Princess Weekes
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Promising Young Woman | Why We Need Catharsis
🕑 Added 2022-01-28 20:43:06 +0000 UTCA brief look at the media history of rape-revenge films and how Promising Young Woman fails to give audiences the kind of catharsis they deserve.
CW: This video is going to be critically discussing the rape-revenge genre, while I do not go into detail or show any sexual assault in the video—I do say the word and I made the decision to not censor it because I found the idea to be honestly very strange. As a survivor, I don’t think the word needs to be censored during analysis and if the Adsense punishes me for it so be it.
If that is too much for anyone, please, don’t feel the need to watch & take care of yourself.
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Thank You to @Be Kind Rewind for being the voice of Emerald Fennell.
Comments
Daniella Lumpkin
I really enjoyed this video (as I do with all your videos). In my first watch of PYW I loved the framing, the colors, the messaging, and honestly didn’t have any complaints and most of the reviews I’ve seen were similar so I was initially shocked you didn’t like it as much but you made a lot of excellent points I hadn’t really thought about in that context. I liked/like the mirroring of Nina’s death symbolically meaning she was erased, and the root of that being the violence perpetrated against her, and how when Cassie goes to the cabin she ends up ultimately succumbing to a similar erasure but with the emotional baggage and foresight of knowing that to be a possibility but the implications of the police coming in at the end are murky at best (and very much a white girl fantasy) and also when you really think about it, it means for all that happens Nina never receives justice, even symbolically if we’re being honest. The video definitely added more nuance to my opinion of the movie. I still will recommend to people and think it’s an excellent effort and debut for the writer but there are definitely some story implications that go unexamined in a way that does detract from its potential impact.
Duck
I watched this with some trepidation because I wasn't sure if it would be too much for me, but it ended up helping me a lot. You put into words feelings I've had for a long time and didn't understand. I was watching this on my phone when I made dinner, and I ended up having to sit on the kitchen floor and stare into space for a bit. It was meaningful for me. Thank you for making it. A very small thing, and I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it: when you had the interview text go across the screen and the narrator read it, it was a bit distracting when they were out of sync.
Princess Weekes
Def could have used more murdering. I don't like Spit, but I appreciate it with a lot of criticism.
Maggie Block
Ok, so I don’t like I Spit on Your Grave because the rape to revenge ratio is WAY off. So much repeated rape, and very little time spent murdering rapists.
Samuel Nguyen
Love the collab with bkr, hopefully not the last one. Thank you for putting so much care and nuance when talking about difficult subjects. Also, not mentioned in the video how do you think Perfect Blue falls into this genre? I know it’s not technically a revenge film, but it does have a serial killer that’s trying avenge Mina for supposed wrong doings.
