Turned fucking Luther off

[fem2019]

Horrendous first episode. The scene on the bus was horrendous and all too plausible. Sick and tired of the women as victims drama drama trope. Like it doesn't happen EVERY fucking day. Absolutely SICK OF IT.

Why do programme makers/planners think we want to watch this sick insensitive crap all the time anyway?

I've never understood why we're supposed to enjoy being vicariously traumatised.

I vote with my off button.

Totally agree. More dramas like Mrs Wilson please. We watch Jane Austen films tbh guaranteed no murders of young women. Hated all those Scandinavian things that were all the rage - one opened with a teenage girl being chased through dark woods we turned that one off.

I avoid horror or detective shows or films because I can more happily live without feeling vulnerable IRL because I have watched women on screen being presented as interchangeable prey animals/rape objects, simply because of our sex.

Plus the fact that often after they’ve arrested someone IRL who has murdered women with a sexual element, there tends to be mention in the press of something horrific that the perpetrator watched for pleasure or to get ideas and then reconstruct on the victims. Not saying there is a direct link but violence and misogyny has a corrosive effect on everyone IMO, even if most people leave that something they enjoy for ‘entertainment’ value when they consume it via film and tv.

It’s definitely a form of social control of women- message is whatever women do or don’t do- ‘look what can happen to you.’ Women can also be sacrificed as the collateral to male disputes in these plots. So the message is that women should live fearfully and compliantly as a type of defence... while always knowing that there isn’t really any defence.

Hopefully cinema and television has changed for the better with more women directors and writers involved, but the ubiquity of pornography and widespread subsequent desensitisation to misogyny and violence also makes me doubt that.

Was Luther breaking the mould (around portraying women characters as victims of crimes)? (Genuine question)

I agree op. Am not even tempted to watch, have heard enough on social media.

madroid

Urm because the ratings tell them we do?

I personally don’t enjoy Luther because I don’t care about all the side stories about him and Alice or the gangsters, I like the police bit. The baddies are super scary. This particular series had both male and females victims and male and female baddies. Should victims be only men?

The scene on the bus was scary. It was supposed to be. As was the serial killer under the bed (who also killed men).

I think this thread is a bit of a reach tbh. The perpetually offended.

This series is better than the previous ones I think. The previous ones (Luther) seemed to get worse - more and more women being killed in horrendous ways. And only women being killed. I nearly stopped watching as it just seemed so gratuitous.

You what now?
Luther is really graphic and really violent, which are enough to turn it off if you don't like it.
But the plot revolved around a married couple who murdered for fun, sexually motivated (male and female victims) , and then the husband finds he has an inoperable tumour and starts escalating, fulfilling his bucket list. The first 2 victims shown were male. The patsy was male. One female victim on the bus and another who survived.
Meanwhile Luther is a weak man, in a twisted relationship with a psychotic woman whom he previously helped escape from a mental institution. While doing a terrible job of investigating the couple sexual murders Luther stands by while Alice kidnaps and subsequently murders the son of a crime boss who sets an assassin on them, whereby one of Luthers (male) colleagues is kidnapped, beaten, saved and subsequently shot at point blank range.
At the capture of the sexual predator Alice murders Luther's (female) assistant, shoots Luther, and eventually falls to her death. Luther is arrested (about time IMO).

Lots of reasons to hate it, but sexual violence against women was a small part of an overall very violent story.

Totally agree. More dramas like Mrs Wilson please. We watch Jane Austen films tbh guaranteed no murders of young women. Hated all those Scandinavian things that were all the rage - one opened with a teenage girl being chased through dark woods we turned that one off.

That is exactly what my female partner and I say and do. Much as I love Sarah Lancashire, I couldn't get through the second series of 'Happy Valley' because I can no longer tolerate the violence and fear these programmes generate.

I can see both sides of the argument on here.
But, considering it broadly, when I have my vivid nightmares (I have mad dreams) it’s always a man chasing me, never a woman. That is pretty telling.

Agree with @GahWhatever

This thread is weird...

I can't watch anything like that. There's enough grimness in RL without making it up. I wouldn't be able to sleep afterwards. I watched Midsomer Murders last night and that's as good as it gets!

I haven't seen Luther but i do switch off the moment a show goes down that particular road. My oh knows this. I just leave the room. In the past I've said that of course he can finish the show or the series but without me and with the sound down. He now sees what I'm talking about, what helped him was the brilliant second seriesof Broadchurch when they described rape from a woman's or victim's perspective rather than sick porn. That show was more educative than anything I've come across.

If people are so affected by it why don’t they just not watch it? Why can’t the rest of us just enjoy it without people moaning?

If people are so affected by it why don’t they just not watch it? Why can’t the rest of us just enjoy it without people moaning?

That's exactly what we're saying - we're discussing the fact that we can't watch such programmes.

People who do enjoy them don't have to read or contribute to this thread.

Most writers of crime and dark or horror fiction ( I am one) write about fears and the dark side of human nature. I quite often write about my own fears. I have written -sometimes quite unpleasant stuff - about abuse and power, and where what it can be like for women is illustrated and it's most definitely - in my case - coming from a feminist perspective. Am I disgustingly trying to control women and creating entertainment porn by just writing about it? I don't agree.

I think it would be reasonable for the BBC to make some drama which is not about sexualised violence. They are supposed to offer a wide range of output. There is plenty of violence on Netflix.

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

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?

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.

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

🤔

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.

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?

Idris Elba is as wooden as a stairpost, anyway 😁

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.

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.