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For a journal issue devoted to cult cinema’s representations of debased rurality, it seems more than appropriate to include the following critical dialogue and book review dedicated to Meir Zarchi’s 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave (AKA Day of the Woman). The film was released during a decade-long cinematic obsession with America’s dispossessed rural poor that not only encompassed horror, drama and comedic formats, but even spawned sexploitation cycles devoted to the licentious drives of countryside inhabitants. With its theme of a sophisticated urban female writer who exacts her revenge against the all-male rural gang who abused her, I Spit on Your Grave not only reflected these wider ‘hicksploitation’ trends but also provided a formative rape and revenge template that provoked more than two decades of controversy from cultural critics and state censors alike. While the film’s unflinching scenes of sexual violence led to it being banned or heavily cut in many territories, its construction of the brutalised but powerful lone survivor Jennifer Hills (played by Camille Keaton) remains one of the text’s most memorable features. This female character not only inspired indirect renditions and rip-offs, but also provided the template for an unofficial sequel Savage Vengeance (Donald Farmer, 1993), in which Keaton also appeared.
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While this straight to video release was deemed ill-judged and incoherent, it was the 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave by Steven R. Monroe that generated new audience awareness of the original film and its controversial legacy. In his remake, Monroe offers a near-faithful update of Zarchi’s foundational premise, which again ranges the character of Jennifer Hills (played here by Sarah Butler) against a gang of rural misfits who invade her isolated writing retreat with disturbing consequences. While most of the character types from the 2010 redux closely resemble those established by Meir Zarchi, the introduction of the new figure of sheriff Storch (Andrew Howard) functions to manipulate prior audience awareness of the 1978 release in order to generate further commentary on debased modes of rural masculinity. With the later 2013 sequel I Spit on Your Grave 2, Monroe shifted from rural to urban settings in a hard-hitting narrative that uses the abduction of an aspiring model (Jemma Dallender) to consider contemporary issues of female tracking and sexual violation within an Eastern European context.
While the 2015 release of I Spit on Your Grave: Vengeance is Mine (directed by R. D. Braunstein) reintroduced the original character of Jennifer Hills (again played by Butler) as a damaged survivor continuing her vengeance quest whilst in therapy, this entry was largely seen as failing to provide the symmetry and closure expected from a remake trilogy. Subsequently, it was left to originator Meir Zarchi to provide a more definitive further entry to the franchise through his 2019 release of I Spit on Your Grave: Déjà Vu. With this title, Zarchi elides the narrative drive of the Monroe sequels to return to the original premise he devised for the original release. Marketed as ‘the only direct sequel to the 1978 movie’, Déjà Vu recasts original actress Camille Keaton as the Jennifer Hills and contemporises her struggles with the survivors of the rural gang that menaced her in the initial release. In an interesting gender twist, the also film ranges Hills’ daughter (played by Jamie Bernadette) against Becky (Maria Olsen), the vengeful wife of a murdered gang member, allowing the sequel retain its rural focus whilst also progressing along familial and female-led lines.
In the following dialogue and book review, author David Maguire reflects upon the recent release of his Cultographies volume on I Spit on Your Grave, which deals with Zarchi’s original and the subsequent remakes. In the opening section of the following review, Maguire recounts the motivation behind the research, development and production of his book. This is then followed by a more sustained review of the voume undertaken by Professor Martin Barker, to which the author then responds. We are delighted to conclude the review by including interviews with I Spit on Your Grave: Déjà Vu lead performers Jamie Bernadette and Maria Olsen, who further contextualise issues raised in David Maguire’s volume, as well as assessing why cult cinema remains fixated on the figure of Jennifer Hills.
While the 2015 release of I Spit on Your Grave: Vengeance is Mine (directed by R. D. Braunstein) reintroduced the original character of Jennifer Hills (again played by Butler) as a damaged survivor continuing her vengeance quest whilst in therapy, this entry was largely seen as failing to provide the symmetry and closure expected from a remake trilogy. Subsequently, it was left to originator Meir Zarchi to provide a more definitive further entry to the franchise through his 2019 release of I Spit on Your Grave: Déjà Vu. With this title, Zarchi elides the narrative drive of the Monroe sequels to return to the original premise he devised for the original release. Marketed as ‘the only direct sequel to the 1978 movie’, Déjà Vu recasts original actress Camille Keaton as the Jennifer Hills and contemporises her struggles with the survivors of the rural gang that menaced her in the initial release. In an interesting gender twist, the also film ranges Hills’ daughter (played by Jamie Bernadette) against Becky (Maria Olsen), the vengeful wife of a murdered gang member, allowing the sequel retain its rural focus whilst also progressing along familial and female-led lines.
