Can pop culture fix rape culture?

Scene from the Last Tango in Paris starring Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando. Image by Craig Duffy on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

One third of male university students would rape a woman if there were no consequences and amongst those men, most don’t recognise that the actions described actually constitute rape, a recent study, by The Violence and Gender Journal, has found. A scary reality, but numbers don’t lie. In 2017, rape culture is still very much alive.

At a time when young people appear to be confused about what constitutes consent, and therefore what constitutes rape, on-screen portrayals of rape and sexual assault matter a great deal. They carry heavy responsibility in the message that they send and how they’re shaping perspectives.

Lately, it seems like rape and sexual assault are all over our screens and headlines. Last October, popular BBC1 period drama, Poldark, featured a scene depicting what was arguably sexual assault, while French film, Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert, made waves for its controversial portrayal of a rape victim as the sexually empowered antithesis of the victim stereotype. But are those depictions doing more harm or good? And are they contributing to rape culture, or subverting it?

A key point in the debate surrounding the portrayal of rape is artistic license versus the responsibility of the filmmaker. Heidi Renton, a spokeswoman for the British Board of Film Classification, says it’s all about striking a balance between acknowledging the viewer’s choice and remaining cautious when dealing with any potentially harmful material that includes sexual violence. "While it’s accepted that sexual violence is a legitimate theme for exploration and that adults have a right to choose their own viewing, whatever the theme, the BBFC will continue to remove scenes or images which may be considered harmful to the individual, or to society, through eroticising or endorsing sexual violence... Context is always the key factor in making our decisions."

In Poldark, the controversy started before the episode even aired, with talks about whether or not the scene was going to be included and how similar to the book it would be. The version that aired was supposedly an ‘updated’ one, that met the actors’ and director’s approval. But it still managed to attract criticism as it featured the eponymous character, played by heartthrob Aidan Turner, forcefully kissing Elizabeth (Heida Reed) while she repeatedly says no, before taking her to bed where she appears to ‘give in’. The scene led to the BBC and Ofcom receiving numerous complaints.

While defenders of the programme argued that this was the climax of a long back and forth between the two characters and that Elizabeth clearly wanted and enjoyed it, it only served as a reminder that our view of rape must change. To employ the popular anti-rape slogan: "No means no", and Elizabeth said no; there is no grey area when it comes to rape. The scene only helped further blur the lines of what constitutes consent, which are evidently already murky for a lot of people.

Victoria Anderson is an arts and culture columnist for The Conversation, and a researcher in the field at Cardiff University. She believes the issue with the representation of rape is its inherent misogyny. "Where rape and sexual violence is evoked, the victim is usually a female of sexually reproductive age which suggests that the assault of women aged 15-40 is a more desirable or acceptable visual narrative device than the rape of men, children or older people," she says. "I certainly think it’s demeaning to present women as helpless rape objects, and I think that eroticised or normalised representations are potentially detrimental."

There sure is still some road ahead towards dismantling rape culture and its patriarchal nature, but perhaps we can take comfort in the fact that our attitudes towards rape have somewhat changed for the better. Poldark’s season two rape scene caused a huge stir on social media and in the press when it aired a few months ago but the 1970s version of the show featured the same storyline, yet somehow wasn’t commented on. When footage recently emerged of Last Tango in Paris director, Bernardo Bertolucci, admitting the infamous 'butter rape scene' featured in the 1972 film was made without the then 19-year-old actress’s consent, it sparked outrage, but when said actress, Maria Schneider, revealed her humiliation over "feeling raped" by Marlon Brando to the Daily Mail in 2007, no one batted an eyelid.

Martin Barker, professor of film and television studies at Aberystwyth University, has led research into audience responses to screened sexual violence. He explains that reactions to such scenes are incredibly varied, ranging from anger, to bafflement, to curiosity. "What is true," he says, "is that in all cases, depictions of sexual assault elicit a powerful reaction and the viewer feels inevitably deeply engaged." However, he credits this reaction not only to the violent images, but also to the public discourse surrounding rape. "People feel forced most of the time to take sides because of the intensity of public commentary around the topic. [Often,] the supposed force of ‘showing rape’ is not the issue at all – it is just the terms in which it almost inevitably gets debated."

Image by SlimVirgin via wiki commons / cc0 (CC BY 4.0)

Viewer engagement and public discourse are both central to Emma Sulkowicz’s work. Sulkowicz is an artist who made the headlines when she was involved in a campus rape in 2013. She decided to turn her trauma into art, creating "Mattress Performance", and "Ceci n’est pas un viol", a self-starring video recreating her rape. In a preamble to the video, she writes: "Do not watch this video if your motives would upset me, my desires are unclear to you, or my nuances are indecipherable... I want to change the world, and that begins with you." "I wanted to make this work that seems to be very focused on me actually pivot and reflect the desires of the viewers, make the viewers question their potential desire to be an aggressor," she says. "I wanted them to be very aware of their prejudices and desires going in to watch the video."

Because she was making art about her rape and didn’t fit the idea people have of how a rape victim should behave, social media trolls started to doubt her version of events and tried to minimise her trauma. Her video, she explains, is to challenge those expectations put on the rape survivor, and break the victim stereotype.

She explains that her video is a departure from the rape scenes we’re used to seeing on-screen, not only because it challenges the viewer’s role and expectations. "Most people on earth actually don’t know what rape looks like cause they’ve only ever seen some sort of cinematised portrayal of it... On TV, they have good lighting and camera angles, things that make it visually digestible." In more honest portrayals like hers, "there’s something raw and gross and the actors don’t look good," she says. "I’m not really interested in people that make any depiction of something that’s really traumatic and terrible that’s easily digestible. I don’t know if I would call that art."

Beyond the effects those representations of rape can have on our view of the crime, they can also impact the victims of sexual assault. Katie Russell, a spokeswoman for the Rape Crisis England & Wales charity, explains that on-screen portrayals of sexual assault can actually be beneficial to survivors. "These portrayals can sometimes help victims understand that they are not alone, that what happened to them wasn’t their fault, and encourage them to confide in friends or family, or seek specialist support," she says. "The important thing is not to glamourise or sexualise violence against women and girls, or use it purely for titillation or entertainment purposes."

Sadly, with 1 in 3 women worldwide having experienced physical or sexual violence according to the World Health Organisation, violence against women is still too common and much more widespread than most people realise. Overall, on-screen depictions can play a positive role in highlighting this by raising awareness of the effects and prevalence of such violence, Russell believes. Ultimately, she says: "Covering sexual violence is a real responsibility and programme-makers should always consider the large number of survivors who will inevitably be among their audience and handle the content with the appropriate respect and sensitivity... The key thing is that [the material] carries clear content warnings so that survivors can make their own informed choices about whether or not to watch."

In 2016, 6116 rapes were reported in London, an almost 13 per cent increase from 2015, but still a fraction of the reality given that most rapes go unreported. This month, the Women of the World Festival is hosting a talk about sexual assault and abuse and why rape is more difficult to talk about than other serious crimes, a taboo that transfers to the realm of cinema and television, given the opprobrium that often accompanies the portrayal of rape.

But whether on-screen depictions of rape and the subsequent discourse around them have a positive or negative impact on the way we view rape, their effect on viewers is undeniable. Television and filmmakers undoubtedly have the power to either strengthen or challenge preconceived notions and damaging attitudes towards sexual violence. So can pop culture help change rape culture? It won’t happen overnight but it could be a start.

To find out more about Emma Sulkowicz and her art, visit her website.

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