(White) Female Rage Catharsis:  The Invisibility of Black Women in Female Revenge Cinema 

‘Female rage’ in film is by no means a new concept but it seems to be on the rise with Google trends indicating that it reached its highest search interest in the past 5 years in April 2023 (Google Trends, 2024). Despite its feminist intentions, the leading characters throughout female rage and revenge cinema unfortunately adhere to the exclusivity of the thin, heteronormatively attractive, white woman. With little range in representation on-screen, the genre erases black experiences with female rage.  The plot of a female revenge film follows the narrative that a white, attractive woman who is wronged in some way, most often by a man, enacts her revenge upon her tormentor/s which is often satisfying in them getting their comeuppance. The arguably villainous behaviours of the female lead characters are cultivated from the suffering that is imposed on them by male oppressors, and the audience subsequently finds the revenge satisfying. Considering today's society being in the #MeToo era, it is interesting to understand the social context that these films were made in but also the heightened reception, reinterpretation, and aestheticization they are now receiving among social media. In the essay ‘Safety valves for mediated female rage in the #Metoo era’  Gill and Orgad comment: “In political discourse, popular and media culture, female rage is ‘having a moment.’ More and more women are getting publicly and unapologetically angry, particularly in relation to sexual violence, but also in reaction to other forms of sexism, racism and injustice.” (Gill & Orgad, 2019).  However they critique female rage representations as “uneven” considering the factors of race, class, age, sexuality, and disability.  Female rage “having a moment” is a result of the #MeToo movement encouraging women to speak out on sexual and other forms of violence, and holding these men accountable for their actions. 

The Feminine Ideal: Rage and Revenge

It is critical to consider that female revenge narratives are intrinsically connected to female rage. The revenge enacted by the female characters is driven by the force of feminine rage which can be understood as an ancestral and inherited response to the struggles, oppression and wrongdoings that women have been subjected to (Alverez, 2023). It is the phrase ‘female rage’ that has become increasingly popular among social media, becoming a prominent trend that aestheticizes female suffering. The video montages include scenes where women are dramatically screaming, murdering, crying, or delivering monologues often over the song ‘Emotions’ by Brenda Lee or an operatic piece.  Whilst the reaction to the videos is generally positive;  praising the  “realness” or how “satisfying” it is to see women not being “delicate”, it is simultaneously critiqued for its whiteness and failure to provide any female characters who fall outside of the male gaze.  In the book “Rage Becomes Her” Chemaly argues that as children women are taught to regard anger as unfeminine, unattractive, and selfish so we should learn to hide and transform it so it's not an imposition to others (2018). The representations of female rage on-screen challenge the societal conditioning that women face to remain ‘calm’ and ‘feminine’ by completely subverting this passive feminine ideal that is projected onto womanhood. 

Neither rage nor revenge are in keeping with the feminine ideal (Chemalay, 2018). However, the characters in female revenge films such as Jenifer Check from Jenifer’s Body, Cassie from Promising Young Woman, Amy from Gone Girl, and Jenifer from the original I Spit on Your Grave all fit within the Western physical ‘feminine ideal’. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir argues that “one is not born a woman- one becomes one”(1949) posing femininity as a product of culture.  There are traditional social demands of femininity such as women dressing typically feminine, being polite accommodating, and nurturing (Planned Parenthood, n.d) and through female rage and revenge narratives these traits are continually disestablished. Feminist filmmaker and critic Laura Mulvey states “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female form which is styled accordingly”  (1975). Female revenge narratives are a subversion of the male gaze, the plot disobeying the notion of the ‘passive female’ by making them “active”. The women are ‘active’ in the sense that they are aware of their desirability to the male gaze and take advantage of it by luring men into their trap through methods of seduction and manipulation, then enacting revenge upon the male oppressor. 

