It was the woods themselves... they're alive, Ashley.

Oh, Evil Dead. You scamp.

It's like the 90-minute enactment of every feminist horror fan's internal conflicts with the genre.

I mean, obviously, tree rape. It's another elephant. One of the reasons I was excited about the DVD of the film was to finally get a definitive word from the filmmakers about that, but almost inevitably, I was disappointed. Raimi and Tapert -- actually Tapert specifically takes credit for it -- say that it was just an idea they had to push the scene further and make it more painful for the audience.

"Sam, I was thinking, how can we hurt the audience?" is exactly what Tapert says. They don't dwell on the point, and this is basically all they have to say about what prompted the tree rape.

However, even though they don't have some Sooper Sekkrit Feminist Statement, nor do they have, for lack of a better word, an excuse for the scene -- still, I think this explanation actually says something positive about their intentions.

Specifically, what's interesting to me is that they don't talk about it being "scary," but painful. And not painful for the character, but painful "for the audience."

Which suggests that the idea that men don't identify with female characters in movies without some kind of psychological gymnastics probably doesn't hold water. Which should not come as any surprise to anyone but the most die-hard Lacanians, really, but which I spent six years of feminist film theory classes trying in vain to argue.

Of course, this only works if you grant that Raimi and Tapert were making the movie specifically for a male audience. I think you'd kinda sound ridiculous arguing otherwise, though, seriously. We're inclusive and enlightened now, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that they really thought any women were going to see the movie except in the tow of a boyfriend. See also: Joe Bob Briggs -- he took girlfriend of the moment Cherry Dilday, who apparently yarked all over the upholstery in the Toronado. (See my previous post for the reference.)

I can give credence to the idea that the filmmakers meant the audience to identify with Cheryl to some extent. They mention on the commentary track for Evil Dead II that a similar scene in that film, minus the money shot, was originally written with a male victim; I guess with the idea that being impaled with a tree branch through the crotch is pretty unpleasant no matter what the anatomy of it.

But I think, especially when you're talking about guys who quickly got out of exploitation film and are now very successful in respectable movies ("indoor bullstuff," as Joe Bob would put it), I think you're going to have a hard time getting them to admit that something like the tree rape scene was intended to be erotic or titillating.

And obviously, this is really the most acutely problematic issue. Is the tree rape erotic? I mean, that's obviously subjective, but less so are the questions of whether it's seen that way, and was it intended to be?

And I can say, being an aficionado of Joe Bob Briggs' work, that the answer to that second question is "yes," albeit in a way that is strange and difficult to pin down. And that's something that the film, and the filmmakers, should probably be held accountable for. After 15-ish years of shock horror film and the drive-in cinema that obviously influenced The Evil Dead, I think everyone involved would sound pretty disingenuous claiming unfamiliarity with the eroticization of extreme sexualized violence against women. Blood, breasts, and beasts: they knew the formula, and they did it justice, if you can call it that.

And this of course brings me to the question of eroticized violence in exploitation film generally. And it's an issue I've struggled with since watching Evil Dead the first time -- it was, I think it's fair to say, the first exploitation movie I ever saw, and I enjoyed the hell out of the movie and was left with a new threshold for gore and perversity in horror movies. But eroticized violence is unavoidable, even central, seen by many as a virtual requirement to qualify for the "exploitation" label.

In a sense, it's horror in its purest form: what is the genre about, after all, but taboo and the violation of taboo -- the seeing of What Must Not Be Seen? Sexualized violence lies right at the heart of that territory.

Now, just because that's What Horror's All About doesn't make it okay. I think there's a razor's edge here, and it's hard to define where the boundaries are. Clearly, what is personally offensive, what is genuinely socially and culturally harmful and degrading, and what it actually kind of fun and entertaining are categories we all probably draw a little differently.

There was a fight last week over at Jezebel about whether a rape-simulation interactive DVD is so socially damaging that it's valid to pull it from Amazon, or whether that threshold and where we place it is a question of personal taste (and whether that personal taste should be allowed to direct decisions about what can and cannot be sold to the public). It's a question that's been part of the public discourse ever since we came up with the idea of free speech, and it's not one that I think there's any simple answer to.

So I guess the only conclusion I can draw is that the tree rape is only as offensive or acceptable as sexualized violence in exploitation film ever is. And personally, I would argue that, especially in a cinema as marginalized as this one, that it is not necessarily Part of the Problem. I'm a lot more concerned about the scene where audiences aren't going "blech" -- even if only for the benefit of the people around them.

Last week I went to a screening for some locally-produced short horror films. I left early on (projection issues rendering staying a waste of time, unfortunately), but not before seeing a little piece of crap about teenage zombies. The idea was that lust turns teenage boys into actual zombies. The boys are interested in nothing but (female) flesh, and the protagonist is a girl who learns that she would be happier and less afraid and conflicted if she just gives it up to her zombie boyfriends like the other girls in the film do. The film offended me a hell of a lot more than Evil Dead ever did, because it offered a blanket acceptance of all of our stereotypes about male and female sexuality -- men are monsters, incapable of self-control, women have to be cajoled into sex, women lack the monster impulse (none of the female characters become zombies), and teenage sexuality is horrific and dangerous, but funny. Most of all, it basically stripped women of all sexual autonomy, yet a-freaking-gain. Just give in! You'll feel so much better! As if that's any less destructive a message than the ever-so-subtle "ABSTINENCE" scrawled in three-foot-high letters on the blackboard in the "sex-ed" classroom where one girl takes refuge.

My point here is not to savage this little short, much as it may deserve it, but rather to point out that nobody is suggesting at any point, textually or subtextually, that The Evil Dead normalizes tree rape. Or any other kind of rape. Rape is the work of EVIL TREES.

And that, I think, is the thing that redeems a lot of exploitation film. It's neither making an argument nor reinforcing an assumption that there is anything acceptable in any way about violence against women. Its position is so far outside the margins that most people are vaguely embarrassed to admit they watch it at all, and the scant one or two who would actually publicly admit that they're turned on by it were, let's face it, probably mentally unbalanced and dangerously deranged to start with.

So it's not something like Stockholm (the DVD causing the fight at Jezebel), or Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, or the fact that Chris Brown continues to show his face in public, all of which make pretty profound arguments in favor of rape or violence against women.

There are arguments to be made that Evil Dead might reaffirm some negative, societally-held views about rape -- from a horror fan's perspective, anyone who wanders off into the woods because they heard a noise out there is "asking for it," whatever "it" may be. But I think you're reaching a little bit, at that point.

Really, the rape itself bothers me less than the reactions of the other characters... but that's for next time! Yes, this will have to be a three-parter. Incredibly enough, I still have a few more things to say about The Evil Dead, all inspired by a single word on the director commentary. Stay tuned to find out what it was!