Here is where I am not a nice person...what happened to Phyllis and Mari was horrible, no question about it, BUT, none of it would've happened if they had been a little bit smarter instead of going off with some random guy alone to his hotel room to score marijuana. If they'd just gone straight to the concert, nothing would've happened to them.
shareIf Krug and crew hadn't raped and murdered them nothing would have happened either...I'd say that's a monumentally bigger transgression...up there with rape apologism.....
When you're 17 a cow can seem dangerous and forbidden...am I alone here?
Even for the 70s it was a stupid idea to run off with some random guy in the streets back to his hotel room ALONE.
shareEven for the 70s a rapist is the only one to blame for rape and a murderer is the only one to blame for murder and in any decade blaming the victim is sickening and ignorant.
When you're 17 a cow can seem dangerous and forbidden...am I alone here?
For any time period do you teach your children to get into cars with strangers or to walk off alone with them? No you don't. Do you tell your kids to put their real name and home address out on the computer so the whole world can see it? No. Do you walk around with all your money sticking up out of your pocket so everyone can see it? Do you let your children play in a building where a registered sex offender lives? You know what, it would be nice if everybody could trust everybody else and nothing bad ever happened to anybody but the world doesn't work like that. Would you invite Charles Manson to your house for dinner since if anything bad would happen it's his responsibility not to kill anyone?
shareAnd if one of my kids was raped, I would focus all my rage on the rapist. Rape is the fault of the rapist, period.
When you're 17 a cow can seem dangerous and forbidden...am I alone here?
There's also common sense and not deliberately putting yourself in harm's way. Oh a weird guy wants to take you back to his hotel room yeah that sounds perfectly safe and innocent. You wouldn't go swimming in the ocean if you had a a bleeding cut, and some people though their brains may be a tiny bit larger, are still like sharks and just move in for the kill, they don't care about if it's wrong or not. Focusing rage on the guilty party is fine, but don't expect just because THEY'RE the ones responsible for a crime that reminding them 'it's your responsibility not to kill me' is going to do any good.
shareThere's also the fact that rape is never the victims fault, ever.
When you're 17 a cow can seem dangerous and forbidden...am I alone here?
True but it all would've been avoided if they'd just gone straight to the concert.
shareIt = the rape homicide, right? See, actually "it" all would have been avoided if the those guys simply hadn't raped and murdered them.
I met Cinderella once... she's actually kind of a bitch.
Yeah but they didn't decide not to do it, did they? And in an instant like that you can't count on people like that to suddenly grow a conscience, can you?
shareDoesn't matter if they went with them or not. If it wasn't them it would've been some other girl the next day. Psychos like that wouldve found anyone. And yes, they shouldn't have been with strangers, but it doesn't make it their fault for some sick freaks existing in the world. You can't excuse what was done to them because they were naive. Those rapists and murderers would've done the same to someone else even if they went out of their way to kidnap them.
...your dead end dreams don't make you =)
By that logic though, why shouldn't teenagers jump into cars with random strangers they don't know, after all if they're bad people they're going to kidnap and murder somebody anyway so it doesn't matter if the victims PUT themselves in that situation by showing a severe lack of common sense.
shareWhat I meant by doesn't matter, is it doesn't matter for the killers. I even said the girls shouldn't have done what they did if you missed that part. But they didn't deserve what happened to them, and by saying its their fault, it totally excuses the killers. Its saying "oh its your own fault if you're raped, beaten and killed for being stupid. So don't blame the murderers for your own stupidity." People should watch out for the horrors of the world, which is essentially what this movie showed. Mari was innocent and because of her innocence, became the cross that bore the cruelty, horror and evil people are capable of. I agree that everyone should tread carefully in our imperfect world, but we shouldn't focus blame on the victims. It takes away from the crimes of the guilty. I guess that's why movies like this are controversial though. Everyone believes differently.
...your dead end dreams don't make you =)
Rapists normally aren't complete strangers. They are normally relatives or trusted friends. The only way to completely avoid rape is to shut yourself away and never spend any time with anyone at all - and even then you're not completely safe.
Of course, the other way to completely avoid rape is to deter rapists through effective punishment and to have a culture where rape is fully recognised as never acceptable under any circumstances. That'd be nice.
Normally no they're not, but for the purpose of this movie, they were, and this movie was made at a time when the common conception WAS that most rapists were complete strangers. What changed that, if there truly were more attacks from people the victims did not know, or if that was just an idea somebody had that spread like wildfire, or even if it was that the victims thought it was strangers because they couldn't see their attackers, we don't know, but it IS how they thought back then when Wes Craven made the movie.
shareI think they were just naive. They just saw a guy who smokes pot and all they had on their mind was peace and love.
Also let's think about this logically for a second. They aren't just being invited up so that the guy can take advantage of them. In any case, there's two of them and one of him so if it was rape they were worried about, they'd seem to have the upper hand against that one guy. What happens to them is more than rape. They are captured, threatened with a knife, beaten and, yes, raped.
