Rape as a traumatic (T.V.) episode
by Maddy Newquist
Content Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault
Rape is steadily gaining more social recognition. In the last few years, particularly during and since the last presidential race and election, it has received a lot of political press. People were asking candidates what they thought of it (usually tag-teamed with abortion)- there was the whole“bean” thing with Paul Ryan, and then Mike Huckabee and all those crazy people who thought that a woman’s body could just reject a man’s sperm and move on.
But why the label “crazy”? What we actually mean, mostly, is that they’re uneducated about rape (among other things, but that’s not what we’re here for right now). What the movement against rape has turned into, therefore, is foremost an education. And that’s where cultural press comes in.
Lately, in a lot of TV shows, showrunners and writers have taken it upon themselves to educate viewers. Not just in the mechanics of rape, situations under which someone can be raped or who can be raped (clue: does not discriminate based on gender), but how people who are involved deal with it in terms of the society around them.
I think that most of these shows depicting rape are — rightly — trying to expose rape as something that can happen to anyone, no matter the culture or time period.
And that’s great. It’s really important to show that rape isn’t just some new modern invention made up by the ‘crazy man-hating feminists’ to drag men through the mud, but rather, that this has always existed. That people have always been taken advantage of sexually. And, to be completely honest, it has a lot to do with the culture they’re in.
Which means that these TV shows are doing something to change that cultural perspective, however subtly or directly it may be. But that also means that some shows might feel that including rape will boost their social justice credibility as a show — even if it has no value to the show or doesn’t actually really fit with the story the show’s trying to tell. “All these other shows are doing it,” they say, “and we want to be on the right side of history”.
What ultimately ends up happening is that these shows end up using rape as a plot device, or character development in a way that doesn’t match the overarching narratives, instead of seamlessly integrating it into the storyline as an expected consequence of the show’s themes or character patterns. And the reasoning generally seems to end up being this: this rape occurs because rape occurred.
Which is not the best reason to have rape in your show- you should only have rape in your show to continue your established narrative and themes. The placement of sexual assault within a show has to be a natural consequence. It has to fit into the show and lives of the characters as something the viewers have been set up to expect, again however subtly or directly. You need to have it be part of the storyline — you can’t just throw it in and expect the viewer to accept its sudden appearance.
Below are examples of how four well-known shows have dealt with rape episodes and themes. They have all approached rape from different angles and with different results (and motives). Understanding how some shows fail or succeed to treat rape accurately or respectfully is imperative for understanding where cultural media can begin to influence social perspectives positively- and where they may need some help.
This is a personal selection: I do not intend to imply that there are the only four ways in which shows depict rape (nor are they the only shows that do), but these are the ones that have stuck out, and give an overall sense of what I feel is a trend on television.
Downton Abbey: Season 4, Episode 2
The first rape scene I saw on TV was on Downton Abbey. While the rape is set up by way of the assaulter’s increasingly unsolicited attentions towards housemaid Anna Bates (it is a natural progression, albeit over a short amount of time), the plotline loses its credibility when the watcher realizes that this is simply a ploy to heighten the drama among the serving class (most of the drama in the previous season had been unevenly concentrated on the aristocratic family).
This rape episode is then used to resurrect the long-dead storyline of Anna’s husband’s uncontrollable rage. Everyone, both in or watching the show, is acutely aware that Mr. Bates could kill someone if he was angry enough, and since he’s already been to jail once on a murder charge, Anna is scared to tell him about the rape because she doesn’t want him to kill her assaulter and then get sent to jail (again). Which actually makes sense — until the show begins to move away from the effects of the rape on Anna and how she handles it emotionally and mentally, towards Mr. Bates’s storyline — resurrected just to keep things “interesting”.
This is possibly the worst way to treat a rape episode — it’s just lazy. Bates is not the only servant at Downton with a reputation and a past, and for the show to exploit rape to bring back a “reliable” plotline is idle writing and poor judgment. Unfortunately, this is not the only show to do so.
Reign: Season 2, Episode 9
CW’s Reign is enough of a hot mess as is. Throw the rape of a queen by Protestant vigilantes into the mix and what do you get? The character development of her increasingly estranged (and historically, 15 years old) husband, the king of France. Makes total sense.