Modern rape culture as reflected in Promising Young Woman 

 In Promising Young Woman, Cassandra or Cassie styles herself  “accordingly” to the male gaze by wearing mini dresses and high heels, going to bars where she pretends to be overly intoxicated, purposefully enticing predatory men who attempt to sleep with her despite her “drunken”, semi-conscious and state and inability to give consent. Promising Young Woman is not a movie fuelled by violence unlike most female revenge films but is instead charged by Cassandra’s cleverly cunning vengeance.  Her weapon is the ability to scare these men by unveiling her stone-cold sobriety to shock them into the realisation of the violation they have committed (Horton, 2021). After Cassandra confronts the men it is not shown on screen what happens to them, leaving it for the viewer's interpretation. The plot reveals that Cassie seeks revenge upon sexual predators due to losing her best friend, Nina, who committed suicide after she was raped by a group of boys whilst intoxicated. Nina is victim blamed by multiple characters throughout the film, an college friend Alison saying: “When you have a reputation for sleeping around then maybe people won’t believe you when you say something’s happened! I mean...it’s crying wolf… Don’t get blackout drunk every night and then expect people to be on your side when you have sex with someone you didn’t want to”. This tells the audience that anyone could be complicit of rape culture even women, the slut shaming and victim blaming Madison spewed is one of the ways rape culture is perpetuated. (Igot et al,  2022). 

The writer and director of Promising Young Woman, Emerald Fennell, made the creative decision to have the film aesthetically hyper-feminine. When Cassie isn’t performatively dressed to entice predators, her everyday fashion is ultra-feminine with soft textures and a pink color palette. When Fennell was asked for the reason for this hyper-feminine aesthetic she said: “It's presenting itself as innocuous, fun and fluffy because those are things we don't take seriously, these are things we associate with lightness, happiness, sexiness, and playfulness. But there's absolutely no reason to me why you couldn't feel murderous rage. Cassie knows how to communicate innocence and she knows how to hide her rage. It’s a way I think a lot of women hide their rage”  (Fennell, 2021). The “innocuous” connotation of pink used throughout the film shows Cassie's methods of preserving the societal expectation of the feminine ideal, disguising her rage with femininity to disarm everybody close around her who have no idea about the rage she is suppressing and her hobby of punishing predators. This film was released in 2020 and is the most recent mainstream rape-revenge film. Made in a post #MeToo era the narrative of holding men accountable for sexual assault is more prevalent than ever but centers back around to the question of why black women are not given any representation on screen in seeking vengeance on male oppressors. Considering that a recent study  suggested that black women are disproportionately at risk of sexual violence compared to white women, with nearly 1 in 5 black women being survivors of rape, and 41% of black women experiencing sexual coercion and other forms of unwanted sexual contact (National Black Womens Justice Institute, 2023), black women’s experiences should have far more representation on screen. As film is considered to act as a cultural mirror it would be genuinely reflective of society to see this systemic issue being portrayed in visual media in the #MeToo era due to its goal of raising awareness and creating solidarity for all women, not just white women.  

#MeToo and the visibility of black women

Whilst it is commonly reported that the MeToo movement began in 2016 after actress Alyssa Milano urged Twitter users to respond to her tweet with ‘Me Too’ if they too were victims of sexual misconduct (Clohessy, 2018), it initially started over 10 years prior in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke.  Burke created the Me Too movement to support black girls and women through their experiences of sexual violence. Milano’s use of the phrase ‘me too’  inspired the hashtag #MeToo and ignited a movement largely associated with the sexual misconduct within the entertainment industry. The new use of the #MeToo hashtag became viral and soon disrupted the already established work of “Me Too”. (Boys & McEwan, 2022). Burke commented on the matter saying: “Seeing “me too”, the phrase I had built, the word and purpose around it used by people outside of that community, was jarring . . . My heart dropped at the thought of inviting people to open up and share their experience with sexual violence online without a way to help them process it. I knew it could lead to emotional crisis in the absence of caring, empathetic environments. This would be a disaster if it went viral.” (Burke,  2017) 

