Played for laughs: how cin­e­ma still fails male sex­u­al assault survivors

Cin­e­ma, as the great empa­thy machine, can tell our sto­ries and allow oth­ers to under­stand them, and there­fore, hope­ful­ly us. The feel­ing of recog­ni­tion one can gain upon see­ing their sto­ry reflect­ed on the big screen is often euphor­ic – but not always. In the sum­mer of 2017, almost a year removed from my own sex­u­al assault, I saw my sto­ry in the form of Jeff Baena’s The Lit­tle Hours. As I watched three women drug a man and pro­ceed to assault him, I saw my sto­ry in front of my very eyes, but the feel­ing was far from euphor­ic. Instead, I sunk deep­er into my chair as the entire audi­to­ri­um erupt­ed with laugh­ter at what was hap­pen­ing on screen. This was a vivid reminder of how cin­e­ma, and by exten­sion soci­ety, viewed male vic­tims of sex­u­al assault.

Male rape and sex­u­al assault is so ubiq­ui­tous and nor­malised in the world of com­e­dy that you may not have even noticed. For decades movies have con­sis­tent­ly pre­sent­ed the vio­la­tion of men as a punch­line, to the point that phras­es like ​“don’t drop the soap” fly com­plete­ly under the radar in all forms of media, includ­ing children’s film and television.

Cin­e­ma has a his­to­ry of not only jok­ing about sex­u­al assault but dis­re­gard­ing it as a whole, regard­less of gen­der. When not used as a punch­line, rape has been treat­ed as a shock tac­tic – such a taboo with­in cul­ture that see­ing it on screen becomes a form of spec­ta­cle. Whether it be Isla Fis­ch­er tying down Vince Vaughn and forc­ing her­self upon him in Wed­ding Crash­ers, Edward Norton’s rape at the hands of a prison gang in Amer­i­can His­to­ry X, or Susan George’s rape play­ing sec­ond fid­dle to Dustin Hoffman’s vio­lent out­burst in Straw Dogs, the movies have proven time and time again that they have no inter­est in explor­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal con­se­quences that such vio­la­tions could have on a person.

At least until 2017. Fol­low­ing the #MeToo move­ment, views around sex­u­al harass­ment and assault have shift­ed dras­ti­cal­ly. Where­as the vio­la­tion of women in the past was nor­malised in cin­e­ma or treat­ed as an issue for men to han­dle à la Charles Bron­son in Death Wish, recent movies like She Said, Promis­ing Young Woman and Bomb­shell focus on women using their own expe­ri­ences to fight back. This is not restrict­ed to film either. Suzie Miller’s play Pri­ma Facie takes aim at the legal system’s approach to tack­ling rape cas­es, stand-up come­di­ans like Ania Magliano have pro­duced shows around their own expe­ri­ences of assault, and Michaela Coel’s tele­vi­sion series I May Destroy You explores con­sent beyond the bina­ry of yes/​no and focus­es on the per­son­al trau­ma of sex­u­al vio­lence. These results are a tes­ta­ment to the chang­ing views around all forms of rape and assault.

One of the great­est recent films to broach the sub­ject is Mol­ly Man­ning Walker’s How To Have Sex, which fol­lows three teenage friends on an end-of-exams hol­i­day in Malia. The film places us in the posi­tion of the girls as they face their fears and anx­i­eties around sex, and in doing Man­ning Walk­er allows us to recog­nise the fear that many women have around alco­hol, walk­ing home alone, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sex­u­al assault. When one of the char­ac­ters is raped, we also feel her pain.

Unlike my expe­ri­ence with The Lit­tle Hours, see­ing How To Have Sex in a cin­e­ma was spe­cial. I felt seen rather than laughed at. This was a reminder that oth­ers shared the same pain and expe­ri­ence that I had gone through, rather than a cru­el spec­ta­cle that made me feel alone. As I walked through Glas­gow – the very city I was assault­ed in – I cried. Each tear felt like a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of my joy at see­ing the top­ic han­dled so respect­ful­ly, but also my sor­row at the lack of films deal­ing with male sex­u­al violence.

