No women, no sex, very little explicit violence, but lots of details about submarine engineering, and plenty of strong, laconic men in situations of extreme peril.
The obvious understanding of rape culture is the top of the pyramid: explicit violence in the form of rape, incest, murder, and battery.
Besides offering little support or actually undercutting the prosecution of most of the people arrested, the videotapes also highlight another substantial piece of the historical record: the Police Department's tactics in controlling the demonstrations, parades and rallies of hundreds of thousands of people were largely free of explicit violence.
For my taste McQueen lingers too long on scenes of brutal floggings and assaults (though the sex is not tastelessly explicit), which may be what white viewers need to be reminded of – except excessively explicit violence is a staple of many modern films, where the old saying that "less is more" has long been forgotten.
Leaving aside the instances of explicit violence, the scenes featuring the hunger and confusion of small children are almost physically unbearable.
According to Jesse Stommel of Bright Lights Film Journal, the lack of explicit violence in the film forces viewers to question their own fascination with violence that they play a central role in imagining.
Commentators have shredded the books for their explicit violence and antiquated treatment of women, made especially clear in the character of Anastasia, an awkward naif who consents to being stalked, slapped and whipped with a leather riding crop.
While the Motion Picture Association of America has largely restricted explicit sex to the R category, it has steadily allowed increasing amounts of explicit violence into the PG-13 category.
Keeping the deaths in her own stories largely off stage, she is put off by the explicit violence and torture porn of some modern thrillers: "It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish.
Its myriad displays of explicit violence are, for the most part, boring, and, if audiences seem to be inured to it (when in fact they're just lulled by it), other filmmakers may be moved to up the ante not more imaginatively but merely more copiously, not in quality but in quantity.
