Turned fucking Luther off

So where does it end then? Just no violence in all films and tv shows?

I actually feel like this series was playing quite significantly with tropes of women as victims. It was shit otherwise though.

I agree- the bus scene was harrowing as a woman who has spent many an east London night bus home on edge.
But I also thought that the female accomplice, the dynamic with Alice and Halliday, and the manipulation and murder of male victims, was notable in this series and remarked on it to my friend.

The only explicitly sexualised murder seen on screen was Alice killing George’s son.

What do you make of that?

Anyfucker we got it on good old fashioned dvd from HMV - £5.

The first 2 victims were male and more males were victims overall? Can’t see your issue in all honesty. I get in a lot of crime dramas it is the poor unsuspecting female but you are pretty far off the mark with this series.

Don't watch Luther but, back at Uni, I remember walking out of 'Resurrection Man' after seeing some guy getting his head bounced off a ceramic sink, repeatedly.

Excessive violence, like excessive swearing, is a sign of a lack of imagination and of bad writing.

I love Lewis, but it got to a point where I could always guess the murderer, if there was a clever older woman in the plot, because it would be her.

Women are the main consumers of crime and murder novels and shows.
Perhaps it's like horror - the people who like it want the peril and fear?
I don't like or watch crime/muder stuff myself, but I do like horror, and empathising with a character in danger is part of the allure.

I'm loving it. It's not just about attacks on women, it's about all kinds of nutters. Very unrealistic though.

Where can I watch the Frances McDormand film please. I luffs her.

Another vote for 3 Billboards. A 60 year old woman who can move her face and in the film wears no or very little makeup and wears one outfit. I know that’s her character but it is refreshing to see.

I saw the first series of Luther 5/6 years ago and one of the episodes still freaks me out so I won’t be watching. I am also consciously watching less violent stuff. Did anyone watch Informer? Although other elements of it were good it involves a mass shooting and felt too real to me now. I won’t be watching something like that in the future.

I agree OP. Give me a cosy mystery because I love the whodunnit, I just hate the gratuitous sexualised violence. There is a certain voyeuristic feel to it all.

I haven't seen it but I don't understand why so many men enjoy watching drawn out scenes of detailed violence. Some of them don't watch much of anything else. Seems a person would live in a pretty dark world to have such a strong desire to watch people being murdered, mutilated and torchered.

On a similar subject, I watched that film with Frances McDormand last night -‘Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri’. It won an Oscar (last year?).
One of the things I really loved about it was that, although the story is that the main character is trying to get the police to solve the brutal rape and murder of her daughter, they never show the actual crime or dwell on the details of it. So refreshing to see a drama where that theme is covered without using it as entertainment. Brilliant film as well.
(Another thing I loved is that Frances McDormand has a normal face, with wrinkles and everything. She can actually move it!).

I tried the first couple of episodes of the first series and realised it was just violence porn against women. Shame bec I do love Idris. The writers are def watching too much porn.

DH and I started watching Series 1 last night, having seen posts all over our timelines about how excited people were that it was back. We watched 3 episodes and then agreed that we wouldn't watch anymore. In DHs words "it's everything that's wrong with everything". Nasty, bullying, narcissistic male protagonist. Were women meant to be placated by the "strong women": female boss (ignored) ex-wife, (terrorised and bullied), villian (yes, always an evil woman to blame for a man acting outside of the rules)? Just enforcing stereotypes and societal expectations of behaviour.

Yeah all of this. I watched the first episode and saw a main character who was a violent bully to his ex wife (punching holes in a door because she broke up with him while she stood terrified in the corner.
It's widely known that men who will damage inanimate objects do it as a form of control and will probably then escalate to hitting the woman.) He then came over to threaten and then beat up her new boyfriend. Burst into her workplace to "talk to her", throwing out her colleagues and barricading her into the room to force her to listen to him. Broke into a woman's apartment while she was out and then later grabbed that woman by the throat and dangled her over the side of a bridge in broad daylight.