In the following dialogue and book review, author David Maguire reflects upon the recent release of his Cultographies volume on I Spit on Your Grave, which deals with Zarchi’s original and the subsequent remakes. In the opening section of the following review, Maguire recounts the motivation behind the research, development and production of his book. This is then followed by a more sustained review of the voume undertaken by Professor Martin Barker, to which the author then responds. We are delighted to conclude the review by including interviews with I Spit on Your Grave: Déjà Vu lead performers Jamie Bernadette and Maria Olsen, who further contextualise issues raised in David Maguire’s volume, as well as assessing why cult cinema remains fixated on the figure of Jennifer Hills.
I Spit On Your Grave: The Motivation (David Maguire)
The desire to write this book was stoked by the research I did into I Spit On Your Grave for my MA dissertation, followed by a number of papers I did on the film/the rape-revenge genre at conferences across the UK. I was fascinated by how, 40 years on, it was still able to strongly divide public opinion. While quite a lot of the notorious/low budget/’exploitation’/’video nasty’ films of the ‘70s/80s have been (and quite rightly I believe) consigned to the trashcan of time, Meir Zarchi’s film has found itself mythologised and revered by the countless rape-revenge films that have followed in its wake. Despite being pretty much universally condemned by critics, women’s groups, politicians etc. when it was released and heavily cut or banned around the world it has managed to spawn official and unofficial franchises, countless imitators – and even, bizarrely, a spoof.
I was equally surprised that no one had attempted to write a book about the film before. As it was approaching its 40th anniversary and I knew that Meir Zarchi had a direct sequel in the works, and his son Terry had a documentary on the film also on its way, now felt like the perfect time to re-evaluate the film. And it couldn’t have been more timely. As we were finalising the book, the #metoo campaign exploded onto the scene. This campaign has established a monumental shift towards listening to victims of rape and sexual harassment, with the tables being turned on the perpetrators. When you consider the protagonist in Zarchi’s film, Jennifer Hills is effectively harassed for the sole reason that she is a young, beautiful, independent, intelligent career woman—and for this “crime” she is subjected to the most appalling degradation and destruction of her psychical and mental self by men who feel threatened by her. In successfully enacting revenge on those of who have wronged her, it is not entirely surprising that the film has such a strong female following, as it allows a woman, on screen, to redress the balance, albeit using violence. While it is correct that ISOYG and the rape-revenge genre have been responsible for putting images of sexual violence and intimidation towards women up on celluloid, they have also conversely provided an opportunity for identification with a fantasy of strong female empowerment.
The desire to write this book was stoked by the research I did into I Spit On Your Grave for my MA dissertation, followed by a number of papers I did on the film/the rape-revenge genre at conferences across the UK. I was fascinated by how, 40 years on, it was still able to strongly divide public opinion. While quite a lot of the notorious/low budget/’exploitation’/’video nasty’ films of the ‘70s/80s have been (and quite rightly I believe) consigned to the trashcan of time, Meir Zarchi’s film has found itself mythologised and revered by the countless rape-revenge films that have followed in its wake. Despite being pretty much universally condemned by critics, women’s groups, politicians etc. when it was released and heavily cut or banned around the world it has managed to spawn official and unofficial franchises, countless imitators – and even, bizarrely, a spoof.
I was equally surprised that no one had attempted to write a book about the film before. As it was approaching its 40th anniversary and I knew that Meir Zarchi had a direct sequel in the works, and his son Terry had a documentary on the film also on its way, now felt like the perfect time to re-evaluate the film. And it couldn’t have been more timely. As we were finalising the book, the #metoo campaign exploded onto the scene. This campaign has established a monumental shift towards listening to victims of rape and sexual harassment, with the tables being turned on the perpetrators. When you consider the protagonist in Zarchi’s film, Jennifer Hills is effectively harassed for the sole reason that she is a young, beautiful, independent, intelligent career woman—and for this “crime” she is subjected to the most appalling degradation and destruction of her psychical and mental self by men who feel threatened by her. In successfully enacting revenge on those of who have wronged her, it is not entirely surprising that the film has such a strong female following, as it allows a woman, on screen, to redress the balance, albeit using violence. While it is correct that ISOYG and the rape-revenge genre have been responsible for putting images of sexual violence and intimidation towards women up on celluloid, they have also conversely provided an opportunity for identification with a fantasy of strong female empowerment.
I Spit On Your Grave: The Review (Professor Martin Barker)
This is unquestionably a book that needed to be written. I Spit On Your Grave (1978, henceforth, ISOYG) has come to occupy a unique position as possibly the most long-term reviled film of modern times. Subject to more debate than almost any other, it is capable of producing spitting rage in opponents, and (in the main) slightly apologetic defences by those who try to rescue it. To mention it is to summon up and reactivate that angry debate. Given this state of affairs, any review of this book which is more than just a ‘notice’ is always going to be more than a review – it is quite likely to become part of the still ongoing debate around this film. I’m happy to accept that risk.
