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Many of the top-grossing feature films spanning from 1915-1927 utilized rape as a device for defining manhood and thereby establishing power relationships. The images of rape in these silent films idealized the power of respectable white men over the men and women of other classes and races and subordinated the women from their own social station. These movies constructed white men as heroes and guardians of morality and civilization, white women as frail but morally superior figures, and African-American and immigrant men and women as uncontrollable sexual deviants who threatened civilization. These films reflected the fears of the white middle class that massive immigration, waves of black migration to the North, and the increasingly public role of women were irrevocably changing American society and threatening the power of the traditional dominant group in the United States: white middle- and upper-class men. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

In the 1910s and 1920s the film industry was fascinated with rape in silent feature films. Out of a sample of fifteen of the most popular feature films from 1915 through 1927, eleven contained single or multiple scenes of attempted rape,1 The attempted rape served as a transitional point for the films and indicated some momentous change in the story line was about to occur. But more importantly rape also acted as a metaphor for larger cultural concerns. Indeed, the action initiated by the sexual violence operated as a symbolic episode that legitimized the power and dominance of white men of the middle and upper classes, who were united through a common culture of respectability that emphasized etiquette and genteel values (Bushman, 1993). Attempted rape scenes in these popular films developed a triangular relationship between the white, manly hero saving his white, female love interest from the sexual violence of the African- American or immigrant rapist. Such plots were based upon a long tradition of melodramatic storytelling with clearly defined notions of good and evil, and many films followed the time-worn traditions of the past. But because films defined white men as good and powerful, white women as objects of sexual violence or adoration, and African- American and immigrant men as violent, all helped to reinforce the cultural perception that white middle-class men were powerful, and that civilization depended on that power. These films defined images of all three types of people by juxtaposing them against the others: logical and powerful white manhood contrasted with weak and passive womanhood and with the destructive sexual energy of the more "primitive" manhood of African- American and southern- and eastern-European men. In short, silent feature films often used rape to preserve and support dominant white manhood, to subordinate women, and to perpetuate negative stereotypes of nonCaucasian males. Further, the metaphorical form these movies used to convey that power - rape - also created a highly charged atmosphere of sexuality. Consequently, even as the films bolstered white male power over women and men of other ethnicities and races as these groups mounted challenges to that power, they also eroded middle-class culture's reticence about sexual self-expression.

For example, the popularity of the film The Sheik (1921) starkly illustrated the American public's fascination with sexual violence during the early decades of the twentieth century. The film's plot revolves entirely around Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan (played by Rudolph Valentino) abducting Diane Mayo (played by Agnes Ayres) and attempting to bend her to his will, Hassan's unconcealed lust clearly reveals his intention to ravish Mayo, and she proves no match for his physical power. The film, however, manages to turn this tale of sexual violence and abduction into a romance by reforming Ahmed before he commits rape and by showing Diane Mayo falling in love with her captor. The Sheik exemplifies a formula of sexual titillation and action that proved to be well received by the public. Young people especially responded favorably to the film. A national survey in 1923 discovered that The Sheik was the third most popular film among high school students (Koszarski, 1990).

Movies proved to be a powerful medium for spreading cultural ideas because of the enormous audiences they attracted. By 1915, feature films had emerged as a major mass leisure activity in the United States, drawing large audiences from all segments of society. Working-class audiences had long been drawn to moving pictures as entertainment, but only with the advent of feature films in the 1910s did the respectable middle and upper classes go to movies in large numbers. Film producers and directors increasingly reflected the values of the respectable classes and built enormous, ornate theaters to attract that particular clientele. Films exploded in popularity (May, 1980; Uricchio & Pearson, 1993). In 1922, forty million people attended movies every week, and by the end of the decade that figure had risen to sixty million. The true significance of these figures is revealed when compared to the fact that the entire population of the United States in 1929 was roughly 120 million people: half the population attended movies every week* Many of these moviegoers were adolescents, and a national study of high school students in 1923 found that boys attended 1.23 and girls 1.05 films each week (Koszarski, 1990; Bowser, 1994). Movies took the United States by storm and soon became one of the most powerful mass media in the nation (Nasaw, 1993).

THE RAPIST

Film's fascination with the topic of rape and sexuality reflected American society's captivation with both subjects. Celluloid images of the savage rapist and uncontrolled sexuality represented the cultural fears of the white middle and upper classes concerning changes in their world in the early twentieth century. White society, both North and South, constructed the idea of the savage rapist in books, magazines, and the popular press beginning in the 1880s, and the idea gained force in the early decades of the twentieth century. The myth of the savage rapist actually reflected cultural concerns over the changing nature of society and the desire of some groups to maintain white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant dominance of the United States.

Progenitors of the savage rapist myth most often targeted African Americans as the bestial rapists. White racist commentators held that black men were both uncivilized and unmanly, and lacked the ability to control their primitive sexual urges. According to racist ideology, the ultimate goal of the primitive black man was to rape a pure, civilized white woman. Without internal self-control and character, African-American men could never be the equals of white men and always had the potential to be rapists. George Frederickson's (1971) The Black Image in the White Mind notes that white southerners began to predict the degeneracy of blacks into a primitive state immediately after the end of slavery in an effort to salvage their racial hierarchy. White southerners held that without the absolute controls of slavery, African Americans would quickly descend into savagery. By constructing black men as savage rapists, the white community justified its campaign of terror and lynchings as a method of social control in the North and South (Hall, 1979; Mumford, 1993). Even northern newspapers that attacked lynching in the South often denigrated the manhood of the African- American victims. This characterization of African Americans, in fact, was consistent with a longstanding discourse in England and the United States on the inferiority of many non-Anglo-Saxon races, but African Americans in particular suffered from their characterization as beasts and savages (Bederman, 1995; Frederickson, 1971).

