2. Okay, now we can start.
Having now finished Kindred I want to follow up on my previous post about depictions of rape and show what this book did right and wrong.
Right:
- They didn't show Alice's rape, allowing no dramatization of the actual act
- They do show Alice's reaction to the rape, which is very, very negative.
- When Dana is raped it is played for drama but almost entirely unsexualized.
- Dana is not helpless, she chooses her fate.
- Though Alice is helpless, she is still portrayed as a human being stripped of her rights and not a damsel in distress.
Wrong:
- Honestly, the only real complaint I have is that Alice eventually starts to fall for her rapist despite her wishes. But it can be interpreted as stockholm syndrome so I'm not going to yell too loudly.
Where does Butler indicate that Alice "starts to fall for her rapist"? She begins to *tolerate* him, maybe (and he was once considered a friend), to see that resisting him will cause her *additional* physical and emotional pain. But I never see anything like "love" in evidence. She's still plotting to escape, right up to the end, and the only thing that keeps her around are the babies. And she's planning to run away *with* the babies, despite the enormous risks.
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