Roll Red Roll *** ½ / *****
Directed by: Nancy
Schwartzman.
The only
thing sadder than the fact that documentaries like Roll Red Roll need to
continue to be made is that cases like the one in Roll Red Roll keep happening.
If you ever need to some people what rape culture looks like, you could do a
lot worse than just showing them this 80-minute movie about the infamous Steubenville
rape case – which ended up getting two high school football players convicted
of rape, but in many ways show an entire town as being guilty as not thinking
something like this is a problem. The silver lining here – if you can call it
that – is that unlike in other cases, the police really do take this seriously.
They are investigating the same day that the victim – known only as Jane Doe –
and her parents file the police report, and charges are filed fairly soon
after. They do not slow walk this investigation – although it is only over time
that the scope of the problem becomes clear.
The facts
of the case really are fairly straight forward. Jane Doe is a 16-year-old girl,
who doesn’t go to Steubenville High School, but knows some of the boys on their
football team – in particular Trent Mays, who she has a crush on. One night,
she goes partying with them and gets drunk – really, really drunk. The players
go to not one, not two, but three different locations with her. There are
pictures of her passed on drunk being carried by the players. Eventually, she
ends up in the basement of one of the players where both Mays and another
football player – Ma’lik Richmond – rape her. There are other boys present –
and while they don’t rape her, they don’t do anything to stop it either.
Once the
charges and filed, and the story hits the news it’s a lot of what you expect.
Former football players and the local media coming to the boys’ defense, trying
to downplay what happened, trying to blame the victim for being drunk around a
bunch of boys anyway, “wondering” aloud if the victim let it happen then felt
guilty, so had to “make-up” a story. Gradually though, that becomes harder and
harder a line to tow. An enterprising crime blogger goes through the social
media posts of the boys on the football team – and it’s shocking. There are a
lot of rape jokes, a lot of misogyny directed at the girl, all from the night
in question. Anonymous soon gets involved – and no matter what you think of the
so-called “hacktivists” group, they discover more – including a video of one of
the drunken players joking non-stop is a torrent of misogyny joking about the
victim, and laughing the entire time. Even then though, it kind of seems like
many in Steubenville, while accepting that the boys did something wrong, still
don’t quite see it as being that bad
either.
There is
something about football culture in America that really does seem to blind some
people. Especially in small town, like Steubenville, where it seems like much
of the socializing happens around the football team – it lets the players feel
entitled, and has everyone covering their back. You see this in the film when
you hear local radio hosts downplaying what happened, or when the school lets
the football coach decide whether or not to punish the players. In one shocking
moment among many in the film, the detective in charge sits down and interviews
the coach, who doesn’t seem to realize the seriousness of what happened, or
even really what rape is. The extent of him looking into it was asking them if
they raped her – and letting it go from there. He didn’t punish them for
drinking – even though normally he said he would – because he thought it would
make them look guilty. And you see it in the way the community responded to the
true crime blogger who found all those social media posts that are horrifying.
They aren’t mad at the players – they’re mad at her.
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