Several factors added to white fears of African Americans. The movement of roughly half a million African Americans to northern industrial cities from 1910 to 1920 almost certainly heightened racial tensions that strengthened the construction of black men as rapists (Goodwin, 1990; Henri, 1975). Devastating race riots broke out in the late teens, as a horrible white backlash turned violently against the African-American newcomers. In addition, the organization of blacks to fight for their civil rights in groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the flight of young black men to northern cities, and the return of black soldiers from World War I disturbed and frightened all white racists, and particularly a white southern society that based its economic, social, and political structures on the subordination of African Americans (Hawley, 1979).

The construction of the rapist, however, was not limited to African Americans, but also included men from the other inferior "races" in southern and eastern Europe. American racist ideology held that men from these regions in Europe also lacked the ability to exercise self-control, especially sexual, which made them dangerous to society. White middle- and upperclass reformers blamed immigrants from China and southern and eastern Europe for the problems of prostitution and venereal disease, and such immigrants were determined to be behind the scare concerning "white slavery." Many people in the United States believed that a massive system of white slavery existed, in which young women were spirited away against their will and forced to become prostitutes. White slavery reformers claimed that immigrant men would lure young white women into their clutches, often force them to have sex, and then coerce them into a life of prostitution. According to contemporary accounts, the kidnappings occurred across the nation in urban cities and the rural towns. Reformers charged immigrant gangs, tavern owners, and brothel keepers with white slavery (Gilfoyle, 1992). Missing girls and young women throughout the country were commonly explained as the victims of white slavers. In addition, many romance novels, reformers' exposés, and even short films commonly employed images of evil foreign men forcing young white women into prostitution (Connelly, 1980; Cordaseo, 1981; D'Emilio & Freedman, 1984; Odem, 1995; Rosen, 1982),

Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe became easy scapegoats for accusations of involvement in the white-slavery trade in the United States. Native-born Americans reacted nervously and with alarm to the massive immigration of these people into the country. Between 1891 and 1920 over eleven million immigrants from southern and eastern Europe poured into the United States and brought with them Catholicism and Judaism, along with different traditions and different languages. Most of these people came from rural peasant backgrounds, and many found the adjustment to modern industrial urban life difficult. Language barriers and the fact that the immigrants kept wages depressed by filling the lowest paying, unskilled jobs in industry made many of the native-born skilled industrial workers hostile to the newcomers. Anglo-Americans often blamed the new immigrants for strikes and radical labor agitation, and the latter felt the brunt of American distrust during the Red Scare in 1919, as anti-Bolshevik hysteria gripped the nation. The series of bombs sent in the mail to men like Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and the mayor of Seattle sparked a national outcry, and the Palmer Raids rounded up and deported suspected radicals (Hawley, 1979; Leuchtenburg, 1973). Anglo- Americans' fears of immigrant values, ethnocentric devaluation of their culture, and white slavery made southern- and eastern-European men attractive scapegoats for many problems in the United States.

Popular films reflected and capitalized upon these sexual, ethnic, racial, and cultural tensions by depicting evil rapists as African Americans and immigrants of the criminal classes. The rapist in these early films always represents cultures that were considered uncivilized and underdeveloped by native-born Americans of the middle and upper classes, In films in which the male protagonist begins the movie as the rapist, such as we find in The Sheik and the Thief of Bagdad, these men display primitive manhood instead of the civilized, refined manhood of white middle-class men. Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, for example, exudes the primal qualities of primitive Arab manhood. He lives by the rules that he makes. In The Sheik, Arab men treat their women as little more than possessions, and the movie's subtitles make it clear that women are "to obey and serve like chattel slaves." The thief Ahmed from the Thief of Bagdad is also clearly an Arab who delights in his disreputable life. He breaks into the palace with the intent of kidnapping the princess against her will, He spurns the laws of men and God. Before either film's Ahmed rapes his chosen victim, however, the moral power of his female prey transforms his primitive manhood into a masculinity more civilized and respectable.

In more representative cases, rape served as a symbol that demarcated racial, ethnic, and class lines and clearly illustrated the differences between respectable people and working-class, African- American, Asian, and southern- and eastern-European people. The connections between race and class as well as ethnicity and class are extremely complex, but scholar J, William Harris (1995) notes that race, and I would suggest ethnicity as well, is "a matter of culture; it is part of a system of meanings" (pp. 388-390), Film's depictions of rapists as African Americans, southern or eastern Europeans, or as men from the criminal classes were part of cultural attempts by the middle and upper classes to delineate and separate those people from themselves metaphorically. Rapists were uncivilized men who lacked the ability to control their sexual desires. Unlike the rapist, respectable men possessed self-control and inner character that provided them with moral guidance.

