Virtue
Teen dramas and how we write an ugly future for women
Quick warning:
This post talks about televised rape and rape threats and will generally spoil Reign if you’re not caught up.
I don’t drink, but I do like to get caught up in television shows that are debatably out of my age range. Vampire Diaries, The 100, and one of my recent favorites, Reign. I figure both of these activities probably kill the same amount of brain cells while helping a sister relax after a hard day of work.
Reign is a vaguely historical fantasy that’s loosely based on Mary of Scots’ life. It takes dramatic liberties with events. For instance, it adds a brooding bastard brother who’s briefly in line for the throne and elements of paganism. It makes King Francis II a beautiful blond looker and fudges Mary and Francis’ ages so they aren’t 15 and 16 when they marry, since we generally don’t look too kindly on that anymore. Historical errors aside, the series is also criticized for using today’s music and costuming too modernly.
I always like to see shows that feature strong female characters. It’s a bonus when the show also heavily banks on sword fights, elegant horse rides and treacherous political intrigue. The first season is salacious and fascinating, full of lore and character conflict. On a cross country road trip through some of the most beautiful parts of the country, I didn’t mind when the sun set because it meant it was time to watch Reign.
However, I’ve been sorely disappointed in this season.
In a recent episode, the castle was besieged while Francis was away. Protestants staged a coup and took over the castle. When a set of guards arrived at Mary’s chambers, they cornered her, struck her and watched as one of the guards raped her.
I was livid.
CW’s rendition of Mary of Scots is one of the most powerful people on Earth, surrounded by a cast of people with myriad motives. And yet, the most compelling thing the writers could think of happening to her was being raped by a nobody.
People will be quick to defend this storyline, saying that ‘it was a different time’ and rape was common. And, that rape is a real problem in the world today. But the universe of Reign is not the real universe. It is not the world we live in.
While we rewrite Mary’s reign as a teen drama with jewels and lacy dresses, there’s an opportunity to create a strong female lead who creates problems for herself, fixes them, butts heads with other powerful people and learns to be a ruler. She doesn’t have to be a girl victimized by a dark man’s touch.
We consistently buy into this narrative that rape is the most destructive thing that can ever happen to a woman. When we want to take a strong female character’s power away, writers place a random man to overpower her and take control of her body. But for a character who is smart and lives in an interesting universe, there are other ways of taking her control that don’t propagate this idea that men have ultimate power over women’s bodies.
#byefelipe and doxxing exist because we’ve taught boys that the threat of sex is paramount to death: it’s how you gain physical power over a woman. We make it unsafe for women to be powerful because powerful women who say the wrong thing (or even nothing at all) become a target for sexual attacks.
If you are writing any powerful female character, you don’t have to automatically resort to rape when you need conflict in her life. Teach girls to be bold or kind or fallible, and you’ll ultimately teach boys that sparring with a woman doesn’t look like him taking her virtue away. Teach them that women are worth opponents who must be dueled like men.