Here are the hoops that the writers had to jump through just to include this plotline: Discontent among Protestants is brewing, and the Catholic crown, as a demonstration and warning against further dissent, has hanged several Protestants. This plotline quiets down over a few episodes, and then Mary sends Francis, her husband, away to find an old, random lord who is only relevant to events in the previous season. Apparently he takes every guard in their entire castle, because a small group of Protestant rebels (remember them?) overtake their entire STONE FORTRESS, force their way to the queen’s chambers, and rape her.
These writers resurrected a strange yet feeble plotline (whose climax actually seems to be reached three episodes after the rape with the arrest of one of the Queen’s ladies), forced an unnecessary visit to someone who was conveniently outside the castle, and then magically got rid of every other person who could conceivably –and literally — stand between peasants and a queen.
I do have to give Reign its due. A lot of the show’s themes deal with the oppressive patriarchy in the mid-1500s, and how the queens and noble ladies work both within and against it. This is incorporated into this rape plot — albeit briefly. After the rape occurs, Mary and her mother-in-law, the formidable Queen Black Widow herself, Catherine d’Medici, struggle with how to heal Mary mentally while presenting her to the public as if nothing has happened. Mary chafes against the secrecy and burden of dealing with this mostly on her own, but understands the more pressing need of not being perceived as weak in front of her subjects and her many enemies.
This is a “good” way to portray the victim based on her society and her position in it. It’s poignant and stark, and involves women coming together to help heal one another. It also further deepens and develops the relationship between Catherine and Mary, which is already one of the most complex on the show.
That is, until the focus shifts onto Francis, king of (you guessed it, you sneaky cognate) France. This shift begins to occur even before the rape does — the Protestants are in the castle to kill Francis, but upon finding him gone, settle for the rape of his queen. Mary’s rape literally only happens in deference to Francis’s narrative and character development.
The aftermath of her rape likewise defers to him. Francis obviously feels guilty for not protecting her, and that makes sense, but even this quickly gets turned around yet again. It turns into a blame game (which alone doesn’t make sense — Mary insisted Francis leave the castle, then blames him for not staying as he originally wanted to), then Mary asks Francis to leave her bed because she’s not ready (more than understandably), and then, within about two episodes, right after Francis is concerned because Mary shrinks from all human contact, Mary decides to get physical with some hot prince from Navarre. And poof! She’s “fixed”. The rape was a ploy to a) cast Francis in a sympathetic light so that when b) Mary hooks up with someone else, the viewer wants them to get back together, and c) when they do, Mary’s rape is never brought up again. Convenient, isn’t it?
Where Downton Abbey used rape to create a new plotline, Reign has used it to further the character development of someone not directly involved in the rape itself. It is still an exploitation of the trauma, but this time it is at the expense of the victim. Not paying attention or respect to a survivor of assault is possibly worse than not acknowledging rape happened at all — it demeans and devalues their experience.
Mad Men: Season 2, Episode 12
Mad Men is the best, and we all know it. They handled parallels to modern issues with grace, wit, and a cynicism that belied how long these problems have been overlooked in society.
Even so, I was surprised when I saw this episode, because at this point I’d already been jaded against rape scenes by the ones listed above — and more. At first, I thought that they would follow in the footsteps of rape episodes past — that Joan Holloway (played by Christina Hendricks) would lose her momentum as a force to be reckoned with, and instead be dragged along by this event as a useless way of keeping her in the forefront without involving her actual character traits or position within the show.
Instead, I couldn’t believe how well this was handled. It is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think back on the show, and is not even a defining event of that single season.
Joan’s fiancé is a relatively stand-up guy — a little dense, a little overbearing — but in the way the show has shown up is acceptable to that time period. And this episode comes late enough in the show itself that it is easily understood that he thinks it is well within his rights as a husband (fiancé, at this point) to take sex from his wife, when and where he wants it — regardless of how she feels. Even if we didn’t realize it right away, the viewer has always known, thanks to the writing, that he is capable of this.
Joan does struggle during, but doesn’t actually fight, but she too knows — has been raised to know — that there is nothing to be done about it — it happens, because a woman in this time period is supposed to let it happen. She still marries Greg, because she is taught to accept that abuse.
