Raw Deal: A Question of Consent

Firstly, I feel wrong adding a commentary to what is a depiction f someone's real life misfortune. It's not like this doco was some Hollywood production - it was real life. Grading something like this feels inappropriate. I'd also like to say that I find the thought very troubling that anyone could sit through the entire documentary and not feel as though they were witnessing something so deeply, deeply wrong. It is so clearly evident that you are witnessing a rape. I do wonder how others who can't see that in this movie would go about defining the act of engaging in sex.. I didn't know that it required the male to over-power and actually pin down the female. I didn't know that slapping and gouging at eyes was an acceptable part of having sex. I feel that the footage depicted in this documentary is disturbingly graphic. My assumption is that this documentary would have been a last ditch attempt available to the victim so as to seek some form of justice. I was left feeling such incredible sympathy for Lisa and a feeling of violently despising Tony Marzullo and his fello fratmates. Really, they should have a 300lb bloke do the same thing to them!

This is a very thought provoking film. It disturbs the idea that the justice system can simply discover the truth of what happened and shows clearly how instead the system constructs the truth of what happened. By juxtaposing video footage of a rape with extracts from interviews with the survivor and a friend of the attacker a complex picture emerges that forced me to rethink 'consent'.

I think it is important to see this film but it is very hard to watch. You are literally seeing someone being raped.

I was attending UF when the event happened and I read about it in the newspapers. I didnt realize it was that big of a deal at the time though. It is really obvious that she was raped, and anyone who doesnt think so really needs help. It is also obvious that she was tired, kinda drugged up, but she somewhat knew what was going on and it wasnt what she wanted. I do feel sorry for the stripper, and Mike Yahraus is obviously guilty as sin. But although I dont want to say she got what she deserved, in life, if you put yourself in certain situations there is a higher probability that bad things will occur than other situations. A drunk female stripper with a bunch of frat boys is one of these situations where something bad can easily happen, and it did. Miss King is not the smartest person in the world, and to pick the profession of a stripper when she was married with kids indicates that she needed some counseling or some kind of help. But you have to feel somewhat bad for her. The frat boys in their interviews came across as the silly spoiled little boys that they are. I hope that the people involved really do feel the repercussions of the event, especially the Tony Marzullo character, who comes across as pure scum.

This brilliant documentary tells the shocking true story of a stripper who claims she was raped while on a call at a frat house. The events that unfolded during the oncoming investigation were truly devastating for the victim.

The beauty of this incredibly difficult film is that the director doesn't take sides. It would have been easy for him to suggest that the stripper was the victim and the frat boys, the bad boys, but the director steers away from all judgement and lets the audience decide for themselves.

It also shows that the victim of the case can be made out to be the villain, which is devastating because it has the power for victims of sexual crimes not to report these horrid actions, because of fear that they will be torn apart psychologically by lawyers and public opinion.

If you can stomach some truly disturbing themes, Raw : A question of consent is a brilliant and thought provoking documentary, that you wont forget any time soon!

Go and see it !

I couldn't sit through the whole film. It's really disturbing that something like this can happen around Year 2000. I'm not talking about rape. It happens every day. I'm talking about the failed prosecution (under whose administration...), the way some really twisted frat boys got away when the crime is recorded on tape. If the woman's so below them, like the guy kept saying, then why did they hire her? If her "stripper" profession's so disgusting, who does the hiring? If they were honest on tape about smearing her character (calling her "crackwhore" etc), why did they also call what they were doing "rape" in the same sentence? Again, what's horrifying is not the crime itself, but that people can watch it and think it's not. How far have we gone in the last four decades? In this day and age.