So sick of violence against women as entertainment

[tinymeteor]

Just had to bail on another movie because the plot pivots, as usual, around the murder of a beautiful teenage girl. With extra emotional juice added by having her mother find her in a dumpster.

I am so fucking sick of being served graphically violent misogyny as entertainment. Seems like where TV and movies are concerned, daughters only exist to be colourfully brutalised and mothers only exist to emote for them, and we're supposed to detach from the ghastliness in front of us and somehow see it as entertaining. While is basically only possible if you're not at all invested in the female characters and only interested in the male protagonist's revenge kick / voyage of self-discovery / redemptive quest for justice (delete as applicable). I can't do it any more.

Full disclosure: I am nine months pregnant with my second daughter so not at my most serene right now, and scenes of mothers grieving are going to push all my buttons. But I'm not fucking wrong, am I?

OP it was that bizarrely shit film with Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman? Thst scene really really upset me too, and like you, I'm sick of it being dished up as entertainment. So weary of it.

Virtually all, except the children's films and even they were full of grooming children for abuse, ahem Zootopia, cough.

Colour me intrigued. How the fuck does Zootopia "groom" children for abuse?

Yes Op, I completely agree, it’s so depressing

Completely agree, OP. Utterly sick of it. Rape and sexual violence is a mere plot device, usually to add to a man's character.

I gave up on Altered Carbon very quickly. It was just so male. All our culture is so fucking male. Just for once, it'd be nice to watch or read something written by women, about women, with no men in it whatsoever. Their stories have been done to death. I want to hear ours.

Sorry to swerve off topic but oddly Pitch Perfect has men as plot devices for the female characters. And small ones at that. Who get smaller through the franchise.

They are far from perfect but in the last one for example, the 'romance' from the previous films is discarded with a tiny mention and the new 'romance' for the female lead is rejected in favour of career advancement.

I’ve seen Zootopoa twice. thebewilderness please tell me you’re joking.

A very good point raised by the OP.

Much of Disney media today covertly conditions girls to let their guard down around predators. It's not in girl's interest to get them to override their natural instincts that something/ someone is "off"

E.g. imagine Red Riding Hood retold Disney style - RRH would be going off hand in hand with the wolf who turned out to be a good ole wolf - really. Whereas the truth is we need to reinforcing the traditional RRH tale to help girls / women trust their instincts and get out of situations where their only indication of danger is their intuition and body knowing that something isn't right.

Mainstream media movies including Disney can often be like Big Brother from 1984 Orwell - it's very dangerous to women and girls.

Yes I am sick of male violence against females being used as "entertainment". But funnily enough I was reflecting last night as I watch Case from Iceland TV from a few years ago - all about trafficking vulnerable girls who have been taken into "care" - how it mirrors the trafficking gangs in the UK - except the predators in Case are white guys in the Establishment and professions surrounding child services (more the "traditional" predators) - and how true to life it is. I learnt a lot from watching it- and there wasn't a lot of gratuitous violence against women but did show some and some against guys.

The best crime programs can be informative of the tactics of predators and a good story. The worse is just masqueraded hard core porn.

All our culture is so fucking male. Just for once, it'd be nice to watch or read something written by women, about women, with no men in it whatsoever. Their stories have been done to death. I want to hear ours.

Agree with this.

Otherwise I haven't seen Zootopia so cannot comment on the appropriateness or not of the film per se... but I think I can see what 'Bewildered' is getting at and so what if that might be seen as 'humourless feminist'? We don't all have to be 'cool girls' around the outpouring of misogynist content [or that which is detrimental to a female viewpoint] in popular culture, be that high brow entertainment or kid's films.

I also feel that the new trend, which I hate, is for the graphic death of children in TV drama-the last couple of years this now seems to be the new way to show how "edgy" a drama is. I won't watch any of them. I don't want to see dead and suffering children served up as entertainment. It's all part of the same issue - bloody male violence shown on screen as entertainment and I'm sick of it.

Well good to know I'm not the only one!