I have to come clean about my own history of involvement with ISOYG. In 1983 I published a lead article in the then-magazine New Society about the British controversy over the ‘video nasties’ – of which ISOYG became for many people the prime exemplar. The starting point for my interest and involvement was that I had just published my book about the British ‘horror comics’ campaign of the 1950s, where I had uncovered an untold story about the nature of the campaign against the comics – and identified a strand of almost deliberate misreading of the comics themselves, in order to mount a case that they were ‘dangerous to children’. The campaign received its main intellectual justification from a book by Fredric Wertham, entitled Seduction of the Innocent. Then in 1983, an article appeared in the Observer newspaper (by literary scholar David Holbrook) with that exact title. Holbrook made the connection between the two campaigns, evidently without knowing the real situation about the 1950s campaign. I had to respond. But New Society (rightly) insisted that I had to say something specific about at least one of the so-called ‘nasties’. After a hunt (and it wasn’t easy, despite all the rhetorics about easy access from the campaigners) I managed to get my hands on a third-generation video copy of ISOYG, and watched its grainy, grimy narrative. And saw that same process of misleading description writ large. British newspapers called it a ‘glorification’ of rape, in which the ‘woman ends up enjoying it’. Bollocks. Total bollocks. But, oh boy, effective.
This was the start of my involvement, which continued with further close examinations of it in my (edited) collection The Video Nasties. Following the whole video nasties controversy, I became more generally involved in ongoing research and debate over the visual depiction of rape/sexual violence, first in some opportunistic research on A Clockwork Orange, and Straw Dogs, then in an ESRC-funded project on the highly controversial Crash, finally in some substantial commissioned research for the British Board of Film Classification in 2006 (research which they conveniently failed to mention in their official response to Issue 1 of the Cine-Excess Journal … how strange …). In among all these, I had an opportunity to meet and talk with (I can’t really call it an interview) Meir Zarchi during a trip to the USA.
So, I don’t come innocent to this review. I am definitely an ‘interested party’ in this continuing debate. And this will show in this response to David Maguire’s very interesting and useful book. Maguire comes from a very different background to me, being currently a programmer for the Leeds International Film Festival’s Fanomenon strand. His book does several main things. It explores the film itself, of course: (some of) the story of how the film came to be made, the decisions and strategies that inform it as a piece of film-making, and the various, sometimes dodgy marketing strategies used to circulate and sell it. It walks us through the intense debates which have accompanied the film since then, including of course the intense academic debates (especially but not only in feminist film circles) about the rape-revenge film genre. And it explores the many ways in which ISOYG has become a self-conscious, if oddly distributed, ‘franchise’, spawning multiple remakes, borrows, homages, and rip-offs. All are carefully, thoroughly and thoughtfully done. But to my eye it does some of these better than others, and the reasons are interesting, I believe.
ISOYG and its ‘franchise’ first. Maguire summarises the histories of many of the predecessors of Zarchi’s film, not just for the sake of proving that ‘nothing is entirely new’, but to ask an important question: how does it work that, while not entirely new, one film comes to stand as ‘ground zero’ for an entire sub-genre? It becomes an inevitable reference point, needing to be acknowledged, referenced, ‘quoted’ from. Maguire cites Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) as another example of the same process – a film which, despite having plenty of precursors, established itself for many as the ‘first modern horror film’. Alongside this, via an interview with Zarchi, as well as using published sources, he tells the story of the making of the film: the motives, the problems, the challenges, and so on. He then assiduously tracks down and recounts (with passing judgements on each) the many follow-up versions. Some of these are downright obscure, and it is appropriate that a contribution to the Cultographies series should show such devotion to locating and logging the details of such recherché materials (though not to have mentioned that there are French and German novels using the same title – but with entirely different narrative impulses – is a small gap in its search for totality). It’s right that we should hear about Thomas Koba’s (2000) I’ll Kill You … I’ll Bury You … And I’ll Spit On Your Grave, and Chris Seaver’s (2008) I Spit Chew On Your Grave – even if we are hardly likely ever to see the films themselves. Maguire is surely right to suggest that the sheer range is significant, because of the confirmation of the iconic status of ISOYG – although we might add that the sheer obscurity of some of these is also indicative (because a number of the films almost look like garage productions). On the more obvious side, it is notable that there have already been one licensed remake, and two sequels.
Maguire does ask (but does not really attempt to answer) an interesting question about this franchising. Given that none of the follow-up films, as far as can be ascertained, made money – indeed most of them seem to have lost it in large quantities – what is it that drives the repeated re-referencing and remaking of this ‘story’? I sense that his answer lies within the compass of the term ‘exploitation’, but that is a bit paradoxical. Standard definitions of ‘exploitation cinema’ all emphasise that it is cheaply-made, fast-buck attempts to coin a profit, by deploying sensationalist themes. If they show no signs of making money, why persist? This is a problem I faced myself, when researching the cycle of films that followed the invasion of Iraq: 23 in all. Each one heralded before release as doomed to fail, they still kept on coming. This requires a better explanation than just bad financial judgement.
