Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape by Kelly Oliver (review)

Kelly Oliver's study of how society views sexual assault takes a two-pronged approach by examining both real life scenarios from college campuses and youth media portrayals of violence against girls and young women in books and films such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight. Throughout Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape, Oliver "consider[s] the contradictory ways in which social media is changing our attitudes toward sexual assault and the reporting of rape" (8). Throughout the book she compares the strong, "hunting girls" of fiction to the hunted girls at universities in order to investigate the ways media might be shaping how campuses discuss and handle sexual assault for real women.

In addressing fiction, Hunting Girls analyzes several protagonists who are generally considered strong female characters. In doing this, Oliver also looks at the way these books and movies continue to perpetuate rape and assault culture, despite their focus on women who "give as good as they get" (27). For instance, in her discussion of the film adaptation of Veronica Roth's young adult novel Divergent, Oliver points out a scene in which protagonist Tris, in a drug induced hallucination showing her worst fears, is attacked by her boyfriend. Here Tris "is afraid that her boyfriend might rape her. This is not a fear of rape in general, or a fear of men, but rather a fear of 'date rape.' . . . [T]he scene makes manifest a deep-seated fear that hits close to home—namely, that like Tris, girls are at risk of being drugged, incapacitated, and raped by those closest to them" (40). Comparing protagonists to the classic tale of Sleeping Beauty and the Greek goddess Artemis, Oliver also includes Katniss from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Disney's Maleficent, Bella from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, and Ana from E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey to show how these "strong" women are still sexual prey to the men around them. Wondering what this depiction does for younger viewers, Oliver contests that these young female protagonists are "[n]ot your grandma's princesses: rather than passively waiting, these strong girls fight and kill like men, and sometimes they ask for kinky sex. Perhaps this signals some kind of progress" (25). However, this empowered portrayal becomes complicated when viewing the violence through the context of "fraternity brothers [who] are marching around Yale openly chanting, 'No means yes, yes means anal,' [meaning] it is crucial to ask whether this type of progress actually benefits girls and women" (25).

In her examination of current events on university campuses, Oliver not only offers statistics that show how much rape and sexual assault affects young women, particularly those in college, but also demonstrates how technology is changing how rape cases are prosecuted. Relying heavily on Kirby Dick's 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, Oliver discusses how universities have cultivated serial rapists, not only because victims are hesitant to report but also because administrations tend to keep cases in-house and do not expel students, particularly athletes, for rape cases. However, where the text truly adds to conversations about rape culture is in its demonstration of how technology is changing the ways sexual assault is documented, and therefore how seriously authorities treat victims' claims. Oliver discusses the prevalence of "creepshots" or voyeuristic photos and videos taken of unaware or unconscious women. Photographing or filming rape and assault has become a new and disturbing norm, and Oliver makes a compelling case for how this trend actually allows for the conviction of more rapists: now that there is hard proof that an assault occurred, cases do not depend on conflicting reports from the people involved. She also discusses consent phone apps, which record videos of partners consenting prior to their sexual encounter. However, these apps seem to protect men from future rape charges more than ensuring consent, as they treat consent as a blanket statement...