I concluded the first part of this "series" with this passage:
I like Seltzer's emphasis of the term "ravishment" over the inexact term "rape," and the former term takes in what I've loosely termed "fake-rape." But I will probably keep using the term as one of my subject-tags, since at times the term does take in the real-life, non-fantasy crime.
Today I decided to amend all of the tags reading "rape" into a word-pair, "rape/ravishment." This allows me to take in any discussion of the real-world crime, or its unambiguous representations in fiction, as well as "actions that look like rape but are better called ravishment." One famous ravishment discussed in the earlier essay was Margaret Mitchell's ambivalent climax (so to speak) of the Scarlett-Rhett relationship in GONE WITH THE WIND.
Of course all fictional representations of rape exist only as functions of particular stories. In TARZAN OF THE APES, the hero's rape-happy ape-brother Terkoz exists to threaten Jane Porter and give Tarzan the chance to rescue his lady love. Rape is an ordeal that heroines like Ghita of Alizarr and the Marvel Comics Red Sonja endure in order to become heroes. It can also be an ordeal for male heroes, though obviously the cultural connotations for males will be different than for females.
"Ravishment," though, carries a distinct value which is related to, but not identical to, the real-world act of rape. Whether ravishment has a real-world counterpart is often difficult to ascertain, because it would depend not on a physical act but on the emotional motivation that facilitates the act. My next essay will explore some of those emotional nuances.
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