rakontur blog

Raw Power On a Budget

By Hannah McGill

August 22, 2001

Raw Deal: A Question of Consent is certainly one of the most shocking and controversial films screening. It tells of exotic dancer Lisa Gier King, who in 1999 alleged that she had been raped by a member of a Florida fraternity house, while his friends videoed the act. However, when the video was recovered, the police concluded that the sex was consensual, and King was arrested for filing a false police report.

Director Billy Corben has included graphic footage from the video in this film, plus interviews with police, lawyers, some of the fraternity members (though not the alleged rapist), and King.

It’s an enormously complicated case presented in an incendiary fashion. Corben doesn’t hold the melodramatics, piling on stirring music and jittery hand-held flourishes. Given how troubling his subject matter is, a more sedate, stylistic approach would have been prudent. That aside, this is a striking film that offers no easy answers, instead challenging how we define truth, evidence, and the crime of rape. What’s most painful is that nobody comes off well. The alleged perpetrators are grotesquely misogynistic, spoiled, snobbish oafs who view King as less than human; King’s behaviour is markedly inconsistent; the women’s group that takes up her case is open to no debate that might challenge their view of her as a helpless victim.

The only thing that can be stated with certainty about this film is that no-one will come away from it without a strong response.