey Weinstein.
For the Fox News reporters of Bombshell, the use of their voice opens them up to criticism of their politics. The question “Are you a feminist?” is snarkily hurled at the bleached, coiffed, and always painted presenters Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), which they adamantly deny with no awareness of the irony. As much as the presenters are grilled over their ideological leanings, they are also criticised for not coming forward about workplace sexual misconduct sooner. Megyn is lambasted for her years of silence that inadvertently allowed Ailes' reign of sexual terror to continue. Whether they speak up or keep quiet, the women of Fox News are damned.
Pressure to call out assailants comes in different forms in She Said, as the journalistic insistence on uncovering the truth often gives the film a self-righteous air. In the lowercase liberal newsroom of 'The New York Times' journalists Jodi (Zoe Kazan) and Megan (Carey Mulligan) are reporting on Weinstein and need women to be named sources in order to strengthen their piece. Over the course of their investigation Jodi – the dogged yang to Megan’s levelheaded yin – gets increasingly frustrated that their sources reserve their right to silence: “I just needed one woman,” she laments. When Tasha Dixon (playing herself) finally agrees to go on record, stating her obligation “as a woman and a Christian” it is as if the heavens are opening up to allow the downpour of coverage that will be triggered by Jodi and Megan’s damning exposé.
Herein lies clear elements of what Katherine Angel criticised about the MeToo movement in her book ‘Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again’. As more and more women came forward, the torrent of coverage seemed never-ending, placing an unintentional pressure on others. “It sometimes felt that we women were required to tell our stories,” Angel admits, concluding that this is part of what she calls Consent Culture, in which “it is not only in retrospect that women are urged to speak – it is also prospectively, into the future, protectively: clear speech is a necessary ingredient for preventing future wrongs, not just addressing past ones.” This is a painful reminder that the onus is still on women to learn to verbalise their interest, boundaries and their traumatic experiences, rather than on men to modify their behaviour.
It is Agnes’ (played by writer/director Eva Victor) staunch refusal to embody the seemingly obligatory confidence of the survivor that makes Victor’s debut Sorry, Baby such a unique work of sexual assault cinema. The eternally collegiate Agnes is the complete opposite to the perfect victim – one willing to speak out and face scrutiny – that has been fortified by the MeToo movement. Only once does Agnes speak about what happened to her explicitly (to their best friend Lydie), because other attempts to detail the event at the campus health centre and report it to the college are met with pushback filled with medical and bureaucratic jargon that silence Agnes. Although their college professor’s violation of Agnes’ boundaries still affects them, they do not seek retributive justice, in part because they have experienced firsthand the way victims are treated.
Agnes differs from the brave denouncing voices in Bombshell and She Said, as they do not share liberal or conservative women’s faith in the justice system. When Agnes is called for jury duty they explain why they never reported the professor’s crime against them: “I want him to stop being someone who does that, and if he went to jail he’d just be someone who does that who's now in jail.” It is through Agnes' quiet rebellion that we see a different choice and a much slower healing process than offered by the historical dramas exploring sexual assault.
Sorry, Baby joins the growing number of films that refuse to visualise the moment of sexual violence. Speaking to Little White Lies, Eva Victor revealed a mindful approach to their audience: “I was always trying to think of how to soften this so that our bodies don’t shut down watching it.” Like Victor, many filmmakers are choosing to explore sexual violence without subjecting the actors and audience members to explicit scenes that may traumatise or retraumatise them. As many recent films examining the repercussions of sexual violence come from those using the medium to process their own traumatic experiences, they are rightly protective of their actors. By avoiding these scenes altogether, perhaps the industry avoids repeating past mistakes, such as Gina Ravera’s – as Molly in Showgirls – traumatic experience shooting a brutal sexual assault sequence. In 2020, 25 years on from Showgirls’ release, Ravera told Yahoo about her experience: “When you do a scene like that, your body doesn’t know it’s not real.”
Leaving potentially traumatising sexual violence off the screen comes at no cost to the film’s impact. Over the course of one work day in Kitty Green’s The Assistant, we see how predatory behaviour poisons the environment. Working for a studio executive, Jane (Julia Garner) attempts to go about her duties like a ghost, unseen and unheard, but she cannot escape the overwhelming evidence of her employer’s treatment of women, coming in the form of vile comments from her boss and his soiled office couch which she must clean as thoroughly as a crime scene.
The intergenerational gothic Sound of Falling explores the lives of women on the same German farm across four time periods. Although misogynistic violence (including exploitation of domestic servants, sterilisation and incestual assault) haunts each generation it is never explicitly shown. Instead director Mascha Schilinski offers only one sexual image and it is notably positive. Christa (Luise Heyer), the mother and wife of the most recent generation to inhabit the farmhouse, holds her husband's flaccid penis in a moment of odd intimacy, affectionately resting her head upon it. Her easy familiarity and lack of hesitation is silently empowering, breaking the cycle of misogynistic trauma that has followed this family.
There are now countless scenes that we can point to as examples of sexual assault and say irrefutably this is bad sexual conduct. When Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex burst onto screens, the booze-soaked depictions of Brits abroad and sexual assault made such an impact that U.K. secondary schools planned to incorporate the film into secondary sex education. Although well intentioned, this demonstrates the limitations of current consent teachings, which are rooted in negative experiences and mainly teaching young boys not to rape and young girls to stay safe, while rarely educating young people on how to have positive sexual experiences.
This isn’t to say we should expect cinema to offer blueprints for best sexual practice, but we should afford space on screen for characters to return to their physicality, whether that be in the awkward manner befitting Agnes in Sorry, Baby, or Lidia (Imogen Poots) reckoning with her voracious and fraught sexual appetite while coming to terms with childhood abuse in The Chronology of Water. Sex is as nuanced and diverse as cinema itself and so its education should be just as rigorous about the grey areas as the hard lines.
At this point in film and wider society, we should know what sexual assault looks like, why it is wrong and the burden that can develop from graphically depicting it in media. By opting to avoid showing sexual assault entirely, perhaps the conversation can reach beyond the act itself and look at the restrictions of consent culture that teaches a binary of enthusiastic yeses and adamant nos. There’s value and power in exploring the rocky healing process and what obligation – if any – survivors have to tell their story.
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