Fear On and Off Screen: Constructing Women’s Fear of the Urban Night in Film

Rick Springfield opens his song “Don’t Talk to Strangers” with these lines that echo a very common warning for women:

When you were just a young girl and still in school / How come you never learned the golden rule / Don’t talk to strange men, don’t be a fool.

From childhood through adulthood, my parents have ingrained in me not to talk to strangers, not to go out at night alone, and to avoid certain places that are considered dangerous. I have absorbed these warnings and lived my life, especially at night, according to these principles.

In this essay, I argue that the fear of sexual violence and, in general, vulnerability in urban spaces at night is internalized by most women throughout their lives and reinforced by gender norms that are represented in the media that we consume. The scene of a woman in an extremely dark, isolated alley is a familiar image to the average viewer. Scenes that portray women in such settings usually imply that she will be the victim of some sort of harassment, particularly of a sexual nature. This is conveyed through specific aesthetic choices and language, as I will demonstrate through close analysis of sequences from Spider-Man (2002), V for Vendetta (2005), Twilight (2008) and Irréversible (2002).¹Sam Raimi, Spider-Man (Sony Pictures, 2002); James McTeigue, V for Vendetta (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2005); Catherine Hardwicke, Twilight (Summit Entertainment, 2008); Gaspar Noè, Irréversible (StudioCanal, 2005). These films encompass various genres ranging from action and thriller to fantasy and romance, and target a wide spectrum of audiences. V for Vendetta and Spider-Man are action films, a typically male-oriented genre that often depicts decisive action-making and feats of strength, and which is associated with the public sphere. In contrast, Twilight is a romantic fantasy, a genre that favors emotions and the private sphere, and which is usually aimed at female audiences.²Christine Gledhill, “Genre and Gender: The Case of Soap Opera,” in Representation, ed. Stuart Hall (Sage, 2013), 337–84. Irréversible is harder to categorize within a single genre: it is an experimental crime thriller in which a controversial rape scene drives the narrative, and it is not clearly targeted to a specific gender. Despite being very different in terms of plot, genre and target audience, these films share scenes of women in dark urban settings who are subject to attacks from strangers. As I’ll show, they deploy similar aesthetic choices that contribute to an imaginary of apprehension and fear of sexual assault for women inhabiting the urban night.

The urban night and gender-based violence: perception vs. data

The night plays a significant role in shaping women’s perception of and interactions with the city, which are often infused with a complex interplay of fear and resilience. As a white woman living in Rome, I usually find myself avoiding places such as train stations, dark streets and isolated areas, especially when I am alone at night. I often avoid going out when I need to return home by myself and, if I do, I live that experience with fear. My perception of the urban night is a shared feeling that seems to be peculiarly female and culturally constructed, as I show throughout this essay. Women generally feel unsafe in isolated and dark spaces because those spaces are most likely to be associated with violent attacks from strangers.³Chiara Vitrano, Monica Ferrario, and Matteo Colleoni, “Rischi di segregazione temporale nella città poliritmica: il caso della mobilità notturna delle donne tra nuove esigenze di spostamento e percezione della sicurezza,” Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana Serie 14, 1, no. 2 (2018): 139-150. doi: 10.13128/bsgi.v1i2.531 Public spaces at night are often perceived as a hostile environment where sexual violence is always around the corner. A large body of research suggests that women fear crime more than men. Despite this perception, men statistically face more violent offences and crimes from both strangers and acquaintances, while women are more often victims of violence and sexual assault by partners or ex-partners.⁴Jodi Lane, Angela R. Gover, and Sara Dahod, “Fear of Violent Crime Among Men and Women on Campus: The Impact of Perceived Risk and Fear of Sexual Assault,” Violence and Victims 24, no. 2 (April 2009): 172–92, https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.24.2.172. A study conducted in Spain suggests that women’s fear is associated with sexual assault while men’s fear is mainly associated with robbery and fights. For some women, fear is a determining factor behind their limited experience of the urban night.⁵María Ángeles García-Carpintero et al., “‘Fear of Walking Home Alone’: Urban Spaces of Fear in Youth Nightlife,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 29, no. 1 (February 2022): 39–53, https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506820944424.

