Woman Up: 5 Revenge Films to Watch and Discuss
by Black Artemis | Better Than Keepin' It Real
Because Rihanna’s Man Down is only the latest attempt in popular media in which a victim becomes a vigilante, I find the controversy it has generated almost laughable. The vigilante trope is as American as running pigskin down a field. It made Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson movies stars in the 70s and now keeps Nicolas Cage on top of his IRS installment agreement. Regardless of where we stand on the morality or effectiveness of vigilantism, we generally accept that violence begets violence.
That is, until the victim-become-perpetrator is a woman.
Even though we cannot get our fill of the steady buffet at the Cineplex of men wrecking havoc in the name of vengeance, let a woman bring wreck, and controversy ensues. Meanwhile, the men in these narratives are rarely themselves the victims never mind survivors of sexual assault.* Rather they seek revenge for a crime committed against someone they love -- almost always an adult female relative (most likely a love interest) or minor child.
Apparently, Hollywood realizes that we are not ready to see a man go HAM because someone fucked with his brother, male lover or even adult child. This is because we cling to a clusterfuck of patriarchal beliefs that insist:
1. A man can possess a woman or child.
2. A man cannot be possessed by anyone else but himself.
3. A man who fails to protect his human possessions should be able to redeem himself by regulating those who violate him by messing with them.
It then goes to reason that, despite our taste for tales of vigilantism, any narrative in which a woman who experiences a crime then takes justice into her own hands will prove unsettling. Where does she come off regulating anyone’s behavior as if she owns anything including her own body?
Read the Full Essay @ Better Than Keepin' It Real
