Does anyone else find it increasingly difficult to enjoy TV and books where women are murdered?

[DontClownfishMe]

I’m currently sitting on a train trying to read a Patricia Highsmith book and the first chapter involves a graphic description of the main character killing his wife. I got to that part and now don’t want to finish it.

I’m not entirely against the idea as a trope in fiction and I love Agatha Christie books but I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with graphic depictions of women being killed in movies/tv and books.

I’ve unfortunately known a few women who have been murdered and I keep thinking of them. Perhaps it’s just that I’m becoming increasingly sensitive as I age but I wondered if anyone else feels similar?

I know what you mean. I look at the book titles and the pictures on the cover and just know that something awful happens, either to a woman or a child. Murdered, abducted, disappeared, psychological torture, you name it. Tv programmes and series are just as bad - every trailer for a new programme it seems. Endless violence, emotional trauma, desperation, the lot.

That is not what I call entertainment.

I've never found it enjoyable, and choose to avoid vast swathes of film, TV and fiction. I think people with 'true crime' obsessions are prurient and crass.

I don't know anyone who has been murdered (well, one, but not a woman), but I frankly don't get why any writer/director etc would think I would find it in any way pleasurable to encounter graphic depictions of violence against women, or why I would find the murder or rape of a woman 'entertaining'.

Yep - and I refuse to read or watch them for this very reason. It’s not entertainment, it’s reality for 100000s of women each year.

Exactly this. I used to work in an area that exposed me to women and children being harmed, tortured, trafficked, beaten etc every day. I can't tolerate this as 'entertainment'. Because everything that can be imagined inside someone's head as entertainment has been done somewhere to real people.

I left that role 5 years ago after 10 years and still have sleepless nights about things that i have seen' heard about. Classic flashback stuff.

Interesting to hear your opinions.

I’m decidedly not a true crime fanatic. I have read a few books on that over the decades but that’s it and I avoid documentaries on it.

I’m not entirely against it as mentioned but any fiction books shouldn’t focus on the graphic details and should be written with respect for the victim, making her more important than the killer(Even if she is imaginary because it is true that it’s the reality for far too many. It’s not that I never expect to read about awful things in books but I find it disturbing that so many seemingly glory in the graphic depictions of rape and murder.

I've never liked it and don't watch or read anything like that!

I agree, I try to avoid this stuff, which is hard because it’s everywhere. I think there are exceptions, I found some of the Strike books really disturbing and difficult to read but they also actually go into the systematic causes and reactions to violence against women in a way that somewhat justifies the gore.

I think it's a boring and unoriginal way to write a murder. A while back I started listening to an audiobook that opened with a graphic description of a dead woman. And don't get me started on the TV shows with the naked woman on the slab that everyone stares at. It's all completely offensive and done to death and just crass and cliched.

Arguably it's something that needs to be reflected in storytelling though, because men's violence against women is eternal and seems to change and morph with the times, as soon as we solve one facet another emerges - revenge porn, deep fakes, strangling. But as a writer I think there are ways of portraying these issues in ways that are ethical and not gratuitous or gross and put the shame where it belongs - on the violent men.

I totally agree with this thread and have thought this for a long time. I cannot see why these programmes are seen as entertainment - perhaps to leave us in a state of fear? I think that these genres must be very triggering for people who have been through real life traumas.
I also hate the seemingly unavoidable ghoulish trailers for true crime documentaries.
I read a great article recently about how these programmes give us unrealistic perceptions of real life policing.

I agree. I also find the whole fascination with shocking pushing boundaries programs/films. All the unnecessary violence and sex scenes/sexualised perspective.

Netflix particularly is always trying to shock people to get the latest program going viral.

It's become very boring. It all feels shoe horned into programs that don't even need it. I have trauma I'm very mindful about what I watch. I appreciate not everyone has this but it seems so distasteful regardless.

