In my first column, I said I wouldn’t limit discussion of remakes to whether they are “better” or “worse”. This is partly because I think that most filmic reiterations are harmless. Even when they’re poorly made, their heart is more often than not in the same place as their forerunners, or at worst they’re no worse than vapid. There are special cases, however, when I object to remakes that reinterpret sensitive material in a morally irresponsible way.
Enter Straw Dogs vs. Straw Dogs. The original 1971 film by Sam Peckinpah was a radically nihilistic take on the psychology of violence. Its plot is often mistaken for a slow-burn thriller, but it’s actually a domestic-drama demolition: Wussy mathematician David Summer and his attractive wife Amy flee the protest culture of America to the latter’s hometown, an English village. The locals, one of whom is an old flame of Amy’s, begin to intimidate the couple, leading to a breakdown of relations between wife, who demands that David confront the villagers, and husband, who seems passive on the matter.
But the film’s real purpose is to annihilate first impressions of this spat when the conflict becomes violent. Straw Dogs’s complicated victimhood comes to a head in its infamous rape scene. Some of the local antagonists invite David hunting, then abandon him. Amy’s ex-lover takes advantage of David’s predicament by finding and forcing himself on her. The scene has two disturbing wrinkles: first, it intercuts with David in the wilderness, apparently disinterested in finding his way home, and, by implication, complicit in the rape; second, Amy seems to be at least partially enjoying the rape, though afterwards she is traumatized.
Peckinpah makes it clear that he doesn’t believe that women generally enjoy rape: another villager soon arrives and rapes her as well, and this time Amy is obviously miserable throughout. It’s an extremely unpleasant sequence, but a daring and ultimately responsible one. Peckinpah knows these acts are despicable, and though he doesn’t blame the victims, he acknowledges that violence is closely tied to interpersonal relationships, and suggests that its appeal as a tool for sublimation makes it impossible to eradicate.
What makes Rod Lurie’s 2011 remake so reprehensible is its commitment to its potential as entertainment over duty to its subject matter. In his version, David is actively looking for a way out of the forest, and Amy is inarguably suffering throughout the entire rape. When the second rapist arrives, Lurie foregoes showing the act by fading out the sounds of the assault over a close-up of the other. Consequently, the rape ultimately reveals nothing. It only serves as ‘drama’, to ‘raise the emotional stakes’. In other words, it’s exploitation.
To respond to an honest, complex psychological dialogue of a sensitive issue with soft peddling is to cheapen both the discourse and the subject at hand. Lurie has said that Amy’s momentary enjoyment of rape ruined the original Straw Dogs, and that removing it makes his film the better of the two, but he’s got it the wrong way around. When a difficult and disturbing subject is seriously explored, it’s arrogant and immoral to ostensibly ‘improve’ it by playing it safe for the sake of enjoyment. Such gratuitously tame treatment of rape must not be allowed to masquerade as feminist revisionism.
