Extreme images of violence against women. "Moral and edgy" or vile misogynist cliche?

[Eleison]

"The assumption is now ? and it seems to be correct ? that audiences are happy to watch their heroines being beaten and gagged, and to stare at explicitly rendered photographs of women cut and splayed and killed."

Great article by Natasha Walton in the Guardian today about the intense and lingering depiction of violence against women in films and TV programmes that habitually excuse their horrific images by presenting them in stories that are 'moral' because they narrate the investigation, condemnation, and punishment of the crime.

When Stephen Griffiths describes himself in court by the 'crossbow cannibal' tag that a newspaper gave him, don't we have to see that the conventional excited and graphic presentation of the murder of women in the media in news reports and in drama feeds back into reality, nourishing the fantasies and encouraging the actions not just of serial killers but of common-or-garden misogynists?

ISNT- the first thing that came into my head upon reading OP was CSI.

Excuse this rant from an English Lit/Gender Studies PhD but this is one of the subjects I'm really interested in.

There is some very interesting literary criticism on the 'diseased' mind of the literary serial killer who defines himself by the number of 'meat' bodies he can pile up. Mark Seltzer's 'Serial Killers' describes it a lot better than I can, but in effect he describes what a lot of you are talking about- the glamorisation of the psychopath who tries to reduce others around him, particularly women (and sometimes children) to mere bodies. His argument is that the serial killer narrative has a lot to say about all the old contemporary capitalist cliches: emptiness, isolation, the attempt to set rational masculinity against embodied femininity, etc. I actually think that writers like Bret Easton Ellis deal with the phenomenon really well when they portray the killer as an overblown cartoon demon like Patrick Bateman- a male=model killer who describes himself as 'not existing'. I suspect though that there are many on this thread who would class him as an exploitative writer- each to their own.

Boo that is exactly what i think. Usually right before turning them off.

It is everwhere

I genuinely fear fo what my sons will see as 'normal' and mainstream when they are older. I mean how more graphic and shocking can the writers get.

'His argument is that the serial killer narrative has a lot to say about all the old contemporary capitalist cliches: emptiness, isolation, the attempt to set rational masculinity against embodied femininity, etc.' - I can follow this, but I suppose my response is: if the consequence of the relentless use of this trope is fear and disgust among watching women and the normalisation of sadistic violence against women, what sort of insular, morally vacant blowhard would you have to be to bang away at it? It's not like male disaffection is an underexamined topic.

I heard a radio report some time ago that said that most readers of crime fiction are middle-aged women. However, I suspect that includes reading books by Agatha Christie and the like, which of course are not in the same league as the many recent misogynistic offerings. As far as I can remember, I think women also make up the bulk of the TV crime drama viewers. I think that when TV and film companies say "misogynistic stuff is what sells/what the audience wants", that is disingenuous. On the contrary, TV and film often offer what they (the creators) want, for social engineering reasons as much as for profit - you can have any type of film you like, as long as it's misogynistic.

Oooh I like columbo.

And midsummer murders, miss marple, rosemary and thyme

I am obviously one of those middle-aged women

MIL is a big fan of Midsomer Murders and such like - can't imagine she watches this. I wonder if the traditional female preference for crime drama still holds with the hyper-violent stuff.

agree about the disingenuousness.

I don't like shows which inevitably involve a random visit to a lapdancing club, inevitably a young attractive female victim, and shots of dead naked women covered in blood rendered so lovingly.

I am going to stop watching CSI I think. It's isn't the same since Grissom left with his insects

As much as I dislike the idea of quotas for anything

It would almost be worthwhile to say that TV programmes should be reasonably even-handed when deciding on teh victim/s for an episode.

When every single bloody time it's a women being raped slashed and tortured it all gets a bit wearing. Especially when filmed in the most tittilating manner possible a la CSI.

I mean assuming the audience is 50/50 men and women, I for one would like the occasional night off from having to hugely identify with the person having their body parts scattered around in bin bags.

You obviously haven't been watching much TV lately TSH

And at list of films over the last few decades which show violence against men.

That's not what this thread is talking about. It's talking about protrayals of women in this one film (which has had a lot of criticism for the violence against women it depicts), then moving onto a discussion about crime/detective drama on television and in print.

Plus there have been plenty of films over the ast few decades which show violence against women.

your point seems a bit random TBH.

I actually think the issue is how depicting extreme, close-up violence is becoming the norm and seen as film directors as "necessary" to the plot whereas, for most viewers, what they enjoy is the storyline. A murder is a commmon theme because it creates conflict/ pressure on the main character/ a clear aim- i.e. to stop or solve the murders. However, IMO the conflict is created just as well if we don't have to watch someone getting their head stoved in in real time as if we do.

Personally, I cannot get into the head of anyone who thinks watching films such as Hostel is entertaining.

Inspector Morse is more my thing.

To thesheikingharpie's point: Yes, I wouldn't want to say that the 'body count' of all screen violence was predominantly female, of course. But on the other hand it is quite clear that there is a distinctive genre of depiction of violence against women: the corpse lingered on in forensic photos is usually female and the violence of a serial killer almost always has women as its victims. Killed women are usually the passive recipients of somebody's fantasy. Killed men are usually in combat.

Of course we wouldn't want to deny that there are issues and problems with the depiction of violence aimed at either gender, but there is this specific kind of sexualised or quasi-sexualised violence against passive women.

CSI NY was on last night and we were treated to a typical example of a woman who had been murdered, a young attractive woman in a spangly get-up, naturally. On the slab, being lovingly and slowly undressed as the camera slid up and down her legs and torso. They do this quite a lot and it is filmed in a very "sexy" manner - it seems to matter not whether the woman is alive and beign undressed by a lover, or dead and being undressed by a pathologist, the camera work and style is the same, and the point is to appreciate teh female form. When the female form one is being encouraged to appreciate is a dead woman, who has been raped/beaten/tortured/murdered, and shows teh bruises from this, you have to wonder WTF their message is.

