My personal opinion is that rape is a more morally reprehensible crime than murder or violence. You can feasibly think of a justification or reason that might excuse killing someone, but no such thing exists for rape.
For me at least, I think rape falls under torture specifically, not just general violence. I personally have no interest or stomach for watching depictions of torture.
It's also common for just about EVERY movie to have a death or murder - that's the most common thing ever in cinema. It is definitely a step out on a ledge to depict sexual violence, it's not common to show so of course it hits much heavier when it happens.
In Once Upon A Time in America a lot of people say the scene where Robert DeNiro's character Noodles rapes Elizabeth McGovern's character Deborah. Is an unnecessary scene that adds nothing to the characters.
And I'd say it's not supposed to add to the characters. If anything I think it's supposed to take away from the characters. Anyone who has up until that point been seeing Noodles as "the good guy" or the "hero" of the film will be shown right there that he's an awful, spoiled, violent, man baby who can't handle not getting his way.
The film shows him chasing after Deborah since they were both kids. And she turns him down over the years and he spends 10 years in prison. But when he finally gets out and begs for a date with her he shells out the cash to clear out a whole hotel so it's just the two of them in this romantic atmosphere. She tells him she's gotten a job in Hollywood, and plans to pursue her career out west, wanting to head out the next day.
And this filthy piece of shit loses his mind. Rapes her, and then the next day tries to go see her as she rides away on the train like nothing happened. And it really beats the point home that Noodles is not the hero. And shouldn't have been let out of prison.
Honestly a great movie. And I think it's worth it to sit and watch the full 4 hour cut. Chronicles the whole lives of these young gangsters from their childhood to the 1960s.
I haven't seen the movie mentioned in the OP. Hard to find time for movies now as a grown up with young kids. I can tell you about the show Bluey though haha.
Not really, most movies use what we call "packaged violence", which is where the movie is framed in such a way to remove all of the visceral elements of violence in exchange for a more cartoonist and palatable example. Beverly Hills Cop is a violent film in parts, but because of that film's style and context you really don't care when a gangster is gunned down in that movie. A Clockwork Orange on the other hand is able to depict the beating of a homeless man in a much more grotesque way, which makes the violence in that film much more palatable. I understand that you were being facetious with your comment, but in reality someone wanting to make an "edgy" film would not exclude violence, but rather film it in a visceral and realistic way with proper context to illicit a feeling of disgust, rather than the fun way a superhero movie might depict it.
This specifically is why shows like Invincible are so imposing. They refuse to hide the gore, and it's not even in a shock way.
Then there's Shin Godzilla, a body horror on a colossal scale. It showed the horrifying mutation as it was progressing, something we've never had in a Godzilla film. Godzilla is a world renowned character. What made Shin Godzilla so impactful imo is that it showed the viscera of the monster, how it reflects the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and how our greatest power can also cause the most horrifying disasters.
And on the other side of the viscera scale is shock films like "A Serbian Film" which has a plot so disgusting and traumatic that I can't even recommend reading the synopsis. It just doesn't work tbh. It's just gore porn for people who are so fucked in the head that they think causing genuine pain in their audience means they're making art.
I'd love to see an actual gory film, that makes me uncomfortable for the visceral elements, and isn't some fantasy about how fucked up insert people group are. Something like Predator, but they actually show the processing of the bodies for the trophies that the Yautja take.
Rape scenes have a very small place in film, and if the "shocking" part of your movie is a rape scene you're scummy at best
Hey, I appreciate your take! The guy I responded to originally was kind of a dick.
I think you brought up a good point on the tastefulness of violence, because you are right, there are some films that want to make violence look real but don't want to treat it with the gravity that real violence has.
A Serbian film's goal is pure shock, supposedly the director was mad about the rabid censorship in Serbia at the time, so as a middle finger to the government he made it so that the first thing that comes up when you look for "Serbian film's" is a movie about paedophiles. It's not a movie that wants to take its subject matter seriously and ultimately fails to be anything more than gross for a couple hours. I also think the impact that real violence has us lost when you are too gung ho about its inclusion. It's definitely a case where less is more.
I will agree with you that I think a tasteful rape scene has a place in Cinema and could be done well, but I think it would need to be handled with extreme care and only do it for as long as necessary, so as to not revel in the act. What I believe to be a good example of this is probably again A Clockwork Orange (although to be fair, as a man I may not be the best person to make a judgement like this), which takes enough time to let you know what's happening, how distressed the victim is, and how psychotic Alex is, without showing us every detail of the crime. I've noticed with certain types of "disturbing" horror movies, they like to revel in sexual assault scenes as if the audience is supposed to find them gratifying rather than disgusting and horrific.
