Sexual Assault or Rape Played for Laughs

Table Of Contents

Conservative Trope Examples

  • Wedding Crashers (2005)
    A depressed and distraught John (Owen Wilson) kisses a bride he's never met before on the cheek and then grabs her face and begins forcibly kissing her on the mouth in a receiving line at a wedding he crashes.
  • The Breakfast Club (1985)
    John hides under a table in the library just as Vice Principal Vernon walks into the room. He hits his head on the table and the group quickly pounds their tables to cover for him. As he adjusts himself he realizes he's staring directly in between Claire's (Molly Ringwald) legs, with the camera zooming in on her opened legs and underwear. He inexplicably puts his head into her crotch and, even though the camera doesn't exactly show it, it's inferred that he violated her because she is shown with a shocked face before the camera goes back below the table to show her squeezing her legs together against his head. He reappears after Vice Principal Vernon leaves and Claire calls him an "as*hole," to which he responds "sue me."
    Staff Aside
    Claire (Molly Ringwald) was only sixteen at the time of filming.
  • Animal House (1978)
    Alpha Delta pledge Pinto is debating whether to have sex with the mayor's unconscious daughter after she passed out drunk on the bedroom floor. He goes back and forth with his "Devil," who forcefully pressures him to rape her and his "Angel," who in a high-pitched "goody two shoe" voice says he will regret it if he does. Even though Pinto eventually sides with his "Angel" the joking nature of the scene downplays rape culture and makes it seem that deciding whether or not to have sex with an unconscious person is a difficult choice.