Hey there!
This month, I’m going to be sharing part my master’s thesis, which is about creative forms and the #MeToo movement. In this excerpt, which is a slightly modified transcript of a presentation I gave at the 2021 Popular Culture Association National Conference, I’ll specifically be discussing television. I do want to give a trigger warning for discussion of sexual harassment and assault.
This essay will feel much more academic in tone compared to last month’s essay, which was all about breakup art. I like to switch it up sometimes!
For a little bit of context, this presentation is a very pared down version of my chapter on MeToo era television. If you read this and find yourself thinking, “but Christina didn’t mention MY favorite show!” it is quite possible that I’ve covered it in this full version of this chapter. I may release additional close readings from that chapter at some point in the future, if anyone is interested in reading more. Either way, if you have any episode suggestions to add to the repository, please feel free to leave it in a comment!
Alright everyone, buckle up and get ready for nerdy conference vibes.
#MeToo on Screen: Examining Depictions of Sexual Harassment and Assault on Television
While the #MeToo movement spans countless industries and communities, one of the most visible examples of industry-specific #MeToo discourse and activism can be found in the entertainment industry. Hollywood carries a long history of sexual exploitation, specifically within highly gendered patriarchal power dynamics. While I do not have the space to detail the formation of gender politics in today’s Hollywood in this project, in order to contextualize television episodes that tackle the #MeToo movement it is important to keep in mind the way that the means of production have been controlled in Hollywood since the beginning of American television history. The vast majority of directors, producers, and showrunners in the entertainment industry have been, and continue to be, men. More specifically, most of the people in these positions of financial, creative, and production power are cisgender white men, who hold the narrative power to control which stories are told, and how. The identities and experiences of the writers and creators of these episodes is an important part of their context, and often informs the storytelling.
While it is important to understand the context of who has the narrative and production power in television, my primary focus for this overall project is the creative products themselves. I will not be discussing films in great detail. However, it should be noted that #MeToo-inspired stories are certainly making their way to the big screen in films like Bombshell and Promising Young Woman.
Within the umbrella of television, I will also be further narrowing my focus in on television dramas and comedies that do not typically center sexual harassment or assault in their plots This means that I will not include close readings of television shows like Unbelievable or I May Destroy You. Though I will not be discussing these titles in detail, I did want to include them for the purpose of acknowledging the context and evolving discourse around sexual violence and justice that is taking place across a broad range of creative forms right now.
There is a long history of female characters being portrayed poorly and irresponsibly within sexual, romantic, and general power dynamics on television. It is actually quite difficult to trace a complete history of the portrayal of sexual harassment on television because so many behaviors and situations that we now recognize as harassment have long been painted as normal, or included in scenes with little acknowledgement. There is, however, a clearer history of the portrayal of rape on television. Specifically looking to comedies and dramas, we can find some historical grounding in Lisa Cuklanz’s 1999 book Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence. In her analyses of television episodes that depict rape from the 1970s to the 1980s, Cuklanz traces the evolution of the storytelling, noting a shift toward more realistic portrayals of rape that includes the depiction of perpetrators as men known to the victims, as well as victims’ post traumatic journeys. Cucklanz also identifies a “basic plot line” that can predict the generic components of most of the shows that she discusses. While many of the episodes about rape from this time period are presented as “special episodes” and include framing public service announcements or content warnings, I found these components to be inconsistent in #MeToo era television. Some of the sitcoms I studied for this project, such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, did treat sexual harassment and the issues of the #MeToo movement as a single-episode story arc, which is fairly characteristic of traditional sitcoms. A few shows, such as Grey’s Anatomy and Switched at Birth, also included content warnings at the beginning of the episodes, or resources for victims of sexual or domestic violence at the end of the episode.
However, while many of the episodes that I viewed for this project, which aired from 2015-2019, share common themes and contexts, the plot maps varied quite drastically. While each plot is different, each story seems to be framed in specific cultural context and rhetoric that the creators presume the audiences will recognize. For example, even if the #MeToo or #TimesUp movements are not explicitly mentioned, characters typically reference high profile, real life perpetrators, or mention more vaguely that times are changing. There also appears to be a tacit understanding, particularly among women, about the normalcy and frequency of sexual harassment and assault. Many of these episodes also contend with the particularly complicated place that many women find themselves in as both victims and enablers of sexual harassment and assault. There also seems to be an increased focus on the aftermath of sexual harassment and violence from the perspective of the victim, rather than a focus on the act itself or the perspective of the perpetrator.
