Susan Berridge

A few months ago the *LA Times* ran a piece entitled '[Women at the CW
work to keep sexual violence off their
shows](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-the-cw-rape-sexual-violence-women-showrunners-julie-plec-20150811-story.html)'.
It detailed the discussions of the 'Running the Show: The Women
Executive Producers of the CW' panel held at The CW Summer TCA Tour in
August. The panel featured a number of female showrunners from the US
youth-oriented CW network -- including Diane Ruggiero-Wright (*Veronica
Mars, iZombie*), Caroline Dries (*The Vampire Diaries*) and Laurie
McCarthy (*Reign*) -- discussing their discomfort at having to write
sexual violence narratives in the past and their decision, moving
forwards, to try to avoid them.

Admittedly, I'm not as up to date with current CW teen drama series as
I'd like. While I followed recent debates over a
controversial [rape](http://jezebel.com/cws-royal-teen-drama-reign-showed-a-graphic-rape-scene-1667460775) storyline
in the CW teen series *Reign* (deemed by many to be gratuitous), I have
yet to watch it myself. However, my previous research has focused on
representations of teenage sexual violence in a range of teen drama
series, many of which were broadcast on the CW (examples
include *Veronica Mars, One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, Smallville, Life
Unexpected, 90210, The Vampire Diaries*). All of these series include
multiple sexual violence narratives, with *Gossip Girl, The Vampire
Diaries *and *Veronica Mars *featuring representations of sexual
violence from the very outset in their pilot episodes. The
aforementioned panel discussion makes me interested to look at more
recent CW offerings to see if there has indeed been a shift away from
representing sexual violence as the showrunners assert.

![Reign](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=350&height=525&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_94/reign.jpg "Reign"){.addCaption
.aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="350" height="525"}

A few years ago, I wrote a blog about my research findings for Zero
Tolerance, an Edinburgh-based anti-violence against women charity. When
I sent a draft of the blog to one of the charity's employees, she asked
me whether I was advocating that teens shouldn't watch these shows. This
question troubled me as it was the opposite of my intention. Indeed, my
initial research came out of a frustration with the way in which
scholarship on teen television often focuses on 'role model' debates,
assuming young viewers to be largely passive, vulnerable and in need of
adult guidance on how and what to watch. Not only does this approach
over-simplify the complexities of viewer identification, but it is also
often implicitly gendered, concentrating overwhelmingly on young girls.
The small (but growing) body of audience research that exists on young
viewers reveals that, far from watching passively, this audience often
actively engages with these programmes (Driver 2007; Turnbull, 2008;
Brooker, 2001; McKinley, 1997).

But while it is important not to over-estimate the influence of teen
television and/or the naivety of young viewers, I do think
representations matter. They are not reflective of reality, but they
have the capacity to inform and educate. Indeed, in interviews carried
out by feminist sociologists, teenagers frequently identify television
as a key source of (sexual) information (Holland et al, 2004: 67). The
teen drama series is a particularly conducive genre for representing
sexual violence, concerned as it is with issues of sexuality as teenage
characters gradually mature. Scholars such as Lisa Cuklanz (1996, 2000)
and Lesley Henderson (2007) have identified fictional narratives of
sexual violence (particularly those in drama series more widely) as
better at engaging with feminist discourses in complexity than
mainstream news coverage (see William Proctor's
previous [blog](https://cstonline.net/the-game-of-thrones-rape-debate) for
an example of the power of drama series -- in this case, soap operas --
in raising awareness of rape). Sexual violence narratives in teen drama
series frequently foreground the experience of the victim, condemn the
perpetrator and offer multiple perspectives on the abuse due to the
presence of ensemble casts and interweaving storylines.

