Tepid Resolutions to Rape: Film Sends Mixed Messages to Freshmen

by CLAIRE GORDON

Octo­ber 2009

Yale land­marks pan across the screen to the romp­ing beat of Kings of Leon: Phelps Gate, Hark­ness Tower, Old Cam­pus… and the Women’s Table – a mon­tage of its cas­cad­ing font. Fade out.

At this fall’s Fresh­man Ori­en­ta­tion, the film Rela­tion­ships: Unti­tled replaced the tra­di­tional “Sex Sig­nals” pro­gram. After 2008’s Zeta Psi inci­dent, when a group of fra­ter­nity pledges posed out­side Yale’s Women’s Cen­ter with the sign “We Love Yale Sluts,” the Women’s Cen­ter sub­mit­ted a report to the admin­is­tra­tion cri­tiquing the sex­ual cul­ture on cam­pus. One chap­ter urged reform of sex­ual harassment/assault pre­ven­tion training.

A com­mit­tee was formed. Another report was writ­ten. The cogs of the Yale Machine creaked for­ward. A year and a half later, a new sex­ual harass­ment and assault pre­ven­tion pro­gram filled two hours of the freshmen’s first few dizzy­ing days.

The 40-minute student-made film pre­sented scenes based on three real cases of sex­ual assault that have been brought before Yale’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. Com­plete with sweep­ing shots of Toad’s and a fresh­man screw dance sequence, the film sit­u­ated sex­ual assault in a Yale-specific con­text. This speci­ficity was meant to res­onate more with its fresh­man audi­ence than the generic sce­nar­ios enacted by the “Sex Sig­nals” skits of yore.

Female alco­hol abuse is pre­sented as a key fac­tor in sex­ual vul­ner­a­bil­ity; the cast of stum­bling “drunk girls” seem almost com­plicit in their com­i­cal slop­pi­ness, while male drink­ing is hardly featured.

Rela­tion­ships: Unti­tled intended to depict the uncer­tainty and spotty mem­o­ries of col­lege hook-up cul­ture. Female alco­hol abuse is pre­sented as a key fac­tor in sex­ual vul­ner­a­bil­ity; the cast of stum­bling “drunk girls” seem, in their comic slop­pi­ness, com­plicit in what hap­pens, while male drink­ing is hardly fea­tured. How­ever, the film did present the ways in which alco­hol com­pli­cates con­sent, spot­light­ing the film’s key theme: ambiguity.

Fresh­man Coun­selors were respon­si­ble for address­ing the film’s unre­solved ques­tions in small post-screening dis­cus­sion groups. The inti­macy and reci­procity of these forums is an upgrade from the eye-rolling and back-row heck­les inevitable in the SSS lec­ture hall that hosted “Sex Sig­nals” for sev­eral years. But it also placed a heavy onus on Fro­Cos to unravel the film’s ambi­gu­i­ties appro­pri­ately, and to pro­vide con­crete instruc­tions about how to respond to sex­ual assault – infor­ma­tion excluded from the film, lest it jeop­ar­dize the eth­i­cal limbo care­fully crafted by the script.

But the genre of info­tain­ment rarely paints com­plex issues in the suit­able shades of gray. One of the sce­nar­ios fell cheaply into the violent-attack-by-stranger stereo­type; the guy leer­ing from his first on-screen appear­ance, squint­ing his eyes at his soon-to-be vic­tim and even­tu­ally pin­ning the girl amid quick-cuts and resis­tant screams. Unfor­tu­nately, evil music will not begin to play in TOAD’s when your rapist lurks around the corner.

Audi­ences do not see the female victim’s wrench­ing walk to Yale Health Ser­vices the morn­ing after. They do not see a med­ical exam­i­na­tion, an STI screen­ing, or the $28 shelled out for Plan B.

Unfor­tu­nately, evil music will not begin to play in TOAD’s when your rapist lurks around the corner.

“Where were the rape kits? Why weren’t there any rape kits? GUYS, RAPE KITS!” said Alice But­trick, Pub­lic Rela­tions Coor­di­na­tor of the Women’s Cen­ter, after view­ing the film.

The vic­tim does not meet with her Dean, the Sex­ual Harass­ment Griev­ance Board, or the Exec­u­tive Committee—let alone the police— about the vio­lent crime com­mit­ted against her. She doesn’t even seem angry; instead, she sim­ply dashes away from her rapist after an uncom­fort­able exchange of glances in Bass Café.

This may be an accu­rate depic­tion of the cul­ture of silence that trag­i­cally sur­rounds sex­ual assault. Espe­cially in col­lege, when your rapist is a friend of a friend or an upstairs neigh­bor, recourse can be socially dev­as­tat­ing and accu­sa­tions met with skep­ti­cal ears.

