Raw Deal: A Question of Consent

I had heard of this documentary when it first came out, I had met the father of the director of the film Billy Corben. he had told me about his son's film. I don't remember it ever playing in my area so I hadn't seen it. I finally came across a DVD of it and saw it. It is both riveting and off putting at the same time. It is very difficult to watch. In 1999, a University of Florida fraternity had a party and hired a couple of strippers for the party. The whole party was filmed by a couple of the frat guys. It turns out that later that night one of the strippers that had left came back to the party and ended up staying and proceeded to go into a room with a couple of the guys and was allegedly raped. The film has interviews with Lisa, the woman that was allegedly raped, and Tony, the one of the party organizers that had hired her and was in the room when the act was going on. There are other interviews with people involved with the aftermath of the case. The film also shows footage from the party and the act in question. The film starts of mostly with interviews, weaving some of the video from the party and the room after. Lisa insists that she was raped, Tony insists that she was lying that she had never screamed or given any indication of not wanting to have sex with these guys. The film then focuses on the horrible handling of the case by the authorities in Gainesville. Lisa accused these guys of raping her and the police confiscated the videos. After watching what had gone on, the police determined that she had falsely accused the frat guys and was arrested for it. The guys she accused were questioned together and were not charged at the time. The whole thing was handled terribly by the police that the DA, the film shows also how politics played a role in not charging these guys wit a crime.

At first I thought that the footage would be too ambiguous for me to agree on whether or not Lisa was raped. In the beginning of the film, the footage is shown quickly and gives the impression that this what happened was consensual sex. It is obvious that Lisa at wouldn't appear to be very sympathetic to us because of preconceived notions about her profession. The last half hour of the film shows the footage for longer periods, and we get a better sense of what went on. The guy that she was in the video with was named Mike, he declined to be interviewed for the film(what a surprise!. This was a power struggle, she was obviously drunk but seemed totally aware of what this guy was doing. She was egging him on, sarcastically asking him if doing this to her made him feel "like a man". The guys that are filming are laughing, at one point one of them says "welcome to the RAPE of a crack-whore bitch". How anyone could look at this and not determined that she was being raped is beyond my comprehension!!!! At least the Mike guy deserves to have been put in jail, he was overpowering her,m there is no way she could have fought him off. I think she decided to let him do this to her without having him hurt her more than if she would have struggled. She was clearly trying to keep him from penetrating her. Tony comes off as a real jerk, asking that if she was being raped why didn't she scream out or say no. He claims that he wouldn't let his friend do that. He comes of as a real scumbag, saying that this had ruined a year of his life and that he had dreams and he was a better than Lisa. Lisa was basically white trash and beneath him. Disgusting human being.

This film reminded me of the film, The Accused, where Jodie Foster played a woman that was raped in a bar by a group of guys and they were being cheered on by spectators. The film dealt with the fact that she was drunk that night and that she had flirted and carried on with some of the guys in the bar that ended up raping here. The rape scene was shot in a way that made it clear that she was raped, there was no way to deny it. My point is that the film dealt more with the attitudes that the justice system and the public deal with a situation like this. Does a woman deserve to be raped if she dresses provocatively or act a certain way.

There are of course cases where a woman has falsely accuses someone of rape. The Duke Lacrosse team case comes to mind. I remember that case, it was assumed automatically that the guys were guilty, and it turned out that the woman was lying. In that case law enforcement had also handled the situation horribly. This documentary deals with the attitudes that we have about what rape is. Rape is not a sexual act, it is an act of violence and degradation. Tony says that he thanks G_d for the existence of the tape, that it completely exonerates him and his friends. I think that it does just the opposite, it clearly shows this woman being raped, she may have put herself in a compromising position, but she didn't deserve for this to be done to her. The justice system clearly failed her.

These guys should have gone to jail.

I found this to be a very serious and deep piece. I did not find the material to be needlessly graphic but I admit it was hard to watch at times. This documentary shares a very introspective look at politics and law. I was most impressed to find audience members debating the films' themes as it played.

Firstly, I feel wrong adding a commentary to what is a depiction f someone's real life misfortune. It's not like this doco was some Hollywood production - it was real life. Grading something like this feels inappropriate. I'd also like to say that I find the thought very troubling that anyone could sit through the entire documentary and not feel as though they were witnessing something so deeply, deeply wrong. It is so clearly evident that you are witnessing a rape. I do wonder how others who can't see that in this movie would go about defining the act of engaging in sex.. I didn't know that it required the male to over-power and actually pin down the female. I didn't know that slapping and gouging at eyes was an acceptable part of having sex. I feel that the footage depicted in this documentary is disturbingly graphic. My assumption is that this documentary would have been a last ditch attempt available to the victim so as to seek some form of justice. I was left feeling such incredible sympathy for Lisa and a feeling of violently despising Tony Marzullo and his fello fratmates. Really, they should have a 300lb bloke do the same thing to them!

I am not easily shocked, nor am I prone to anger. However, I just finished watching this film and feel disgusted and angry. The thing that disturbs me the most, is how people who saw the footage could possibly conceive the sequence of events as normal consentual sex. That includes some of the people who have posted comments on this site. Make no mistake, Lisa King was not wise to go back to that "party" she was not wise to continue drinking. However, this mistake and this recklessness does not mean that she deserved what happened to her. Shame on anyone who feels that the boys cant be blames for what they did, just because an intoxicated woman flirts with you, does not mean you have the green light to have sex with her. It is painfully painfully clear that Lisa did not want Mike to continue, she never kissed him, she fought him, she taunted him, the only time she ever conceeded was when he chocked her, bit her toe, or any of the other times when he stepped up his use of force to a point that hurt her or scared the hell out of her.

If this was consentual why did she never appear to be enjoying herself? I feel upset that these particulars even need to be explained, as it just so simply clear that this was an act of domination and and not one of consentual sex. The prosecuters, the judge, the boys at the party, and anyone who believes that this was not rape, really needs to look at their understanding of how to treat another human being. The level of acceptance of what happened that morning is truly a disturbing comment on the standards of humanity in society today.

I couldn't sit through the whole film. It's really disturbing that something like this can happen around Year 2000. I'm not talking about rape. It happens every day. I'm talking about the failed prosecution (under whose administration...), the way some really twisted frat boys got away when the crime is recorded on tape. If the woman's so below them, like the guy kept saying, then why did they hire her? If her "stripper" profession's so disgusting, who does the hiring? If they were honest on tape about smearing her character (calling her "crackwhore" etc), why did they also call what they were doing "rape" in the same sentence? Again, what's horrifying is not the crime itself, but that people can watch it and think it's not. How far have we gone in the last four decades? In this day and age.