Whitney Babyak
I Spit on Your Scary Movie: Rape in Horror Movies
In this paper, I examine the progression (or regression) rape scenes in
horror movies over the last 25 years. A qualitative content analysis of
was conducted 17 horror films featuring rape, chosen for their
representativeness, box office gross, and release date. For each movie, I
recorded the characterizations of the victim and rapist, the details of the
rape(s), its visibility/graphicness, its context, and its relation to the
overall plot of the movie were examined. Overall, the sample in this
study suggests that rape was more commonplace in horror movies in
the early 1980s. In the mid 1980s and early 1990s, rapes were not fea-
tured nearly as much and when they were used, they were usually
implied and not shown. In the horror movies of the last decade, however,
rape has become much more common, central to the plot, violent and
graphic, according to my sample. Overall, this study concludes that vio-
lence towards women, both physical and sexual, is becoming
normalized.
