TBH this post is kinda dark

TV genius is here to analyze another show!

Well faaaancy seeing you here on my weekly Substack email! If you missed the last one, here she is.

Hope everyone’s safe and warm as 2022 circles the drain. This edition’s Media Essay is about (strictly fictional) rape(s). If that topic’s not your bag, scroll past the first section. Also scroll past if you don’t want Veronica Mars spoiled. (It’s sooaaur good.)

If I’d been born 5-7 years later, I think I’d be a YouTuber. 5-7 years earlier, I’d still be working in magazines. Aren’t you glad I’m here instead?

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LISTEN TO ME:VERONICA MARS BELONGS IN THE CRITERION COLLECTION.

Veronica Mars did rape better than any show (or movie) I’ve ever seen.

And then worse.

By sheer volume, rape is mostly depicted on screen (or off-screen, having happened just before the story starts or in between scenes) as A Terrible, Singular Crime. On shows like SVU, Unbelievable and Broadchurch, a rape is a mystery for detectives to solve, then for lawyers to punish. There is one perp, and he is abnormal. As often as not, life-ruining, character-altering, personality-destroying rape incites the action, and often results in the death of the victim: 13 Reasons Why, Promising Young Woman. In Speak, the victim isn’t dead but silenced, a neat shorthand for Loss Of Innocence. In Thelma and Louise, they die at the end. On The Dropout, a college assault is bizarrely implied to be what made Elizabeth Holmes Like That. There is Before and After. Horrid but neat. Pregnancy as a result of rape is a common set-up for tragedy porn (Precious, Room), or teased out to add extra drama (Big Little Lies). In the case of The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s the whole show.

Sometimes rape is not a plot point but a symptom of an abusive relationship. On Jessica Jones and Game of Thrones, it adds real-life stakes to the power imbalances of supernatural/magical worlds. Buffy tried to use its fantasy element to add a bit of nuance to the act (Spike technically didn’t have a soul…). It’s handled deftly and sensitively on Sex Education and I May Destroy You, both of which focus less on what drove the perpetrator and more on the victim’s healing and aftermath (in general, a good idea).

To be clear, none of the shows or films above make light of the problem¹ (although I think it’s sort of offensively obvious in Big Little Lies, a series that trades on female suffering in lieu of structure), but they all pale in comparison toVeronica Mars.

Veronica Mars is about the teen daughter of a private investigator who helps her father with cases before setting up her own side hustle solving her classmates’ issues. In the pilot, we get a lot of backstory. Her town, Neptune, is starkly divided between the have-a-lots and have-nots. A year ago, Veronica’s family was working class but had purchase with the rich and respected. Her dad was the sheriff, and Veronica was best friends with Lilly Kane, daughter of a software billionaire. She was also dating Lilly’s older brother Duncan.

Then, Lilly was brutally murdered, and Veronica’s dad accused Mr. Kane of the crime. He was quickly proven wrong and removed from office, and Veronica’s fall from grace was equally swift. Veronica and Duncan broke up, Veronica’s mom skipped town, and the Marses become town pariahs. In an ill-advised attempt to get her old life back, Veronica went to a popular kid party where she blacked out drinking, and when she woke up, her underwear was gone. She took the incident to the new sheriff and was immediately dismissed. Everyone thought the Marses were liars, and it’s not like believing women was ever popular in the first place, so institutional support goes right out the window. No law enforcement heroes here. No lawyer heroes either. All of this, again, happens in flashbacks and voiceover during the first episode.

Veronica is explicit about wanting to solve her best friend’s murder. And she’d like to know her rapist’s identity too, but that’s secondary. It’s something that happened to her but did not define her. Her trauma is lingering instead of all-consuming. It didn’t radicalize her, but it set her on edge: she assumes it was someone from her school, so she can’t really trust anyone.

And the show uses the incident to make, well, great TV! Assault shouldn’t be used to titillate, but I’m also not tuning in for a lesson on the prevalence of sexual violence! If you’re going to script a fictional character’s assault, pay someone to act it out, light the scene, edit the footage, add a soundtrack and beam it through the air to my television, it better not be a recap of, like, the newspaper.

Veronica Mars doesn’t do that. Veronica Mars serves twists and turns that question and deepen out understanding of consent, culpability and responsibility.

