Shern's Journal
SYNOPSIS OF DESCENT: Maya, played by Rosario Dawson, is a reserved and intelligent college student that gets raped by Jared, a college student also. Maya becomes distraught not talking to anyone about the rape. She shuts everyone out of her life and loses herself to a dark and gloomy world in which she experiments with drugs and sexual activity. She goes out for revenge on Jared by luring him to her apartment and allows her male friend to rape him.
When a man rapes a woman is it correct for the woman to get even by doing the same? We, as females, know that two wrongs do not make a right but we are still hurting and want the rapists to hurt because of that. Most of the times they are oblivious to our pain. In Descent, the audience sees the reality of what some women wants to see happens to their rapists. Instead of her going through the legal system, we see her take revenge in her own hands. In reality, humans do hurt humans. We feel the rage that Maya feels by allowing Adrian to do that to Jared. Also, as humans we are desensitized when a woman gets raped because we see and hear it many times but when a man gets raped it is unusual but it does happen. Hurting each other because we got hurt is not the solution to any problem but this film works against the traditional reasoning. The film takes more of a reality approach to a traumatic situation. When bad things occur, we tend to want the world to stop and acknowledge the pain we are in. These rapists are going about their normal life and never realize the tremendous pain and insecurities among other issues we face day to day. Hurting another person because they hurt us is an even worst decision because we are just creating more future suffering for ourselves.