i wrote my second sex/gender paper on the film hard candy featuring ellen page in the role of the conventionally viewed masculine victimizer. Haylee is meticulous, assertive, and intelligent in her role as the avenger. if you haven't seen the film, i highly recommend it for its psychological thrill and it's reversal of typical gender roles within the film's genre.
the film follows the initial meeting of a 14-year-old girl with a 33-year-old man whom she meets online. they end up back at his house where haylee takes over the role the audience assumes jeff intended.
she drugs him, she terrorizes him, and she becomes this cold, unfeeling (and thus, more masculine), borderline psychotic torturer that possesses the mental capacity to trick jeff into believing she is in the process of castrating him. furthermore, she has the audacity to castrate this man--inflicting sexual violence normally projected from the male onto the female character.
when compared to the film i spit on your grave, the female protagonist is seeking retribution for the multiple rapes she was made to endure. her vegenance is supposedly justified because of the sexual violence inflicted upon her.
while the female victimizer is not a new theme among the thriller genre, hard candy strays from the typical notion that the character's revenge is based upon the act committed against her. this is evident in films like enough with jennifer lopez and 1986's extremities. these films deal with domestic violence and sexual violence respectively. i spit on your grave deals with the removal of one (of several) rapist's genitals in an extremely graphic scene.
haylee embodies traits traditionally considered to be masculine and therefore, symptomatic of only a male. through this role, she takes on masculine characterisitcs and challenges the conventional view of the masculine victimizer.
sweeter dreams.
k
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