The major­i­ty of media focus­es on female vic­tims of assault or harass­ment, and it’s easy to under­stand why. Accord­ing to Rape Cri­sis Eng­land and Wales 1 in 4 women expe­ri­ence rape or sex­u­al assault, where­as only 1 in 18 men report the same expe­ri­ences. Fur­ther­more, 98% of adults arrest­ed for com­mit­ting sex­u­al offences are men. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, women tend to be the vic­tims of assault and men tend to be the per­pe­tra­tors – but it’s more com­pli­cat­ed than that. Men are also less like­ly to report their expe­ri­ences of sex­u­al assault, so it’s safe to assume the real­i­ty of sex­u­al vio­lence against men is high­er than fig­ures suggest.

Richard Gadd’s Baby Rein­deer and Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You are two recent, rare exam­ples of media that does address male sex­u­al assault in a sen­si­tive man­ner. A plot line that appears in both tele­vi­sion shows is the strug­gle for men to talk about their assault. In the case of Baby Rein­deer, a recur­ring ques­tion asked of the main char­ac­ter Don­nie is ​“Why’d it take you so long to report it?” reflect­ing the real­i­ty that many sex­u­al assault sur­vivors strug­gle to talk about what has hap­pened to them. Fur­ther­more, in both shows, nei­ther of the male sur­vivors attend sup­port groups nor ther­a­py (Michaela Coel’s char­ac­ter in I May Destroy You, who is also sex­u­al­ly assault­ed, attends both).

The wider issue of men strug­gling to dis­cuss their emo­tions and the impact this has on their men­tal health is increas­ing­ly promi­nent, but decades of male sex­u­al assault being treat­ed as a joke only per­pet­u­ates the notion that men should not speak up for fear of being ridiculed. The severe lack of media dis­cussing the issue doesn’t help mat­ters either.

Where­as sto­ries of male sex­u­al assault are being pro­duced more fre­quent­ly in con­tem­po­rary tele­vi­sion, the same can­not be said for film. Two of the most recent exam­ples of movies dis­cussing male sex­u­al vio­lence come in the form of 2012’s The Perks of Being a Wall­flower and 2023’s May Decem­ber, both of which por­tray adult women assault­ing young boys. With a 11-year gap between the films, it is clear that this top­ic is rarely han­dled seri­ous­ly, if ever, in cinema.

That is not to say that no films attempt­ed to tack­le the issue before this. Pic­tures like Bar­ry Levinson’s Sleep­ers dis­cussed the rape and assault of young boys in a juve­nile deten­tion cen­tre back in 1996. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at this point, sex­u­al vio­lence was still very much used as a shock tac­tic, with films like Sleep­ers focus­ing on the events them­selves while show­ing lit­tle to no signs of emo­tion­al or phys­i­cal trau­ma for the sur­vivors in the long term. Both The Perks of Being a Wall­flower and May Decem­ber avoid show­ing the assaults them­selves and focus much more on the impact the events have on these young men. In doing so, both films bring atten­tion to the com­plex pain such inci­dents can have on some­one and the painful con­ver­sa­tions we often need to have with oth­ers and ourselves.

Por­tray­als of male sex­u­al vio­lence may be few and far between, and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, dis­taste­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tions of male sex­u­al assault do still exist – this year alone the lat­est sea­son of The Boys fea­tured a scene in which lead char­ac­ter Hughie is assault­ed, which showrun­ner Eric Krip­ke described as ​“hilar­i­ous.” How­ev­er, the increase of sur­vivors like Richard Gadd shar­ing their sto­ries presents a hope­ful change in the way that the issue will be han­dled in art going forward.

Hon­est, affect­ing depic­tions of male rape and assault do exist and shows like Baby Rein­deer and films like May Decem­ber treat the issue, and there­fore sur­vivors, with care and respect. They por­tray their jour­neys through trau­ma as messy, ugly, and hon­est. With heal­ing comes a lot of men­tal and phys­i­cal pain, but these shows remind us that the first step on a heal­ing jour­ney is by con­fronting that trau­ma in the first place. The lack of media dis­cussing male sex­u­al assault only con­tin­ues to silence vic­tims, many of whom do not see them­selves rep­re­sent­ed on screen, or are too ashamed or fear­ful to share their own sto­ries. Only by smash­ing the taboo of male sex­u­al assault on screen by shar­ing authen­tic sto­ries can this begin to change.

Rape Cri­sis pro­vides spe­cial­ist help to all sur­vivors of sex­u­al assault. Call free on 0808 500 2222 or go to the web­site to start a free online chat.