There is no denying that Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (1978) deserves its title as one of the most controversial films ever made. While many condemn it as misogynistic, others praise it for raising uncomfortable issues about sexual violence. While its reputation as a cult film has undoubtedly been cemented by its unique position in the 1970s/80s exploitation era and the ‘video nasties’ scandal, it has also become mythologized by its own official and unofficial franchises.
David Maguire examines why the film still continues to provoke fierce debate forty years on, not only investigating the historical, social, and political landscape into which the film was first released—and condemned—but also examining how it is has inadvertently become ground zero for the rape-revenge genre because of its countless imitators. The book explores how academic study has reevaluated the film’s importance as a cultural statement on gender, the conflicting readings that it throws up, the timeless appeal of its story as examined through folklore and mythology, and its updating to reflect contemporary issues in a post-9/11 world of vengeance and retaliation.
Table des matières
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. History and Herstory in the 1970s and 1980s
2. ‘Only Women Bleed’: Filth or Feminist?
3. I Spit on Your Grave and its Legacy
Notes
Filmography
Bibliography
Index
A propos de l’auteur
David Maguire (MA, Film Studies, University of Bradford) is a programmer and researcher for the Leeds International Film Festival and a communications manager for the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency. He has presented a paper on I Spit on Your Grave at the Cine-Excess international film festival and an examination of the political interpretations of the same film and its sequels at the University of Canterbury’s Exploitation Cinema in the 21st Century symposium, and has also presented papers on zombie films and the representation of women in modern rape-revenge films at conferences run by the Universities of Leeds, Bradford, and Sheffield.
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