Does the humor make it any easier for Jessie’s fictional acquaintances to stomach? How about for the viewer? I’m not sure I think so. But I’m also not sure if there’s any pleasant way to talk about rape without bringing down the mood in the room, or if we should even have such a courtesy bestowed upon us. After all, a victim of sexual violence certainly has no immediate escape route to hide from the pain of what happened nor a convenient coping mechanism that doesn’t fade after a few hours or cause a horrible hangover. For once, let’s not try and take the easy way out. Let’s do the work and have the conversation and squirm a little bit and face it head on like a collision and let awkward laughter be the airbag. In “Meet My Rapist,” the 28-year old filmmaker certainly doesn’t dodge or hold back any emotional bullets stemming from her own rape eight years ago. Through allowing herself to be complicated, contradictory, and vulnerable along her turbulent road to recovery, Jessie shows us that just because it’s difficult and uncomfortable to confront, that doesn’t give us the right to shy away from it or perpetuate the culture of shame and silence surrounding the problem (which is the prevalence of sexual violence). As the filmmaker so astutely observes, a survivor’s journey is brave, gradual, slow, long, vulnerable, never-ending, bumpy, awkward, embarrassing, truthful, candid, exposed, unarmed, unbearable, confusing, and shameful, but is interspersed with brief but hopeful moments of humor, relief and light at the end of the tunnel.

I think the very reason “Meet My Rapist” is so successful is because it confronts the complexities and volatility of a rape survivor’s emotional wellbeing, which can fluctuate between calm and hysterical, between feeling victimized and empowered, at a moment’s notice. Additionally, the film puts the violence into the context of the casual, painting a picture of the pervasiveness of the trauma as it manifests itself even through mundane obligations of the day-to-day and disrupts the routine of Jessie’s everyday existence (while she fights against letting it defeat her, denying that she has any “issues” about her rape while being interviewed for a job by a particularly ignorant fellow).

Through its subversive insertion of dark humor as a survival tool, the film clearly articulates that rape isn’t just something that happens one isolated night and then slips away in silence; its impact ricochets throughout, its triggers lurking around every corner. By opening up a seven minute window into one survivor’s life, Jessie proves that sometimes laughter is best medicine, at least until we can find a cure for it. To hear from Jessie Kahnweiler on the process of making this short, and about the role of humor in her own survival story, read her interview with The Broad Side.