Content Warning: This article talks a lot about sexual assault, and uses the word “rape” repeatedly. Also, spoilers.
Please allow me to begin with saying that I like this show. It’s stylistically fun and a bit all over the place with the costumes (which are fun to spot and name which production you’ve seen them in before), an all-women lead cast, and lands very close to a time and place I’m currently writing. Having only women as the writers/directors/producers is great. A show about sex workers is great. There are many good things to say about it.
“It was very important to us from the beginning to make it about the female gaze. We were determined to make something different. Our hope from the beginning was, ‘Everything from the whore’s eye view.’”
— Alison Owen, Executive Producer
Is there any way you would be able to tell the stories of sex workers without addressing sex abuse? No, not really. For a realistic view, it’s going to get dark really fast. But just, allow me this complaint.
There is an awful lot of rape.
I’m struggling to think of a storyline in this show that does not revolve around rape. The rape is everywhere. When it is not being shown, it is being talked about, facilitated, or the characters are dealing with the fallout of one sexual assault or another. It’s rape or be raped.
The specter of rape haunts every scene. It is not just from the various slimy or malicious male characters, but from the women as well. Of the two matriarchs of the show, one is kidnapping and selling virgin girls to be raped (and sometimes murdered) while the other is putting up her daughter’s virginity for auction in just the first episode. And while we’re supposed to care about these women’s journeys of discovering the error of their ways and how society has fucked them over (is that a pun?), we’re mostly just being subjected to watching a lot of rape.
Within minute 12 of the pilot, women are being violently raped and murdered by a gang of angry men. It doesn’t let up from there, really. We see multiple main characters raped on screen in the first season.
Are rape scenes “better” when directed by women? Yes? But do I want to be constantly watching them? Raping your “empowered” and “feminist” characters is still raping them. And it’s a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. Just because I can’t see an actress’s boobs while they are being raped to avoid the male gaze, is that enough of a positive to be depicting so much on screen assault?
And when the women aren’t being raped, they’re being almost raped or beaten or held against their will, etc, etc. Again, all very plausible and realistic. Entertaining, though? Not as much as maybe they think it is.
We have so few options when it comes to historical fiction that avoids being a tumble-dry cycle of women being abused that as much as I like many parts of this show (particularly the non-white characters which we so rarely get in these types of stories, and as I tried to find an article citing all of the new non-white cast for season 3, all I could find were headlines about Alfie Allen, so fuck it check IMDB and also my point is made), it leaves me yearning for something more escapist than watching my own trauma in pretty dresses.
