[THE HUNTING GROUND screens Thursday March 16th at 7:00 pm at the Nightlight Cinema in Akron.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
Call it urgent victim-culture
programming for Women’s History Month, or call it (as I would prefer) a warning
to anyone seriously thinking of sinking a fortune into a college education,
when diplomas are largely worthless in today’s no-jobs economy. But Kirby Dick’s
incendiary feature THE HUNTING GROUND will stick with you, and prove that
feminism and sexism are no match for the biggest “ism” of all – tuitionism.
The documentary
is a blistering expose about how "sexual violence has always been part of
the college experience," as one interviewee puts it.
But in Great
Recession America, the filmmakers charge, universities are so greed-driven and
desperate as to resist expelling known sex predators - especially if the
violators are student athletes crucial to sports success/largesse, and brothers
in powerful fraternities.
Rape victims,
meanwhile (including male ones), find themselves facing unsympathetic campus
law enforcement and open hostility from peers (particularly when a BMOC
football hero is accused).
