When he had seen Jabba the Hutt enslave and chain Princess Leia
People are talking about this story today – Pro Publica’s long report on a teenage girl in Lynwood, Washington (a suburb just north of Seattle) who reported being raped, was doubted by her foster parents and then by the cops, and ended up with being charged with the crime of false reporting. Spoiler: she wasn’t lying.
In the part late in the story that narrates how the rape happened, there’s this bit that brought me up short:
He had a term for what he was about to do: “rape theater.” Deviant fantasies had gripped him since he was a kid, way back to when he had seen Jabba the Hutt enslave and chain Princess Leia. Where do you go when you’re 5 and already thinking about handcuffs? he would ask himself. He was only 8 the first time he broke into a home. It was such a rush. He had broken into more than a dozen homes since.
Uh. Aren’t we always told that violent movies don’t inspire real life violence? I’ve never believed that, but aren’t we always told it?
I don’t think anyone claims violent people don’t take inspiration from violent movies. The claim is that exposure to movies is not the cause. That is, the person would still have been violent without seeing the movie, and had the person not been prone to violence the movie would not have made them so.
I don’t think there is any demonstrated correlation between availability of violent movies within a culture, and actual violence.
It’s an interesting point. I mean there is MUCH more violence in movies and games than there used to be, but then our meat space day to day lives are actually a lot less violent than they were. I suspect that one plays off against the other, but that the ‘entertainment’ actually has significantly less impact than the grinding reality anyway.
To put it more anecdotally, I’ve seen the movie with Jabba the Hut. It didn’t make me want to chain up a woman.
I’ve watched lots of action movies. I’ve never had the slightest desire to shoot people or blow them up.
I like the Godfather movies. I have no desire to set up a protection racket.
Silentbob, I seem to remember that the statistics are something 5% of men commit rapes. (In the US. In South Africa it’s something like 25% or 40% or something awful. But whatever. Let’s limit this to the US.)
Do you think that means a woman who needs to walk to a grocery store late at night says to herself, “Only five percent of men are a problem, so I’ll be fine”? No. She just doesn’t go.
It does not matter that most people aren’t susceptible to mental infection by fantasy violence. The research saying that most people aren’t susceptible is irrelevant to the problem.
The problem is that some people are infected by fantasy violence. Read some of the posts by young women about what passes for normal het sex and come back and say that porn humiliations have no effect on “most people.”
Enough people are changed by this crap that it causes huge consequences for some people. The point that there is research that’s not picking that up says more about the design of the research than its reflection of the facts on the ground.
Perhaps he should have paid more attention to bit where she strangles him to death with those same chains?
Story about a similar case. Total horrorshow.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/the-police-told-her-to-report-her-rape-then-arrested-her-for
Being 5 and thinking about handcuffs is not abnormal. A lot of kids like being tied up or tying up others. It’s the lack of empathy and concern for others that’s problematic.
Did I miss the part about Jabba the Hut being a burglar? Breaking and entering appears to be a major marker for violent criminality. One which isn’t usually blamed on the media.
That said, the ‘Leia in chains’ trope is very disturbing. We should be surprised that the only time the character is not wrapped in a choir robe is when she is imprisoned by a monster. But ‘imprisoned by a monster’ passes for a normal model of sexuality in this culture.
This seems like a bit of a melodramatic response to the story – and that is perfectly understandable. What happened to the victim both during the attack and subsequently was horrific. Her attacker was also clearly a violent deviant who I’m sure we all wish had been stopped long before his eventual arrest.
But like Silentbob, I’m inclined to think that the argument from experts in regard to violent media has consistently been that it does not make people violent, but rather that people who have natural tendencies to violence might be inspired by it. However, it is very likely still the case that even had such a person never been exposed to violent media, they would still have ended up committing violent acts because it is in their nature to due so – you might even say that on an emotional or psychological level, they are compelled to. At least that is the impression I have gotten from public reports by the Australian Federal Police into multiple murderers and other highly violent offenders. But the claim that new media affects people’s behavior in ways disturbing for society is as old as the hills – it has historically been leveled at plays, novels, music, television, movies and now computer games.
I personally tend to enjoy horror and action movies, as well as violent video games. I find them a entertaining and fascinating – although I do draw a distinction between horror and thriller movies and what I’d call “torture porn” movies like Hostel or I Spit On Your Grave. I don’t find that my interest in the genre has had any noticeable affect on my mental or emotional responses to stimuli. I’m inherently horrified by seeing any creature in pain and instinctively want to help – I even trained as a first aid officer to be able to.
Trying to blame this on Star Wars – and more specifically on a handful of scenes where Leia plays victim until she can effect her own escape seems a little silly. I personally loved her character when I first saw Star Wars as a child – she is a powerful political leader, who commands military and personal respect from all around her and she is tough, smart and can take care of herself. She is so different from the Disney damsels I’d been used to up to that point. Let’s not let evil people ruin everything fun in life.