Images of Sex and Rape

Abstract

Americans are spending increasingly greater portions of their leisure time consuming audiovisual forms of media, such as movies and television. Given the regularity of media consumption and the assumption of its influence on the perceptions of viewers, it is important to study the content of media programming. In this study, we conduct a content analysis of the 50 top-grossing films in 1996 to measure the prevalence and nature of sex and rape depictions. We find that movies present a rather patriarchal vision of sex and rape. Rapes in the movies are committed by sadistic, disturbed, lower-class individuals who prey on children and the vulnerable. This unidimensional movie picture of rape may help to perpetuate the real problem of rape and sexual abuse in our society by ignoring the reality of most real life rapes.