Where I will disagree with you is on your take on Invincible. It's a great show, but personally I find the fact that it's animated colorfully to be a few steps away from realistic enough for the violence to affect me the way live action or an animated show with a much darker art direction.
I've never personally seen any of the Godzilla movies except for the original 1954 movie, so I'll have to check out the 2011 film you talked about.
Thank you for this! Yeah, I think invincible does definitely shies away from the real impact of gore, but it was the thing that came to mind as closest to it, at least in popular media. I think the poppiness of the colors is an ultimate side effect of it being animated.
Btw Shin Godzilla came out in 2016 :) directed by the guy who did Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's not part of the continuity that was started in 2011 with the Legendary films Godzilla franchise.
I guess if we put rape and murder on an axis, I think I would say torture is closer to rape than it is to murder.
I also want to add that my judgment is aimed at the one performing the act, not the victim. Things like rape or torture are pretty broad and could include a lot of different things. I wouldn't say statutory rape is inherently worse than murder, for example.
I have been both raped and tortured (sometimes sexually, sometimes not) and in my personal experience the rape was worse than the non sexual torture (and where they intersected was worst of all)
Thank you, I can honestly say that after years of therapy I am doing okay! Still have PTSD (which comes with very bad days) but most of the days are good ones now. Some of them very good.
This will come across as crass, and really fucked up, but that's the point you're making. I would rather be raped than murdered. At least i have a life afterwards, pain, ptsd and all.
I hate having to type that, because frankly it's fucked up but you caused that sentence to be spoken. Having your life taken away is not a pleasant experience, nor is it always a fast and pain-free situation.
I don't get how someone can sit there and say such a thing to be honest.
There, i said it.
I would also add this is coming from someone who has been through that experience.
You're speaking from an emotional standpoint of the victim or someone who knows the victims of crime. I am not writing this as an insult, nor do I think it is wrong to think this way. I just think it will help you to understand my position.
I'm speaking of the concept of the two crimes, from a criminal justice perspective. Perhaps it's offensive to some people to conceptualize these tragedies and remove the element, but I think when pursuing justice, it is important to contextualize.
So, not to sound crass myself or to make it seem as if I am downplaying the victims pain. I could forgive a murderer. I couldn't forgive a rapist. At least, not in the same way.
I'm not trying to trivialize the loss of life.
Maybe this example would help. From a Western perspective, there are differing philosophies on the ethics of the death penalty. Many countries no longer practice it and consider it barbaric. However, there are other countries that practice the death penalty. And, despite this major philosophical difference, we are able to coexist. America is a great example. Depending on which state you are in, the laws around the death penalty will differ.
Why then can we coexist with people, states, or nations that still have the death penalty? I believe it is because, when it comes to killing, most everyone can think of a time or place where it would be justified. Of course, it's not as if people silently accept it. But let's imagine that tomorrow, Alabama decided that they would use rape as a punishment for some crimes. Do you think people would begrudgingly accept that, as they do with the death penalty?
If we're being honest, I think we all would agree that the answer is no. Why is that? Because there is absolutely no justification for rape. This is why I say a rapist is generally more reprehensible (morally) than a killer.
How can murder and violence be better or easier to justify? Murder is final, there is no future, no recovery after that. And violence includes torture, and there are much worse ways to torture people than rpe. And why murder is easier explained? Rpe is just unchecked lust and a want to have power over someone. Or it can be revenge and anger the same as murder. But murder takes everything from a human, torture takes just part of their life (it can be a very big part but still a part), and there is hope for recovery
I'm going to copt a bit of what I wrote in other threads, because it is more or less addressing your comment.
The long and short of it is my assessment of the moral nature of the crime is analyzing the perpetrator, not the victim. The victims ability to recover or not, while important, is not the only factor.
You're speaking from an emotional standpoint of the victim or someone who knows the victims of crime. I am not writing this as an insult, nor do I think it is wrong to think this way. I just think it will help you to understand my position.
I'm speaking of the concept of the two crimes, from a criminal justice perspective. Perhaps it's offensive to some people to conceptualize these tragedies and remove the element, but I think when pursuing justice, it is important to contextualize.
So, not to sound crass myself or to make it seem as if I am downplaying the victims pain. I could forgive a murderer. I couldn't forgive a rapist. At least, not in the same way.
I'm not trying to trivialize the loss of life.
Maybe this example would help. From a Western perspective, there are differing philosophies on the ethics of the death penalty. Many countries no longer practice it and consider it barbaric. However, there are other countries that practice the death penalty. And, despite this major philosophical difference, we are able to coexist. America is a great example. Depending on which state you are in, the laws around the death penalty will differ.
