Monsters of Television

What does this image say to you? Can an image speak?

I have a cute little post about Hellcats ready to publish. It is kinda silly and kinda fun, but I think I’m gonna hold off on that for a moment. Instead, I’d like to offer a few words about Private Practice.

Rape storylines always get me going.  As a former rape victim advocate and all around self-proclaimed feminist, the issue of rape troubles me more than other crimes.  It isn’t that it is a “woman’s issue,” per se, because men are raped, too.  Rather, I am troubled because we, as a society, seem incapable of comprehending the full horror of this crime and its impact.  This week’s episode of Private Practice has invited questions about the limits of television, about its ability to exploit, and about its potential to expose something true.  I think it is an important one to talk about further. So, more about this after the jump.

With Private Practice, I’m motivated to write not due to the storyline but rather due to the conversations about it (a good summary of the debate, including links, is here) I should also offer a disclaimer: I haven’t seen the rape plot on 90210 or Sons of Anarchy.  I rarely watch Law & Order SVU, for a host of reasons in addition to its slight “ick” factor.  But Private Practice is a show I watch relatively faithfully.  I checked in and out of it in past seasons, but this year, I’m on top of it.  And Charlotte has always been a character that frustrated me to no end–again, not because of what she does but because of how people interpret her actions.

Charlotte is a tough cookie.  She is demanding.  She’s controlling.  She’s dating world’s biggest marshmallow, so as you can imagine, there has been plenty of conflict between them  throughout the years as Charlotte sometimes gets annoyed with spineless boyfriend, Cooper.  Of course, these character descriptions reflect the surface more than the depth within the characters; Cooper is pretty stubborn in his own right, as Charlotte is less tough than she seems.  The rape threatens Charlotte’s sense of self and the vision of herself she sees reflected back at her by others.  So during this episode, she fights to maintain her self-possession.

Charlotte King, an addict in recovery, lives by controlling the details of her life.  When she gets attacked and raped by a stranger, she resorts to her typical coping mechanism–she micromanages the details.  Refusing to tell her the police about the rape, she instead calls Addison.  Adddison is not a friend of Charlotte’s–instead, the two tend to clash.  Addison is therefore touched that Charlotte has called her after being beat up.  As she gushes about feeling special (Addison is really good at making things about her–even when it in no way is about her), a nurse completing the evidence collection mentions that Charlotte has not included her underwear with the other evidence.

Charlotte says that she doesn’t wear underwear.  As recognition of the reality of the situation dawns on Addison, she chimes in, “she doesn’t. I think it is gross, but…”  The nurse, seeming doubtful, leaves the room.  Addison turns slowly toward Charlotte and issues a list of the emergency sexual disease treatments she will need, ending with, “right?”  Charlotte licks her lip, as if the word tastes disgusting, and spits out, “right.”  What I found remarkable here was Charlotte’s knowledge that she did need help–she needed medical attention.  So she chose it on her own terms–in privacy, exposing herself to only one more person beside her attacker.

Controlling who knows about her attack is Charlotte’s way to keep her life normal.  After everything has changed, she fights to maintain a bit of her sense of self (and, importantly, others’ sense of her) as a way to fight her attacker.  This is Charlotte’s coping mechanism.  Every rape survivor copes in their own way.  Entire fields of psychology examine different coping mechanisms, trying to help patients replace unhealthy coping (drugs, sex, etc) with healthier ones (talk therapy, meditation, mindfulness, etc).  Charlotte’s way to cope in the midst of a crisis is to turn to what she knows best–control.

That Charlotte chose to remain silent about her rape has disappointed a number of viewers, or so it seems based on some comments offered on the “Watch with Kristin” site.  This is compounded by the fact that other prominent rape storylines on shows this season have also portrayed survivors who did not report.  I hate to be the one to break it to you, but rape is probably the most underreported crime in the U.S.  Fun fact: if you go to the police with a claim of assault but then decide at some point not to proceed with the case, they sometimes log it as a “false report.”  Important fact to know when you hear about the number of false rape reports bandied about as if it is an epidemic.

Reporting a rape can victimize the survivor repeatedly.  Our system depends on granting the accused the benefit of the doubt.  Toward that end, the accuser, aka the rape survivor, must make a case that proves the rape beyond a reasonable doubt.  She must repeat the story ad nauseum to people trying to ascertain her veracity at all times.  During the exam, her insides must be exposed, probed, and wiped to collect “evidence” that generally proves only a sexual encounter, not necessarily a rape.  There is no guarantee that her case will ever see trial–and that she will be able to prove her case.