As a study conducted in Milan suggests, women generally feel unsafe during the night when alone in the city. The factors that influence their perception are illumination, the presence of people on public transport and bus stops, the presence of bars, the presence of police officers, and the use of video surveillance. Fifty percent of the women interviewed reported that they had given up going out at night at least once when unaccompanied. In addition, 53 percent of respondents said they had felt they were being followed during an evening or nighttime commute, and 48 percent had avoided modes of travel that were considered dangerous.⁶Vitrano, Ferrario and Colleoni, “Rischi di segregazione,” 139-150. According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), the most severe forms of violence against women are perpetrated by partners, relatives or friends. Rape was committed in 62.7 percent of cases by partners, 3.6 percent by relatives, and 9.4 perecent by friends. Physical violence (such as slapping, kicking, punching, and biting) is also mostly the work of partners or ex-partners.⁷ISTAT. “Il numero delle vittime e le forme di violenza,” ISTAT, 2014,  https://www.istat.it/it/violenza-sulle-donne/il-fenomeno/violenza-dentro-e-fuori-la-famiglia/numero-delle-vittime-e-forme-di-violenza.; “Global Database on Violence against Women,” UN Women, accessed September 9, 2024, https://data.unwomen.org/global-database-on-violence-against-women. On a global scale, the UN Women’s global database on violence against women and girls has collected relevant data across 161 countries. The data show that almost one in three women (an estimated 736 million women) have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their life, often at the hands of a current or former partner.⁸“Global Database on Violence against Women,” UN Women, accessed September 9, 2024, https://data.unwomen.org/global-database-on-violence-against-women. Despite the apparent mismatch between data and perception, an analysis of socialization, power, heteropatriarchy, and trauma reveals that, as feminist geographer Leslie Kern puts it,“the paradox of women’s fear [is] only paradoxical when viewed through a lens that ignored gendered power relations.”⁹Leslie Kern, Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World (London: Verso Books, 2020), 165. Female fear and vulnerability at night are often attributed to a sense of limited physical competence.¹⁰Kristen Day, “Strangers in the Night: Women’s Fear of Sexual Assault on Urban College Campuses,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16, no. 4 (1999): 289–312. On screen, a woman in danger is frequently saved by a strong man – even sometimes a superhero, such as Spider-Man.

When the male hero intervenes: the rescue trope

The backstory of Spider-Man is well-known: Peter Parker is a student in New York who, after being bitten by a genetically modified spider, gains spider-like abilities and super strength, which he devotes to fighting crime. Early in the 2002 film, Peter’s long-time friend and love interest, Mary Jane, is shown going home alone after her shift at a restaurant. The scene opens with Mary Jane and Peter having a conversation. When Mary Jane leaves, it begins to rain heavily; as she moves away, two shady men enter the frame from behind a corner and identify her as an easy target. “Hey, check it out man,” one says, gesturing towards Mary Jane. They nod to one another and start following her. The scene shifts from a wide shot to a bird’s-eye view of Mary Jane walking alone with the men trailing a distance behind her. The lighting in the scene is darker than before, conveying a sense of tension and danger. As the music reaches a crescendo, Mary Jane is cut off by two further men in an extremely dark alleyway. She attempts to defend herself, but they stop her in front of a wall and try to undress her. Spider-Man promptly arrives and incapacitates the assailants. This is followed by the iconic “upside down kiss” between Spider-Man and Mary Jane.

The scene associates episodes of sexual violence against women with an inherent unpredictability. Mary Jane’s assailants enter the frame behind a corner, seemingly selecting her as their target at random; they happened to be in the right place at the right time. As a lone woman in a dark street within a bustling metropolis, Mary Jane embodies a vulnerable position where any eventuality seems plausible. Sexual assault, as Kern writes, is a common trope used in cinema, television and books to illustrate a female character’s crucial turning point. When combined with sensationalized news media reporting about sexual violence and internalized norms, “these portrayals imply that stranger violence and sexual assault are always just around the corner.”¹¹Kern, Feminist City, 166. Outnumbered four to one, Mary Jane has very limited odds of escape or incapacitating her assailants.