Yes it was the Julia Roberts /Nicole Kidman movie but I feel like I've seen a version of it 1,000 times. I just had this visceral moment of "why is this hideousness in my house?". And the answer is that it's bloody inescapable. I've had enough of violence in entertainment, but as a PP said it's the ubiquity of VAW as a plot device that is extra depressing.

I do have to respectfully disagree about Zootopia though! I read that as a race allegory, not a gender one, and in that light it's highly valid.

Totally agree with OP. I get really angry with the TV. And I watched a children’s cartoon from Spain recently where a girl was kid napped but at the end the kidnapper confessed but said he was in love with her, and we were supposed to assume that made it all OK and a happy ending?!

It was an episode of “Mirette

bewilderness - I totally agree about Zootopia actually.

Fearless, female, determined, first prey (all police officers are predators) police officer carries 'anti-fox' spray given to her by her mother when she moved to the big city. There's an epidemic of predators going feral and murdering prey (not in so many words, it's a kids movie), and at one point she's having a talk with a fox she's befriended who gets a bit aggressive, so she unclips the button on her anti-fox holster (bear in mind the context here - predators going feral) - at which point the fox guilt trips her so badly (DARVO), more stuff happens, and she gives up her dream to go back and be a carrot farmer with her parents. Where she solves the problem with the feral animals - which was intentional poisoning - after seeing her childhood bully had changed and become a lovely predator (NAMALT).

She charges back to the city, saves everything (show-downs etc) - and the lesson she learned (painfully pointed out) is that she shouldn't have prejudged, because that fox was her friend and he'd never have hurt her.

Not that the fox should have had some self-awareness and realised why she was quite fairly scared witless, and given her a break for it, oh no. It was the bunny that was wrong all along.

The predator / prey thing says it all doesn't it.

Pretty much every time we turn on the tv men are being told they're predators, women are being told we're prey and everyone is being told there's something enjoyable, thrilling and sexy about this relation

This Zootopia discussion is beyond crazy. Talk about over-analysing!

YY. I love crime dramas but have had to give them up. True Detective and Top of the Lake were two I just couldn't finish. Clearly well produced with fine acting, but tired themes of violence against women and children. And because we've seen it all before they have to make the manner of death or abuse worse each time.

I wholeheartedly agree, there is virtually nothing watchable anymore.

I clicked on a ballet progame on Amazon the other day “flesh and bone” thinking it would be light relief.

Nope. Rape. Incestuous rape. Violence. A tit count to rival GOT.

Are there really no stories to tell that don’t include the vile debasement of women?

Fearless, female, determined, first prey (all police officers are predators)

No they're not. They're all larger animals. There's the elephant cop, the rhino. Ffs the main chief cop character is a bison. How are they all predators? The point was she was the first bunny cop. If you can't even get the basics right, the rest of your "analysis" is clearly bollocks

Agree that rape and sexual violence against women and girls is used far, far too often - often as a lazy narrative device, or a shortcut to "grittiness".

Completely disagree about Zootropolis though!

It is more analogous to race rather than sex, I think although not a perfect analogy to either. I found it to be a very well done done, sensitive film that somehow managed to explore a lot of nuanced ideas in a children's film.

There were a couple of scenes in it though, which reminded me of the subtle barriers that can face women breaking into all male careers. eg, where the chairs and equipment (even the toilets) in the police training centre and precinct are all designed for large mammals, because that's who normally uses them. Sounds trivial, but it reminded me of how all the PPE at one place I worked was designed for large men. It would never have occurred to them how inconveniencing this was, but it mattered.
Judy Hops is NOT the first non-predator police officer (the chief is a buffalo), she is the first small mammal.

My OH doesn't like Scott & Bailey as too many women in it! Women get to be detectives AND the coroner, shocking!

So sick of violence against women as entertainment

I'm just sick of violence-as-entertainment, full stop. It's not at all appealing.

I went to the cinema to watch “The Skin That I Live In” or something with Antonia Banderes

They are showing that locally as part of a film series, it's the one I immediately said I didn't want to see.