The character Jehan in The Hunchback of Notre Dame appears to be an exception, being the brother of the Dom Claudio, archdeacon of Notre Dame, Yet Jehan's lack of a productive role in society, his close ties to Clopin (king of Paris's underworld of thieves, beggars, and prostitutes), his stabbing of Phoebus, and his attempted rape of the beautiful Esmeralda clearly illustrate his criminal nature. Jehan commits all of his acts of evil because he cannot control his lust for Esmeralda.

The brutal German sergeant who tries to rape Marie in Hearts of the World is portrayed as barbaric and uncivilized, He is part of the bloody Hun who are trying to destroy civilization in their mad drive for power. These Germans could not control their lust for power or sex, and their willingness to destroy civilization to achieve their conquest clearly made them barbaric and primitive. Two rapists in The Orphans of the Storm, which is set just prior to the French Revolution, are from parasitic and disruptive social classes. The Marquis de Praille kidnaps Henrietta, played by Lillian Gish, for a dissolute orgy. The Marquis represents the worst of the French aristocracy, who are leftovers from the Middle Ages and serve no function in modern society. Their existence no longer has any purpose other than to drain society of its resources, Jacques Frochard represents the other end of the social scale, being a thief and beggar. Both rapists clearly represent classes of people who challenge the power of the productive and respectable middle and upper classes who sought to form stable legal and social institutions for France, exemplified best in this film by the lawyer Danton.

The shirtless, grimacing pirates in The Black Pirate, who are clearly primitive and uncivilized men, provide yet another example. They look nothing like the dashing, well-groomed, and smiling hero of the film, Douglas Fairbanks. In other films, the names of the characters betray their ethnic origins and tag them as potential rapists. For example, Sandoni, the ItalianAmerican strongman in The Kid Brother, tries to rape Mary Powers. One of Birth of A Nation's rapists is the mulatto politician Silas Lynch, who is characterized as part of the race blamed for trying to destroy civilization in the South after the Civil War. That all rapists in these popular films are African Americans, immigrants, or clearly habitual criminals from the lower classes indicates a relatively consistent effort to characterize the men of these groups as rapists who are dangerous and out of control.

THE VICTIM

Attempted rape scenes in silent films were not only targeted to control African-American and immigrant men, but women as well. The questions of women's power, independence, and especially sexuality had become divisive topics during this period. Fears of rampant sexuality were stirred by many challenges to respectable sexual codes in the early decades of the twentieth century, A new youth culture based in schools combined with the new cornmodi fi ed, sexualized images in advertising, literature, and film to encourage young men and women to push the boundaries of sexual expression in relatively unsupervised settings. Parents complained about the amount of sexual imagery in magazines and films and the sexual maturity of their children (Lynd & Lynd, 1929). Cultural images such as the New Woman also pushed against the boundaries of acceptable behavior by portraying women as highly sexual beings. Added to the anxieties about sexuality were the new freedoms that young women of all classes gained from the employment opportunities offered by industrial capitalism after the turn of the century. As never before, women had the money and freedom from authority to do as they pleased (Bailey, 1989; Banner, 1984; May, 1980; Nasaw, 1993; Rothman, 1984; White, 1993). The ability of relatively independent women to explore their sexuality in commercialized, leisure activities - dance halls, movies, and amusement parks - worried many people in the middle and working classes. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, progressive reformers instituted laws to control the sexual behavior of working-class girls and young women, and when older forms of coercion broke down, government agents and workingclass parents used the law to enforce sexual standards. Reformers initiated campaigns to eliminate prostitution and to raise the age of consent for sexual activity (D'Emilio & Freedman, 1984; Odem, 1995; Peiss, 1983). In addition, the emergent eugenics movement warned that promiscuous women possessed defective genes and that they would pollute the healthy gene pool of the United States (Haller, 1963; Kevles, 1985; Pickens, 1968).

All of this very public emphasis on sexuality challenged middle-class culture's attempt to suppress and hide sexuality, especially among young people. According to many commentators, sexual promiscuity imperiled society by spreading disease and vice and by causing racial declension. Middle-class culture could not justify its contentions that women were more moral than men if women experimented with premarital sex. Ironically, films echoed societal concerns over uncontrolled sexuality by directing the heroine's sexuality into a monogamous relationship and by negatively portraying "loose" women.

These larger cultural concerns of the middle and upper classes over women's sexuality and independence found their way into silent feature films and manifested themselves in the attempted rape scenes. Alongside demonstrating the need to subordinate African-American and immigrant men, the attempted rape scenes served as metaphors that sought to control women's independence. Silent films depicted women as the least active member of the triumvirate in attempted rape scenes, and the films often constructed white women as the objects of men. Films generally portrayed women as weak and passive victims, and rape was the symbolic act that represented their powerlessness. In each of eleven popular films, women were unable to defend themselves against the brutal power of the male rapist.

