Concern over depiction

The Colour Purple is a masterpiece and treats a father raping his teenage daughter as mundane, both parties also think it's mundane.

 

One isn't expected to sympathize with the father though, as I recall.

 

I'd rather call it advice.

I want to show the brutality and ruthlesness of war and it's consequences, and the grey and evil side of humanity. But also redemption in many different ways.

 

I don't think "understated horror" is the same thing as "mundane". If anyone comes out of reading The Color Purple thinking that what happened to Celie was anything but horrible, I think they missed the point.

 

Yeah. And Celie takes a lot of it to protect her little sister, doesn't she?

 

Your analogy to The Colour Purple might work better than I thought, though you'll need to work hard on it. The Colour Purple is about the oppression of African-American women, and just because the characters take rape as normal doesn't mean the story treats it as acceptable. If your story is about what war does to people, rape and other abuses of force are part and parcel of that. I'd even advise going beyond a mention--not necessarily depicting it "onscreen," but digging into why rape occurs and how it fits into the larger picture of wartime cruelty.

 

This has just turned into beside-the-point derailing.

Also, a lot of double-standards. Murder can be heroic and good, and more importantly mentioned casually and mundanely, yet rape, an act that CAN be considered less evil than murder should not?

 

So is this another of your threads that's posed as a question but is really just a statement?

Maybe next time you could say: "I'm going to include rape in my novel. I don't care what you say. Please discuss."

 

If anyone thinks me mentioning something that did happen is bad, then I might as well rename myself Winston Smith.

 

Fuck off.

 

I wouldn't see murder as heroic or good.

But I do think there's a difference between killing out of a sense of necessity and becoming sexually aroused by violence against women. The first, I can believe could be necessary. The second? Pointless, disgusting brutality, and I'm not going to sympathize with any character who commits rape.

 

Yes, that would be another more honest way for you to open a thread.

Just start with "Fuck off", and then we can take it from there.

 

Which is a black and white view.

 

I wasn't joking. If you don't like my thread, get the fuck out.

 

A thread isn't "yours" just because you start it. This is a forum. Next time just write your opinion on a note and tape it to your refrigerator. I assume you live alone. Problem solved.

 

From the sounds of it, your characters would be raping civilians captured during the fighting. The most direct analogy would be to slaughtering civilians for fun. There are ways to make indiscriminate killing understandable within the context of the times, but if you're trying to be "casual" about slaughtering civilians, you've already got a pretty big problem on your hands.

 

Oh no, I was just pointing out double standards. I view both and hope to portray both as sick acts of human nature that should never be commited.

 

So what WERE you looking for when you started the thread?

It was going reasonably smoothly as long as everyone agreed that rape would be fine - I disagreed, and everything went bad for you? I think I've suggested it before - there are people who are posting progress journals and what-not when they just want to be enthusiastic about their projects. Maybe that's what you're looking for. Not a discussion thread, where people will, very likely, discuss the questions you ask in your OP.

 

You know that's not what happened.

 

No, I don't know. I genuinely don't know why you're upset.

ETA: Okay, I re-read, and I see that you got upset when I suggested you weren't really looking for a discussion.

But... WERE you really looking for a discussion?

 

Of course.

 

So...? When did the discussion turn into a "beside-the-point derailing"?

ETA: You're confusing people (me, and I think others) with your distinction between "what people would think of it" and "whether it should be included or not". How can we discuss the second issue without giving our opinions of the first?

 

I'm not sure I'd call murder heroic or good under most circumstances, but at least it is easy to see why someone might resort to it. It can be rooted in understandable, perhaps even noble motives. Rape on the other hand is pretty much always motivated by a desire for power/control and to some degree or another sexual lust. These selfish motives are a great deal harder to sympathize with, and I'm probably never going to like a character who raped someone.

 

I remember an entry on TV Tropes that might be relevant. In regard to the 1960s Spartacus movie:

 

Alexander the Great took many of his enemies to task, so to speak.