Why is There So Much Violence Against Women on TV?
Following the uproar over Euphoria's copious nudity, let's reflect on who experiences pain on TV and why.
This article discusses heavy topics, including abuse, sexual violence, and more. Please stop reading if any of these themes may potentially trigger you.
When Season 2 of Euphoria dropped earlier this year, many fans of the show began to express their discontent with the amount of nudity present in the HBO Max hit series. "Am I tripping, or is the nudity on Euphoria this season extremely excessive… it's kinda off-putting? I genuinely don't understand what purpose it's serving," one user on Twitter wrote. These criticisms sparked a larger conversation on the violence and trauma present in a show like Euphoria and whether sensitive scenes should be cut. However, actors from the show, including Emmy-winner Zendaya, were clear that people should watch the show with caution. "I know I've said this before, but I do want to reiterate to everyone that Euphoria is for mature audiences," she said in an Instagram post.
Both points have value, but despite criticism of these same themes in the early 2000s-2010s, excessive nudity and violence against women in TV and film have persisted. We continue to primarily see women forced into horrific circumstances to shock audiences or create online traction. No one is arguing for censorship, but rather, we need to start asking screenwriters and directors: why? What does this violently graphic scene add to the larger conversation surrounding abuse or sexual trauma? How does this add to the storyline instead of aiding the male gaze? Where do we draw the line?
The easiest way to answer this question is by explaining what not to do. For example, HBO's Game of Thrones is one of the most successful dramatic fantasy series of all time, with an average viewership of over 18 million people across eight seasons. In the premiere episode, Emilia Clarke's character Daenerys Targaryen is shown naked and quickly sold off to a man named Khal Drogo, who rapes her on screen. Targaryen is a teenager when these events take place and later falls in love with Drogo, perpetuating the idea that rape can lead to love. From the beginning, Targaryen's character is sexualized, and her nudity is used as "sexposition" to keep viewers interested.
In Season 4, fans were outraged when Game of Thrones dropped in yet another gratuitous rape scene for random shock value. Director Alex Graves commented on the scene in which Jamie rapes his sister Cersei, justifying it by saying it was "consensual by the end." This response indicates a more significant problem with the toxic environment of male-dominated writer's rooms, where it's rare for any sort of critical commentary to seep through.
In Season 5, we see Sansa Stark's (played by Sophie Turner) husband commit the same act, forcing a tertiary character to watch. "You grew up with her as a girl. Now watch her become a woman," her husband says. The gratuitous scene was not part of the book series that the show is based on and was particularly difficult to watch because we are focused more on the character who has to watch this violent act than the pain Sansa is enduring.
What do these scenes add other than exploiting the male gaze for views? Was anyone unaware of the violence women face daily? Were any female characters developed through these scenes? Did we need to see yet another woman get raped on screen? The answer to all of these questions is no.
Defenders of the show will say that it's a realistic portrayal of medieval times or war, but this argument is as lazy as it is untrue. If the show's creators were genuinely concerned with realism, they would not exclusively show violence against conventionally attractive women through a male gaze. Men and other prisoners of war were also victims of this form of sexual abuse, but Game of Thrones strays from showing such scenes, likely because their predominantly male audience wouldn't find it appealing.
In a 2019 interview, Clarke revealed that she was uncomfortable with the excessive nudity written into the Game of Thrones scripts: "I've had fights on set before where I'm like, 'No, the sheet stays up,' and they're like, 'You don't wanna disappoint your' Game of Thrones' fans.' And I'm like, 'Fuck you.'"
Actress Jessica Chastain summed it up perfectly in 2018 when she argued against the narrative that exploitative or violent scenes 'help' women.
Then there's Euphoria writer/director/producer Sam Levinson's propensity for adding excessive nudity into random scenes for the sake of shock value. Many have pointed to Levinson's strange fascination with portraying teenagers having sex on screen, especially with regard to the characters of Kat and Cassie. While all of the actors are adults, viewers are still uncomfortable with seeing this much nudity within the confines of a high school setting.
While men are also shown naked throughout the series, established male actors like Eric Dane are given prosthetics to wear during their nude scenes while other lead actresses are actually baring their own skin on camera, in many cases for absolutely no reason other than a dramatic montage. It doesn't matter how beautifully a scene is shot: when it's through the lens of the male gaze, there's something inherently disturbing with these sequences.
Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie Howard, recently shared that she had to tell Levinson to cut certain topless scenes out of the script. "There are moments where Cassie was supposed to be shirtless, and I would tell Sam, 'I don't really think that's necessary here.' He was like, 'OK, we don't need it,'" she said. "I've never felt like Sam has pushed it on me or was trying to get a nude scene into an HBO show. When I didn't want to do it, he didn't make me."
It might be easy to overlook this issue if it wasn't a clear pattern of behavior. For example, when Minka Kelly's character Samantha is introduced this season, she was instructed to unzip her dress and have it fall to the floor. "I said, 'I'd love to do this scene, but I think we can keep my dress on,'" Kelly said to Vanity Fair. "[Levinson] was like, 'OK!' He didn't even hesitate. And he shot a beautiful scene and got exactly what he wanted." It's vital that the actresses felt listened to, but it also speaks volumes that they had to ask for these scenes to be cut in the first place. Perhaps if Levinson had a writer's room with diverse female voices, the women on Euphoria wouldn't have to raise their objections to constant objectification.
Furthermore, the character of Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie) and her trauma has also been a point of contention with fans since Season 1. While Levinson’s intention was to blur the lines between love and pain with Perez’s relationship with Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi), it has evolved into a form of trauma porn. The physical assault she experienced in the first season was difficult to stomach, but the second season used and abused Maddy for no apparent reason.
In Season 2 Episode 5, Nate pins down Maddy in order to scare her into giving him a CD; he plays Russian roulette on himself and continues to pull the trigger as she sobs. The scene ends with Nate laughing and leaving her in her room alone to cry. We don’t see how this event affects Maddy in the long term, or if she processes the trauma at all. Once again, the pain inflicted upon her feels purposeless and shallow—intended to spark viral tweets and nothing more.
A perfect example of nuanced storytelling regarding sexual abuse and trauma is Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You. The show revolves around Coel's character Arabella—who experiences the horrors of being roofied and raped—and follows her as she slowly remembers her assault. The limited series is based on Coel's personal experience and was praised by critics for its conversations around consent. Coel centers her series on Black women, immigrants, and the LGBT+ community, and instead of dropping extremely violent scenes casually, she questions these events and asks viewers to do the same. I May Destroy You exemplifies how you can make a critical show about sexual abuse and trauma without exploiting a woman for views. The message matters. Perspective matters. Nuance matters.
Netflix's Unbelievable is another example of how showrunners can delicately portray sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress. Based on the true story of Marie, a woman who was raped and later recanted her story, Unbelievable takes a look at trauma and the insidious nature of how sex crimes are handled. Most importantly, it shows these events from a woman's perspective. Unbelievable didn't take the usual route of most true-crime series, where they focus on investigators, prosecutors, and perpetrators. But instead, we experience these events through Marie's eyes.
The series followed the same blueprint as the 2018 film The Nightingale, which follows Clare, an Irish prisoner of war in Tasmania, as she sets out to find the man who raped her. The film's rape scene at the beginning is brutal, violent, and disturbing, causing many Australian viewers to walk out of screenings in disgust. However, unlike many of the scenes on Game of Thrones, the director Jennifer Kent doesn't focus on exposed skin, but rather, the camera is panned in only on Clare's face as we see her fear, sadness, and eventual numbness to the assault. The takes are long, and Kent was criticized for this.
"When we talk about the real damage violence does to people, I wanted to be very respectful and put the audience into the shoes of the person experiencing it," Kent said in response to criticism. "Isn't it interesting that seeing a woman in that kind of emotional pain makes people more uncomfortable than senseless, graphic violence?" Kent pushes against the status quo of rape scenes being shot as sex scenes. "Being forced to live it through Clare's eyes, through Clare's experience, you realize it has nothing to do with sex. It's a destructive, humiliating, and just horrendous act of power and violence, and its victims live with the trauma and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) for years to come."
Good representation and delicate handling of intense subject matters are possible. But showrunners need to honestly reflect on the purposes of these scenes. The overabundance of violence and nudity scripted for female characters, and the conflagration of the two, is so often more about shock value or pleasing a specific demographic than it is about honest storytelling of the female experience.
When Coel created I May Destroy You, she was filling a gap in television surrounding BIPOC experiences with sexual assault and consent. When Unbelievable dropped, the show focused on the flaws of the criminal justice system and the lack of care for female victims. There were intentions behind every scene in these projects to prompt or extend conversations on sexual assault and female trama. To every show that lacks this purpose behind their violent scenes: we don't want to see them anymore.