I have serious problems with this character being seen as simply flawed but alright really, as fans of the show have said to me of him. He's evil, and having no real repercussions for this behaviour in the show doesn't exactly send the right message. They could have shown his marriage breakup without the violence and the storyline would not have been materially affected. It seems that's a lot of female fans of the show are willing to overlook all of that because he's good looking. And it was ever thus.

There is a character in a novel by David Lodge, or Howard Jacobson, or someone like that, who is a middle aged, bitter, screen writer for a thinly disguised “Play for Today”. He used to go to pubs and pick up young women by promising to get them on the telly, but they got wise to that. Now he just writes parts in which they are stripped naked, waits a few months, and then sees them on screen.

I really don't know what you are supposed to do with that visual information. Yes it serves a narrative function, but for me that doesn't ever override the fact that I've just watched a terrified woman being raped/murdered.

Idris Elba is as wooden as a stairpost, anyway 😁

I watched it because there was so much praise for it from friends and family. I didn't enjoy it. I won't watch anymore, I'm not going to argue that other people can't watch it, just that I can't see what all the fuss is about. I do wonder if I didn't like it because it was set in London and it felt "too close to home", I can watch US crime dramas and historical thrillers, is that because they are removed from my personal environment?

I've also found that as I grow older and have had children my tolerance for gratuitous violence has lessened, it does make me fearful of society. I think programming like this desensitises us just like pornography is desentising, and the more it is watched, the more it encourages worse violence to be portrayed.

If we're going to argue about restricting access to hardcore pornography, I think that there is an argument for restrictions on violent films and TV programming, not just on showing violence against women, but all violence. And that I've started to feel this way surprises me, because I've always felt strongly about freedom of speech and choice, nowadays I think that there isn't enough societal responsibility about what people are being exposed to. Is it enough to say that just because something has good ratings, it's justified in being shown?

If we start saying that we can't portray violence against women then we can't portray violence against men eith

Yeah. There is no power imbalance in society so that is entirely true. And violence against men in westerns is always sexual, of course.

Did you miss the part where the first two victims were male?

🤔

Am torn in this.

We started watching the first series of Luther on boxing day. I don't watch much TV generally, call the midwives and vera is about as far as I go.

But have watched back to back episodes every night and just have the final 2 episodes to watch tonight.

I don't generally watch gratuitously violent stuff. And really dislike needless violence towards women.

But I think Luther is just gritty enough to be what it says it is. It's based on the Serial and Serious crime unit. It's going to have serious and serial crimes. It's going to have serious crimes against men and women. You don't see lots of blood and gore. You don't usually see the actual murder, just the body and photos afterwards.

The main character isn't portrayed as perfect, he is deliberately flawed for the characterisation. It's clearly fiction, it's not real, I don't think even the police department is real life.

If we start saying that we can't portray violence against women then we can't portray violence against men either. And then we couldn't have war films. Or westerns. Or even soaps. We shouldn't have paintings that show violence. It goes on and on and on.

I think if you could do a body count on luther there would be as many dead men as dead women. And some strong female characters do feature. Obviously there is Alice, Luthers wife who had actually left him was pretty ballsy and a human rights solicitor, Jenny the young girl he rescues from the gangsters who use her in porn actually murders her attackers and her attackers grandmother was a strong character. Luthers boss in the first series, the female partner is series 4 I think who shoots the serial killer who blew her previous partner up. Probably more that I have forgotten.

The male characters are pretty flawed in Luther. Apart from Justin I can't think of another who isn't.

I think it has a good balance personally. There are violent scenes, against men and women. There are strong male and female characters. It's a work of fiction. It's not particularly gratuitous but it is based on serial killers so it has to have some violence in it and I think the violence is fairly split between the sexes.

The bus scene was scary though, and the bloke popping out from under the bed was fucking terrifying. But it's clever writing and filming. It's meant to make you jump.

I think it is telling that the film Deliverance still provokes such a reaction from men as it contains a male rape scene. From 1972.

How many times, in how many films have featured women being raped since then?

Also it’s bloody boring and done to death (excuse the pun). Can’t be just a coincidence that effectively all these dramas are is the same story with slightly gruesome alterations