July 8th, check! Well personally I agree with your approach to the rape scene, Garrett - if it doesn't add anything to the narrative, the reader's mind can fill in the gap just as effectively. Strange, though, because I started thinking of some movies where it IS graphically depicted (The Accused, Last Exit to Brooklyn) and I'm not sure where the cutoff is, why it adds to the one medium but not to the other? Maybe because movies are sensory and "temporal" - they simulate the experience of being there in real time and the ability to extrapolate is limited, whereas books are entirely cerebral and can be put down and picked up again at our discretion.
I read an article recently about "Frodoing" your character, which is basically where you conk your character on the head in the middle of an action scene, then cut to the aftermath - and I realized I had done it in my novel! 🤣 Yours was an active choice though - different, but I think it's a totally valid device in many situations, part of trusting the intelligence and imagination of your readers...
Haha I love that! Definitely want to add "Frodoing" to my vocab.
I also love what you're pointing out here as well. Though it doesn't involve rape, one scene I keep returning to as a successful graphic depiction is a whipping scene in 12 Years a Slave. Left me frozen in shock, and then in tears. I thought it was handled in a really great way, though, because the whole point seemed to be to accurately depict an atrocity -- to present it in a way that sort of said, "We do not want you to look away from this."
And that leads me to think of context as well. With something like 12 Years a Slave, there is hundreds of years of course social context baked in. It's common knowledge that atrocious acts were committed (and often), and it's common knowledge that race is something upon which the U.S. was built upon (and/or around), and something that the U.S. still struggles with mightily.
So I feel like the, "We do not want you to look away from this," stance is all the more important. And I think it can definitely work with the written word as well.
Have not watched 12 Years a Slave, it sounds like the kind of movie I'd have to wait until the Mr. goes out of town. But "don't look away" - so true - I read something about that a long time ago that stuck, about writers needing to really be brave and witness things they might otherwise not want to. And then there's the opposite end of the spectrum, with Joan Didion meeting that little kid tripping on acid back in the 60s and doing nothing about it because she was a journalist - she actually said "It was gold." Oy! That seems monstrous to me. Anyway, it's a vast subject...
July 8th, check! Well personally I agree with your approach to the rape scene, Garrett - if it doesn't add anything to the narrative, the reader's mind can fill in the gap just as effectively. Strange, though, because I started thinking of some movies where it IS graphically depicted (The Accused, Last Exit to Brooklyn) and I'm not sure where the cutoff is, why it adds to the one medium but not to the other? Maybe because movies are sensory and "temporal" - they simulate the experience of being there in real time and the ability to extrapolate is limited, whereas books are entirely cerebral and can be put down and picked up again at our discretion.
I read an article recently about "Frodoing" your character, which is basically where you conk your character on the head in the middle of an action scene, then cut to the aftermath - and I realized I had done it in my novel! 🤣 Yours was an active choice though - different, but I think it's a totally valid device in many situations, part of trusting the intelligence and imagination of your readers...
Haha I love that! Definitely want to add "Frodoing" to my vocab.
I also love what you're pointing out here as well. Though it doesn't involve rape, one scene I keep returning to as a successful graphic depiction is a whipping scene in 12 Years a Slave. Left me frozen in shock, and then in tears. I thought it was handled in a really great way, though, because the whole point seemed to be to accurately depict an atrocity -- to present it in a way that sort of said, "We do not want you to look away from this."
And that leads me to think of context as well. With something like 12 Years a Slave, there is hundreds of years of course social context baked in. It's common knowledge that atrocious acts were committed (and often), and it's common knowledge that race is something upon which the U.S. was built upon (and/or around), and something that the U.S. still struggles with mightily.
So I feel like the, "We do not want you to look away from this," stance is all the more important. And I think it can definitely work with the written word as well.
Have not watched 12 Years a Slave, it sounds like the kind of movie I'd have to wait until the Mr. goes out of town. But "don't look away" - so true - I read something about that a long time ago that stuck, about writers needing to really be brave and witness things they might otherwise not want to. And then there's the opposite end of the spectrum, with Joan Didion meeting that little kid tripping on acid back in the 60s and doing nothing about it because she was a journalist - she actually said "It was gold." Oy! That seems monstrous to me. Anyway, it's a vast subject...