The third task this book sets itself is to weave a course among the many debates and critiques (and also defences) of ISOYG. This is a pretty monumental task, and without doubt Maguire reaches out very widely, across reviews, reconsiderations, academic critiques, and the like. He visits a lot of cult websites for their takes on the film (and its remakes). Some of the things he turns up I had missed – I didn’t know for instance that radical feminist Julie Bindel, who had damned ISOYG mightily when it first appeared, had recanted on her critique of the film in recent years – although, visiting that to read it carefully revealed a complexity which isn’t caught in the book – more on this shortly.
But what bothers me about his coverage of these debates is not his reach, rather, it is the implied position from which it works. Overall a sense of unease about taking a position for or against recurs, caught (among other places) when he writes: ‘although ISOYG is exploitation, it does at least attempt to tackle rape in an unflinchingly honest manner’ (p. 70). Maguire can’t quite make up his mind about the film. He acknowledges all the ways in which the film makes absolutely clear the degrading and horrible nature of rape, and its care not to create a camera eye on Jennifer’s body as she is repeatedly assaulted. He shows well the ways in which the film undercuts what have been seen as various ‘rape myths’ (eg, that men get carried away and can’t help themselves, or that women secretly enjoy it). But then he cites without comment people still arguing that it’s all a kind of pretence, and therefore still dangerous. He quotes people putting forward frankly stupid arguments, and doesn’t comment at all. My ‘favourite’ is his quotation from Luke Thompson: ‘defenders of the film have argued that it is actually pro-woman, due to the fact that the woman-lead wins in the end … is sort of like saying that cockfights are pro-rooster because there’s always one left standing’ (RottenTomatoes review, cited p. 37). That is a singularly stupid analogy, and should have been called out as such. Instead, it hovers ambivalently, like the author.
And this is where I return to Julie Bindel. Her ‘mea culpa’ is, when you read it, a very strange one. She admits she has changed her mind. The film is not dangerous in the way she used to think – but then almost immediately she follows this by saying that she nonetheless doesn’t regret having picketed ‘video nasties’ of the period. How can this be? Which other ones has she not re-viewed and recanted on? Not a word. This is a cop-out – getting renewed present-day virtue without admitting anything in the past. An apologia, rather than an apology. I believe it is really important to say that critics at the time lied about the film, or (if I am being generous) didn’t care that they crudely misrepresented it and other such films. And their misrepresentations mattered. As the book does mention, some others even lost their jobs for trying to ask alternative questions about it. But we’re not supposed to say things of that kind, are we?
Of course, Maguire may respond that he is simply capturing an ambivalence in the film, in particular between its narrative and cinematic organisation and the (‘exploitative’) way it was marketed. The term ‘exploitation’ does a lot of work in the book – sometimes rather oddly. Much is made of the film’s title-change from Day of the Woman to ISOYG, when its distributor changed. And much is also made of its main (iconic) poster, of the bruised and bloodied Jennifer walking away from us, her clothes torn half-revealingly and holding a knife. Clearly there are questions about the semiotics of this poster, and what may have made it so iconic – though it seems odd to complain (as Maguire does, more than once) that the image does not appear in the film – think how many absolutely mainstream films construct posters that bear no direct relation to any scene within them.
But I sense that there is something more – a feeling that the film is up against a criterion which means it simply can’t win. This is to be a measure of its ‘feminist leanings’ (this wording p.36, but happening throughout the book). Apparently, because the film has been such a fraught subject for feminists, and in particular for ‘feminist film theorists’, this is the ultimate criterion against which it must be measured. Is the film pro- or anti-feminist? I find this weird. Of course the feminist debates are very important. But does that mean that no one other than feminists can be appalled at rape, and allowed to take a view on the way the film represents it? ‘Feminism’ is a site of huge and evolving debates – including continuous recourse to the worryingly ahistorical category ‘patriarchy’ – but that is not the only problem. What is it about this which makes this different from, say, someone asserting that the only tradition to be cited in relation to, say, homosexuality is the Christian/biblical tradition? Again, a major history of evolving debates – but it is surely very unlikely, except for those already operating within that faith tradition, that this would be seen as the sole measure or criterion, the ultimate determinant of possible attitudes. It says a lot about the current position of feminism within radical debates that it is so hard to put forward other ways of condemning sexual violence towards women (or anyone else, for that matter).