Now people don't tend to perform premeditated murders in their own hotel room because if they leave any kind of mess or if there's any kind of fuss, their identity is really clearly found at the front desk. I know that these were fugitives from the law, but normally some kind of ID is used so that could help to trace them even if it didn't actually give away their own identities. The very last thing anyone would expect was that these thugs could successfully smuggle the girls into their car without any hotel staff or bystanders noticing in the morning. What happened to those girls was entirely unexpected.
While a thief is still a thief you shouldnt be leaving your door open. just common sense.
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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
"Here is where I am not a nice person...what happened to Phyllis and Mari was horrible, no question about it, BUT, none of it would've happened if they had been a little bit smarter instead of going off with some random guy alone to his hotel room to score marijuana. If they'd just gone straight to the concert, nothing would've happened to them."
I think it is almost a purposeful thing the makers of this film did. In the Virgin Spring, the girl isn't like this at all. I think it was done so people could view the horrible things and then say to themselves, "well, that's what you get for not wearing a bra and walking in the bad part of town". Maybe it would have been more effective for the girls to be by Mari's house in the beginning and then have bad things happen in the woods by their place...maybe they could even be wearing non-sexy baggy clothes to drive the point home that rapists are the bad people and not the girls.
And the thing is with the movie industry at the time, they probably wanted that put in. I mean, if the girls are innocent and dressed in sweatpants then the sexually is taken out and it is very disturbing. With the sexual awakening, the movie can be released as a cautionary tale, because girls shouldn't be sexual or comment about their breasts. HOW DARE THEM!!
I don't like the whole blaming the victim thing. Yeah, young girls can be stupid, but I don't think being stupid should be an excuse to get raped or killed horribly. It's the attacker's fault and always will be. Now girls can protect themselves and should, but a lot of rapes happen to girls by people they know...even parents, teachers and people they consider friends. It is a lot more common than stranger rape and even harder to avoid.
So basically girls need to do martial arts and be on high alert at all times or stay inside their houses all day, fearing to go outside because they might get attacked.
What a choice. I prefer to throw rapists in jail or make a world where "blaming the victim" doesn't exist. So women can walk the streets at night without worry. It's my humble opinion and I hope other people would be with me on this one.
Walking the streets is one thing, because nothing happened to them when they were doing that, but can you justify going off to a random stranger's hotel room and figuring nothing bad is going to happen? I mean is that something that YOU would do under ANY circumstances, not knowing one thing about that person or even if he's alone or got a whole gang up there?
shareYou have so slim a point, it can't stand on its own.
The point was that the old days of trusting a stranger to give you an innocent ride home, or score $20 an oz weed (WTF INFLATION!?), ceased to exist without warning. The 70s was a new time period, we all judge the characters for agreeing to come upstairs, but there was at time when that wasn't a huge deal. You didn't have to think they were going to rape or murder you when that's the forgone conclusion these days. Sure did they act immature, sure, but if Mari's boobs grew in only just over the summer, she was not that old to begin with.
Also, rape is never the victim's fault. You are not a nice person for insinuating that their behavior caused their deaths/rape/torture, true, but instead you are truly sick. All Jr. had to do was sell them weed and make some money for gas/proper car care, instead he invited them in for a good old fashioned rape because he was a heroin addict and was promised a fix for doing that to the first women who spoke to him. Wrong place, wrong time, and a horrible thing happened to them. THAT was the point. If a guy did the same thing as Phyllis and got killed, you'd call the killers dicks. But, they're women, so they shouldn't have been out of the kitchen, right?
That's my belief and I'm sticking to it.
If a guy did the same thing as Phyllis and got killed, you'd call the killers dicks. But, they're women, so they shouldn't have been out of the kitchen, right?
One of the points of the movie was that in this time period, going off with a stranger was not supposed to end in rape/murder. If you do this now, you have a bit of a death with. They didn't know there were 4 people up there and both didn't grow up in a part of town where such things happened. They were not at fault anymore than someone who gets in a car and drives on a highway late at night is when a drunk driver hits them. It's *beep* and they should have though it out more, but the point is that blaming them, in the slightest, for the rape and murder that others committed to them is ignorant of both the film and life in general.
That's my belief and I'm sticking to it.
Something else to consider, they weren't completely in the dark. They DID hear the radio report saying two men had escaped from prison and made a getaway, and true, they had no way of knowing WHERE these people were, but that is exactly the point, they could be ANYWHERE, could be right beside them, could be in the hotel, and since these people killed guards when they made their getaway, what challenge are two teenaged girls going to be? I mean if you hear there was a prison break nearby and two killers and rapists got away and are on the loose and nobody knows where they are, are YOU going to blindly skip away with some stranger off the street?
shareHow do you even know they paid any attention to the radio?
