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‘Bombshell’, is a 2019, thriller/drama, that re-enacted, and for entertainment purposes, dramatised, the repeated sexual abuse of Fox News TV hosts and interns. The movie focuses particularly on the experiences of Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson at the hands of network CEO, Roger Ailes. ‘Bombshell’, was an incredibly popular film at the box office, with a stella celebrity cast. This film, however, is a sensationalisation of lived trauma and is quite restricted in its representation of said trauma. Resulting in what could potentially be, prejudicial consequences of #MeToo victims on social memory (IMbD 2019).

The film invents a character by the name of Kayla Pospisil, Kayla is adopted by the film as a physical embodiment of commonly reported sexual assault at Fox News. One non-graphic assault scene depicts Kayla being obligated to lift her dress above her hips to expose her underwear to the lone company of Roger Ailes. During this scene there is no soundtrack or sound effects, efficiently adding to the incredibly uncomfortable atmosphere of this moment between Kayla and Roger. This lack of auditory stimulation immerses viewers and heightens their emotional connectivity to Kayla’s distress, as if they are both being violated with her and violating her as a voyeur to the film (Green 2010). This scene is the only of its kind throughout the film, the sexual assault is otherwise implied or censored in a flashback style. Towards the end of the film, Kayla recounts the assault through tears and on the phone to her co-worker, “I gave into him… I feel so filthy” (Bombshell 2019). Kayla is a young, thin, conventionally beautiful, naive, success driven, conservative woman, who is easily connected with by broad audiences. Her connectability is what affords the film a representable and relatable victim to audiences, resulting in a constructive effort to make ‘Bombshell’s audience comprehend the varying degree in which sexual assault traumatises victims and alters their psyche and self-worth. The pitfall of ‘Bombshell’, despite being realistic, ends with these victims achieving no justice or agency against their perpetrators, further leaning into Kayla’s (who was fashioned to represent all victims) mentality of giving in and being filthy for it (Guyon, Fernet, Couture, et al. 2024, 345).

Alongside meagre victim representation, ‘Bombshell’ somewhat accurately embodied the common social opinions of the American public towards the #MeToo Movement, specifically the mentality to blame the victim and sympathise with the perpetrator (Lucarini, Suitner, Brown 2020, 5). The film features a consistent message of victim blaming. Megyn Kelly, in one scene is told by a male co-worker that her "[assault] proves that [she] is hot”, adding a dimension of incomprehension and immaturity to the trauma committed (in this instance) against women by men. Beyond this, there is a sentiment among particularly male characters at Fox News that ‘surely not this many women have been sexually assaulted at work and by Roger Ailes’.  The constant denial, victim blaming and eventually non-belief of victims in both the film and reality is shockingly paralleled to Sigmund Freuds’ inability to accept the prevalence of sexual assault in the Victorian Era, ultimately leading him to abandon his seduction theory due to the high occurrences of female hysteria. ‘Bombshell’successfully demonstrated these attitudes but fails to combat them in a productive way for both viewers and victims, the comments are made and subsequently forgotten. Adding to and somewhat guarding the prevailing rhetoric of disbelieving and discrediting victims when they come forward and go on the record (Lucarini, Suitner, Brown 2020, 5). ‘Bombshell’ is a model of the possible restrictions in film characterising sexual assault trauma, by portraying unconstructive victim blaming narratives, which have the opportunity to weave into social memory and consciousness.

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4.3 IMBd. She Said. Digital Online Poster.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11198810/

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‘She Said’, is a 2022 drama film that re-enacts the journalistic trail made by investigative correspondents, Meagan Toohey and Jodi Kantor. Their Pulitzer winning article, “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades”, inspired the film and exposed a system of sexual abuse against workers and actresses employed by Weinstein. Their exposure of Weinstein was a cornerstone of the #MeToo Movement’s revival and public interest in institutional sexual assault. The Hollywood movie naturally has both affordances and restrictions in depicting sexual trauma memory, for conciseness however, I will focus on the affordances represented in ‘She Said’, as a widespread quality for sexual trauma memory in film.

Traumatic memory is somewhat unrepresentable as this memory is subject to fractures of temporality (Caruth 1996). ‘She Said’ uses film techniques of cutting between scenes in time to represent this temporality and non-linear form of remembrance. For example, when character, Laura Madden, recounts her sexual assault experience to Jodi Kantor, the film cuts to a new actress playing Laura as a younger woman and the scene is filtered with a greyish blue lens as the audience travels to the past (Brand 2009, 199). This creative approach to non-linear memory reconstruction is not unique to ‘She Said’, but regardless acts as an industry representative of an artistic, engaging, and visceral symbol of trauma’s impossibility to present facilely (Brand 2009). This creative direction additionally intwines temporal individual trauma memory to the social sphere of memory, through accessible means of comprehending the difficulty of oral testimony (Gook 2017).  Artistic intentions cater to their intended audiences, in this instance, a film with multiple noteworthy actors and a stint in the box office, positions its envisioned audience, as the general public of movie goers (Hodgin and Thakkar 2017, 7-8). With this in mind, the social palatability of creative choices, such as to not include a graphic sexual assault scene and instead, platform post-traumatic memory in forms of mental and physical responses, repositions the victim over the perpetrator. The purpose of ‘She Said’ is to literally silence the perpetrator and broadcast to as many viewers as possible the physical and temporal damage sexual assault can inflict on a victim. Building from this notion of silencing, ‘She Said’, ‘On The Record’ and ‘Bombshell’, all use their films to uplift, high profile, previously stifled victims, however, ‘She Said’ takes the opportunity to also represent non-celebrity victims of Weinstein – like Laura. This representation of an arguably marginalised group of victims at the height of #MeToo and gagging their perpetrator, acts as an affordance to film as a medium when representing individual and social memory of systemic sexual assault. The story of the victim is re-written with their healing, empowerment, and resilience fore fronted when they are spotlighted over the perpetrator (Gook 2017). This affords film to be a site of endowing individuals and swaying the social memory of the audience to that is in favour of the victim. ‘She Said’ is an example of films affordance in portraying sexual assault trauma by uplifting and representing victims.

