One of my favorite movies ever is The Lovely Bones, based on a famous novel of the same name even though the film is quite different from the original material.
In the movie, we witness as 14-years old Susie Salmon is lured into an underground room by her neighbor George Harvey. We do not get to see any graphic stuff taking place, but it's very clear that Harvey wanted to rape and murder the teenage girl and he accomplished it successfully in the middle of that cornfield.
The movie does include rape as part of the tragedy, but the story is all about how Susan's family deals with the loss and how they slowly rebuild their lives. Susie comes to slowly accept that her life has ended and she has to move on, so that's the message of the film: Life goes on, you can recover even if terrible things happen to you.
In this case rape happened, but the issue was treated respectfully and the fact that the story is about emotional recovery makes all the difference to me.
I agree with Chesterama in her view that rape has no place in Fantasy. In case that I wanted to read about such things, all I have to do is to search for the real-world stories about teenage girls and young women that keep disappearing where I live just to be found dead in forests and sewers some time later.
Apparently they are kidnapped by the organized crime in order to be raped, tortured, murdered and then dumped like garbage at the mentioned forests and sewers. I have heard real stories that happen here and would make any GoT fan cringe, so why would I want to read about the same stuff in Fantasy too?
Rape and other extremely delicate subjects can be used in Fiction, but they must be treated with great caution and respect. After all, we are talking about stuff that shatters lives everyday.
In the movie, we witness as 14-years old Susie Salmon is lured into an underground room by her neighbor George Harvey. We do not get to see any graphic stuff taking place, but it's very clear that Harvey wanted to rape and murder the teenage girl and he accomplished it successfully in the middle of that cornfield.
The movie does include rape as part of the tragedy, but the story is all about how Susan's family deals with the loss and how they slowly rebuild their lives. Susie comes to slowly accept that her life has ended and she has to move on, so that's the message of the film: Life goes on, you can recover even if terrible things happen to you.
In this case rape happened, but the issue was treated respectfully and the fact that the story is about emotional recovery makes all the difference to me.
I agree with Chesterama in her view that rape has no place in Fantasy. In case that I wanted to read about such things, all I have to do is to search for the real-world stories about teenage girls and young women that keep disappearing where I live just to be found dead in forests and sewers some time later.
Apparently they are kidnapped by the organized crime in order to be raped, tortured, murdered and then dumped like garbage at the mentioned forests and sewers. I have heard real stories that happen here and would make any GoT fan cringe, so why would I want to read about the same stuff in Fantasy too?
Rape and other extremely delicate subjects can be used in Fiction, but they must be treated with great caution and respect. After all, we are talking about stuff that shatters lives everyday.