“You didn’t see the film?” Gone Girl?” These were the words of a Vallejo police investigator in 2015, after accusing Denise Huskins (29) of staging her own kidnapping and lying about a rape.
In the eyes of the police (and much of the media), the case bore a strong resemblance to David Fincher’s successful crime thriller, released the previous year. In Gone Girl Rosamund Pike plays Amy, a woman who runs away from home, incriminates her husband for murder and then returns to claim she was kidnapped and assaulted by a stranger.
Huskins was telling the truth about her ordeal, but it took months for the police to realize, her lawyer later said, “How can someone in charge of investigating a crime think this is like a Ben Affleck movie? This is Hollywood. This is real life!”
The story of Huskins’ kidnapping and its unpleasant aftermath is part of the new three-part documentary series American Nightmare, which premiered last week on Netflix. It includes archival footage and reenactments, as well as new interviews with Huskins and her husband Aaron Quinn, who was also attacked by the kidnapper and considered a suspect in the case.
But make no mistake: American Nightmare is above all a story about police ineptitude and institutional sexism. It would be wrong to attribute the biases of the Police to a sensationalist production. However, the legacy of Fincher’s film should not be forgotten.
Needless to say, most people are smart and perceptive enough not to be influenced in legal matters by a movie starring Tyler Perry. Likewise, you can’t blame Taxi Driver for the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by the hands of John Hinckley. Nor can you blame Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange for the flood of similar cases that occurred after its release. However, the unfortunate incident behind American Nightmare is a reminder of the impact films can have and the importance of examining them critically and thoroughly.
Between fiction and reality
It is often believed that subjecting films to rigorous analysis is “overthinking the issue.” Some people even tend to say, “It’s not that deep.” However, incidents like Huskins’ clearly show how the media we consume influences our beliefs and prejudices.
Essentially, Gone Girl is a film about a woman’s deceptions. Her husband Nick (Affleck) is a womanizer and Pike is a complete sociopath, so a character like that shouldn’t pose any problems. However, the law enforcement authorities have wrongly and prejudicially rejected legitimate complaints of sexual assault long before the film was released; in fact, it is very likely that, even without it in mind, they would have rejected Huskins’ case. Additionally, the film does not consider Amy representative of her gender. She is presented in isolation as an extraordinarily cunning and deceiving woman, whose audacity is worth telling.
Although the film is one of the few adult dramas in recent years to stand out and become a mainstream success, the choice to highlight a false rape accusation was, for many critics, unfortunate. Statistics show that only a small percentage of sexual assault allegations are false, and the fact that the film chose to focus on one of these isolated cases led Joan Smith to describe it as a “recycling of rape myths” in The Guardian.
Huskins’ ordeal connected fiction with reality and, while the film was not responsible for the prejudices of the Police Department, it is clear that it helped manifest some sexist ideas in the minds of the police, gave them a name, and set a precedent.
Does this mean the film should never have been made? No. Nor should it have been forced to be framed in the context of gender-based violence and the relative obscurity of false allegations. Art should be free to express whatever it wants and as it is, and be judged on its own merits. However, if the story had been clarified, or if something completely different had been said, maybe it wouldn’t have been used to attack a woman who desperately needed help.
American Nightmare is now available on Netflix.
Translation by Noélia Hubert