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Scandal, House of Card, The Americans and how rape survivors are portrayed on TV
Cross posted in GD...
Elizabeth Jennings, Mellie Grant and Claire Underwood have something in common. A few things, actually: Calculating relationships with their husbands, bottomless wells of nerve, awesome cheekbones. And one other thing. As The Americans, Scandal and House of Cards have revealed throughout their first and second seasons, all three are rape survivors.
A rape scene on a show that isn’t specifically about crime — your non-SVUs and CSIs — is shocking almost by definition, but what was particularly striking about these scenes is how they seemed to be astonishingly true to life. None of these women fit some stereotypical “victim” mold. None was attacked by a stranger who jumped her while she walked down an alley, none reported the crime to the police or even to her family. And while all of these survivors found a way to move forward and lead productive, healthy lives (to various degrees), they all still wrestle with trauma in their own personal, usually private ways.
What did each of these shows get right about the reality of rape and sexual assault? To find out, I called up Dr. John Foubert, founder and president of One in Four, a national non-profit organization to implement rape prevention programs in the military and on college campuses. Our conversation, lightly edited and condensed for space, is below. (FYI, if you aren’t caught up on any of these shows, spoilers abound):
A rape scene on a show that isn’t specifically about crime — your non-SVUs and CSIs — is shocking almost by definition, but what was particularly striking about these scenes is how they seemed to be astonishingly true to life. None of these women fit some stereotypical “victim” mold. None was attacked by a stranger who jumped her while she walked down an alley, none reported the crime to the police or even to her family. And while all of these survivors found a way to move forward and lead productive, healthy lives (to various degrees), they all still wrestle with trauma in their own personal, usually private ways.
What did each of these shows get right about the reality of rape and sexual assault? To find out, I called up Dr. John Foubert, founder and president of One in Four, a national non-profit organization to implement rape prevention programs in the military and on college campuses. Our conversation, lightly edited and condensed for space, is below. (FYI, if you aren’t caught up on any of these shows, spoilers abound):
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/04/02/3421759/realistic-rape-survivors-tv/
