I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

While some have vehemently argued that this is a sick, twisted work of extreme misogyny, others contend it is an exploration of misogyny (both onscreen and off) and that it empowers the victim, as she gets the rapists back in acts of extreme revenge. Is this a work of the same old misogyny or in fact of radical feminism?

Is I Spit on Your Grave (1978) virulently misogynistic or a creation of radical feminism? This question had been long discussed ever since this controversial feature was released. I Spit on Your Grave is generally referred to an exploration of men’s darkest “desires” and later it became the quarry of feminist critique for what was distinguished as misogyny, and mainly because of the exploitative half-an-hour-act of blatant rape and torture which demonstrates four men assaulting the main protagonist, Jennifer Hills (Keaton). According to Carol Clover’s Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, rape-revenge dramas are “by no means [an exclusive] property of horror” (Clover, 115). In the majority of rape-revenge films the first half of the narrative lies in the extreme use of the sadistic, brutal, misogynistic, sexual abuse of an innocent, young woman at the hands of some random folks (here, in the case of I Spit on Your Grave, according to Clover’s sub-chapter Urbanoia, comes into play the aspect raised by class and regional (city versus country) tensions, and therefore tensions between the both sexes). In the second half, one is likely to witness this “repeatedly raped and tortured” (Clover, 114) woman survive and execute a terrible, sadistic, radical feminist revenge on the ones who violated her — the heroine proving “to be just as vicious as her attackers” (Clover, 114).

I Spit on Your Grave presents one of the most convincing depictions of the physical and simultaneously emotional (“after reading a page of her novel aloud, laughing uproariously at her references to “love-making” and tearing the manuscript to bits” (Clover, 117)) humiliation and damage to a victim who suffered from a violent rape. “It seems to take more joy in presenting its heroine’s degradation than her victory” (Clover, 114). The very beginning of the film starts off with a comforting pace, as the heroine plunges into a false sense of security in a rented riverside summer house. After this short establishing introduction, the assault begins and does not end until about half an hour later. The perverse simplicity of the story and the minimalist mise-en-scène forces the spectator to follow the key events and explore them to such an extent that one may feel like he or she is experiencing them too — not from the point of view of the assailants, but through the heroine’s position. The roles are finally switched when Jennifer’s long and pensive healing process leads her to the idea of revenging herself, without involving the law. Clearly, at this point the film shifts from the atrocious reality of life to an almost impossible “full-scale revenge” (Clover, 138), where Jennifer finds all her strength and “fights back” appearing to be fearless and simultaneously seductive, she is not weak neither helpless but is simply, in rape aftermath, “crushed” and defeated. On the contrary, she is depicted as an educated, wealthy and strong woman, while her assailants are depicted as “utterly impoverished, uneducated and unemployed” (Clover, 126) losers (i.e. city versus country split). It took a gang of four thugs “(one of whom is retarded)” (Clover, 114) to cruelly torture and rape her, whereas Jennifer as her own avenger “eventually hangs, axe [blows, propeller mutilates] and castrates the whole group” (Clover, 114). What is indeed surprising is that “the men [(aggressors)] are not odd specimens but in the normal range of variation” (Clover, 119). Therefore, one can come to a conclusion that Jennifer’s assailants are careless about getting any of the joy from their felony: the rapes are mainly about a some sort of challenge — about determining and sustaining male hierarchies: “Johnny the winner, Andy a strong second, Stanley the loser, Matthew on the bench” (Clover, 122) and clearly there is no place for sexual pleasure or envy. “The rapes are presented as almost sexless acts of cruelty that the men seem to commit more for each other’s edification than for their own physical pleasure” (Clover, 118), argues Clover. Similarly, “Jennifer goes about the business of catching and murdering her assailants almost impassively” (Clover, 119). In other words, the explicit misogynistic and voyeuristic sense of the first half of the film is very predominant as the filmmaker presents his heroine as weak, fragile, objectified and abused by a group of misogynist countrymen. While, on the other hand, the end result of the extreme violence and filmmaker’s intention was certainly to depict a strong feminist character of the heroine who appears to be “dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant female” (Solanas, 21), who is enraged to such an extent that “will kill all men” (Solanas, 22).

The structure of the rape-revenge narrative lies in the portrayal of violence and power. It examines the one who is being assaulted, why, their identity and race, their economic and social condition, their culture (for instance, education level). I Spit on Your Grave “sets a woman against men [‘s misogynistic acts] and makes overt gestures toward feminism” (Clover, 160). The film thus could be considered as both misogyny and feminist revenge that goes to the extremities: it is about a woman who has been pushed far beyond the most intense and excessive type of misogyny, and who in the end turns the violence once imposed upon her back on her aggressors. The aim of the society should be to cease misogynistic violence and rape. If the legal system is effective in punishing the assailants for their committed crime, the victim of sexual aggression would not have to do her own justice and being brought to the brink of reacting just like her aggressors.

Bibliography

Clover, Carol. Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. 21–64, 114–165.

I Spit on Your Grave. Dir. Meir Zarchi. Perf. Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor and Richard Pace. 1978. Cinemagic Pictures, 2006. DVD.

Solanas, Valerie. S.C.U.M. (Society For Cutting Up Men) Manifesto. London: Verso, 2004.