Whut.

[Content Note: Rape culture; descriptions of fictional sexual assault depicted in a film.]

Actual Headline: Jennifer Aniston Fends Off Rapist in Gritty New Movie.

How is that a headline? How is that news, even entertainment news? Why is Aniston's rep working with garbage entertainment rag Us Weekly (that collusion is how these stories exist) to try to shore up Aniston's Serious Actress Credentials using "fends of rapist in gritty new movie," as if sexual violence is the hot new subject for totally trenchant actresses to tackle? And, by the way, she doesn't actually get raped like some dummy! She FENDS IT OFF!

(There is also, in my reading, some "rape is totes a compliment" shit going on here, in that we're supposed to understand that, at age 44, Aniston is still sexy and desirable enough to be raped. Because the mainstream film industry generally treats rape as a Very Sexy Thing that happens to Very Sexy Ladies. We'll come back to that.)

Actual Opening Paragraph: "Coming off the box office success of comedy We're the Millers in which she played a stripper-turned-housewife, Jennifer Aniston continues to make riskier choices in Daniel Schechter's Life of Crime—in which she fends off a would-be rapist. The flick will be the Toronto International Film Festival's Closing Night event on Sept. 14."

Playing a woman who "fends off a rapist" is a "risky choice" in the same way that playing a "stripper-turned-housewife" is. I don't even know how to begin to deconstruct everything terrible and wrong about that equivalency.

Actual Next Two Paragraphs:

Based on the novel Switch by the late Elmore Leonard (Justified, Get Shorty), the movie serves as a prequel to Jackie Brown, which was adapted for the screen by Quentin Tarantino in 1997. In Life of Crime, Aniston, 44, plays the wife of a wealthy Detroit developer who is kidnapped for ransom money by two ex-cons Ordell Robbie (Yasiin Bay) and Louis Gara (John Hawkes). Held against her will her character, Mickey Dawson, is forced to stave off harm and mistreatment at the hand of her captors.

In one particularly harrowing scene, she is nearly sexually assaulted by one of the villains, Richard (played by Mark Boone Junior); in the sequence, Junior rips off her bra, although Aniston stays covered up. Full of tension, the attack is unnverving to watch.

He rips off her bra (sexxxxxxy!), but no titties (boooooooo). WHAT IS THIS ARTICLE?

One interesting thing to note is that when I took screencaps of this horrendo nightmare article yesterday, the sentence about how "unnerving" the attack is to watch did not exist. So it read even more as strictly about how titillating the attempted rape scene is where her bra comes off.

Actual Final Paragraph: "According to multiple people close to the production, Aniston was game to shoot the disturbing scene, and make sure that it looked authentic. 'Being the level of actor that she is you would imagine that she would be closed off, but she was actually very giving and brave in the scene,' one production source tells Us Weekly. 'She wanted to get it right.'"

Gee, I can't imagine who the anonymous "production source" is that shared with Us Weekly how the HIGH LEVEL SUPERSTAR Jennifer Aniston was so AMAZINGLY BRAVE in trying to be authentically almost-raped in a sexy way before fending off her would-be rapist and definitely not showing her boobs because that would be distasteful.

Ahem.