Word: raped
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...unexplained. In the aftermath of the killing, we do learn that something dreadful happened to Louise years ago. Obviously it was some kind of sexual assault, but she never reveals its exact nature. This, of course, runs counter to the conventions of popular culture. If this were the TV-rape-movie-of-the-month, a hysterical revelation of the exact nature of the abuse -- especially if it were, say, gang rape or years of incest -- would be obligatory in order to balance the moral scales...
...just has to have him. With him she has great sex for the first time in her life. To him -- he's a convenience-store bandit -- she loses all the getaway money that Louise had scraped together from her life savings. But what might have seemed yet another rape, this time of a more symbolic kind, turns out to be a fair exchange. The hitchhiker, using Thelma's hair dryer as a gun substitute, teaches her the tricks of his dubious trade; soon she is doing hold-ups. It is Thelma too who gets the drop...
Literalists criticize Thelma's erotic awakening because, they say, it could not happen so soon after the trauma of near rape. Doubtless that would be true in circumstances less special than the ones the movie sets up. The point it's insisting on is that a sudden access of freedom is eroticizing as well as empowering...
...courtroom have not been realized. Even in states that allow televised trials, judges make the final determination as to whether TV should be admitted for a particular case; cameras are usually barred when the victim's identity needs to be protected, as in the Central Park-jogger rape trial. Nor, despite the / crowd at Ligon's trial, has TV in general turned the courtroom into the proverbial media circus. With tight ground rules, cameras and microphones can be kept relatively unobtrusive...
Among those who think such fears are overstated is Judge William G. Young, who allowed cameras to cover the barroom rape trial in New Bedford, Mass., that was the basis of the movie The Accused. Says Young: "I came away from that convinced that if you had careful controls, TV did not change the dynamics of the trial or the fairness of the trial to the litigants...