I Spit on Your Grave is a low budget rape/revenge-movie released in 1978, directed by Meir Zarchi. The plot follows Jennifer Hills, who is brutally raped by a group of men and then left for dead. She survives and then proceeds to seek revenge on her rapists. In 2010, a new adaptation was released, with a similar plot and characters, directed by Steven R. Monroe. This study sets out to examine the differences between the portrayal of protagonist Jennifer Hills in the 1978 original and the 2010 version of I Spit on Your Grave. Using qualitative content analysis and a structuralist and semiotic perspective, the study also aims to explore what these differences can tell us about the societies responsible for producing the movies. The theories examined in order to properly answer these questions are mainly feminist film theory derived from acknowledged film theorists and scholars such as Carol Clover and Laura Mulvey. The material analyzed consists of scenes where Jennifer is present, and the results show that Jennifer in 1978 is portrayed in a more feminine manner, heavily influenced by the femme fatale from the 1940’s film noir. She uses her beauty and body to seduce the men in order to kill them, whereas Jennifer in 2010 is portrayed as a woman whose characteristics after the rape transforms into those of a man. In order to get revenge on her rapists, she has to behave more like them. Rather than a beauty, Jennifer is portrayed as a monster. Zarchis' film from the 1970’s seems to reward women behaving and looking like women, while Monroes film from 2010 encourages women to act like men, in order to survive.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-113830 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Melchert, Simon, Nylander, Signe |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för medier och journalistik (MJ) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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