Raw Deal: A Question of Consent

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.

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.

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!

This is a very thought provoking film. It disturbs the idea that the justice system can simply discover the truth of what happened and shows clearly how instead the system constructs the truth of what happened. By juxtaposing video footage of a rape with extracts from interviews with the survivor and a friend of the attacker a complex picture emerges that forced me to rethink 'consent'.

I think it is important to see this film but it is very hard to watch. You are literally seeing someone being raped.

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.