Similar dynamics can be observed in V for Vendetta. In that film, London is depicted as a police state ruled by a fascist government following a world war. A vigilante known as V uses terrorist tactics to fight the oppressive authorities. In one scene, Evey, a young woman, ventures out into the deserted streets of the city during the government-enforced curfew. As she turns into an alley, she collides with two menacing figures. The encounter immediately takes a sinister turn: they remind her that is past curfew, and she replies that she must go see her sick uncle. The tone of the scene becomes even more sinister, revealing the threat of sexual violence. One of the two says, “Well, maybe you could look after us before getting back to your uncle.” With one man addressing her directly and the other encircling her, an atmosphere thick with danger and tension envelops the scene.

Starting from a close-up of Evey, we cut to an extreme close-up of one of the men, who is trying to put Evey’s hand on his lower abdomen, making both Evey and the viewer understand his intentions. In her attempt to resist, Evey is confronted with an official-looking shield wielded by one of the men, who asserts their supposed judicial authority as agents of the Finger, a branch of the secret police. Evey tries to escape but she is cut off by a third man who immobilizes her. The atmosphere is extremely dark, and the music underscores the moment when the viewer understands that Evey has no chance to escape. One of the three men laughs as he says, “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” and makes the gesture of unbuttoning his pants. Just as Evey disappears behind the three male figures, V arrives from a dark corner and incapacitates the assailants.

Evey’s attempted sexual assault represents, in V for Vendetta’s dystopic world, how the objectification and abuse of women can be institutionalized. The Fingermen use their power to abuse citizens and, in Evey’s case, it could have culminated in sexual violence. However, episodes of gender-based violence should not be treated as isolated, extraordinary cases. On the contrary, violence against women is symptomatic of a large-scale issue that is deeply connected to patriarchal values, power and control. Sexual assault finds its roots in dynamics of control and power, and this will be the case for both Bella in Twilight and Alex in Irréversible.

In Twilight, Bella is an angsty high school student who moves from Florida to the rainy town of Forks, Washington, where she meets Edward Cullen, a mysterious teenager who eventually unveils his identity as a vampire, alongside his entire family. The night Bella finds herself in danger, and nearly becomes a victim of sexual assault, she has only recently met Edward. Being a vampire, he possesses the ability to read the minds of others and discern their thoughts, yet Bella’s mind remains an enigma to him. That night, Bella leaves a bookshop and gets lost in the streets of Port Angeles. While trying to find her way, she comes across a very steep and dark passageway. However, when she sees two visibly drunk men on the other side, she decides to turn in the opposite direction. Now in a deserted parking lot, Bella finds herself cornered by three more men. Instead of trying to run away, she stands still, unable to scream, preparing herself for their attack. The scene is very dark, making it difficult for the viewer to distinguish Bella’s face from those of her assailants. Rapid camera movements convey a sense of suffocation: Bella is cornered. Before the men can attack, a car speeds around the corner and stops directly in front of her. Having intercepted the aggressors’ intentions, Edward promptly disperses them and drives Bella home. Bella has been saved, just like the other two female characters encountered so far. However, Alex in Irréversible will be left by her assailant nearly dead under a subway tunnel.

Fantasies of revenge

Irréversible runs in reverse chronological order, starting with Marcus and Pierre, Alex’s current partner and ex-lover respectively, seeking revenge for her rape. The details only become clear later in the film. In the key sequence, Alex is going home after a night out in Paris. A wide shot shows her entering a pedestrian underpass, and the atmosphere becomes progressively darker. The camera quickly shows a red luminous sign reading “Passage”. The tunnel’s walls are red and the scene’s lighting is red-toned, creating a foreboding sensation of danger. As she walks through the tunnel, Alex glimpses a prostitute being attacked by a man named Le Tenia. When he notices Alex, he immediately turns his attention to her. Le Tenia corners Alex against the wall and when she tries to escape, he threatens her with a knife. He passes the knife across Alex’s cheeks and neck and checks her figure. What follows is Alex’s brutal rape and savage beating. The camera remains at ground level and the scene runs in one unbroken take for around nine minutes. According to director Gaspar Noé, the choice of pinning the camera to the ground, in line with the victim, minimizes the chance of the viewer accidentally identifying with the predator. As Noé says, “You have to identify with Monica who plays Alex,” and continues, “And not with anyone else, especially with the attacker.”¹²Spikima Movies, “Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible Damage”, https://youtu.be/3UYCQlNdcT4?si=j6HIsleZAIbXihJ0 Le Tenia leaves Alex unconscious and nearly dead in the tunnel.

