Abstract: »There is a subgenre of exploitation films which focus on alternatives to formal justice or ‘self-help justice’. They can therefore be characterised as the ‘cinema of vigilantism’. Within this subgenre there is a steady stream of films focusing on revenge for the act of rape as a means of securing a form of justice. Most are by the victims themselves, but other revenge scenarios are carried out by family members and/or friends. What characterises all these films has been their understandable seriousness and that the victims were raped by strangers. In the past few years, however, two mainstream films have reached multiplexes which adopt a somewhat different approach. This paper explores what is distinctive about these films. The films are the 2016 Paul Verhoeven/Isabelle Huppert film Elle and the 2020 Emerald Fennell/Carey Mulligan film Promising Young Woman. The paper concludes that the most important thing about these two films is the shift to the depiction of rape in a domestic setting through relatives or acquaintances which have seldom featured in rape-revenge-films and the incorporation of the rape-and-revenge theme within mainstream cinema.« (Source: Article)

Contents:

	Abstract (p. 103)
	Introduction: ‘Self-help justice’ and the ‘vigilante film’ (p. 103)
	Rape-revenge-films in context (p. 107)
	Film-historical reconstructions. Developments in rape-revenge films (p. 110)
	Changing style and focus (p. 114)
	Conclusions and outlook (p. 118)
	Bibliography (p. 119)
	Filmography (p. 121)

Lecture: Robson, Peter. »From Bloodbaths to Parody: Western Cinema's Uneasy Relationship with Rape Revenge Themes.« Rape and Revenge: Rache-Kulturen und sexualisierte Gewalt in intermedialer Perspektive / Revenge-cultures and sexualized violence in intermedial perspectives. Hamburg 2022. - Bibliographic Entry: Info

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of England, History of France | Film: Rape and revenge / Promising Young Woman | Law: Arbitrariness / Revenge | Sex and the law: Rape / History of rape