Film: Rape on the Night Shift
Link: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/rape-on-the-night-shift/
Discuss one of the themes/concepts that arose in class conversation or in your personal observations and notes, keeping the film’s specific scope and approach in mind. Discuss a pattern, a collection of visuals, a character, a phrase, a specific subject, or any other feature of the film to “anchor” your point of view.
You may delve deeper into the filmmaker’s motivations and point of view. How do they frame the issue of carcerality, and why did they chose this particular story? In this setting, how does carcerality present itself, and how does it connect with conceptions of race, gender, nationality, and ethnicity? What distinguishes the filmmaker’s approach to the subject? How do the movies work?
Overview
Rape on the Night Shift is a documentary concerning sexual attacks suffered by certain janitors while working at night. This documentary exposes the unfairness that these employees face because the majority of them are illegal and unaware of their rights. The experiences of women in this documentary are linked to feminist philosophy, which holds that women are unequal to men and that males have the authority to dominate women. Indeed, the documentary depicted gender inequity, exploitation, and the devaluation of women’s labor.
In the documentary, we observe feminist philosophy in action when bosses or supervisors sexually assault their employees. They take use of their superior strength and position to control their employees. So they compel them to have sex and then laugh at them because they won’t listen to or believe them. In some circumstances, they believe it and do not report it right away, and when they do report it to the police and the firm, it is difficult to obtain evidence. As in the instance of one of the janitors, she too recounted what occurred to her.
Companies would disregard the women’s compliments about being sexually assaulted and harassed. It’s disheartening since these were the largest cleaning businesses and they still had trouble resolving these sorts of issues. I believe it is unjust because if this similar situation had occurred in an office or in a higher position, the firm would have responded immediately and most likely dismissed the abuser at the same time. I believe these organizations undervalue women’s work because they regard it as a basic chore for which no degree or credential is required
