Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The dark side of mateship: Rape and silence in blackrock

2012; Issue: 68 Linguagem: Inglês

1449-857X

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas,

Cinema and Media Studies

Watching the depiction of rape in on-screen fictions can be difficult, even harrowing, for viewers - and can become even more so in the case of gang rape. Despite (or perhaps because of) this difficulty, gang rape has become a common plot device in Australian film, one that is used to expose the dark side of otherwise culturally celebrated notions of mateship. Movies like Wasted on the Young (Ben C Lucas, 2010), The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998), The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005), Shame (Steve Jodrell, 1988) and Blackrock (Steven Vidler, 1997) all use this type of sexual violence as a way to illustrate the fact that the loyalty we often champion as a key element of white Australian masculinity often comes at a horrific cost. The gender politics that dominate these films demonstrate just how complex - and often hypocritical - widely held attitudes towards sexual violence can be. They force us to question the moral assumptions that we are exposed to through the media on an almost daily basis, and indeed the assumptions that we make ourselves.