Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power, and Football in the American Heartland

Expanding upon Schwartzman’s award-winning 2018 documentary, Roll Red Roll, about the rape of a teenage girl by two high school football players in 2012, filmmaker Schwartzman and coauthor Zelevansky (Competitive Grieving) offer a window into a town’s view of sexual violation. Narrator Brittany Pressley navigates skillfully through this impeccably researched book, which contains large amounts of primary source material from interviews conducted by Schwartzman, court proceedings, and video evidence shared on social media. She infuses strong emotion and maintains an elevated energy level from the night of the rape to correlating events of today. She skillfully captures the fear of harassment and blame-shaming of the victim and witnesses, the anger of parents, their friends, and the school during the investigation and trial; the boys’ divergent responses to the decision in the case; the disgust of reporters and others at hypermasculinity that is omnipresent in the community; and the historic fallout and jaw-dropping erosion of victims’ rights that has taken society backward in time.