#MeToo’s viral nature lowered the visibility of black women's experiences with sexual violence as the movement was overshadowed by the 12 million posts and reactions in response to the new #MeToo movement, which reflects the longstanding marginalisation that black women face (Onwuachi-Willig, 2018). Critical race theorist Kimerle Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” which recognised that individuals can experience multiple forms of oppression and how the biological factors of race and sex overlap or “intersect” (1989). In the framework of intersectional feminsim Crenshaw acknowledges the double oppression that black women face of both race and sex discrimination. Taking into consideration the marginalisation that black women have experienced throughout history and more specifically in the #MeToo movement, it can be understood that the oppression of women by sexual violence is set apart by the binary opposition of being a black or white woman. Whilst white women experience misogyny and oppression, they benefit from the structures of white supremacy and wield more power than any other group of women (Ezaydi, 2023). In  ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color’ Crenshaw explains how statistics indicate that black women are more likely to be victims of sexual or other forms of violence than white women and are also less likely to report their rapes due to the lower likelihood of their case going to trial and the perpetrator being prosecuted (Crenshaw, 1993).   In 1985 a sex abuse worker revealed that 10% of rapes involving white victims end in conviction, compared with 4.2% for rapes involving non-white victims (Ferguson, 1985 as cited in Crenshaw, 1993). Although this statistic was taken in 1985 it indicates the racial bias that black women have and continue to face. Female revenge movies draw attention to society's dark underbelly of rape and violent culture, but somehow even though black women are disproportionately at risk they are excluded from having any thoughtful representations on screen, mirroring the systemic issue of racial bias and discrimination in both wider culture and within the film industry. 

Stereotyped representations of black women

Female revenge films that were produced in a pre #MeToo era and the films that have been produced during and after this movement are now receiving a heightened reception showing how the female revenge narrative is more prevalent than ever.  From a feminist perspective, the narrative of enacting revenge upon a male tormentor is empowering and cathartic due to the history of oppression that women have faced as the ‘second sex’, as coined by Simone De Beauvoir (1949). However, this empowerment seems to be exclusive to attractive, white women. The visibility of black women’s experiences of sexual and other forms of violence through films is disproportionally less than white women. 

In a Google search of “female revenge films” in the 49 that were suggested only two films centered around a black female lead; Foxy Brown and Ma. This disappointing but unsurprising result becomes even more offensive through the stereotypes that these two characters represent; the “Jezebel” and the “Mammy”. In visual media, black women have historically been dominated by the three images of the Jezebel, Sapphire, and Mammy (Jerald,  2017, Thomas 2004 as cited by Warren-Gordon, 2022). The mammy is “traditionally depicted as a dark-skinned, overweight woman, wearing a headwrap and shawl, the mammy is employed by a white family to care for their children and is utterly devoted to her charges.” (Jones, E, 2019). Black actress Octavia Spencer plays the role of Sue-Ann or ‘Ma’, whilst she does not wear a headwrap and shawl and is not employed by a white family she embodies the other traits of the mammy. Ma befriends a group of white teenagers allowing them to have a party in her house, on the condition that they obey her house rules and refer to as ‘Ma’. Ma’s caring and hospitable nature that parallels the mammy is subverted as she tortures and murders the teenagers,  the plot revealing that they are the children of her highschool bullies. However, this does not feel like an intentional decision to challenge the mammy stereotype but instead feels like a general psychological horror trope of the ‘dark twist’ and further exaggerates modern representations of the mammy. The titular role of ‘Ma’ once more exemplifies the blatant stereotyping black women are subjected to in visual media, with ‘Ma’ being a literal abbreviation of ‘mammy’.  

In the 1974 film Foxy Brown, Pam Grier plays a voluptuous black woman who takes a job as a high-class prostitute to get revenge on the mobsters who murdered her boyfriend (Metacritic, n.d). Grier’s character is an overtly obvious representation of the ‘jezebel’ stereotype; which can be defined as a seductive African American woman who is highly sexualized and valued purely for her sexuality (Donovan, 2007, Jewell, 1993 as cited in Anderson, et al , 2018). Similar to the film ‘Ma’, the use of the titular character “Foxy Brown” leans heavily on the connotation of the stereotype they are presenting; Foxy meaning “sexually attractive” (Cambridge Dictionary). 