At the same time, when exploring these narratives, the same kinds of
stories about sexual violence appeared repeatedly -- narratives that
ultimately worked to close down rather than enlarge feminist discourses
on violence against women. In these programmes, sexual violence is
predominantly framed as a personal problem for teenage girls, divorced
from larger social and political structures. Perpetrators are typically
non-recurring characters who disappear shortly after committing sexually
violent acts and, thus, the need for social transformation is rarely
acknowledged. Further, stark contrasts are drawn between these men and
'normal' male characters, who frequently display heroic masculinity by
protecting and defending female victims (see Landry in seasons 1 and 2
of *Friday Night Lights *for an example of this). Ultimately, it is
often male responses that are emphasised (and notably this was one of
the key criticisms of the rape narrative in *Reign*). Rarely does sexual
violence work to create a shared identity between women. This finding
resonates with feminist scholarship on television depictions of sexual
violence more widely (Moorti, 2002; Projansky, 2001; Cuklanz, 2000).

My research found that sexual violence representations in teen drama
series were so common that they risked becoming normalised and, thus,
invisible. Many people I spoke to were shocked when I told them quite
how many examples I'd found. Of course, the question of definition is
important here. The women on the CW panel, for instance, largely equated
sexual violence with rape. In my research, I used a broader definition,
including other instances of sexual abuse that prompted fear in the
victim, such as stalking, obscene phone calls, sexual assault. In many
cases, these narratives would build up slowly over several episodes,
escalating into an attempted rape or rape storyline to end the season on
a moment of high drama. Indeed, one of the main areas I became
interested in was where these narratives sit in relation to broader
series' structures.

My first job upon completion of my PhD was at a practice/theory based
institution and I had some rewarding conversations with script-writing
practitioners whilst there, who helpfully challenged the textual
emphasis of my work, arguing that the positioning of sexual violence
narratives within series structures is not necessarily ideological but
practical. Writers need to build up to exciting storylines at the end of
seasons to ensure viewers return. This offered me an interesting insight
into industrial constraints that I hadn't fully considered. But, I'd
counter: why does the 'exciting' cliff-hanger storyline need to involve
sexual violence? Why is that the 'go to' narrative? The impression that
the female showrunners gave on the panel was that sexual violence almost
becomes a shortcut for expressions of teenage female vulnerability in
conversations around the writers' table. The very fact that these women
feel that they need to go out of their way to avoid these storylines is
telling.

I'd be disappointed if sexual violence narratives disappear from teen
series altogether. The genre has the potential to play a really
important role in challenging dominant myths around sexual violence as
well as raising awareness of the prevalence of this kind of abuse
(especially in light of recent news reports about the ubiquity of sexual
harassment in schools). These narratives can be handled in interesting
and provocative ways. Seasons 2 and 3 of *The O.C. *offer an interesting
example of the long-term effects of attempted rape on the victim,
stretching the storyline out over multiple episodes and across seasons;
season 6 of *Buffy *draws provocative connections between hegemonic
constructions of masculinity and gendered abuse (as Karen Boyle has
written about previously (2005)) and *Veronica Mars *features several
overlapping sexual violence storylines throughout, making it difficult
to see this kind of abuse as a one-off, aberration of an otherwise
functioning patriarchy.

But there's something interesting about the desire of these showrunners
to do something different. And maybe in doing so, when sexual violence
is explored in these shows (and I am confident it will continue to be),
it will be dealt with thoughtfully and *as *sexual violence, rather than
used as a narrative shortcut to highlight another theme or issue. That
can only be a good thing.

**Susan Berridge **is Lecturer in Film and Media and a member of the
Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University of Stirling.
Her research focuses on representations of age, gender, sexuality and
sexual violence in popular culture. She has published on these themes in
journals including *Feminist Media Studies, The Journal of British
Cinema and Television *and *New Review of Film and Television
Studies. *Susan is also the co-editor of the Commentary and Criticism
section of *Feminist Media Studies.*


A few months ago the
<em>
 LA Times
</em>
ran a piece entitled ‘Women at the CW work to keep sexual violence off their shows’. It detailed the discussions of the ‘Running the Show: The Women Executive Producers of the CW’ panel held at The CW Summer TCA Tour in August.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE CW