An example of this is seen in the character Diane Mayo in The Sheik, who appears to be the epitome of the New Woman of the 1920s - strong, independent, and capable of taking care of herself. Yet Mayo is as much at the mercy of men as any other woman. When she leaves on an African safari without any other white Americans in her party, Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan immediately kidnaps her. Once outside the institutions and moral structures of "civilized" society, Mayo finds that she is totally at the whim of Hassan because of his greater physical power. It is significant that Ahmed waits to attack until Mayo's brother leaves the safari. With his troops Ahmed could have taken her at any time, but he chooses to wait until her white, manly protector leaves the band before he moves. At first Mayo resists and shows she is determined to fight the Sheik after her capture. When the Sheik pulls her onto his horse, she doubles up her fist as if to strike him, but Ahmed Ben Hassan's angry words intimidate her. After only a week in the Sheik's oasis home, she is "sullenly obedient." The Sheik starkly illustrates that women's independence is a civilized luxury and easily lost when women are outside the boundaries of civilization and without respectable white men to serve them as protectors. Women might be able to live independently in a civilized nation with its laws and institutions designed to protect individual liberty, but in the uncivilized world where the strong rule, women are at the mercy of primitive men's desires.

Most of the films containing potential rape scenes, however, do not make any pretense that the women are capable of defending themselves against the rapist under any circumstances. Marie Stephenson, played by Lillian Gi sh in Hearts of the World, for example, is saved from being raped by a brutal German sergeant only because he is called to duty. Most of the films demonstrate that only the aid of other men can save women from a rapist's sexual violence. For instance, manly protectors save the sisters Henrietta and Louise, played by Lillian and Dorothy Gish, respectively, from the embrace of savage rapists in the Orphans of the Storm, Duke Arnoldo, played by Douglas Fairbanks, saves Princess Isobel from being raped by pirates in the swashbuckling film The Black Pirate. In addition, a noble hero saves a woman from a rapist in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the Thief of Bagdad. The rape plot contrivance is so common that even Harold Lloyd's comedy The Kid Brother has Lloyd's hapless character save Mary Powers, played by Jobyna Ralston, from the attentions of a rapist. In all of these films, the only woman who prevents her* self from being raped is Flora Cameron in Birth of A Nation, but she does so by hurling herself off a cliff to her death! These movies dramatize women as incapable of physically harming a man. These film images of women deliver no knee to the groin or finger to the eye of their assailants. Indeed, all attempts at struggle are immediately overwhelmed by men's greater physicality. These films depict women as passive victims in the drama. Indeed, women are almost reduced to the realm of the inanimate, and they appear to be little more than objects to be won or lost by men (Hall, 1979; Painter, 1988).

The only faculty these celluloid women possess that helps them alter the events around them is the passive ability to change the character of men through their innate goodness and moral superiority. Like white supremacists such as Thomas Dixon, Tom Watson, and Benjamin Tillman, these popular films often conflated the refinement and morality of white womanhood with civilization (Painter, 1988), The major female characters often appear as angelic beauties with innate moral strength. Their moral superiority is best demonstrated not through any direct action they take, but through their power to transform men from immorality to respectability. Several of the movies - The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Thief of Bagdad, Orphans of the Storm, The Kid Brother, and The Sheik - used the plot or subplot of a woman redeeming a man. The Sheik and The Thief of Bagdad, for instance, illustrated how pure, white women could transform rapists into respectable men who embodied middle-class values.

In The Sheik, we see how Ahmed Ben Hassan steals Diane Mayo to be his concubine, but he can never bring himself to rape her. Mayo's innate goodness and moral superiority eventually transform Ahmed. In the end, as Ahmed awakens after suffering a horrible wound, he declares, "Diana, my beloved! The darkness has passed and now the sunshine." The line relates not only to Ahmed's recovery from his injury, but also to his redemption from evil to middle-class morality.

Similarly, the Thief of Bagdad illustrates a woman's moral powers. The despicable thief and rogue Ahmed, played by Douglas Fairbanks, sets out to steal the beautiful princess of Bagdad (I maintain their spelling for continuity). Ahmed is a man who spurns religion and society, stealing whatever he fancies. When he tries to steal the princess, however, her beauty and goodness overwhelm him. Ahmed declares his love to the princess: "When I held you in my arms-the very world did change. The evil in me died."

Women could also engender courage and self-confidence in men through their moral suasion, In The Orphans of the Storm and The Kid Brother, women change men from being insecure and weak to confident and strong. Unlike Sheik Ahmed and Ahmed the thief, Pierre in The Orphans of the Storm and Harold in The Kid Brother do not begin the movies with stalwart manly characteristics of courage and confidence. Pierre Frochard's character in The Orphans of the Storm lives under the domination of his mother and brother in Paris just prior to the French Revolution, surviving by begging and stealing. It is the moral power and fragile beauty of the blind Louise, played by Dorothy Gish, that changes Pierre. Only when his evil brother Jacques threatens to rape Louise are Pierre's latent courage and nobility awakened by the plight and moral strength of the woman. The two brothers draw knives, and Pierre kills Jacques, reuniting Louise with her sister.

Mary Powers has the same transformative effect on Harold Hickory in The Kid Brother. Mary instills confidence in Harold, and he gains manly bravery that he had never before possessed. Women's superior morality could save men from immorality and cowardice. It was precisely this identification of pure white womanhood with a powerful morality that made them indispensable to society. White women were the backbone of civilization, for it was their refined values that created and sustained morality in men. White womanhood and civilization were inseparable. The role of pure moral guardian, however, denied women the power to influence events in their lives directly and relegated them to a passive role in which their only significant ability was to civilize men indirectly. In these films only the passive, morally superior women gain the protection of manly guardians (Hall, 1979).

