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Abstract: »The female victim-survivor of sexual and gendered violence is seldom theorized in scholarly accounts of such violence on screen. The presumed audience for much scholarship in the fields of film studies, feminist studies, and trauma studies as they intersect with cultural production is one that must first be informed of the horrors of rape and abuse, must be touched by a film in a way that they have not been in real life. This dissertation, by contrast, assumes that the audience for representations of rape and abuse in cultural production-literary, poetic, filmic, to name a few-has personal, lived experience with sexual and gendered violence. By theorizing media through the rape victim-survivor, and then creating media based on that theory, this dissertation and accompanying film work to disrupt common-sense notions of who is and is not allowed to speak as a victim, how victim-survivors are constructed and exist in the world, and what possible ways forward may exist in the realm of imagining better futures. I begin with a study of rape in cinema, surveying the 1910s and '20s forward, with case studies from the 1960s and '70s rape-revenge film cycle. From there I expand out to analyses of current fiction film trends, poetry (written and spoken word), music, art, documentary, and memoir. This dissertation closes on a discussion of digital media and where representations of rape victim-survivors intersect online with real-world conditions.« (Source: Thesis)

Contents:

	List of Tables (p. viii)
	List of Figures (p. ix)
	Preface (p. x)
	1. Introduction (p. 1)
		1.1. A Brief History of Rape in Cinema (p. 1)
		1.2. Behind-the-Scenes: Sexual Violence in the Media, Off-Screen (p. 4)
		1.3. Methodology (p. 9)
		1.4. Chapter Breakdown (p. 11)
	2. Whose Rape, Whose Revenge?: The Rape Revenge Sub-Genre (p. 14)
		2.1. Precursors: Rape as Metaphor and the Folk Tale (p. 17)
			2.1.1. Against the Obfuscation of Sexual Violence (p. 20)
		2.2. Iterations of Last House (p. 22)
		2.3. When Rape Is Not Metaphor (p. 29)
			2.3.1. Bodies and Absence in 2009's Last House (p. 32)
			2.3.2. Culpability for Which Audience? 2010's Spit and the Victim-Survivor (p. 34)
		2.4. Conclusion: Against Agency, Against Empathy (p. 37)
	3. Representing Rape in the 2020s(p. 38)
		3.1. Spectatorship and the Realities of Violence (p. 40)
			3.1.1. High Art/Low Art: Critical Reception and Representations of Rape in the 2020s (p. 71)
		3.2. Who Is Your Film For: Representing Rape Trauma for Men (p. 44)
			3.2.1. Target Audience and Formal Considerations in Promising Young Woman (p. 46)
		3.3. Critical Disability Studies and Trauma: Nothing About Us Without Us (p. 49)
			3.3.1. Aesthetics and a Disability Justice Approach to Trauma (p. 51)
		3.4. Playing with Formalism: Run, Sweetheart, Run (p. 53)
		3.5. Conclusion: The Work is Never Pretty (p. 56)
	4. Quick to Anger, Quick to Justice: Rape Poetry and the Flawed Framework of Testimony (p. 58)
		4.1. With(in) Trauma: Spoken Word Poetry and Mediated Rage (p. 60)
			4.1.1. Anger: Brenna Twohy and Victim-Survivor (Legal) Testimony (p. 62)
		4.2. Music as Poetry, Poetry as Feminist Ire (p. 64)
			4.2.1. Audience Reception, Femme Aesthetics, and Real Stakes (p. 66)
			4.2.2. Scene Queen and Femme Fury (p. 71)
		4.3. Claire Holland: Fragmenting the Final Girl (p. 73)
		4.4. Conclusion: Retribution (p. 77)
	5. We Are Not Unaware of Rape: Forestalling Justice with Evidence (p. 80)
		5.1. Méret Oppenheim and the Materialized Feminine (p. 81)
		5.2. Talking Back to Power: Chanel Miller and the Refutation of Cross-Examination (p. 84)
			5.2.1. When You Don't Give Him What He "Needs" (p. 86)
		5.3. Evidence as an Appeal to Authority (p. 87)
			5.3.1. The Documentary Mode, Truth Claims, and Radical Reimaginings (p. 89)
			5.3.2. éFormal Codes and Rhetorical Turns in Phoenix Rising (p. 90)
		5.4. Conclusion: Messy Personhood and the Importance of Imperfection (p. 94)
	6. Coda: Bad Victims, Bad Survivors (p. 97)
		6.1. Amber Heard: A Doomed Vector of Change (p. 98)
			6.1.1. Testimony and Bearing Witness to the Bad Victim (p. 99)
		6.2. Alexa Nikolas and Digital Victim Advocacy (p. 101)
		6.3. Female Victim-Survivors are Deceitful; Male Victims are Tragic (p. 103)
	Appendix A. Leakage Short Film (p. 105)
	Appendix B. Artist's Statement (p. 107)
	Bibliography (p. 108)

Wikipedia: History of the Americas: History of the United States | Film: Rape and revenge | Sex and the law: Rape / History of rape