Feminism looms large within the book, as something to be very careful about. He spends a long time exploring how ‘feminist film theory’ has interacted with it over the years’ (p.40). The trouble is that this squashes work of incredibly different kinds under this one umbrella term. The grandiose theorising of Laura Mulvey gets set on the same plane as the close textual investigations of Isabel Pinedo, and the (rare, but for that reason incredibly important) work on women as horror audiences by such as Brigid Cherry. It is all ‘feminist film theorising’, just arriving at different judgements. This allows it to remain the privileged domain and the source of all the measures we can have for evaluating the film. So, the fact that ‘feminist film theory’ has to a considerable extent debated the pros and cons of ISOYG in terms of its tendencies to provoke or deny ‘identification’ with Jennifer or her assailants sets the terms of his investigation. The fact that there are some – and yes, I am of course one of them – who find the whole concept of ‘identification’ unclear, incoherent and unhelpful simply isn’t noticed.
Perhaps inevitably I have focused on the points where I am unhappy with the direction and tenor of this book. It would be wrong to close on this. This is in so many ways a valuable contribution. Clear and thorough, it maps the territory of debates around this strange and persistent film in ways that have not been done before. It does raise a lot of important questions about ISOYG’s filmic construction. And without getting lost in the debates about ‘cult’, it clearly enunciates the ways in which the film has set a close template for repeated revisitings of this difficult topic of rape and revenge. The book closes by pointing to the ways the story is not finished yet. At some point later this year, a new sequel, this time with Zarchi’s own imprimatur, is due to be released: ISOYG: Déjà Vu. Rumours, pre-reviews, guesses, forewarnings have been circulating about what the film might be like, and Zarchi’s ‘motives’ for supporting it. It will for sure be another small chapter in the ongoing history of this most misread and mis-cited film.
David Maguire, “I Spit On Your Grave”, London: Wallflower Press (Cultographies Series), 2018. ISBN: 978-0-231-18875-3 (pbk.), 978-0-231-85128-2 (e-book).
References:
Barker, Martin, ‘How nasty are the video nasties?’, New Society, November 1983, pp. 231-233.
Bindel, Julie, ‘I was wrong about I Spit On Your Grave’, Guardian, 19 January 2011 (available online).
This is unquestionably a book that needed to be written. I Spit On Your Grave (1978, henceforth, ISOYG) has come to occupy a unique position as possibly the most long-term reviled film of modern times. Subject to more debate than almost any other, it is capable of producing spitting rage in opponents, and (in the main) slightly apologetic defences by those who try to rescue it. To mention it is to summon up and reactivate that angry debate. Given this state of affairs, any review of this book which is more than just a ‘notice’ is always going to be more than a review – it is quite likely to become part of the still ongoing debate around this film. I’m happy to accept that risk.
I have to come clean about my own history of involvement with ISOYG. In 1983 I published a lead article in the then-magazine New Society about the British controversy over the ‘video nasties’ – of which ISOYG became for many people the prime exemplar. The starting point for my interest and involvement was that I had just published my book about the British ‘horror comics’ campaign of the 1950s, where I had uncovered an untold story about the nature of the campaign against the comics – and identified a strand of almost deliberate misreading of the comics themselves, in order to mount a case that they were ‘dangerous to children’. The campaign received its main intellectual justification from a book by Fredric Wertham, entitled Seduction of the Innocent. Then in 1983, an article appeared in the Observer newspaper (by literary scholar David Holbrook) with that exact title. Holbrook made the connection between the two campaigns, evidently without knowing the real situation about the 1950s campaign. I had to respond. But New Society (rightly) insisted that I had to say something specific about at least one of the so-called ‘nasties’. After a hunt (and it wasn’t easy, despite all the rhetorics about easy access from the campaigners) I managed to get my hands on a third-generation video copy of ISOYG, and watched its grainy, grimy narrative. And saw that same process of misleading description writ large. British newspapers called it a ‘glorification’ of rape, in which the ‘woman ends up enjoying it’. Bollocks. Total bollocks. But, oh boy, effective.
This was the start of my involvement, which continued with further close examinations of it in my (edited) collection The Video Nasties. Following the whole video nasties controversy, I became more generally involved in ongoing research and debate over the visual depiction of rape/sexual violence, first in some opportunistic research on A Clockwork Orange, and Straw Dogs, then in an ESRC-funded project on the highly controversial Crash, finally in some substantial commissioned research for the British Board of Film Classification in 2006 (research which they conveniently failed to mention in their official response to Issue 1 of the Cine-Excess Journal … how strange …). In among all these, I had an opportunity to meet and talk with (I can’t really call it an interview) Meir Zarchi during a trip to the USA.
So, I don’t come innocent to this review. I am definitely an ‘interested party’ in this continuing debate. And this will show in this response to David Maguire’s very interesting and useful book. Maguire comes from a very different background to me, being currently a programmer for the Leeds International Film Festival’s Fanomenon strand. His book does several main things. It explores the film itself, of course: (some of) the story of how the film came to be made, the decisions and strategies that inform it as a piece of film-making, and the various, sometimes dodgy marketing strategies used to circulate and sell it. It walks us through the intense debates which have accompanied the film since then, including of course the intense academic debates (especially but not only in feminist film circles) about the rape-revenge film genre. And it explores the many ways in which ISOYG has become a self-conscious, if oddly distributed, ‘franchise’, spawning multiple remakes, borrows, homages, and rip-offs. All are carefully, thoroughly and thoughtfully done. But to my eye it does some of these better than others, and the reasons are interesting, I believe.
