This article extends the question Claire Henry asks of rape-revenge remakes in Revisionist Rape-Revenge: “Is rape-revenge not (or no longer) a feminist genre?” 8 Finally, Three Billboards has it both ways politically: it is a film that wants to have both a qualified justification for “feminist direct action,” but undercuts this justification by suggesting that in adopting vigilante tactics, Mildred has to do two things: unsex herself, and collude with a male chaperone. 7 He also has it both ways with regard to genre: cinematic revenge genres including rape-revenge and maternal revenge are at once invoked and subverted. In a pattern described by Molly Ferguson, McDonagh first advances, and then retracts, vindications of vengeance and offers of redemption for key characters including Mildred and Dixon, but finally Mildred’s critique of the law as inadequate and inept is allowed to stand. Mildred’s vindictiveness is both justified and represented as misguided, grotesque, and destructive, if not actually disproportionate.
Similarly, it seems to me that McDonagh has it both ways: extra-legal violence-on the part of both Mildred and Dixon-offers spectacular cinematic set pieces, but the audience may be punished for enjoying them. Many of the twenty-first century rape-revenge films have it both ways-using vigilante action to mount spectacular scenes for the visceral delectation of their audiences, but also representing revenge as destructive, disproportionate and monstrous. Whereas previous commentators have analysed Martin McDonagh’s work with hypermasculinity, I will be examining what McDonagh does in connecting femininity with grief, rage and violence. I examine Three Billboards’ vengeful gender politics in the generic context of rape-revenge. Monroe, 2013) and I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine (R. Monroe, 2010) I Spit on Your Grave 2 (Steven R. 5 The continued relevance of the genre this is also suggested by the remakes of 1970s rape-revenge films and their sequels: The Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972) and The Last House on the Left (Dennis Iliadis, 2009) I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978) and I Spit on Your Grave (Steven R. 4 However, as Claire Henry wrote in 20, and Alexandra Nicholas-Heller demonstrated in 2011, it was still a live tradition then. 3 Writing in 2000, Read opined that rape-revenge had had its day. Carol Clover has identified this as a subset of horror, although Jacinda Read asserts that rape-revenge is, rather, a narrative pattern that crosses multiple genres, including the Western. As the film is all about rape and vigilante action, it bears comparison with films in the rape-revenge genre. Three Billboards is about Mildred Hayes’ (Frances McDormand) frustration with the law and her vigilante action in the wake of rape, which puts her in direct competition with the representatives of the law: Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) and Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell). What is disturbing is that by 2017, when Martin McDonagh released Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri very little seemed to have changed. This characterisation of feminism as vengeful is of course reductive and androcentric, but what if we take vigilante action seriously, as a symptom of the unmet demand for justice? It is in this light that the 1970s rape-revenge films became Second Wave feminist texts. 45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981), women’s calls for justice for the crimes that typically beset them, including sexual crimes, remained outside the law, outside of the reach of justice, in the realm of revenge and vigilante action. 2 In rape-revenge films from the 1970s such as I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978) and Ms. It is a challenge to the law: to paraphrase Francis Bacon, revenge puts the law out of office.
Revenge is the justice of the marginalised, of those whom the law excludes. Denise: “You go, girl! You go fuck those cops up!” 1