ROLL RED ROLL

A scathing examination of American rape culture, promoted and abetted by athletics.

Documentary filmmaker Schwartzman focuses on an incident that occurred in 2012 in Steubenville, a small town in the “football-obsessed state of Ohio.” High school football players threw a party in which some of them repeatedly raped an intoxicated young woman—and, moreover, boasted of the event on social media as it was happening. “As a result of their tweets and texts,” writes the author, “in the aftermath they couldn’t deny what had happened.” That didn’t keep their coaches and other school officials from trying to cover up the rape, which later led to grand jury indictments—but, unsurprisingly, only the mildest of punishments for the rapists. Therein, Schwartzman observes, lies the crux of a toxic culture that explains away crimes against women as the product of youthful exuberance and adrenaline. In the grim industrial town in which the crime occurred, gridiron success affords the possibility of escape via college scholarships, and locals tend to be disinclined to take that possibility away over what is explained away as teenage hijinks. Indeed, in a local bar, Schwartzman overheard “men [who] grumbled with resentment about trumped-up charges and girls who deserved what they got.” Small wonder, given such attitudes, that it’s so difficult to enact effective policies to combat rape culture, including simple sex education. The people Schwartzman encountered in town were less concerned with the fact of gang rape than with “negative attention about the football program.” Furthermore, the women of Steubenville expressed their tacit support by voting for Donald Trump in 2016. “Women’s supposed solidarity around being potential victims of sexual violence was trumped by their allegiance to whiteness, and their own gender bias,” writes Schwartzman. Meanwhile, the perpetrators earned their scholarships, lauded as “good kids, good football players,” and rape culture rolls on.

A maddening, well-documented account of crime without punishment even as violence against women continues unabated.