Jane is a student, but she could be anyone. She has friends, participates in college theater, attends her linguistics lecture. At this lecture, the title of the short film comes starkly into focus: disfluencies, her professor intones, are stammers and filler words we use in everyday speech. Jane, like many of us, uses “sorry” as a filler word. Soon, we’ll see that Jane has nothing to apologize for.
The short film Disfluency tells the story of Jane (Libe Barer) who is sexually assaulted by a classmate at a campus party. Her name is an overt reference to the anonymous survivors of rape whose stories we’ll never know, either because they are unable to come forward, or because their experiences are swept under the rug (as too often happens to women of color and LGBTQ+ individuals). RAINN estimates that 11.2% of all college students will become survivors of sexual assault. That number grows to a staggering 23.1% of female undergraduate students. Though some stories do make it into the press, it’s typically because the college’s administration badly mishandled the investigation into the assault investigation. There are many, many survivors who will forever be unknown to us.
Disfluency – Short Film from MEOWFLIX on Vimeo.
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