I almost cried with anger when I read the editorial on how Club Filipino’s event on Mar. 28 attracted more people that the Nappy Roots concert (“I-not So-Weak,” April 3 ). Few people know that the African Cultural Showcase was on the same night. The attendance there was sad, despite the efforts of the African Society’s board. How many people even know that it was Africa Week from March 24 to March 29? While the Georgetown community supports many cultural events, African culture is not one of them. There is a hierarchy among the cultural clubs here at Georgetown.

The African Society coordinators worked late nights and raised a lot of money to put their show on. They painted signs (and had them torn down) and even advertised on other campuses for what? Thirty people in Gaston Hall? What does this tell me as an African student about the people here at Georgetown?

Asian cultures are the blockbusters here when it comes to cultural events. I don’t resent that. I danced in Rangila, I’ve cheered for Club “FLIP.” But I don’t see them doing the same for me. How are we increasing our cultural awareness if the only non-American culture we are familiar with is Bhangra dance?

Then I see that no campus papers covered the African Showcase or the events of Africa Week. Why? The world is bigger than Asia. How many people attend Ballet Folklorico? How many people will attend the chamber music concert? I cannot force people to attend an event, but I implore all clubs to at least support one another. The African Society performed in Rangila Remix, but where was SAS during the African Cultural Showcase? Nowhere. So far all we have done is produce further separation.

Those clubs that do find themselves with large attendances at their events have seen no need to return the favor. Our campus newspapers should not do the same. Please represent all of Georgetown and help publicize all events. Otherwise, how will they truly reflect student life?

Mojoyin Onijala (SFS ‘05)

Rape scenes in movies make me think that everyone is insane. I have been raped and do not need to shell out $8 to watch the fantasy of violence unfold before me. I can peruse my own, very solid memories any time I feel like it, which is pretty much never. I was disappointed at Gilbert Cruz’s review of the film Irreversible (”’Irreversible’ unforgettable,” April 3), because I found it decidedly shallow and cavalier in relation to the question of rape scenes in movies. In my mind, there exists little credibility in the defense of an unaffected male, especially when the defense lacks interrogation into the real implications of the prevalence, creativity, and virtual inescapability of the rape scene.

It is estimated that one in eight Hollywood movies contain rape scenes, and their effect on the psyches of men and women is largely ignored. When Cruz wrote of the frequency of walk-outs at the Cannes screening, I sympathize, because I myself walk out of movies with rape scenes, although I usually get very loud while still in the theater, and I always get my money back. These scenes have served only to make me feel powerless to protect the woman on the screen, much as Cruz described his impression of the sentiments shared by the audience when he viewed the movie. Noting this impression, however, is a poor substitute for investigating its significance.

I can tell you firsthand what it does to me when I see a rape scene. When I had post-traumatic stress disorder from the various trauma I had been through, a rape scene would send me into a panic attack that left me terrified for days. I got physically ill. I know from friends who have also been raped that this is a common reaction. The passive nature of consuming a movie-the fundamental inability to escape or change the larger-than-life image that swells into our eyes and sticks to the back of our brains is intrinsically in conflict with the reality of rape. The fact that I have to sit and watch that happen, unfolding before me as entertainment or as a plot device, is sick and twisted; the fact that as a passive moviegoer I am discouraged from speaking, that I have to sit surrounded by people refusing to speak, makes me feel more silenced than I can bear.

I am obsessed with the fantasy of violence, endlessly confounded by the entertainment value of creative human suffering. Anyone who has ever been raped knows that many rapes mimic pornography or movies, with some of the dialogue and “action” being lifted directly from a film that the rapist has watched and enjoyed. Rape is sexually arousing and done with the intention of creating and satisfying arousal-for example, it would have been impossible for my rapists to perpetrate the act if they did not have erections. To that end, it seems to me fundamentally counterintuitive to invite feelings of sexual stimulation when showing a rape scene, something I assume happens in Irreversible because of Cruz’s description of the violence as semi-pornographic.

Cruz encourages those who “can” see the movie to partake, citing its deep poetic meaning, intensity of emotion, cathartic extremes and on and on. I find this encouragement incomprehensible. Does the category of those who “cannot” stomach the movie include women who have been raped? Does it include all women as potential victims of rape? It is immeasurably sad to me that I can open a newspaper and read an uninformed, frivolous review of a rape scene; the mishandling of the subject significantly removes its significance. Such phrasings as “she was violated to the point of dehumanization” obscure the reality that the violation is inherently dehumanizing; a woman’s face getting smashed into the ground doesn’t make the point any more clear. In fact, it has the opposite effect, escalating the definition of a “brutal” rape to the level that “common” rape cannot compare.

I am tired of shallow reviews and uninformed student writing lacking in content, but I am particularly tired of the mishandling rape scenes in movies. It is not a revelation that there is a link between women as objects and women as rape victims, nor is it provocative to present the pretty girl as the victim; it is in fact, trite. More importantly, a review with nothing but preliminary and crude questioning of the implications of the fantasy of violence against women is morally repugnant.

Jessica Corsi (SFS ‘03)