ISOYG and its ‘franchise’ first. Maguire summarises the histories of many of the predecessors of Zarchi’s film, not just for the sake of proving that ‘nothing is entirely new’, but to ask an important question: how does it work that, while not entirely new, one film comes to stand as ‘ground zero’ for an entire sub-genre? It becomes an inevitable reference point, needing to be acknowledged, referenced, ‘quoted’ from. Maguire cites Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) as another example of the same process – a film which, despite having plenty of precursors, established itself for many as the ‘first modern horror film’. Alongside this, via an interview with Zarchi, as well as using published sources, he tells the story of the making of the film: the motives, the problems, the challenges, and so on. He then assiduously tracks down and recounts (with passing judgements on each) the many follow-up versions. Some of these are downright obscure, and it is appropriate that a contribution to the Cultographies series should show such devotion to locating and logging the details of such recherché materials (though not to have mentioned that there are French and German novels using the same title – but with entirely different narrative impulses – is a small gap in its search for totality). It’s right that we should hear about Thomas Koba’s (2000) I’ll Kill You … I’ll Bury You … And I’ll Spit On Your Grave, and Chris Seaver’s (2008) I Spit Chew On Your Grave – even if we are hardly likely ever to see the films themselves. Maguire is surely right to suggest that the sheer range is significant, because of the confirmation of the iconic status of ISOYG – although we might add that the sheer obscurity of some of these is also indicative (because a number of the films almost look like garage productions). On the more obvious side, it is notable that there have already been one licensed remake, and two sequels.
Maguire does ask (but does not really attempt to answer) an interesting question about this franchising. Given that none of the follow-up films, as far as can be ascertained, made money – indeed most of them seem to have lost it in large quantities – what is it that drives the repeated re-referencing and remaking of this ‘story’? I sense that his answer lies within the compass of the term ‘exploitation’, but that is a bit paradoxical. Standard definitions of ‘exploitation cinema’ all emphasise that it is cheaply-made, fast-buck attempts to coin a profit, by deploying sensationalist themes. If they show no signs of making money, why persist? This is a problem I faced myself, when researching the cycle of films that followed the invasion of Iraq: 23 in all. Each one heralded before release as doomed to fail, they still kept on coming. This requires a better explanation than just bad financial judgement.
The third task this book sets itself is to weave a course among the many debates and critiques (and also defences) of ISOYG. This is a pretty monumental task, and without doubt Maguire reaches out very widely, across reviews, reconsiderations, academic critiques, and the like. He visits a lot of cult websites for their takes on the film (and its remakes). Some of the things he turns up I had missed – I didn’t know for instance that radical feminist Julie Bindel, who had damned ISOYG mightily when it first appeared, had recanted on her critique of the film in recent years – although, visiting that to read it carefully revealed a complexity which isn’t caught in the book – more on this shortly.
But what bothers me about his coverage of these debates is not his reach, rather, it is the implied position from which it works. Overall a sense of unease about taking a position for or against recurs, caught (among other places) when he writes: ‘although ISOYG is exploitation, it does at least attempt to tackle rape in an unflinchingly honest manner’ (p. 70). Maguire can’t quite make up his mind about the film. He acknowledges all the ways in which the film makes absolutely clear the degrading and horrible nature of rape, and its care not to create a camera eye on Jennifer’s body as she is repeatedly assaulted. He shows well the ways in which the film undercuts what have been seen as various ‘rape myths’ (eg, that men get carried away and can’t help themselves, or that women secretly enjoy it). But then he cites without comment people still arguing that it’s all a kind of pretence, and therefore still dangerous. He quotes people putting forward frankly stupid arguments, and doesn’t comment at all. My ‘favourite’ is his quotation from Luke Thompson: ‘defenders of the film have argued that it is actually pro-woman, due to the fact that the woman-lead wins in the end … is sort of like saying that cockfights are pro-rooster because there’s always one left standing’ (RottenTomatoes review, cited p. 37). That is a singularly stupid analogy, and should have been called out as such. Instead, it hovers ambivalently, like the author.
And this is where I return to Julie Bindel. Her ‘mea culpa’ is, when you read it, a very strange one. She admits she has changed her mind. The film is not dangerous in the way she used to think – but then almost immediately she follows this by saying that she nonetheless doesn’t regret having picketed ‘video nasties’ of the period. How can this be? Which other ones has she not re-viewed and recanted on? Not a word. This is a cop-out – getting renewed present-day virtue without admitting anything in the past. An apologia, rather than an apology. I believe it is really important to say that critics at the time lied about the film, or (if I am being generous) didn’t care that they crudely misrepresented it and other such films. And their misrepresentations mattered. As the book does mention, some others even lost their jobs for trying to ask alternative questions about it. But we’re not supposed to say things of that kind, are we?
