The film eroticizes the imagined threat of dark-skinned men raping a white woman.
Evidence
Willie, dressed in a virginal white dress, her hair adorned with a crown of roses, is shackled in a metal cage that is lowered toward the subterranean fire. Willie’s arms and legs are spread apart and held in shackles, to the delight of the cult followers, in a scene that is strongly suggestive of the rape of a white woman by a mob of angry, dark-skinned men. She strongly resembles Christ on the cross; even Willie’s headpiece resembles a crown of thorns. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 604
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- SHARE: A striking reading worth sharing with anyone interested in film-studies takes on Indiana Jones or the eroticization of racial threat in pop cinema.
- XREF: This is the ‘white woman in peril’ trope the reader’s inquiry likely needs — the threat-to-chastity anxiety that undergirds the manufactured monster image.