From "Game of Thrones" (above) to "The Handmaid's Tale," narratives of sexual assault have become particularly common in film and TV lately. How do filmmakers, actors and crew feel about staging rape scenes? Are they tired of them? Can the personal and social risks be somehow justified?
From L.A. Weekly:
Back when director Rachel Feldman was starting her career, in the late '80s and early '90s, the demand for rape stories was high. She'd been working in television — "The Commish"; "Picket Fences"; "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" — and wanted to break into features with a Lifetime movie. The producers were receptive to the script she had written but demanded one big change: "The only way it was going to go into production was to take this direction where they wanted [the character] to be raped."
Feldman felt, and still feels, that it's possible to direct a tasteful rape scene that can serve a larger purpose. Her compromise was to write a scene where the victim could fight and kill her rapist. "It's not like I left her whimpering in a pool of semen," Feldman laughs. "She had strength."
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