In the scenes analyzed in this essay, women encounter their aggressors in liminal public spaces such as a parking lot, an alleway, and a subway passage rather than in defined locations (e.g.,  home, a school building, a restaurant). One specific quality of such spaces is that the subject has scarce visibility of the surrounding environment. Researchers have observed that individuals’ feeling of safety is related to spatial properties of lighting, entrapment, prospect, and refuge. Victims feel safe in places where offenders lack refuge (i.e., a place hidden and/or dark that allows protection), and victims have prospect (i.e., an open view of the environment with clear escape routes). A clear view therefore allows the victim to know what to expect and, at the same time, the lack of hiding places for an attacker makes a victim feel safer.¹³Bonnie S. Fisher and Jack L. Nasar, “Fear of Crime in Relation to Three Exterior Site Features: Prospect, Refuge, and Escape,” Environment and Behavior 24, no. 1 (1992): 35–65, https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916592241002. Films often deploy such transitional spaces in scenes of sexual violence. In Irréversible, for example, Alex is attacked in a confined public space with scarce visibility and no escape routes. The attack is shown halfway through the film, preceded by an impulsive, chaotic, and extremely violent revenge attempt. In this film, the male savior is absent: both Marcus and Pierre are denied the role of being Alex’s protector and savior. Having failed to protect her, they try to reclaim this role by seeking revenge. However, the victim is not in control of her revenge. The cycle of violence is shown to continue, becoming violence among men, with the victim excluded. Alex does nothing to be avenged; she is unconscious and left alone when taken to the hospital. Thus, although Alex’s sexual assault drives the plot, the film fails to address the victim’s trauma from her own perspective.

Significantly, in three of these films, the characters avoid becoming victims of sexual assault because of the intervention of a male heroic figure. Moreover, the films glide over the fact the female characters were almost victims of sexual assault and fail to address the feelings and traumatic experience of the victims during and as a result of the attack. Rather than centering female experience, in V for Vendetta the attack serves to introduce the male protagonist, while in Spider-Man and Twilight the incidents reinforce the credibility and savior status of Spider-Man and Edward Cullen respectively. The construction of these scenes suggest that Mary Jane, Evey, and Bella would have been incapable of evading their respective assaults, just as Alex was in Irréversible. Taken together, these sequences impart an alarming message: a woman’s only option is to hope for the absence of a violent attack. In the absence of a heroic savior, the chances of avoiding violence are low. Furthermore, this imagery of “stranger danger” diverts attention from the more prevalent “private” forms of violence against women committed by partners, relatives and acquaintances. These representational patterns direct women’s fear outwards, outside of the home, suggesting that the urban night is not a place for a woman alone. As Kern emphasizes, women’s fear serves the social function of restricting women’s lives, limiting their use of public spaces, and restricting their economic opportunities.¹⁴Kern, Feminist City, 167.

As a woman often inhabiting the urban night, for the last part of my project I wanted to provide my own perspective through a video essay in the “supercut” format. A supercut is a combination of film clips that, when combined, highlight a common characteristic. When combined into one sequence, the four scenes of the films analyzed in this essay show the common aesthetic choices used to portray women in danger in urban spaces at night. Following the four scenes from the film, I added my point of view using the camera as a form of ethnographic gaze into the urban night. My perception, and how it is recorded and edited, reflects the broader issue of “female fear” and highlights the gendered power relations that permeate the experience of many women around the world.

Marica Loffreda

A recent graduate of John Cabot University with a dual degree in Communications and International Affairs, Marica Loffreda is a passionate writer with a keen interest in social and political issues. She is particularly interested in merging the art of storytelling with the power of data analysis.