Content Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual violence that readers may find distressing.
The taboo around dialogue about rape and sexual assault exists everywhere except television. Schools, churches, workplaces, and athletic teams receive media attention for sexual abuse scandals only when they become serial patterns of conduct. Survivors often suffer in silence because of their aggressor’s status or promising future, and move on without voicing their unbearable trauma.
Television depicts sexual assault casually as if it were like any other plot point or conflict. Why are survivors ignored, doubted and dismissed in the real world if assault narratives are easily distorted into popular television tropes? While some shows, like Law and Order: SVU, are designed to enthrall their viewers with an endless and explicit stream of “trauma porn”, others are much more subtle. 13 Reasons Why builds up to a lengthy and soul-numbing rape scene over the course of the entire series, while shows like Bridgerton, Scandal, and Glee sprinkle in this taboo to spice up their plots. Whatever the approach, rape is a cruel dramatic device that clings onto the entertainment industry’s mysoginistic origins.
Mentions of rape in television often take on a graphic visual character that amplifies the risk they bring beyond being physically triggering for survivors. Research from the University of Montréal and UCLA demonstrates that rape scenes in commercial films caused young men to be more at ease with gendered violence and even to be attracted or aroused by sexual aggression, regardless of the victim’s gender. UCLA’s study also warns that “sexual arousal to violence is one of the contributing predictors of actual aggression against women.”
Avoiding televised rape is increasingly difficult, as a growing number of series rely on female degradation. These shows remind me that television is a symbol of leisure, and in our society leisure is a luxury for and by men because there is nothing leisurely or relaxing about seeing characters like yourself abused on screen. Shows like Game of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale, Orange is the New Black, and Private Practice treat the rape of a female lead as character development to break strong women and allow their characters to appear vulnerable and dependent. These are the humanizing traits that the patriarchy assigns women.
A show that only knows how to develop female characters by raping them is not a show made for women or survivors. When writers create strong female characters, they are creating some of the only positive role models that young viewers have. Raping them to make them more appeasing to the male gaze is a vile and inaccessible dramatic mechanism that carelessly perpetuates gendered violence. Please stop dramatizing rape on TV.
(Image by Emilia Tamayo, ’23)
