Rape is... - Globe Review

DOCUMENTARY EXAMINES PERSONAL, POLITICAL RAPE
By Bella English, Boston Globe, April 6, 2002

The new documentary "Rape Is'' is only 34 minutes long, but it's a long 34 minutes. In this case, that's not an insult. Produced by Oscar-winning filmmakers Margaret Lazarus and Wenner Wunderlich of Cambridge Documentary Films, it offers a somber, intense look at rape in all its forms: child abuse, date rape, stranger rape, wartime rape, marital rape, prison rape. The viewer is taken from African war zones to American living rooms. Ultimately, the message is that rape is both a personal and a political act.

As usual, the producers tell the story through the lens of experts in the field: both victims and feminist professors. There is no narrator; rather, the camera cuts back and forth between personal accounts and professional commentary. The result is a three-dimensional look at an issue that has plagued women - and men - since time immemorial. The film uses powerful photographs of women being abused in countries such as Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, as well as scenes from the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague with men being found guilty of wartime rape, torture and imprisonment.

But the most powerful footage is that of the victims, telling their own, obviously devastating, stories. The filmmakers cleverly divide the film into sections, each headlined by a "Rape Is" title. Under "Rape is: A Kind of Death," a young American woman tells of being raped in her car by a stranger who approached her in a parking lot. It was the hand over her mouth, gun in her side. "I thought I saw him everywhere I went," says the woman. "I didn't sleep for three months."

For "Rape is: The End of Trust," a woman from Boston tells of being 17 years old when she was raped by a 22-year-old she was dating casually. She didn't report it because of the shame and publicity it would engender. Three years later, studying in Nairobi, she was again raped by an acquaintance. "If you're going to do this," she told him, "please put a condom on." Later, she would wonder if that request could somehow be construed as consent.

The answer, of course, is yes. As Harvard professor and a lawyer Diane Rosenfeld tells a women's studies class, "The focus is always on the victim and her behavior. What was she doing in that bar? Why was she out so late at night? Why was she wearing that short skirt?" Rosenfeld describes the recent trial of a 22-year-old man charged with raping an 11-year-old girl. "The judge's comment was that it takes two to tango. Is it any wonder that victims experience trials as a second rape?"

In "Rape is: The Theft of a Voice," playwright Eve Ensler of "The Vagina Monologues" tells of being molested and beaten by her father at a young age. "The first 37 years of my life were devoted to recovering from sexual abuse," she says. "I don't think women should be doing that. I think we have better things to do."

The film goes on to explore a "rape culture," in which sex permeates the media. It links prostitution with childhood sexual abuse. It talks about the international sex trade, which the United Nations estimates is a $7 billion-a-year industry. It takes the viewer to the Norfolk County Jail, where a male inmate talks about being raped by his uncle, and addresses prison rape in general. It discusses the 200,000 Korean "comfort women" offered to Japanese soldiers during World War II and, in a heartbreaking segment, features the remarks of an elderly woman who remains traumatized by her ordeal.

Despite years of consciousness-raising legal reform, there is no happy ending here. As Rosenfeld points out, rape remains the most underreported crime. The message from this disturbing but important film is not new, but it bears repeating over and over again, especially to boys and girls, young men and young women: Women have the right to say no. And men have the obligation to take them seriously.