SEXUALITY

The attempted rape scenes in these silent films also mirrored American society's growing concern and obsession with sexuality. These contradictory strains appeared full-force in silent films. Films reflected the concerns of many older Americans that public images of sexuality and loosening of moral standards regarding female sexual practices were becoming common. Unlike nineteenth-century representations of white women, silent feature films openly portrayed the sexuality of the female protagonists, and the attempted rape focused attention upon the woman as an object of intense sexual desire, yet her sexuality was passive. It was the man who initiated sexual contact. The universal sign of sexuality in silent films was the clinch between the woman and man, a sensual embrace. Douglas Fairbanks' films possess some of the best examples of the clinch. In the parting scene of the Thief of Bagdad, the princess of Bagdad (Julianne Johnston) and Ahmed (Fairbanks) embrace and kiss as they sail into the night sky on a flying carpet, toward a happy ending that promises sexual fulfillment. The Black Pirate ends as Duke Amoldo (Fairbanks) proposes to the beautiful Princess Isobel (Billie Dove) and they kiss passionately. In each case the man initiates the sexual encounter, and the danger of unbridled sexuality is constrained by a relationship that promises marriage - most clearly demonstrated by Fairbanks' proposal in The Black Pirate, The female protagonists do openly express some sexuality and eagerly participate in the clinch, but women's sexuality is largely contained and channeled into safe and socially acceptable monogamous relationships. The films attempted rape scenes focus sexual attention upon the women protagonists but also attempt to reconcile them with middle-class mores by making them passive and subordinate to men. Female sexuality is controlled.

A transitional figure, somewhere between the subordinate sexuality of the heroine and the wanton sexuality of clearly immoral women, is represented by "The Little Disturber" in D. W. Griffith's Hearts of the World. Dorothy Gish plays a confident, jaunty bohemian musician whom Griffith labels simply as "The Little Disturber." As her title indicates, the character upsets standards of middle-class behavior, but she is not really a serious threat to them. When she meets Douglas, the male lead, she looks him over in a way that men usually look at women. She is aggressive and bold, smiling slyly and winking at the man she wants. Though the audience may like her carefree attitude, all see that she loses her fight for Douglas's affection to the demure Marie, played by her sister Lillian Gish. Ultimately, the audience sees that "The Little Disturber" is not too dangerous because she does control her sexual desires and conforms to societal expectations through her marriage to Monsieur Cuckoo. It was perhaps acceptable to bend the limits of female sexual reticence, but if a woman did so she risked losing the man she desired to a more demure woman.

If women are too aggressive in their sexuality in the films they cross an invisible line that separates "good" women from "bad" women, and the films portray them as dangerous. It is not an accident that the women who openly court sex are from the same races, ethnicities, and classes as the male rapists. Silent films' representations of African- American and immigrant men and women as dangerous and uncontrollable played to the social fears of the white middle classes in the 1910s and 1920s. Social upheavals like massive immigration, race and labor riots, and the Red Scare all heightened fears of the "dangerous classes" and of cultural changes that seemed to be threatening the social order. For example, in another scene from Hearts of the World, women "entertain" German officers with sensual dancing and erotic embraces during the First World War, The active sexuality of these women as well as their cavorting with the "barbaric" Germans leave little doubt that they are lascivious and wicked. In a like manner, The Orphans of the Storm, set in the era of the French Revolution, shows an orgy at an aristocrat's manor. The camera pans past men and women embracing and kissing erotically to a fountain running with wine and filled with scantily clad women cavorting in the liquid. One of the women rises to reveal her naked breast. Films and popular writing normally defined such ultra-sexual, depraved women as African Americans, immigrants, or simply from the lower classes, and contrasted them to the restrained, moral white women of the middle and upper classes. Orphans of the Storm is unusual because it is set outside of the United States and levels its condemnation at a corrupt and obsolete European aristocracy.

A more typical film is Birth of A Nation, another Griffith movie, which clearly connects hypersexuality with African-American women, Lydia, the mulatto housekeeper of Congressman Austin Stoneman, cannot control her emotions when asked to retrieve a hat for a visitor to the Stoneman house. When the man leaves, she spits after him, falls to the ground, and writhes passionately. With little self-control, Lydia rips open her dress revealing her undergarments and rubs her chest suggestively. Silent films depict women who cannot control themselves and who openly and aggressively seek sexual encounters as being outside of the bounds of white womanhood. Not even the independent New Woman, Diane Mayo in The Sheik, aggressively seeks a sexual liaison. Western European and American cultures both possessed long traditions that maintained that lower-class white women and women of color were ultrasexual· Historian Pamela Scully (1995), for example, has demonstrated that black African women had a difficult time getting a rape conviction against white or black men in the latter half of the nineteenth century in South Africa because men of both races held that black women always were willing to engage in sexual intercourse. These popular films reinforced the notion that women of "less civilized" races could not be raped because of their highly energized sexual nature. Only pure, white women could be the object of rape. The cultural construction of the sexually restrained, respectable white woman and the promiscuous African, Asian, and immigrant woman each relied upon the other for definition (Haag, 1993; Hall, 1983; Painter, 1988).