Of course, Maguire may respond that he is simply capturing an ambivalence in the film, in particular between its narrative and cinematic organisation and the (‘exploitative’) way it was marketed. The term ‘exploitation’ does a lot of work in the book – sometimes rather oddly. Much is made of the film’s title-change from Day of the Woman to ISOYG, when its distributor changed. And much is also made of its main (iconic) poster, of the bruised and bloodied Jennifer walking away from us, her clothes torn half-revealingly and holding a knife. Clearly there are questions about the semiotics of this poster, and what may have made it so iconic – though it seems odd to complain (as Maguire does, more than once) that the image does not appear in the film – think how many absolutely mainstream films construct posters that bear no direct relation to any scene within them.
But I sense that there is something more – a feeling that the film is up against a criterion which means it simply can’t win. This is to be a measure of its ‘feminist leanings’ (this wording p.36, but happening throughout the book). Apparently, because the film has been such a fraught subject for feminists, and in particular for ‘feminist film theorists’, this is the ultimate criterion against which it must be measured. Is the film pro- or anti-feminist? I find this weird. Of course the feminist debates are very important. But does that mean that no one other than feminists can be appalled at rape, and allowed to take a view on the way the film represents it? ‘Feminism’ is a site of huge and evolving debates – including continuous recourse to the worryingly ahistorical category ‘patriarchy’ – but that is not the only problem. What is it about this which makes this different from, say, someone asserting that the only tradition to be cited in relation to, say, homosexuality is the Christian/biblical tradition? Again, a major history of evolving debates – but it is surely very unlikely, except for those already operating within that faith tradition, that this would be seen as the sole measure or criterion, the ultimate determinant of possible attitudes. It says a lot about the current position of feminism within radical debates that it is so hard to put forward other ways of condemning sexual violence towards women (or anyone else, for that matter).
Feminism looms large within the book, as something to be very careful about. He spends a long time exploring how ‘feminist film theory’ has interacted with it over the years’ (p.40). The trouble is that this squashes work of incredibly different kinds under this one umbrella term. The grandiose theorising of Laura Mulvey gets set on the same plane as the close textual investigations of Isabel Pinedo, and the (rare, but for that reason incredibly important) work on women as horror audiences by such as Brigid Cherry. It is all ‘feminist film theorising’, just arriving at different judgements. This allows it to remain the privileged domain and the source of all the measures we can have for evaluating the film. So, the fact that ‘feminist film theory’ has to a considerable extent debated the pros and cons of ISOYG in terms of its tendencies to provoke or deny ‘identification’ with Jennifer or her assailants sets the terms of his investigation. The fact that there are some – and yes, I am of course one of them – who find the whole concept of ‘identification’ unclear, incoherent and unhelpful simply isn’t noticed.
Perhaps inevitably I have focused on the points where I am unhappy with the direction and tenor of this book. It would be wrong to close on this. This is in so many ways a valuable contribution. Clear and thorough, it maps the territory of debates around this strange and persistent film in ways that have not been done before. It does raise a lot of important questions about ISOYG’s filmic construction. And without getting lost in the debates about ‘cult’, it clearly enunciates the ways in which the film has set a close template for repeated revisitings of this difficult topic of rape and revenge. The book closes by pointing to the ways the story is not finished yet. At some point later this year, a new sequel, this time with Zarchi’s own imprimatur, is due to be released: ISOYG: Déjà Vu. Rumours, pre-reviews, guesses, forewarnings have been circulating about what the film might be like, and Zarchi’s ‘motives’ for supporting it. It will for sure be another small chapter in the ongoing history of this most misread and mis-cited film.
David Maguire, “I Spit On Your Grave”, London: Wallflower Press (Cultographies Series), 2018. ISBN: 978-0-231-18875-3 (pbk.), 978-0-231-85128-2 (e-book).
References:
Barker, Martin, ‘How nasty are the video nasties?’, New Society, November 1983, pp. 231-233.
Bindel, Julie, ‘I was wrong about I Spit On Your Grave’, Guardian, 19 January 2011 (available online).
I Spit On Your Grave: The Response (David Maguire)
First off, I’d like to thank Martin for his very thorough and frank review of my book. As he says in his review, Martin has a vested personal interest in this film – its reception 40 years ago, the sustained controversy etc.; I was aware of this and so I won’t pretend to say I wasn’t a tad apprehensive when I knew he was reviewing my book. If anyone knows this film inside out – it’s Martin!