Why should they sacrifice their liberty, their freedom to come and go because of some escaped convicts?
Do you think that RIGHT NOW there are no bad people out there in the streets?
I think your judgment is too narrow-minded and somewhat misogynistic, really.
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Because Marie said she wanted to listen to the radio report, that's why I think they were paying attention to it.
And you know what? We DID have a prison break a few months back, and we WERE on guard, we saw the pictures and kept an eye out every time we were in public until they were recaptured, one of them was in for first degree murder hell no we weren't taking any chances of bumping into that somewhere alone.
I kind of get your point- I'm someone who thinks we should all take measures to avoid rape, murder and other disasters. I don't think the OP is being misogynistic, really. However, not many people have mentioned the fact that these girls are just that- GIRLS! They are not well-informed and street-savvy women! They are really just kids who are probably really used to going off with strangers to buy drugs etc. People (including teens and kids) were probably much less aware of the whole street-savvy thing- they probably never learned anything about 'stranger danger' like kids do today. Not to mention, we don't really know much about the intelligence levels of these girls- maybe they were genuinely of lower intellect, who knows?
It is idealistic to point out what the girls should/should not have done, but at the end of the day, rape is the rapists' fault, and the victim should not be held responsible for the rapists' actions in any way.
The 70s was a new time period, we all judge the characters for agreeing to come upstairs, but there was at time when that wasn't a huge deal.
One of the points of the movie was that in this time period, going off with a stranger was not supposed to end in rape/murder. If you do this now....
It's a cautionary tale. Irreversible and many other films have kind of copied the idea.
The sad thing is, many other teens also do a similar thing today (as well as some adults), that's why it's CAUTIONARY.
How could you blame the naive teenagers who are all buzzed about seeing a band live and feel like going out of their comfort zone to get some weed?
That's sick.
Because being 17 and naive is not an excuse. 17 is one year away from 18, legally an adult, and we don't say adults are too young to know better, and I really don't buy that you're going to gain SO MUCH more common sense in that final year of adolescence that you didn't already have.
shareHey imdb debaters!
I have personal experience with this matter.
I used to go up to a lot of guys' hotel rooms. Strangers. Complete strangers. I had this odd fascination with little green pictures of Ben Franklin. Anyway...
One night, a man pulled a knife on me. A rather long and serrated bloody knife. It looked like something from a movie like this, and I still have flashbacks in the kitchen sometimes. (I love to cook and always will.)
He told me, "Take it all off! I'm not f-ing playing!"
I pretended to be sexy taking my jacket off. I used it as an excuse to fumble around for my MACE!!!!
He ran away from me. I did not get raped. Or even robbed.
True story. 0:)
The point is, it actually doesn't matter whose fault it is. Finding fault only serves to hold people in the past.
In this modern world it's easy to forget how brutal nature truly is, and by extension humans.
Forget the cops. Forget blaming people. It's every person's responsibility to be prepared to protect themselves as best as they possibly can.
Yes, Mari and Phyllis did not use good sense, and, yes, you don't seem like a nice person.
shareI think a lot of people don't seem to realize how different the attitudes of most people in 1970s were - compared to today's child-proof, safety-obsessive, risk-free utopian world that so many ppl today seem to believe is possible.
For instance, hitchhiking was EXTREMELY prevalent (at least when traveling at distance through North America), especially as the notion of each individual traveler owning a separate personal motor vehicle was considered impractical; even wasteful. Hitching was used by many as a somewhat consistently reliable form of transportation that was often socially beneficial - passengers who were picked up on the road could kick in gas money, take turns at the wheel to relieve tired drivers, navigate routes, help look out for police/dangerous traffic/etc, and, converse or enjoy music, which can help alleviate what often is an otherwise stressful or mundane chore, even turning it into a somewhat fun and interesting experience of social bonding.
Eventually it became illegal in most places - whether picking up hitchers or soliciting rides themselves - as a dangerous activity whose utility had been surpassed by its risk. Many ppl these days assume (thanks to new cultural norms that tell everyone to be afraid of our own shadows, I reckon) that this was because people picking up hitchikers; or conversely, those hitchikers themselves, had all resorted to robbing, raping, murdering, and eating each others brains all over North America's highways. Not so. The real reason (at least the one given) was that having groups of ppl stationed right on the edge of dangerous roadways with their thumbs in the air was leading to unacceptably high numbers of gruesome fatalities and the smearing of human remains all across the asphalt.
Yet still, driving in and of itself remains probably the most dangerous thing we regularly do. Yes, use street-smarts and common-sense as much as you can, but always realize that rarely will interacting with our fellow humans result in sudden violent injury or death.
The person most likely to hurt and/or kill you is, as it always has been, YOURSELF.
Answering a few years later...True, but can't you say "if that did/didn't happen" about almost ANY film?
share