Ironically, the sexual desires of middle-class men and women and the growing emphasis on female sexuality were projected onto African-American and immigrant men and women in silent movies and served to help normalize greater sexual expression and to titillate the audience. Men from the primitive races were rapists, and the women of these groups were little more than harlots. And yet it was precisely these film images that really pushed the boundaries of sexual expression. Women who engaged in lewd sexual encounters and projected images of raw sensuality and partial nudity could excite audiences and serve prurient tastes. Even as images of such women half naked excited audiences, so too did the direct and unconcealed lust of the rapist. While the movie images of the rapist are normally constructed to be obviously abhorrent to the audience, they also offer onlookers the same kinds of sexual titillation as do the images of immoral women. The manly hero ultimately defeats the rapist, and his savage, uncontrolled sexual desires are chastened so that respectable values of propriety and self-control are victorious. Good defeats evil. But along the way the audience is given the opportunity to see the rapists openly lust after the beautiful women who are their victims. The Sheik illustrates how just the expressions of the characters could signal sexual intent. The audience plays the part of the voyeur when Rudolph Valentino's character, Ahmed Ben Hassan, openly admires the sexual attributes of the very attractive Agnes Ayres, who played Diane Mayo. The gaze of this film is decidedly masculine, as the audience is encouraged to look along with Valentino at the sexual characteristics of Ayres (Dixon, 1995). The extreme close-ups of Valentino's face allow the audience clearly to see his arousal, and, in case these are not forthright enough, director George Melford provides subtitles. The first night of Mayo's kidnapping, Hassan hauls the woman into his tent. She asks what he wants of her, and he replies, "Are you not woman enough to know?" After all his posturing, however, Ahmed's latent Anglo-Saxon manhood, stirred by Mayo's redemptive white womanhood, does not allow him to rape her.

Films with scenes that clearly show that rape will occur if not stopped offer even more explicit images of sexuality. An examination of The Orphans of the Storm, again from the perspective of the male rapists, the lecherous Marquis de Praille and his peers, yields a similar perspective of unrestrained sexuality. The entire scene gives the audience a prurient, maleoriented gaze. Men and women are at the orgy, embracing erotically and kissing. When Henrietta awakens at the party-she had been drugged and kidnapped-she is desperate to leave and find her blind sister. The Marquis laughs and tries to kiss her. She breaks free and runs to another man, who pulls her body to his own and tries to kiss her. All the men in the group touch and embrace her, tossing her from man to man. Though the scene goes no further because Chevalier saves Henrietta, the audience has already been treated to openly erotic fantasies of dissolute orgies and the sexual domination of a woman. Middle-class values demand that evil be punished in the end, and the films upholds these mores. But by using such openly sensual images, the films helped to mainstream public expressions of sexuality and ultimately helped to erode the respectable values they overtly supported. At the same time, images that dramatized many people not of the white middle classes as rapists and trollops served to demarcate racial, ethnic, and class lines between the white middle classes and everyone else.

Attempted rape scenes in feature films also served in part as metaphors that illustrated that the disruptive social forces that were extending sexual boundaries could be contained if white women remained dependent and passive. The threat of rape constrained women's activities and insured their obedience to men. When women took initiative and demonstrated independence, they became targets for the rapist. William Sedgwick, an epidemiologist who chaired the Massachusetts Institute of Technology department of biology and public health, argued in a New York Times article that advanced civilization and evolution had produced biological differences in men and women. Men revered women for their position in the family and moral strength. But if women continued to enter into politics and the workforce, demanding the right to act as men, they would destroy that reverence. Men then would revert back to the primal savage rapist, and women would be at the mercy of the brutal physical power of men. Women should beware, Sedgwick warned, if they continued to seek economic, social, and political equality with men, for they would lose their protection under the respectable code of chivalry. The New York Times congratulated Sedgwick on his direct speech (Bederman, 1995). Only subordinate women would have the protection of white men, because only they could retain their moral superiority. As the guardians of morality, these women could continue to guarantee the virtue of the dominant middle-class society. The attempted rapes in the films demonstrated that the fears of moral decline could be halted if white women maintained limits to their social, political, and economic advancement. The myth of the rapist, then, encouraged white women to remain in their traditional roles as mother and wife and not to move out into the public arena. Outside of the safe haven of the home and unprotected by their husbands or fathers, women alone in the public world were vulnerable to the attacks of the rapist.

THE HERO

White men of the middle and upper classes appeared in popular films as the powerful guardians of women and civilization. Anglo-American men were the heroes. They were the subjects, imbued with the ability to affect events and to transcend even the most impossible situations. A coalition of middleand upper-class men had dominated the economics, politics, and culture of the United States since the early nineteenth century, and cultural producers of these groups took credit for creating America's social, legal, political, and cultural institutions. Attempted rapes by more primitive men, therefore, provided the white heroes with the opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of their manhood and their culture (Hall, 1983).

The attempted rape created a contest between the civilized Anglo-American man and the uncivilized, primitive rapist. On the most basic level, the conflict was over which male would win sexual rights to the woman. If the primitive man won the battle, he would savagely rape the woman, as his bestial character demanded. The victory of the white, Anglo-American male would insure his sexual dominance, and his civilized values dictated that the white woman should have the opportunity to choose her mate. He would still be the dominant partner, but only if she chose him. In the films, however, the woman always chooses the Anglo-American hero, whose virility and toughness she admires. On a deeper level, the manly white hero saving the woman actually stands as a metaphor for Anglo-Americans maintaining civilization and middle-class culture: by sustaining their power and control in this arena, they by implication do so in all others as well. The protagonist's victory insures his claim over the woman and his claim for social power.