Though many of the television shows I studied in the project, including GLOW, Bojack Horseman, and Good News, focus on sexual violence and the television and film industry, #MeToo era television also depicts experiences with harassment and assault that take place in other industries and spaces. In many of these storylines, there is also a power structure operating alongside the misconduct, often enabling it.
For example, in the eleventh episode of the fourth season of Jane the Virgin, “Chapter Seventy-Five,” Jane is forced to revisit a relationship she had with a professor when she was a graduate student. Jane the Virgin is a television dramedy that aired on The CW from 2014-2019. The show was developed by Jennie Snyder Urman, and was loosely adapted from a telenovela titled Juana la Virgen. “Chapter Seventy-Five,” which first premiered in March 2018, gives Jane (Gina Rodriguez) the opportunity to revisit a past storyline with some new context and a fresh perspective. In search of a teaching position, she returns to the university where she attended graduate school years ago, where she is nervous about interacting with her former advisor and love interest, Professor Chavez (Adam Rodriguez). Their relationship actually took place a couple of seasons earlier in the show, and, as told from Jane’s perspective, was framed as romantic and consensual at the time. Their relationship was serious enough for her to consider losing her virginity to him, and ultimately for her to choose a different graduate advisor so that they could more ethically pursue their relationship. Jane realizes that she has always thought that their relationship was an isolated incident, a singular transgression on his part as an educator. However, when she arrives at his office to meet with him, she catches him kissing another graduate student who is currently enrolled in the program.
As she processes this new information, Jane does some research on social media and learns that Chavez has been in romantic relationships with at least four other graduate students, and this “reframes everything.” She explains to her current boyfriend that, “I didn’t feel like he took advantage of me at the time, I had a crush on him.” Her boyfriend affirms this discomfort, pointing out the power dynamics in the situation. While it is entirely possible to engage in consensual sexual activity with a partner who holds more power, the disparity certainly complicates boundaries in the relationship and, potentially, consent. In several interviews, Urman has expressed that she and the other writers working on Jane the Virgin wanted to consciously engage with the #MeToo discourse in the episode. Urman told Variety that “The events that we showed [in previous seasons] were perfectly fine, but what if there was more to the story that you didn’t know? So much of what you’re realizing now is that there are patterns, and you’re one of many, and people who transgress [do so] often usually. We wanted to figure out a way within Jane’s world on how to engage with what’s happening right now.” Urman recognizes this pattern in the #MeToo movement, as well as the television inspired by it. By choosing to revisit and reframe a past storyline rather than create an entirely new one, the writers were able to demonstrate just how important context and perspective can be when navigating sexual and romantic relationships within systems of hierarchy and power. Jane was very young and much more naive when she and Chavez had their affair. Looking back as an adult, Jane sees things differently because she understands that this is a pattern of behavior for him that reflects an abuse of power.
As her knowledge of this situation grows, her understanding of it develops and changes, and so does ours. This episode makes space for survivors of sexual harassment and assault to reflect on past experiences and reframe them with a more informed, critical eye, validating this change in perspective in a way that runs counter to a lot of anti-#MeToo rhetoric, which often doubts the validity of accusations made years after the fact. It took Jane years to realize that Chavez’s actions were inappropriate, and she needed to contextualize her experience with his other relationships with graduate students to see the full picture.
An important part of many of these #MeToo era television storylines is the survivor’s awareness that others, particularly women, share their experiences. The depictions of sexual harassment and assault are almost always framed as something that women experience as victims, so a lot of the collective knowledge and shared experiences portrayed happen among female characters. This is certainly true in the tenth episode of the first season of The Good Doctor, “Sacrifice.”
The Good Doctor is a medical drama on the ABC network that is loosely based on a South Korean show of the same name. The showrunner is David Shore, and the executive producer is Daniel Day Kim. Though the primary protagonist of The Good Doctor is a young surgical resident with autism named Sean Murphy (Freddie Highmore), “Sacrifice” tells the story of one of the other recurring characters, Claire (Antonia Thomas), experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace. Claire is paired with Dr. Koyle (Eric Winter) to perform a surgery, while her fellow interns are assigned a different operation. When she tells her fellow interns, who are both men, that she feels uncomfortable with the way Dr. Koyle looked at her during the operation and touched her back later, they tell her that his behavior seems normal and that Dr. Koyle is “just trying to establish a rapport.” Later, Claire’s patient, who is a woman, notices how uncomfortable she is around Dr. Koyle, and assures Claire that she doesn’t have to “tow the line” with her. They are able to speak fairly freely about how both of their industries, though vastly different, are dominated by “bros,” as is any industry they can think of. They seem to share an understanding of the realities of sexual harassment in the workplace as tied to both gender and hierarchal power structures, as their experiences are recognizable even across industries.