There also isn't a option in the UK to avoid these scenes.That I know of. Aside from not watching much which I essentially do. I know in America they have something called vidangel which takes these scenes out. That would be a great option.

I got sickened by Girl With A Dragon Tattoo Trilogy constantly having dead bodies found who were young women and often naked.

I also find domestic violence against women thrown in as a "plot twist" highly unpleasant.

I agree. I used to watch more when I was younger but through my 40s I got fed up with the same scenario of men killing women as entertainment. That said, I also dislike gangster type documentaries and drama, with men cutting each other's fingers off and shooting each other in the head.

YES! There is such a trend for books to open with really graphic scenes of a woman being killed and I now just stop reading the book immediately if it starts like that. I hate it, feels wrong to get your entertainment from something so terrifying and sadly quite common.

I could not read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy at all. My mother bought me the first one because she is quite keen on murder stuff and I said to her gently that i could not read it. She got really cross with me and called me wet and pathetic. Then bought the others for me the next week, and kept badgering me about if i had read it. I just kept blanking her. I said at one point to my father that she had to let it go. I used to work with women and children who had been trafficked for sex and the organ trade. I'm not reading violence in my leisure time.

I agree. Raping and murdering women as entertainment is the norm sadly. I stop watching when it seems voyeuristic and unnecessary. Particularly if it's a man writing it. I don't read crime fiction but imagine it's as bad as tv/film crime stuff.

And I worked in child protection for many years so know how evil/barbaric some people are, which means I don't/can't see it as entertainment

Not really tbh. I very rarely watch or read crime, but I do watch and read fantasy and drama. I loved Game of Thrones, for example, which was pretty gruesome and involved lots of violence towards women, but also men. I have no problem with violence being depicted in fiction. I don't generally see it as pushing boundaries- these things happen in real life.

I remember when Mandy Patinkin left Criminal Minds after the first series (or quite early on anyway) because he didn't realise how much it would focus on the rape and murder of mainly women and he couldn't continue.

I have an issue with newer media really that seems to get off on more and more gratuitous sex, rape and general violence just for the sake of it and showing it in a very graphic way someone is enjoying it andit is so often written and directed by men. It rarely adds to the storyline and whether it is fictitious or not the actors still have to do it and for many of them not doing it may mean not acting so they do it just because they want to preserve their career.

Wow OP I thought I was the only one. I love to read. I stopped watching movies with rape scenes in my teens…Dirty Harry movies in particular still have scenes I cannot forget Then scenes of trafficking..Taken. Now when I browse books there is a whole genre of missing girl/gone girl/ girl vanished . All with girl in the title. I read girl with dragon tattoo and found the imagery so upsetting I didn’t read anymore and I cautioned everyone not to read especially as it seemed young female readers were a target audience. And I stopped reading Patterson because so many books contained sodomy. And I actually enjoy murder mysteries but the sheer violence seemed to lurk in my memory. And yes @seagulldown when I read that about criminal minds I thought I can so relate.

Certainly. Women are nearly always such "disposable" characters. I think Alfred Hitchcock was one of the worst perpetrators of this careless philosophy.

This is a thread that suggested lots of good TV that doesn't rely on violence/rape/shit treatment of women 😊

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4410604-Can-we-have-a-brilliant-tv-programmes-that-centre-women-and-manage-to-be-brilliant-without-using-violence-and-rape

Can people share recommendations for crime fiction that doesn't focus on horrific things happening to women? I also feel like this, but I do love a good police procedural...

Oh haha by the time I actually finished my post this post had appeared!

I find it really difficult too.
I think it is overused as a concept, but I don't mind reading/watching stories that have it in generally if its kind of 'subtle', like we know it happens but I don't need to see the horrible details; but I find that the graphic nature of how this is portrayed in writing and film has increased dramatically.
I now find it really triggering (and I don't use that lightly) as so often its really quite intense and scary and realistic in a way that I find very upsetting and uncomfortable to watch.