The differences between the uncontrolled sexuality of the rapist and the control and caring of the white guardian are best exemplified by the protagonists who shift from rapist to protector. One of the best examples is The Sheik, in which Ahmed Ben Hassan cannot bring himself to rape Diane Mayo. In Edith Hull's novel (1921), upon which the film is based, the sheik repeatedly rapes Mayo and only later does she fall in love with him. The movie radically alters the book's message. Though Ahmed clearly intends to ravish Mayo, when he has a chance to rape her on that first night, he does not do so, He approaches her with a lusty look of excitement and sexual expectation, but when he sees Mayo weeping, his expression changes. Chagrin and sadness replace his excitement, and he turns and leaves the tent. Ahmed cannot bring himself to ravish Mayo, and eventually his AngloSaxon manhood-he is not ethnically Arab after all-is awakened by his love for the woman. But before he can let her go, the Arab bandit chieftain Omair abducts her. By rescuing Mayo from Omair just as the bandit attempts to rape her, Ahmed comes full circle from savage rapist to hero. In the end his lust has been transformed into love and promises a controlled monogamous relationship.

Ahmed the thief in Thief of Bagdad is transformed in a similar way. He begins the film as the prospective rapist but cannot go through with the act because the love of the princess redeems him. Ultimately, he too comes full circle when he saves the princess from the rapist Mongol prince, As in The Sheik, this Ahmed expresses his love not through the lusty expressions he uses early in the films, but instead through a caring, romantic, loving embrace. In both cases the rapist rejects primitive manhood in favor of white, civilized, middle-class manhood.

Some of the movies markedly illustrated that the primitive manhood of the rapist posed a dire threat to civilization, D. W, Griffith's Birth of a Nation is based on the pretext that African Americans had controlled the South during Reconstruction with the aid of northern radical Republicans and that they had threatened to destroy the civilization of that region* The film portrays black soldiers as cowards, black politicians as ignorant lazy drunkards, and black men in general as rapists. Indeed, the worst savage rapist in the film is Gus, a black Union soldier. The renegade chases down the young, white southern girl, Flora Cameron. Instead of giving herself up to his savage embrace, young Flora leaps from a cliff to her death.

It is the gallant, manly protectors who play the central role in the film, however, for it is their physical power that preserves civilization. Though too late to save young Flora, her brother, Ben Cameron, gathers the members of the Ku Klux Klan to search for Gus. Without their regalia they scour the town for the renegade. The white, brawny blacksmith fearlessly enters the town's black saloon where Gus hides. Several black men in the bar attack the blacksmith. Using his powerful muscles honed at the smithy, the blacksmith defeats every black man in the bar with his fists. After the blacksmith throws the last man out of the bar, the cowardly Gus rises from his hiding spot and shoots him in the back. The film obviously suggests that black men could not stand against the physical power of the superior white man without resorting to treachery. That night, in full regalia, the Klan executes Gus. Ben Cameron prepares the Klan for war:

Brethren, this flag bears the red stain of the life of a Southern woman, a priceless sacrifice on the altar of an outraged civilization.

Here I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men, the fiery crosses of old Scotland's hills,,,. I quench its flames in the sweetest blood that ever stained the sands of Time!

In a final climactic battle, the Ku Klux Klan defeats the black troops and saves southern womanhood and civilization from the barbarous, primitive African Americans. Rape and the threat to civilization justify the use of physical violence against black savage rapists, and by winning the white men prove their superiority and justify their right to rule.

The confrontation between the hero and the savage rapist not only demonstrated the power of white middle-class society, but also served to instill bravery in and teach fighting ability to white men. Harold Lloyd's popular comedy The Kid Brother exemplifies how violent confrontation with the forces of evil, embodied by the Italian Sandoni, could create manliness. The film is basically a story about a young man proving his manhood to his father, his girlfriend, and himself. Harold Hickory (Lloyd) is a small, bookish-looking man, with horn-rimmed glasses. On the family ranch he does all of the "feminine" chores such as washing the clothes, cooking, and cleaning. The hapless Harold is scared of his brothers and a young bully who lives next door. Only the confidence Mary Powers has in Harold transforms him from a coward into a man. Harold first meets Mary when Sandoni, the strongman, is chasing the beautiful young woman through the woods in an attempt to ravish her. By brandishing a stick with a coiled snake on the end, Harold manages to scare the big man away. But it is not until Sandoni and a confederate steal the town's money that Harold really proves his manhood. Despite being warned not to interfere by his father, who is blamed for the loss of the money, Harold serendipitously finds the strong man. The two finish their confrontation that began at the attempted rape, Harold ultimately wins by pushing the big man into a pool of water and beating him senseless. Violent confrontation with the rapist and victory earn Harold his status as a man.