The disappointingly narrow representations that black women are given in cinema proves that the female revenge genre is unfortunately overwhelmingly white. The only two representations of black female leads in mainstream female rage movies are very two-dimensional and unlike the majority of female rage films and  have no feminist underlinings or motivations. Despite certain evidence suggesting that black women are statistically more at risk of violence than white women, the film industry undoubtedly does not reflect this. “As an art form and a cultural mirror, cinema has long been a platform for exploring complex societal issues”(Narcis, 2023). The societal issues that are being mirrored in female revenge movies are the oppression, domination, and violations that women face due to their sex, however, the intersections of both sexism and racism have unfortunately not been justifiably represented in this genre. 

Demanding an Intersectional approach to female rage 

Cassie’s character in Promising Young Woman remains (seemingly) nonviolent until one of the last scenes where she ties up and threatens to castrate her deceased friend’s rapist which opposes the other characters in this genre. For example, Jenifer Check, as played by Megan Fox in Jenifer’s Body murders four boys by seducing them and later torturing and eating them. Jenifer becomes a demon after being made a sacrificial virgin in a satanic ritual gone wrong. Megan Fox was hypersexualised at the time of it’s release in 2009  throughout visual media so choosing Fox to portray the titular character would attract a young male audience who associate her with sex appeal (Ghidossi, 2020). The weaponization of female sexuality is used against this assumed male gaze aligning with the ‘femme fetale’ archetype which  “largely abjures traditional romance and passive domesticity, choosing instead to apply her sexuality to homicidal plots in the service of greed” (Boozer 1999, as cited in Monika, 2021). Similarly, Cassie’s character could be considered a femme fetale because she plays on her sexuality to lure men into her trap but not in “the service of greed ” but rather as an act of vigilantism against sexual assault.  As empowering as it is to see women “get even” with male oppressors and to see societally thwarted ‘ugly’ rage in all its glory, female revenge cinema is undoubtedly lacking in an intersectional approach to women's rage on screen. 

In Rage Becomes Her, Chemolay writes “Black girls and women are routinely silenced by "Angry Black Woman” stereotypes and have to contend with abiding dangers of institutionalised violence that might result from their expressing justifiable rage” (2018). This justifiable black female rage is due to the expansive history of institutionalised violence from slavery, segregation, and discrimination as well as the disproportionate risk of sexual violence. In an opinion piece “The ‘female rage’ trend excludes BIPOC women” Lagunilla shared “White women are allowed to cry. They are allowed to express emotion, while women of color aren’t. For as long as anyone can remember, white women have been praised for their expressing their emotions, while women of color have been ridiculed for it. The female rage trend is just one example of this systematic oppression.” (2023). This ‘angry black women’ racist stereotype is included frequently in film and TV where the plot is not centered around a female rage narrative but instead decides to lean on the stereotype, perpetuating the myth of black women being irrationally bad-tempered, hostile, and aggressive (Asare, 2019). Crenshaw argues that black women are often excluded from the “single axis” of feminist theory and that the feminist community focuses on white female sexuality (1989, p.139- 40).  The feminist underpinnings and motivations of female revenge films do not extend to black women. As the constructions of race and racism are inextricably tied to structures of power and privilege  Welch, 2017)  it is critical to recognise that the film industry is predominantly white and male, accounting for 73% of film directors (Coyle, 2023)  This once more reflects why the visibility of black experiences with female rage and revenge is virtually nonexistent and why the women with the mainstream female revenge films adhere to the exclusivity of physical embodiment of the Western ‘feminine ideal’. The complex notion of female rage and revenge films has the potential to broaden further than just white experiences with sexual and other forms of violence and mistreatment; seeing a black woman getting her revenge on a male oppressor is what a diverse audience needs to see to feel represented in the #MeToo era where it is encouraged to hold men accountable. The female revenge genre should take an intersectional approach to the representation of a systemic issue and would consequently truly reflect society as cinema is intended to.