What makes this rape storyline better structured is that it follows through for Joan — and only for Joan. She is the sole inheritor of this trauma, and it, in turn, is not used to introduce a plotline or affect another character’s development. Instead, everything carries on as usual — except for Joan’s personal life. Joan and Greg‘s relationship never recovers (he refuses responsibility for his actions — he does not know they are wrong, and so it falls to her to change), and ultimately she divorces him because she knows she can never forgive him. Joan becomes skittish and snaps more often than usual, but doesn’t let it affect her work — doesn’t let the rape change her fundamental character. There is no victim blaming, but there is an undercurrent of societal pressure to accept this as a marital duty, and rather than swinging to one of the extremes (bowing to social pressure and becoming meek [bold Anna Bates hiding secrets and her shame], or flaunting cultural norms as a healing process [married Queen Mary sleeping with another man]), Joan plays by the rules but bends them to help herself move on.
Mad Men does not alter all the characters’ paths to form around this event, and handles the event with the care and historical accuracy that it gives to all its other storylines. Rather than being shown and then dismissed as a plotpoint, the trauma becomes an irrevocable part of the show’s fabric.
Jessica Jones: Season 1, all episodes
Netflix’s newest show also follows this example, and incorporates a rape directly into the story, without cheapening the experience by using it as a jumping-off point for other narratives.
Jessica Jones is unique among these examples for not showing the rape itself. The show deals primarily with the aftermath, something that pervades Jessica’s everyday mental state and relationships. By focusing on the victim and how she deals with the consequences of the trauma, rather than how it affects which direction the story takes, the show can pay Jessica the respect every survivor deserves.
This is mainly achieved through her continued interactions with Kilgrave, her former boyfriend and tormentor. Even after the assaults and Jessica’s choice to leave him, Kilgrave still isn’t sure that what he was doing to/with her was rape. He not only isn’t sure — he openly scoffs at Jessica’s assertions as if she was labeling their relationship in retrospect just to spite him.
Kilgrave: “We used to do a lot more than just touch hands.”
Jessica: “Yeah. It’s called rape.”
Kilgrave: “What? Which part of staying in five-star hotels, eating at all the best places, doing whatever the hell you wanted, is rape?”
Jessica: “The part where I didn’t want to do any of it!…”
Kilgrave: “That is not what I was trying to do.”
Jessica: “It doesn’t matter what you were trying to do. You raped me again and again and again — ”
The “well you wanted it during it” argument from the side of the attacker is a familiar one — and one that is perhaps closest to the heart of rape education right now. Many shows, most recently Master of None, talk about assaulters (usually male in these instances) not knowing where the line is in terms of sexual harassment and assault. True, Marvel and Netflix brings this argument to an extreme, due to the expression of Kilgrave’s mind control, but the foundation is the same. Jessica Jones is showing this side of the argument in order to undermine it. It would be difficult for a viewer to see the ongoing mental trauma of Jessica’s life (as a direct result of her assault) and still take the position represented by Kilgrave. This allows the show to bridge back into the viewer’s world, one without the mind control but with the recurring blurred lines argument.
Here, rape is being treated in deference only to Jessica. It is always present under the surface of every episode, but is never an actual plotline, thus allowing the show room to expand other themes and narratives. This also means it cannot be dismissed after one episode — Jessica Jones’s rape is a part of who she is now, and the audience watches her come to terms with it.
Jessica Jones treats and displays rape differently than Mad Men, but the effectiveness in both demonstrates that TV shows have multiple options in how to treat rape and other traumas with respect.
TV has the power to change how large groups of people perceive traumatic episodes such as rape. When shows use rape to further or create a storyline or character development that doesn’t sync with the themes of the show, they not only demean rape as a traumatic experience. They have the potential to influence how people look at rape as a social issue. It is one thing to show that it occurred — that is easy enough for most people to accept. But by dismissing rape after an episode or two, shows actually run the risk of their audience thinking that rape is similarly overcome by its victims — that there are no long-term consequences for anyone involved.
It is increasingly important, therefore, that each show approaches that trauma and the people it affects with the respect they are due. Shows that do so have a much greater chance of changing public perspective and of building support for the survivors through depictions that reflect seriously and solely upon the consequences of the trauma itself. If television wishes to continue to be at the forefront of social education, they have to fully understand the topic they are teaching.
