Difficult, But Necessary
Sexual violence on TV.
This season’s promo for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit noted that SVU is “the most watched show in all of TV,” based on the seventeenth season’s ratings. Despite the continuing success of SVU, many, including self-proclaimed fans, have questioned the meaning behind the massive allure of a show about “especially heinous” crimes. “I watch SVU religiously, have actually seen every single episode. I am not sure what that says about me,” wrote Roxane Gay in an article for The Rumpus. Some actors have even decried their own shows, on the basis of excessive sexual violence.
Following director Bernardo Bertolucci’s rape comments regarding the “sex” scene in The Last Tango in Paris between Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando, the conversation regarding the presence of sexual violence in film and television has once again made its way into mainstream media. Maureen Ryan, Variety’s chief TV critic, recently talked to a number of writers and showrunners in the television industry about sexual violence as a narrative tool. She ended her article on a quote from Michelle Lovretta, the executive producer and showrunner of sci-fi programs Lost Girl and Killjoys, who explained that the difference between between “valid and powerful” and “lazy and exploitative” sexual assault scenes in television “comes down to why you’re telling the story, who you’re telling it through, and what you’re saying in the process.”
In a response to Ryan’s piece, Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic at The New Yorker, tweeted that she’s “one of those people who is [very] much in favor of sexual violence on TV, as part of smart & realistic portraits of male & female lives…” In the past she’s written about Law & Order: SVU and commented on the fact that “the show’s pulp appeal was simultaneously addictive and faintly shameful” for viewers. Nussbaum’s baseline argument was that narratives like those told on the show can be empowering for survivors.
It also stands to educate people on consent in a society that is still trying to find a way around admitting that rape culture exists.
The benefits of SVU are twofold. The show represents an ideal in law enforcement: police fighting unflinchingly for justice, and often attaining it, in a world where that’s not always a given. It also stands to educate people on consent in a society that is still trying to find a way around admitting that rape culture exists. SVU brought spousal rape and female-on-male rape to court before the two were officially tried in the real world, and it has continued to draw attention to often overlooked topics in sexual assault throughout the past eighteen years.
Multiple studies have been conducted on the effects of sexual violence, and just violence in general, in television, including “Effects of Violence Against Women in Popular Crime Dramas on Viewers’ Attitudes Related to Sexual Violence” and “‘These are our stories’: Trauma, Form, and the Screen Phenomenon of Law and Order.” The latter focuses on the original homicide-focused Law & Order, and the various implications of TV violence, but the first study, while preliminary, suggests “that well-designed, popular drama may present an opportunity to promote prosocial values such as reducing traditional gender stereotypes and debunking rape myths.” The key phrase here is “well-designed,” something which SVU has struggled with since its revolutionary 1999 premiere, but has still managed to achieve the majority of the time. Other shows have also stepped up to the task and worked to incorporate sexual violence in an educated and informative way, right from the pilot episode.
Jessica Jones is among the superhero-centric TV shows that have proven surprisingly sharp and able to address some of pop culture’s trickier topics, like coming out on Supergirl and indomitable grief on Luke Cage. Netflix’s Jessica Jones tackles rape and PTSD better than most other shows, and it has only aired one season so far. The protagonist, the show’s namesake, grapples with the very real aftershocks of a month of repeated assault, wherein her abuser tried to convince her that she “wanted” everything, and was doing this to herself. The scenes are appropriately placed to tell a much-needed story. The narrative comes from a place of understanding, and will continue to do so, as showrunner Melissa Rosenberg announced that Season 2 will be directed only by women.
Until discussion regarding sexual assault is a permanent fixture in education and everyday life, it’s essential to have these narratives on TV, so long as they’re implemented with the intention of creating a realistic and empowering dialogue, not simply for the sake of shock value or default character backstory. Tasteful, “well-designed” shows like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Jessica Jones are not just important, but currently necessary in teaching a generation about the very real but often negated existence of rape culture.
