You mentioned that us engaging in movies has become a form of societal conversation. This surge of movies may be society’s reaction to human actions they did not know proliferated society on so many levels and so frequently.

Movies are a way to attempt to understand those who commit actions considered to be the most egregious. Movies on the topic help us decide how society should deal with these individuals who pose such a threat to it.

There is a natural reaction towards curiosity when society discovered that anyone they knew could harbor such violence. Coupled with the fact that they desire violence towards children, whom which society natural attempts to protect at all costs. We see these movies in an attempt to understand the nature of those who pose a threat to our children and loved ones.

It is then that mental illness becomes something of a secret disease and less a matter of these individuals being evil. We desire to know why people have these impulses and what caused them. If discovered, we may have the chance to stop it.

First, as ipkang writes, Dead Man Walking should definitely be included in the sex-crime film category. Ipkang observes that some viewers feel raped by the film itself, through its “repeated slow-motion depictions of the crime.” This observation ties in with other comments pointing to the unusually close identification of viewers with victims or offenders of this type of movie. That these films can really engulf us no doubt reflects the power of sex itself. It also reflects the overwhelmingly dire effects of sexual victimization.

Neal King points out that the sex-crime film category should include sexually-motivated serial-killer films such as Copycat and The Cell. These are “procedurals” in which the detective has some sort of sexual relationship to the killer. Maybe the detective is literally having sex with the killer, as in Basic Instinct (which also should be added to my list of sex-crime films). In other cases, the detectives themselves identify with the killer and end up discovering their own inner serial killer, as Al Pacino’s character does in Cruising.

In Shots in the Mirror, I discuss the sexual implications of several of these films–The Offence, Tightrope, Manhunter–but I’ve grouped them as serial-killer films, not sex-crime films. Clearly, as Neal points out, there is a lot of overlap. As Neal also points out, some of them skirt the edges of pornography.

Matt Travis raises big questions about sex-crime films’s effects on audiences. He also asks about the impact of “the buildup effect,” whereby we become progressively numbed by Hollywood violence, leading film-makers to create increasingly violent movies for audiences in search of new thrills. This is an excellent example of the feedback loop between crime films and their social context.

I don’t have full answers to Matt’s questions about audience effects, but in Shots in the Mirror I argue against the view that movies cause crime. Instead, I argue that movies contribute to the creation of interpretive frameworks or mind sets that we carry around in our heads and use to make sense of the world. Through a series of internal dialogues that we conduct all the time, but with special intensity when watching a good film, we build up and modify these frameworks, some of which help us interpret violence in the world and in film itself. This is how I understand the interactions between self and film. But Matt’s comments drive home the fact that for some people, the self-film interaction encourages sadomasochistic fantasies.

Matt, to finish my reactions to your comments: I don’t think newspaper reports of violence have much effect on Hollywood except to suggest topics. What is driving the new spate of sex-crime films, in my opinion, is the fact that news media now talk openly about, for example, pedophilia. (The posting by Lauren makes this point.) Hollywood has responded with films about pedophiles.

Suzanne has come up with what sociologists would call a Durkheimian account of the effects of crime films: we watch them, condemn the offenders, and thus achieve a sense of solidarity with other non-offenders. I think this process does occur for many viewers; to use the terms outlined above, the films give us information which we use to create and modify our mental frameworks for understanding sex offenses, and those frameworks help some people define such offenses as bad and themselves as good. But something else may be going on, too, for as some of the commentators have observed, sex-crime films also reveal to some viewers a taste for watching violence and, particularly, sadomasochistic violence. That is, sometimes the films contribute to mental frames or constructs that allow viewers to secretly revel in depictions of such acts. They don’t go out and commit sex-offenses as a result of viewing the movies, but they do derive sexual sadomasochistic pleasure from the viewing.

I definitely agree that people like to watch people get hurt in movies, we like the characters taking the risk or them getting hurt and then fighting their way back to becoming the hero of the story. Which in most movies where sexual crime is involved the victim or a relative to the vicitim rights the offense and gets revenge. We like to see the person that hurt them get caught or killed. A movie is more interesting to the audience when there is more violence and more action and that is also why more movies include this topic of sexual crime.

As a woman it upsets me that only women are seen as the victim in these movies. I don’t understand why people like to see women get hurt or terrorized. You never see men involved in these movies unless they are the ones doing the terrorizing.

I’m not sure if the recent popularity of sex-crime film themes is related to the debate of whether certain aspects of sex crimes are moral or if it is just Hollywood remixing old themes to draw in larger audiences. For instance, Samuel L. Jackson plays Carl Lee Hailey, the father of a girl who is raped, in A Time to Kill (1996). The movie’s plot revolves not only around the rape itself, but racial issues, the fairness of the legal system, and revenge. In Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), we see the makings of comatose patient rape in hospitals; however, the movie is full of other plot types. In Gothika (2003), we find that otherwise respectable citizens are harboring deadly secrets about creating snuff films. All of these present very serious problems in the world today.

Should we focus on the more direct mainstream movies like 8mm (1999) where the issue consumes the majority of the plot (which you may have left out because it is borderline pornographic) or integrate movies where sex crimes play a smaller role as well such as the ones mentioned above? Additionally, how is Hollywood genre melding affecting the general populace’s perception on the topic?

I personally like to believe in the buildup effect. We watch scenes in movies that are horrible to us at first, but eventually, our emotions go numb, and we are more willing to watch the more graphic material. I think this is why we are seeing an increase in movies like this. As people watch more and more movies, they are looking for larger and larger deviances from the norm. How else can we explain the widespread popularity of movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre(s) and Hostel? Additionally, does the violence in our news (reports of rape and others) lead to the popularity of the sex-crime genre?

I apologize about having more questions than answers, and I wish you luck with your book.