I said to DH, this is really odd, isn't it? And he said, um yes, and we turned the channel over.

CSI is just wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start.

It makes my flesh crawl, especially when it's (allegedly) 2am and the pathologist woman is at the crime scene in full make-up. Wtf?

Then there are the frequent scenes I'msonottelling refers to. Yuk Yuk Yuk.

Let's start a Mumsnet buoycott!

I used to love it, when grissom was in it, they used to have a wider range of victims and crimes. This last series has been ridicuous. The entire storyline of one episode revolved around a man who was making money selling used knickers and the whole thing was just so gratuitous it was laughable.

it's not the only one - I generally like US crime type stuff and there are loads at the moment where teh storyline is pretty much always about rape and murder and graphic depictions of dead women.

I mean at least with criminal intent: special victims unit it is explicit what sort of crimes you're going to get.

I've never seen CSI.
Is it BBC? I don't know about a boycott, but I do get particularly irritated when BBC output is misogynistic - that's my licence fee they're spending FFS! If it was just me I would probably get rid of the tv and write and tell them why....

No it's 5 or sky1 can't remember which at the moment

The american shows seem to be the worst for this, but then they have always been a bit random. Years ago I was always at how when perfectly normal people had percectly normal meetings they often chose to hold them in strip clubs

This Luther prog on teh BBC sounds pretty bad but I haven't seen that one.

CSI used to be good though (a little iffy sometimes but what do you expect from american TV) but now it's just got silly.

Gonna stick to columbo

I was talking to my 90 year old granny about this yesterday. Consensus was that what we like about detective stories (book or TV) is the puzzle part - why is someone acting like this, or how has this seemingly impossible thing happened? The shows that have extreme violence were def in the turn-straight-off category for both of us. Why would we want to see this? It is vile and scary and makes you uncomfortable both about the people making it, and the intended audience. Are there really that many people out there who like looking at others being terrorised and maimed and killed?

Weirdly this made me think of a conversation with DP recently about sex scenes in films/TV. There always seems to need to be some- perhaps less so recently - but who actually enjoys watching it? I mean if you're with family or friends it feels embarrassing and wrong, and on your own it's just boring. Was wondering if maybe the gratuitous violence scene has taken the place of the gratuitous sex, now that porn is so available. Writers and directors want to put in these images to make their shows seem "adult" and "edgy". But few watching actually enjoy them.

"It's not like male disaffection is an underexamined topic." Yeah but try telling that to the male writers and directors continually given money to make shit films and TV. Practically every hollywood non-horror/thriller is based on the premise that nothing is more fascinating than the everyday discontents and anxieties of a white well-off 30-40 year old man. It's boring, watching the same stories over and over again. A man is finding it hard to adjust to marriage is he? Well there's a story rarely told. I am still waiting for the flood of films about how women experience the every day challenges of marriage, growing up, pregnancy, but somehow they are always "naturally" prepared for it and - in fact - probably don't have an internal life at all.

Maybe as well as running for parliament

We all need to become film-makers as well

You are right about the reason for watching these things. I will take a poirot/columbo style mystery over a blood n guts fest any day.

It's totally the people making it, isn;t it.

I'm sure very very few people tune in in order to see teh depictions of violence. People tune in, in order to see a mystery to solve, will they do it in time etc etc. There is no need for the gratuitous violence, it's not put in to add to teh plot or because teh audience wants it. It's there because it's what the program makers like.

Look at hitchcock - didn't he famously weild the knife in the shower scene in psycho? And have seriously peculiar ideas about his female stars?

can we assume that the people making this stuff are putting what they want to see on the screens?

And that in prgs like CSI it is just another convenient way of showing naked women.

I'm sure you're right, ISNT. (And thanks for the eerily correct career suggestion ) We all like to solve a mystery, it's at the root of lots of programmes that aren't about women being tortured. Time Team for instance .

I think maybe it's a bit childish really. If someone who's part of the creative process doesn't like the idea of showing so much violence, they might be frightened off or shouted down as priggish or not "pushing the boundaries" or whatever. Plus the vast majority of these people are still men, for whom the idea of being raped or killed merely because of your gender is an idea they can play with quite comfortably, knowing there's no chance of it ever happening to them. It's a seasoning to them, adding spice and zing to their otherwise moribund creative output.

They could make a Time Team that was about women being tortured - lots of soft porn images of reconstructed female skeletons etc. And it would be easy to justify it in terms of it being educational etc.
(Oh God, it's going to happen isn't it? In 5 years or so we will all be posting about how we never watch Time Team any more since it got so misogynist.)

Oh, don't even say that!

To copy from prolesworth's comment on another thread (about women who oppose feminism): "Perhaps this analogy is unforgivably trivial, but it's like men are the 'cool crowd' and women are the 'sad crowd' at school: the strategy a lot of women use to avoid overt victimization is to identify with the cool crowd. They're never really accepted but it seems to buy them safety and approval, and that approval goes up if they actively deride the 'sad' kids who can't or won't play the game." - The same could be said for those who would like to oppose misgynistic violence on screen but don't. They may not like it but it's better to let it go than be put in a box as a spoilsport(Oh good and now I'm back at the idea of abuse of women as sport.)

The more I think about this the more depressing it is. Such a job has been done on everyone to the point where we all have to overcome the cliche of associating opposing harm to women with undesirable "joyless" attitudes. As if the hurting and killing of women was "joyful".