Let’s take a fun stroll through the criminal justice system through a simple google search.  Here’s a case where a15-year old girl could not get a prosecutor to proceed with her case.  Oh, and here’s another one where the prosectur can’t make the case.  Here’s one where the jury can’t come to one decision despite strong evidence that the “consensual” sex was extremely violent.  And here’s the kicker–a case in which rape was videotaped–and still, they could not convict.  The victim seems to smile, you see, proving consent. Cause girls love sex to end with urination.  This is the part that gets me.  Why is is so much easier to believe a woman likes rough sex than it is to believe a human capable of being a violent animal?  What is the reason underlying that seeming disconnect?

If you want to critique Private Practice, do it based on the fact that Charlotte’s rape was committed by a stranger (not the norm), that he is clearly mentally unbalanced (he admits the rape on tape at the police station!), and that no one at the police station seemed able to put two and two together that the woman attacked at the hospital may have some connection to the random guy with blood all over his shirt in the police station.

But please, do not blame Charlotte.  For any of her decisions.  She did the best she could in the worst of situations.  This is a fictional story.  But there are larger truths that we can discuss through the example of Charlotte.  Just as there are dangerous traps into which we can fall when discussing it.

The episode is also being critiqued because it chose to depict the rape in a series of short clips, intercut with Charlotte walking out of the hospital at the end of the episode.  Most of the shots are close-ups of Charlotte’s face–filled with terror.  Her screams are guttural and hit the viewer deep in the chest.  I cannot imagine anyone viewing this scene and thinking of sex.  Yet Emily Nussbaum did just that in her review.  She writes, “No matter how well-motivated, a rape scene is a sex scene, and TV shows are fantasies. This one wasn’t sexy, but there was part of me that didn’t want them to show it at all.”

I can see her point–she is questioning whether a rape scene can ever avoid being somewhat exploitative.  But the link she makes between rape and sex is a huge problem.  Rape is not sex.  It is not driven by sexual desire.  It rarely ends in a climax because it is so much not about desire.  Because we continue to misunderstand rape as a sexual attack instead of what it is–a violent action driven by a need to control–it is easier to look away from claims of rape by couching them within terms like consent and “asking for it.”  A rape scene is not a sex scene.  It is a violent, brutal attack with sex used as the weapon.

Nussbaum’s comment also implies that television (perhaps all media) cannot escape from its mode of production and reception to present the true horror of rape in any satisfying way.  Rhimes is deeply aware of this issue–as she makes clear when Charlotte tells Addison how different is being raped from the portrayals on made-for-tv movies.  I’m sure the choices Rhimes made as to which short clips to show in the rape montage were deeply influenced by her desire to tell the story from the victim’s perspective.  I think she did a pretty solid job of avoiding some typical tropes, though I kind of wish she would have let the camera stay with Charlotte throughout the entire episode.  Let us see Charlotte alone, as survivors are sometimes alone after an attack.  Let us see the contrast between her conversations with others, trying to be normal, and the moments in which no one can distract her.  Perhaps this would have allowed Rhimes stronger motivation to show the rape–as bits of it flit through Charlotte’s mind until another person enters the room.

But what I found terrific and terrible about the rape depiction was Charlotte’s terror–KaDee Strickland’s performance is powerful, and she deserves all the praise she is getting.  Her face distorted in fear remains with me today.  I’m not sure how well known it is that one common comment made by rape survivors is that they felt themselves about to die during the attack.  This awful truth is something I thought Rhimes conveyed well–that rape threatens death.  And to some extent, it succeeds because the survivor continues to live but never as the same person.

I’m glad Nussbaum raised the issue of whether Rhimes should have depicted the rape because television simply can’t portray it without arousing the viewer.  The limits of television is a worthy conversation.  Nevertheless, television is among the most powerful cultural mediums in our world.  It can arouse conversation, distort truth, and reflect a vision of our society’s deeper fears.  This episode forced me to interrogate one of my deepest fears, and I am not sure I’m ready to give up on media as a vehicle to encourage this type of conversation.

I found the reactions of men to be among the more interesting parts of this episode.  Cooper, in particular, found himself needing to be comforted by Charlotte.  It was a powerful moment for the show.  One might try to criticize Cooper for being the one who was weak, but considering Charlotte’s need to assert her strength, perhaps Cooper did the very best thing for her.  He let her feel like herself.

How Rhimes depicts the male characters in upcoming weeks will be interesting considering her desire to shift the rape plot from the law to the survivor.  Does she displace Charlotte’s anger onto a male revenge storyline?  Often in fictional rape accounts, that is exactly what happens.  The man claims the right of anger and avenges the victim.  I’d rather see Rhimes turn to her most overused of tools–the big speech.  Give a man a big speech in which he addresses other men–including the rapists among them.  Let him take responsibility for telling other men that rape is not okay.  Not because the rapist stole a piece of his woman.  Not because he’s sad that he’s now sort of a victim, too.  But because objectively, as a human being, men share a stake in the crime of rape.  But let the speech be all.  Let the man have to deal with an inability to do anything–let him share that part of the survivor’s helplessness in the face of violence.