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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Nuff yes I loved three billboards too

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

Bloody hell, Nuff. How retro are you

I know! I want to get rid of the dvds, but DH keeps buying more. He is the dodo, not me.
Yesterday’s purchase was because he felt sorry for HMV.

NAMALT.

@ReflectentMonatomism
"I don’t start watching anything unless I am 95% certain it will not feature sexualised violence against young women so the writer or director can get their jollies, or give the audience what low expectations say they want.

I therefore watch no drama after 9pm. I watch no police procedural."

...Are you me?! This is exactly what I do. There's enough upsetting shit on the news every day without watching this type of vile drama

I love a good DVD. I still have a collection but no longer anything to play them on.

Generally, I agree with your objections. Most dramas completely fall into that trap of gratuitous violence and sexualisation of female victims.

In this case though, I think Gah is right. Luther has been fantastic, definitely not derivative or generic. It's really complex and interesting. Brilliant programme.

It has been very illuminating to read this thread alongside the actual Luther thread, whereby int out (correctly) that all crime drama is based on someone's nightmare.

One could also discuss at length the literary role and function of the bogeyman - something that is both common, and in therms of world literature, universal, and is the basis of much (unbowderalised) children's literature. The latter being possibly most apposite to counterpoint to the oresmise of this thread. Scary tales for DC teach them about the world and how to deal with the scary/difficult/sad.

And of course some of the premise of this thread (as trenchantly pointed out on the other) just plain wrong - given the sex of both perpetrators and victims in the series in question.

Unless you are calling for the end of all suspense - remember that for many people, the scariest bit was the 'man in the attic' where it was all in dead silence, and he hunted the man in the house first. Should that not have happened either, because it was showing a man's nightmare?

It seems that this thread is a call to ban everything over a 12A, becausng upsetting/scary should ever be shown.

Accepting for the moment that what Edith says is right, then I would say at worst that Luther is collateral damage from the fact that most TV crime drama is sexualised violence in large quantity. And “collateral” is a good word: that series last year with Billie Piper and Carey Mulligan also featured the protagonist naked in the shower for no readily apparent reasons. Presumably Billie and Carey had a “no nipples” clause in their contract, but Jeany Spark’s agent hadn’t got the leverage to get the same. That was the last TV crime drama I watched, because I found the leery male gaze attitudes distasteful. Perhaps Luther is better. I’m not sure I care: most of the BBC’s crime drama output is vile (as is the stuff they buy in: just because the woman is being raped on Ikea furniture doesn’t make it any less exploitative).

I don’t need TV drama to tell me that women are violently raped, nor that they in treated badly by exploitative men. The BBC does not shows these programs to educate people; it shows them so men can get their jollies from a pretty woman in the shower or a pretty woman being raped. If people want that, they know where Pornhub is.

This post is really weird and I think just demonstrates a lot of feminist concern is 1st world problems (ie white, middle-class issues). For god sake how many men, ethnic minority or younger audience will be watching Austin or Mrs Wilson hmm
The world is a scary place and this is overly dramatised in thrillers which plays on everyone's fears both men and women.

Just listened to a woman on Radio 4 talking about her experience as a 14 year old of holding her dying mother after her father had stabbed her to death and how this has affected her. They were talking about the 14 year old boy who held his father as he lay dying after being stabbed to death on a train last Friday.
I thought of this thread as I listened to her experiences and wondered at the arrogance of all those who pop up to lecture women for worrying about unbridled violence. Just like the poster above telling us all about how "Scary tales for DC teach them about the world and how to deal with the scary/difficult/sad". I reckon that all of us, especially children would be better off without the gratuitous use of excessive violence and gore in programmes like Luther. Just because you can replicate someone being brutally murdered, doesn't mean it's OK to do it.