Aesthetics for Birds

What follows is a guest post by C.A. York.
Warning: This post contains spoilers as well as descriptions of sexual assault and violence.

Promising Young Woman, released after several delays due to the pandemic, pledged a “delicious new take on revenge” when the trailer for the film premiered in early 2020. Hell-bent on critiquing rape culture, while playfully paying homage to rape-revenge films of the seventies and eighties, director Emerald Fennell’s feature debut appealed to those familiar with the genre standards set out in previous rape-revenge classics such as the widely contentious I Spit on Your Grave, and Abel Ferrara’s cult classic Ms. 45. (Warning: Both film trailers feature implied rape and explicit scenes of violence.) Fennell herself has carried forward a fascination with murderous female enigmas with ingenuity. As second season showrunner of the BBC program Killing Eve and the Sundance short Careful How You Go, Fennell’s endeavors, thus far, have been in creative pursuits that feature captivating, violent female characters at the forefront of her storytelling. Taking on the gender and sex dynamics embedded in the rape-revenge genre seemed a natural fit for her first studio project. However, the biggest shock of the film comes from Fennell’s refusal to gratify viewers with gratuitous sex or violence. For the majority of the film, explicit scenes of sexual and physical violence are obscured rather than graphically exploited. In an effort to subvert conventions and challenge attitudes, Promising Young Woman here offers something different.