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4.2 IMBd. On The Record. Digital Online Poster. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11394650/ 

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‘On The Record’ is a documentary film that examines African American women’s trauma of sexual assault within the Rap and Hip-Hop music industry. The film honours highly successful music producer, Drew Dixon, as she recounts her sexual assault at the hands of former boss, Russel Simmons. Dixon, alongside seven other survivors and in tandem with activist scholars, by the likes of Kimberly Crenshaw, stress the representability of Black victimage in #MeToo. ‘On The Record’ reveals the unique affordances and restrictions of documentaries when discussing and representing sexual assault trauma in film, at both an individual and social level.

As the film is a documentary, there is an intrinsic public expectancy that what is represented is the unabridged actuality of events. Documentaries present a distinctive restriction when representing sexual assault trauma in film spaces, as the victims mediate their own experience, thus meaning the interviewee is anticipated to deliver their whole traumatic experience. Trauma memory theory denotes that traumatic memory is non-linear and mediated by language from the unconscious (Berlin 2011, 6). This understanding of memory encoding indicates the difficulty of precise and comprehensible survivor testimony, alongside a victims probability to experience memory repression (Diedrich 2018, 85). In the instance of ‘On The Record’, the temporality of traumatic memory encoding is not specifically acknowledged, therefore, the audience expectancy for raw total truth, may generate the automatic social memory of Black #MeToo experiences based on these testimonies and genre.

However, this uniqueness of personability offered by the documentary genre is also its greatest affordance. Victim representation in film is fundamental to individual and social healing, empowerment, and recovery of traumatic events (Thompson and Marsh 2022, 17). The rupture of #MeToo in 2017, elevated white, straight, female, celebrity voices to highest prominence, presenting this persona of the credible victim (Diedrich 2018, 91). The historically racist discourse of the ‘rapability’ of African American women and their alleged lasciviousness (Somerville 1994), is reasoned by activists, Sil Lai Abrams and Crenshaw in ‘On The Record’, as the leading reason for why people of colour are not as easily afforded victimhood. ‘On The Record’, initiates the conversation of people of colours ability to be represented as legitimate victims in the social memory of #MeToo. Trauma is legitimised by the existence of a victim, and a victim is validated by remembrance and representation (Fassin and Rechtman 2009). Victimage of sexual assault is treated with doubt and suspicion, especially in the instance of African American women, as asserted by ‘On The Record’. Yet, the documentary stands to defy this victim blaming social mentality and in doing so, attempts to redirect the viewers colonial biases against non-conventional victims of sexual assault (Diedrich 2018, 91). The audience observe as the victims struggle through their testimony and they are presented with horrifying commentary such as, “it happens to everyone, we just didn’t talk about it,” (On The Record 2020, at 0.46.02) which further reiterated the internalised victim blaming and shame caused by sexual assault. The audience of ‘On The Record’ watch both the individual and collective memory of African American women’s experiences of #MeToo unfold and are directed to challenge their colonial prejudices.

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The intention of this exhibition is to present the affordances and restrictions of different artistic mediums when representing sexual traumas, this portion will exemplify film as said medium.

The following three films, which will be featured in analysis, all occur within the foundational years of the 2017 American, #MeToo Movement. They are, ‘Bombshell’ (2019), ‘On The Record’ (2020), and ‘She Said’ (2022). These three films were selected for their reputation among wider audiences at the box office and with critics. This popularity intends to act as a reflection of the collective responses created by the #MeToo Movement, as it took the Western world by storm.  Sexual assault and rape perpetrated by men against women in the last contemporary decade has been encoded in public memory as an issue of political injustice and social acceptance of misogynistic powered assault. The #MeToo Movement was/is a survivor led association against sexual assault and actively works in creating pathways for healing, justice, and action for victims of rape and sexual assault (metoo 2025). The hashtag found its contemporary prominence in 2017 when celebrity, Alyssa Milano, posted to twitter, “if you have been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘#MeToo’ in response to this tweet” (Alyssa Milano, Twitter Post, October 15th, 2017 [1.21.pm.]). Thousands of celebrities and non-famous, mostly women, re-tweeted #MeToo in a digital unification of trauma, effectively igniting the movement into a broad public concern of the institutions of power that tolerate sexual assault and rape.

Distinctive to #MeToo, is the social memory developed from the vast collection of individual survivors over contemporary history, creating a bottom-up structure (Assmann 2006, 214) of remembrance for systemic (male to female) sexual assault. #MeToo is a social memory constructed on individual memory. This social memory is therefore subject to potential influence by popular film depictions of true testimony, thus meaning it is imperative for movies to consider their representation of victimhood and trauma. When trauma is enshrined in film, it becomes accessible to remembrance, sympathetic of trauma complexity and representative of some victimhood; however, social recollection can be forgotten in place of film or falsify actuality with dramatizations.

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