But the tepid res­o­lu­tion of this sce­nario, and all the film’s sto­ry­lines, both rep­re­sents and dan­ger­ously repro­duces this silenc­ing cul­ture, nor­mal­iz­ing non­cha­lance to sex­ual vic­tim­hood. The les­son to fresh­man females is not, “Rape hap­pens; here’s how to deal,” but rather, “Rape hap­pens, so deal with it.”

The girl in one sto­ry­line does receive coun­sel­ing from the SHARE Center’s Dr. Car­ole Gold­berg, who helps her cope with a black­out sex­ual encounter. After the Fresh­man Screw, this girl’s sweet-seeming date walks her home and tends to her as she lapses in and out of con­scious­ness. Cut to the next morn­ing, when the boy sneaks out from under the cov­ers, dresses, and exits— leav­ing his hung-over screwed date to wake up alone, with­out clothes or any mem­ory of the night.

Audi­ences do not see the female victim’s wrench­ing walk to Yale Health Ser­vices the morn­ing after. They do not see a med­ical exam­i­na­tion, an STI screen­ing, or the $28 shelled out for Plan B.

After a rather unam­bigu­ous case of date rape (to this viewer), the girl explains to Dr. Gold­berg that she’s eat­ing okay, hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing, unsure of what hap­pened, and uncom­fort­able plac­ing blame. The solu­tion: more coun­sel­ing. “You don’t have to feel any­thing you’re not ready to feel,” Dr. Gold­berg consoles. The only feel­ings she seems ready to feel are con­fu­sion and sad­ness, dis­em­pow­er­ing emo­tions not eas­ily chan­neled into con­crete action.

The third sce­nario, unlike the oth­ers, involves a com­mit­ted cou­ple. The mechan­ics of the case are indeed ambigu­ous. Girl and Boy are in bed. Girl says she does not want to have sex, but ini­ti­ates mak­ing out. Boy pen­e­trates. Girl says “Stop” softly. Boy con­tin­ues; Girl says “Stop” emphat­i­cally. Boy stops.

But the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the boyfriend through­out the film as a paragon of gen­til­ity, and the girl­friend as unsta­ble, make her claims of rape (the only direct claims of rape in the film) seem bitchy and hys­ter­i­cal. The mes­sage: They were dat­ing, after all. And this guy was totally awesome.

The film col­lages three iso­lated inci­dences, uni­fied only by the shared theme of sex­ual dis­com­fort. The orig­i­nal Women’s Cen­ter report, how­ever, high­lighted the inad­e­quacy of “Sex Sig­nals” as part of a more holis­tic exam­i­na­tion of Yale’s sex­ual cul­ture. It is a cul­ture, accord­ing to the report, which per­mits, even cel­e­brates, the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion, harass­ment, and assault of its female stu­dents, specif­i­cally female freshman.

While not inclu­sive of most Yale men, it is a cul­ture often incu­bated in all-male set­tings, like fra­ter­ni­ties and ath­letic teams. It is a cul­ture in which a fra­ter­nity can laugh­ably cir­cu­late an email rank­ing the fuck­a­bil­ity of girls in their first week of col­lege. It is a cul­ture in which respect­ing women and hav­ing sex with them are mutu­ally exclu­sive things.

The les­son to fresh­man females is not, “Rape hap­pens; here’s how to deal,” but rather, “Rape hap­pens, so deal with it.”

Fem­i­nism teaches us to under­stand sex­ual assault as a rein­force­ment of inequal­ity. Per­haps it is unre­al­is­tic to expect a Yale ori­en­ta­tion pro­gram to grap­ple with the MacK­in­non­ist con­cept of rape-as-terrorism or to men­tion rape’s shock­ing sta­tis­ti­cal preva­lence on cam­pus. How­ever, an injec­tion of Fem­i­nism 101 into the screen­play could have expanded the three “ambigu­ous” exam­ples into an unam­bigu­ous com­ment on the lived real­ity of gen­der and sex­u­al­ity at col­lege today.

The lin­ger­ing shots of the Women’s Table that opened the film promised a more empow­er­ing mes­sage than just a semi-accurate drama­ti­za­tion of col­lege sex­ual mis­takes. The gap between Rela­tion­ships: Unti­tled and the reform imag­ined in the pages of the Women’s Cen­ter report par­al­lels another incon­gruity that has unfolded in the last month.

The SHAPE report, which landed in every under­grad­u­ate inbox at the start of this year, empha­sized Yale’s intol­er­ance of harassment—a sen­ti­ment echoed by a note from Dean Miller. This admin­is­tra­tive response to Zeta Psi’s “Pre-season Scout­ing Report” is noth­ing but a ver­bal wrist-slap. It seems the only thing more ambigu­ous than the sex lives of drunk Yale stu­dents is the university’s gen­uine con­cern about it.

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UPDATE: Rela­tion­ships: Unti­tled is being re-screened on Nov. 3rd at 7 p.m. in Rosen­feld Hall. The screen­ing is co-sponsored by the Yale Col­lege Dean’s Office and S.H.A.R.E.

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Claire Gor­don is a senior in Yale College.