The same pattern holds true for Pierre Frochard in The Orphans of the Storm. Though a minor character, Pierre has his manhood redeemed when he finally confronts his evil brother Jacques, who is attempting to rape the blind Louise. Similarly, Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame redeems himself and proves his inner nobility despite his grotesque body by killing the evil Jehan as he attempts to rape Esmeralda, Even as Jehan fatally stabs Quasimodo, the hunchback heaves him from the battlements of Notre Dame to his death. By fighting and defeating the rapists, Pierre and Quasimodo (posthumously) lay claim to manliness and middle-class respectability.

CONCLUSION

The threats that independent women, uncontrolled sexuality, and primitive manhood posed to white, middle- and upper-class men could all be controlled metaphorically through films. Rape served to define all three actors. By striving to rape, rapists showed they were disruptive and destructive agents. By being the potential victims of rape, women demonstrated that they should not stray too far from the subordinate roles that the hegemonic society demanded, or they would court danger. By defeating the rapist and saving the woman, the white hero legitimized his power. The popular films that showed attempted rape were in fact vicarious stories that reassured white middle- and upper-class men that their power was, and deserved to remain, intact. Men were still needed to save women and the better orders from the agents of chaos. The films offered straightforward victories for the good guys, who succeeded in retaining their power and saving the day because of their own individual merits and strengths. In the twentieth-century world in which corporate bureaucracies eroded the autonomy of men, these melodramatic films provided vicarious victories for men of the middle classes. And though these films offered vicarious experiences, they also displayed the values of aggression, violence, and a desire for power as ideals to white men. Silent feature films often taught that physical violence and toughness guaranteed white men power and assured them that women desired to be dominated.

Current scholarship on rape emphasizes that the act is about power - a man's ability to force another person through intimidation or violence to engage in sexual behavior (Grauerholz & Koralewski, 1991; Scully, 1990). Cultural studies of rape in literature emphasize the presence of rape throughout Western literature, from classical mythology through modern texts, and stress how rape has been used metaphorically to strengthen male patriarchy (Wall, 1988; Zipes, 1993). In the modern era popular media of all kinds create what Diane Herman has called our "rape culture," in which normative sexual relations between men and women are often based upon a rape model. And these films did, as Herman argues, dramatize the idea that men are sexually aggressive and women sexually passive (Herman, 1984).

Silent films added to an established discourse by constructing rape as a vehicle for demonstrating the legitimacy of the power of white men of the middle and upper classes. Popular feature films, which actively sought middle-class audiences, reflected cultural tension in the United States when they emphasized the power of white manhood even as other groups challenged the power of elite white men in new ways. Film offered vicarious attempted rape scenes as a way of dealing with the challenges that immigrant and African- American men and all women posed to white manhood. In part, these films used straightforward attitudes that regarded rape as horrific and dangerous. By preventing the rape, defeating the rapist, and subordinating women, elite white men metaphorically maintained their power over society. In film at least, white womanhood, so essential to civilization, was controlled, and the new womanhood, exemplified by Diane Mayo in The Sheik, was properly tamed. In a like manner, the threats of the radical foreign men and African-American men were beaten down by force and properly dominated to ensure a safe, orderly society. The specter of rape in film warned of the dangers tearing at the fabric of American society and was a cultural manifestation of the uncertainty confronting white men of the middle and upper classes.

Ultimately, the attempted rape scenes made dangerous connections between manhood, violence, and sexuality that would bear particularly ugly fruit by the 1930s. Violence became the key to the action in many films, first the violence of the rapist trying to ravish the woman, and then the violence between the men as they fought over the woman. Violence and sexuality fed off one another in a strange symbiosis. The attempted rape and the violent dominance of one male over another heightened the excitement and sexual tension of the bizarre mating ritual. In addition, a new transitional style of hero emerged in film that challenged the simple categorization of rapists as evil criminals, immigrants, or African Americans. Rudolph Valentino's roles best exemplified these new characters, which were "stock villains or seducers" transformed into "attractive figures of raw sexual energy ..." (Koszarski, 1990, pp. 299-300). The Sheik took the woman he wanted and physically dominated her in the beginning of the film. Despite The Sheik's softening of Ahmed Ben Hassan's character by not having him openly rape Diane Mayo as did the novel, he still manhandled Mayo until the very end of the film. The movie deals with the apparent paradox of an Anglo rapist by reforming Hassan, but it introduces a disturbing anti-hero who exudes machismo and treats women roughly. It is a small jump for Hollywood from Valentino's character in the 1920s to the tough guy actors of the 1930s who routinely "roughed-up" their women. The fact that films often portrayed women as sexual objects certainly promoted the increasing violence directed toward women. James Cagney shoving a grapefruit into Mae Clark's face in Public Enemy illustrated increasingly common treatment of women in the first generation of "talkies." One film observer noted in 1939 that "today, a star scarcely qualifies for the higher spheres unless she has been slugged by her leading man, rolled on the floor, kicked downstairs, or cracked over the head with a frying pan, dumped into a pond, or butted by a goat" (Thorp, 1939, p, 76), These images of the tough guy helped to normalize aggressive sexuality and violence between men and women (Haskell, 1973; May, 1980; Mellen, 1977; Sklar, 1992), Ironically, the heightened emphasis on sexuality in the twentieth century freed woman from some nineteenth-century sexual roles, but recast her into new plots that reinforced the culture of rape in the United States.