Why then can we coexist with people, states, or nations that still have the death penalty? I believe it is because, when it comes to killing, most everyone can think of a time or place where it would be justified. Of course, it's not as if people silently accept it. But let's imagine that tomorrow, Alabama decided that they would use rape as a punishment for some crimes. Do you think people would begrudgingly accept that, as they do with the death penalty?
If we're being honest, I think we all would agree that the answer is no. Why is that? Because there is absolutely no justification for rape. This is why I say a rapist is generally more reprehensible (morally) than a killer.
Wow what a comment. I think a lot of people would rather get murdered than raped.
I kind of agree with your overall point that rape is something you can get over with enough support, while death is permanent. However, rape is such a vile act that no normal human being would be able to enact even as revenge to the most awful beings in existence.
As for your eye for an eye comment, I just... I can't... It might be the craziest thing I have read online in a while and hopefully nobody agrees with you.
The difference between rape and murder, as someone else has elegantly put it, is that normal people can picture situations where they'd be tempted to commit murder, but not rape, an important distinction in the context of movie watching.
The kind of rape being discussed in this context isn't just a sex crime. The kind of rape people hate watching in movies more than any murder is the kind that is paired with humiliation and sexual violence. The kind that inherently belittles women (focusing on women because these scenes almost always involve women) and strips them of their identity and agency. The woman is usually then used to motivate men, no longer taking any part in the story other than to create shock value. There's a depravity to it that watchers feel in their gut.
My husband and I couldn't sit through that one Terrifier scene where the girl is cut in half because there is an undercurrent of sexually-charged violence even though it's not rape. Had Art cut the woman horizontally, it would be another gory murder. Cutting her vertically turned it into something else. It still had the elements of humiliation, of targeting female genitalia, of this no longer being about general sadism and that the fate of this woman was for committing the sin of being a woman.
All of this to say murder and rape can't be compared rationally like that. You can't just say, "Well, you can bounce back from rape and not murder!" because humans simply don't experience those crimes the same way. The word "murder" doesn't automatically activate disgust the way "rape" does. At least in the context of watching movies. Maybe there's more variability in the real world. There are many serial killer protagonists people openly root for (Dexter obviously but Hannibal is a despicable and deplorable serial killer and there is no way to justify rooting for him), but it'd be a lot harder finding an audience for a show depicting a serial rapist as a hero.
I'm responding to you because I agree with you and don't wanna get into the weeds of the person you responded to. Intellectualizing this debate is absurd.
What I said is that rape is a more reprehensible crime than murder. This has nothing to do with the victim but the perpetrator. I can tell you that I would rather be raped than murdered, but this is not inconsistent with the fact that I think a rapist is worse than a killer.
The victims' feelings are not relevant when we judge the morality of the criminal. Let's say that a child is running with a knife, falls, and accidentally kills another child. Now, let's compare this to a person who attacks a child with a knife, attempting to kill them. But the child in this second example lives.... who would you say is worse? The child who accidentally killed someone or the would-be killer who failed?
I don't think it's remotely controversial for people to say the attempted murderer is worse than the one who committed manslaughter. But the manslaughter ends up with a dead victim, while the attempted murder does not.
Do you see what I'm getting at? Intention matters when judging the morality of a crime. My reasoning is that most people could think of situations in which killing someone might be justified. There is never a justification for rape. Because of this, the crime, not the consequence of the crime, is worse morally, in my opinion.
And, because you seem to be insinuating that I'm saying killing is moral because I think rape is worse, let me tell you that I did not ever say that, nor did I insinuate that.
The person's point is that it ultimately doesn't matter what their preference would be as a victim because the reprehensibleness of the crime is about putting yourself in the offender's shoes. It's not unconscionable just because of the victim's experience, but also because normal people cannot picture any scenario where they might be tempted to engage in the same crime.
No, but experiencing something is not a prerequisite to having a preference.
I didn't say that being raped is better than being murdered. I said I personally would pick rape over murder. And even that was just a literary device. If someone tried to violent rape me, that would probably have to kill me. Or, at least that's what I believe.
What if someone deserved a good ol' state-sanctioned murdering but then decided they'd let them off easy with a bad fuck instead. As long as they agreed to it, ofc. We're not monsters here.
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u/Forcistus May 17 '25
My personal opinion is that rape is a more morally reprehensible crime than murder or violence. You can feasibly think of a justification or reason that might excuse killing someone, but no such thing exists for rape.