Artistic Depictions of Sexual Violence Towards Women Have a Very Long
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Artistic depictions of sexual violence towards women have a very long history, with many of the oldest oral traditions and mytho-histories including stories that frequently contain cases of rape or sexual assault. The narrative or artistic intentions of these depictions vary wildly, as stories that include such deplorable acts can consider them either grievous crime or wacky hijinks depending on the tale in question. There is a larger historical precedent for stories to see such violence as inherently villainous, often as an inciting incident for a tale of revenge. In modern storytelling, there are those closer to feminist ideas, like I Spit on Your Grave, and more regressive depictions such as Taken, with its threat of sexual violence towards the daughter of Liam Neeson’s character being used to add suspense. There is a long debate in the field of television and cinema regarding visual depictions of sexual violence towards women, and how they can be done in an effective and artistic way to contribute to the piece without being exploitative or worse, gratuitous. Then there is Goblin Slayer. An anime, light novel, and manga series produced in Japan; Goblin Slayer is a dark fantasy series that follows the exploits of the zealous warrior, known as the Goblin Slayer. In a world of other fantasy adventurers, he is seen as an oddity due to his refusal to take contracts to slay monsters other than goblins, and for the extreme prejudice he uses in his desire to eradicate them. He is belittled for this, but the fact that, in this world, goblins only reproduce by kidnapping and raping women of other races means that he doesn’t go without praise or support. However, he is not introduced to the audience as the story begins, nor is this world’s inherently sexually violent aspects of goblins explained. The first episode of the anime follows a character named Priestess; all characters in the series are named after their respective adventurer classes, or roles. At the age of 15, she has decided that she is sufficiently proficient in divine spellcasting to become an adventurer, and the episode begins with her joining the Guild, entering a party of other adventurers, and going on a quest to clear out a nearby cave of goblins. Over the course of the party’s quest to find the goblins, it is heavily implied through various discussions between the characters that the adventurers are inexperienced, naïve, and over all unprepared. So, when the group becomes separated and attacked in the goblin’s cave, the party members are easily dispatched. The Sorceress is tackled and overwhelmed before being near fatally stabbed, the Warrior is disarmed when his sword scrapes the cavern wall and is quickly mobbed and butchered. It is violent, bloody, and brutal, but the lack of gore doesn’t make the scene worthy of the disclaimer that most streaming services put before this episode. While Priestess tries and fails to heal Sorceress, the Fighter tries to protect her last companion, kicking away the nearby creatures, until a larger goblin catches her leg. Swinging her up by her leg, the goblinoid slams her into a wall, before turning and swinging her again into the other wall. Fighter is dropped onto the ground, and the camera pans away while the other goblins mob around her, their shadows showing them bludgeoning her repeatably. The camera returns to show that the creatures have begun to rip the clothes from her broken body, flipping between the violence and the onlooking priestess or cave scenery to avoid an R rating. She is then displayed with her face pressed against the ground and hips thrust in the air while mumbling “Run” to Priestess, as the last scrap of clothing covering her crotch is ripped away; with the camera jumping right away to the face of a goblin, staring and drooling in excitement. The last we see of Fighter as Priestess runs away is a shot of jagged fingernails bloodily digging into soft flesh and one of her half profiles as her face scrapes back and for the across the stone. The following scene follows Priestess carrying Sorceress’s body out of the cave, only to be caught by a pair of goblins. After getting hit in the shoulder by an arrow, she drops the Sorceress, who’s paralyzed body is promptly defiled by the goblins. Cowering nearby, Priestess pisses herself in fright, drawing the creature’s attention away from the corpse. But lo, the title character arrives, as the heavy metal soundtrack kicks in and the goblins seem to cower at the sight. The Slayer easily dispatches the creatures, bashing one’s head in with a torch and killing the other by expertly tossing his sword into the back of its neck as it tries to run. Having saved the Priestess, the Slayer pulls the arrow from her shoulder and hands her a healing potion. Priestess asks to administer it to Sorceress, but the Slayer informs her that she suffers from a goblin poison. He carries antidotes, but is too late for her, so he gives the Sorceress the mercy of a quick death, saying that trying to help her would only cause her to suffer more. The remainder of the episode covers the Slayers descent into the caves, as he displays his expert tactics and experience with goblin hunting. He defeats the shaman and rescues the now unresponsive, devastated Fighter, before finding the goblinoid children and clubbing them all to death. Dark fantasy, as a genre, tends to cover western fantasy, with trappings similar to the likes of Lord of the Rings or Dungeons & Dragons. Both use magic and monsters as stand-ins for certain ideologies, specific groups, or to represent broader concepts as a more easily understood idea. The evil of Mordor as representation of Nazism or Fascism, making ethnic or religious groups appear more alien to either make them seem more inherently hostile, that a people are little more than violent animals, or to display the ridiculousness of prejudice against them; the idea of making people empathize with a fictional creature to make them more supportive of a real group. Magic is often just a stand in for the unknown, whereas something like “the darkness” conjures up fears of societal pressure and collapse due to unseen or overpowering forces. Dark fantasy tends to be a response to traditional fantasy, using brutality, violence, and darker imagery to strip such worlds of their glamour in an attempt to discuss the logical and logistical consequences on the world and society from having fantasy elements. It is common for them to have sequences like that previously described in Goblin Slayer that introduce the world as if it were a standard fantasy world, only to shock the audience with a scene that informs them that it is distinct from that genre. A work like The Lord of the Rings tends not to use brutal or sexual imagery to convey it’s themes, while works like A Game of Thrones do. The dark fantasy genre has a long history of endemic problems regarding sexual imagery and sexual violence. The previous example of GoTs applies here, where scenes of nude women are used solely to tantalize the viewer, while simultaneously contrasted against scenes of brutal violence and rape, creating an environment that diminishes the narrative impact of sexual violence as seemingly just another pair of breasts on display for the viewer. Slayer is not the first to ineptly use rape for shock value, but closer examination reveals larger problems with Slayers depiction that reveal a morbid and repressed desire. The scene in the anime frames Fighter not as a suffering victim, but as a sexual object to be ogled. While the text of the show uses the sexual violence device for shock value, the animation uses it for gratuity. The audience is repeatedly shown her near naked body, with scraps of clothing obscuring key locations, and always with the her more sexually enticing traits displayed. The shot in which she initially has her clothing ripped away is from a vertical angle, with the crowd of rapists parted to allow for an unobstructed view of her torso and thighs. Following that, she is then arranged face in the dirt and ass up, the camera panning to reveal her naked back and the side of her breasts before focusing in on her rear, shown under a final scrap of clothing as it’s being torn off. Both shots are gratuitous. Not only is the staging of the scene intentionally making such that her body isn’t obscured, the change in posing for the second shot is purely so that the camera can ogle her as it pans upward. The anime is not alone in this, as the manga version has her bare form on display, not only with fully exposed breasts and genitalia, but where her spine is unnaturally twisted so as to display both her breasts and genitalia in the same panel. This dedication to displaying sexually enticing imagery reveals an innate desire to see women as sexually enticing objects regardless of situation or context. No matter if the subject is being sexually assaulted, she still exists to sexually entice onlookers, to exist purely as a means of sexual gratification of the other, viewer or participant. The idea of using rape as a literary tool for the vilification of the abhorrent while simultaneously using it as an excuse for gratuity and fan service is inherently hypocritical. It says that rape is a crime worthy of death, but yet it encourages the idea that women exist purely as means of sexual pleasure for the enjoyment of men, in all but words saying that rape isn’t even a criminal act.