Later, as that same patient is asleep recovering from her operation, Dr. Koyle askes Claire out for a drink. When she declines, he escalates his advances. When she declines again, he accuses her of insubordination, and threatens to report her inappropriate behavior next time. Dr. Koyle goes beyond making Claire feel uncomfortable or unsafe, he also threatens her career. He implies that she could be punished for resisting his advances, and threatens a repeat episode “next time.”
Flustered and upset, Claire confides in one of the other interns, Jared (Chuku Modu), who she also has a romantic relationship with. When Jared encourages her to file a complaint with Human Resources, Claire explains that she will be blamed or not believed, and refers to the way Jared initially discounted her intuition when she shared with him that Dr. Koyle’s behavior did not feel appropriate. She tells Jared that she will “get labeled hostile and difficult, neither of which work with my complexion or gender.” Claire is a Black woman who is new to the field, and Dr. Koyle is a white man with an established career. Claire is very familiar with the power dynamics at play in her situation, as well as how high the stakes are for her. Interestingly, this is the first and only time that Claire refers to her race in the episode. When she and her patient, who is a white woman, discuss their common experiences with sexual harassment in the workplace, they do not discuss the way that racial dynamics can also impact these situations. This omission may be because Claire is isolated from other women of color in her workplace and in this storyline, but her mention of her “complexion” demonstrates that she is aware of how her intersecting identities affect the way she must navigate the medical field, as well as workplace harassment.
Later in the episode, Claire’s patient reveals that she was not asleep when Dr. Koyle harassed Claire, and she heard everything that happened during the confrontation. She says “good for you...I wish I had done that, you were brave.” With this encouragement from another woman who has also experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, Claire realizes that she has to report the incident to Human Resources in order to stand up for herself, but also to protect other women from Dr. Koyle’s predatory actions. This call to action through encouragement from another survivor is something that comes up in a lot of the episodes I surveyed for this project. When Claire goes to HR to file a complaint, she learns that Jared has been fired for attacking Dr. Koyle on her behalf. Claire, in turn, is furious at Jared for getting involved in the situation without her consent.
While Claire was able to confide in her female patient about her experiences, she was unable to trust her male partner or male colleagues. Even the men who were not directly harassing her were complicit in the harassment because they dismissed her complaints and did not believe her when she told them about her experiences. The story isolates her from anyone who she could fully trust or relate to, but, ironically, the person who understands her situation the most is her patient, who she knows the least. The episode implies a fairly simplistic narrative of sexual harassment in the workplace, in which women are always victims and all men are somewhere between clueless, complicit, or perpetrating. Of course, this does not speak to every individual, nuanced experience. However, it does speak to a wider volume of collective experiences that the #MeToo movement has encouraged survivors to share. As discussed previously, the #MeToo movement has been criticized for privileging certain stories and marginalizing others, and much of the creative work that comes from the movement echoes these patterns and silences.
Ultimately, these shows raise a series of questions for #MeToo era viewers to contend with. On one hand, it is undeniably important to shed light on the issues of sexual harassment and assault, and promoting awareness of these issues can contribute to a cultural shift toward prevention. However, how can creators ensure that the #MeToo movement is not reduced to weekly entertainment, or a trend they capitalize on for the sake of ratings? Is striking that balance the creators’ responsibility? What are the risks of commodifying #MeToo in mainstream entertainment? Is it helpful? #MeToo era television shows, as demonstrated here, often replicate the issues and inequities found in the #MeToo movement, including primarily depicting women as victims as men as perpetrators, as well as failing to address issues of race and other facets of identity in a meaningful way. These shows often address or at least repeat the sentiment that culture has shifted recently, and that some actions and behaviors that were once acceptable no longer are. Even though the positionality of that sentiment is rarely interrogated, the shows predominantly focus on the perspective of the victim and the aftermath of the harassment or assault.
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Best,
Christina
One of the early, thoughtful depiction of SA that I still think about is from the show Felicity. I watched the show while I was in my first year of college, and I still think about it sometimes today. One of the core characters was assaulted by her boyfriend, and ultimately ended up leaving college because of her mental health in the aftermath. I’m not sure if it sticks with me because I was in a similar phase of life, or because it was possibly the first time I saw a depiction of someone being assaulted by a partner, but the image is still clear in my mind in a way I hadn’t realized until reading this.
Two recent shows with really nuances storylines around assault are Betty and Grand Army. In Betty it’s something that happens off screen, which I appreciated. Grand Army was tough to watch because of how real it all felt, but I also appreciate that it got the weightiness and complexity it deserves.