TY - JOUR
T1 - Rejecting Angelina
T2 - Bosnian war rape survivors and the ambiguities of sex in war
AU - Helms, Elissa
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, American Association for the advancement of Slavic Studies. All rights reserved.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Before Angelina Jolie’s 2011 film In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the rape of women in the Bosnian war, was filmed, a group of Bosnian women war rape survivors persuaded local government officials to revoke Jolie’s on- location filming permit. The survivors’ objections were based on a rumor, subsequently refuted, that the plot was a love story between a Bosnian Muslim woman and her Serb rapist. This paper analyzes these objections, their subsequent permutations, and the film itself in light of the relationships between gender and sexuality, nationalist ideologies, and the logics of war. I contex- tualize the objections raised and argue that the film ultimately fails to challenge conventional patriarchal and nationalist assumptions about wartime rape, sex, and gender roles in war, despite its seemingly provocative focus on violence against women in war. Ultimately, as I show, the film reinforces clear-cut ethnonational narratives of victims and perpetrators while leaving the gendered logics of sex and power unexamined.
AB - Before Angelina Jolie’s 2011 film In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the rape of women in the Bosnian war, was filmed, a group of Bosnian women war rape survivors persuaded local government officials to revoke Jolie’s on- location filming permit. The survivors’ objections were based on a rumor, subsequently refuted, that the plot was a love story between a Bosnian Muslim woman and her Serb rapist. This paper analyzes these objections, their subsequent permutations, and the film itself in light of the relationships between gender and sexuality, nationalist ideologies, and the logics of war. I contex- tualize the objections raised and argue that the film ultimately fails to challenge conventional patriarchal and nationalist assumptions about wartime rape, sex, and gender roles in war, despite its seemingly provocative focus on violence against women in war. Ultimately, as I show, the film reinforces clear-cut ethnonational narratives of victims and perpetrators while leaving the gendered logics of sex and power unexamined.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84928198186&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5612/slavicreview.73.3.612
DO - 10.5612/slavicreview.73.3.612
M3 - Review Article
AN - SCOPUS:84928198186
SN - 0037-6779
VL - 73
SP - 612
EP - 634
JO - Slavic Review
JF - Slavic Review
IS - 3
ER -