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“The Killer Inside Me” Promo (NSFW! And Major Trigger Warning!)
by gwen, 11-09-09 12:27pm
Cate M. emailed us about the promo for the movie “The Killer Inside Me,” saying,
The level of violence is at NSFW levels and quite possibly one of the most ‘trigger warning’ vids I’ve ever seen used to promote a non-horror film.
We get a lot of submissions about sexualized violence toward women, so I thought, “well, ok, we’ll see.” And then I watched it, and at 1:15 in had to pause because I was already horrified. Here’s the whole 5:42 promo. It’s Not At All Safe for Work, and you won’t want to watch it if scenes of sexualized brutality toward women would be a trigger for you. And also, I guess, Spoiler Alert, if that’s your main concern.
UPDATE: The promo keeps being taken down; here’s a link that works for now, but I don’t know for how long.
Clearly, Casey Affleck’s character is a sadistic asshole (the cigar on the guy’s hand), but in the promo, at least, the graphic, sexualized violence is reserved for women…who also appear to like it, at least for a while. Jessica Alba gives in to him, and apparently starts a relationship with him, after he pulls her pants down and whips her. Perhaps that’s because she’s a prostitute; of course she’d like a dominant man who plays rough, right?
The thing is, you could make this movie and tell the same story without actually showing all the violence in such a graphic way. Movies imply things all the time. It’s a choice to show this type of violence toward women as a form of entertainment…and to show the women liking it.
See our posts on increases in
violence toward women on primetime TV,
sexualized violence on TV crime procedurals, and
the movie “DeadGirl.”______________________My take? I like plenty of movies that are violent. But it's all about context, of course. And if, as the article points out, this indeed isn't a horror film... that's a lot of violent imagery and gore for a trailer. And the trailer bugs the fuck out of me since (among other reasons) it's splicing images of women being brutalized with the same women having what appears to be consensual sex with their attacker. Author Inga Muscio has written about the sexualization of rape in mainstream cinema (rape isn't disgusting and vile, it's just bad and kinda hot) and this seems to be an almost tailor-made example.