As Martin points out I’ve tried to encapsulate as much as I could – in the limited amount of space available in the Wallflower Press Cultographies series (which follow a set size/word count) – about the film, its production history, the climate it was released in, the (global) response to it, its antecedents, its imitators and the franchises (both official and unofficial) that it has spawned. Not an easy thing to do in such a small book – and with new sequel coming out this year (alongside the documentary), there is scope for this chapter on the film continuing well into the 21st century.
The main point I’d like to answer in relation to Martin’s review is when he states that he feels there is an overall sense of unease – on my part - about taking a position for or against the film. This is a very valid observation which I’ll try to answer. I have tried, as best I could, to give a balanced response to the two polarising views of the film – those who view it as misogynistic exploitation filth which pretends to be pro-feminist, and those who argue that it is an empowering, bold, piece of filmmaking which many see as a key feminist text. Personally, I’m not sure which side of this fence I actually sit on. While I see a lot of the former arguments in the film, I see just as equally as many of the latter. I do not think it is a great film; I do not think that it is a particularly likeable film – and my defence of that would be, should a film about such a controversial subject matter, which portrays the rape of a woman in such graphic unflinching unrelenting reality, be considered a likeable film? That said, I do come across countless female viewers of the film who categorically state that they absolutely love this movie. So while it is correct that I Spit On Your Grave and the rape-revenge genre have been responsible for putting images of sexual violence and intimidation towards women up on screen, they have also conversely provided an opportunity for identification with a fantasy of strong female empowerment. And if the film is as demeaning to women as many of its (initial) critics have complained, then this is complicated by the number of female viewers who champion the film – and equally the fact that it has now been re-evaluated academically as a powerful feminist text. So, going back to Martin’s review – and the fact that the lack of a position from me gives him cause for concern – I would argue that I can’t argue steadfastly for or against the film. I was asked at a conference recently where I was giving a paper on the film why I liked the film – and the question, albeit being a singularly simple one, truly stumped. I had to answer that I honestly wasn’t sure if I did like the film – because of all the reasons I’ve given above (and in the book hopefully). However, I cannot deny the fact that I think it is a very powerful film, with very powerful things to say, and some of the techniques Meir Zarchi uses to get those points across are truly compelling. For that reason, regardless of people’s final views on the film, I truly believe that this is a film that needs to be explored and re-evaluated in great detail.
First off, I’d like to thank Martin for his very thorough and frank review of my book. As he says in his review, Martin has a vested personal interest in this film – its reception 40 years ago, the sustained controversy etc.; I was aware of this and so I won’t pretend to say I wasn’t a tad apprehensive when I knew he was reviewing my book. If anyone knows this film inside out – it’s Martin!
As Martin points out I’ve tried to encapsulate as much as I could – in the limited amount of space available in the Wallflower Press Cultographies series (which follow a set size/word count) – about the film, its production history, the climate it was released in, the (global) response to it, its antecedents, its imitators and the franchises (both official and unofficial) that it has spawned. Not an easy thing to do in such a small book – and with new sequel coming out this year (alongside the documentary), there is scope for this chapter on the film continuing well into the 21st century.
The main point I’d like to answer in relation to Martin’s review is when he states that he feels there is an overall sense of unease – on my part - about taking a position for or against the film. This is a very valid observation which I’ll try to answer. I have tried, as best I could, to give a balanced response to the two polarising views of the film – those who view it as misogynistic exploitation filth which pretends to be pro-feminist, and those who argue that it is an empowering, bold, piece of filmmaking which many see as a key feminist text. Personally, I’m not sure which side of this fence I actually sit on. While I see a lot of the former arguments in the film, I see just as equally as many of the latter. I do not think it is a great film; I do not think that it is a particularly likeable film – and my defence of that would be, should a film about such a controversial subject matter, which portrays the rape of a woman in such graphic unflinching unrelenting reality, be considered a likeable film? That said, I do come across countless female viewers of the film who categorically state that they absolutely love this movie. So while it is correct that I Spit On Your Grave and the rape-revenge genre have been responsible for putting images of sexual violence and intimidation towards women up on screen, they have also conversely provided an opportunity for identification with a fantasy of strong female empowerment. And if the film is as demeaning to women as many of its (initial) critics have complained, then this is complicated by the number of female viewers who champion the film – and equally the fact that it has now been re-evaluated academically as a powerful feminist text. So, going back to Martin’s review – and the fact that the lack of a position from me gives him cause for concern – I would argue that I can’t argue steadfastly for or against the film. I was asked at a conference recently where I was giving a paper on the film why I liked the film – and the question, albeit being a singularly simple one, truly stumped. I had to answer that I honestly wasn’t sure if I did like the film – because of all the reasons I’ve given above (and in the book hopefully). However, I cannot deny the fact that I think it is a very powerful film, with very powerful things to say, and some of the techniques Meir Zarchi uses to get those points across are truly compelling. For that reason, regardless of people’s final views on the film, I truly believe that this is a film that needs to be explored and re-evaluated in great detail.