By the end of the first season, we know who murdered Lilly and also who raped Veronica: no one. Sort of. What happened is complicated, so stick with me. Veronica got DRUNK drunk at the party. Meanwhile, a classmate, Dick, a brainless, privileged boy who was never taught right from wrong, slipped GHB (the date rape drug that’s not roofies) in his girlfriend Madison’s drink. Madison, a rich bitch, spit in that drink and passed it to Veronica as a cruel prank. Veronica downed it without a second thought, and as she lost consciousness, Dick (not necessarily realizing that she was drugged, but plainly seeing that she was out of it) and his younger brother Cassidy plopped her on a guest bed. Dick told Cassidy to lose his virginity to her unconscious body and left him there to do the deed. Cassidy didn’t, but told Dick he did. Later, Veronica’s ex (who’d also been GHB’d without his knowledge) Duncan came into the room to find Veronica awake. Their feelings returned and they had consensual sex — Veronica’s first time — but Duncan, believing that they were secret half-siblings (they weren’t) (it’s a TV show!), never spoke to her about it, even though he remembered it (she remembered little from the night).

It’s kinda brilliant? This explanation explores one of the few true grey areas: it’s possible for a person to be blacked out and not realize it, and for others not to realize it either. As a teenager unused to party drugs, how could Duncan possibly know that Veronica wasn’t in a fit state to consent? They loved each other; she was up and talking. Their parents’ toxic secret-keeping led to the misunderstandings that caused shame in the relationship, and what might have been a nice(ish) moment was corrupted. It’s absolutely not ideal, but it could have been a lot worse. And it’s damn good TV. All of the actions come from character. We know Dick is the type to spike a girl’s drink and treat her like an object, that Duncan is the type to make love tenderly but also too weak and confused to make sure everyone’s OK the next day. This information upends Veronica’s understanding of the night, but not of the power structure in Neptune: rich kids are careless, and she can’t ever lose control again.

Twist: in the second season, Veronica solves the case…again. Here’s what really happened: everything above. But also, Cassidy did rape her. He was molested as a child by a popular local figure who gave him chlamydia. Now a teenager, he won’t or can’t have sex with his girlfriend, but that night, pressured by his brother and presumably seeing in the unconscious Veronica a “safe” way to officially lose his virginity to a girl, he did it. Later, he kills a bunch of other victims to keep them from coming forward, and finally he kills himself. Everyone else is left to pick up the pieces, plus poor Veronica has chlamydia.

This second ending asks more fundamental questions, but worthy ones: is it too easy to say hurt people hurt people? Veronica lives and Cassidy dies; who is the worse-off victim?

Not to be like ~it’s society~ but it’s society! Cassidy kept his secret, kept himself from getting help, because of the same toxic masculinity that caused his older brother to suggest he assault Veronica. Her rape is a semi-malicious act but also the consequence of her abandonment by her peers. She’s punished for not fitting in. If Veronica had been at the party with a single friend willing to drive her home when she got too drunk or even just check in on her…if boys weren’t putting drugs in drinks and girls weren’t spitting in them…the teenagers failed to make the party a safe place, and Veronica got hurt. The adults failed to make the town a place that protected children, where they children could be heard and believed, and Cassidy got hurt. All along, law enforcement did nothing. It’s a community-wide failure; the actions (or inactions) of the parents lead to terrible consequences for their children.

There is no One Bad Seed. The entire field is rotten.Veronica Mars explores endemic issues² in Neptune: crime, poverty, gangs, secrets, lies, greed, hate. The cost of these issues is safety, and rape is how the price is paid.

(Lilly’s murder, too, is misunderstood and then covered up by multiple people. Only her killer is truly culpable, but the investigation was hampered by the whole town’s class prejudice.)

Which brings us to the unfortunate third season.

In fairness, there was a lot working against the show. The transition from high school to college is a notoriously difficult trick for teen programs to pull off. So much innate conflict (parent-child, student-principal) is basically gone if you’re eighteen. There’s a cast shake-up, and in an attempt to gain new viewers, the show pivoted away from season(s)-long mysteries to shorter, multi-episode arcs. (Yes, the first two seasons included isolated episodic adventures, but the show was hard to follow if you’d missed more than a week or two.) The writers handled these challenges…poorly.

Basically, in season three, there’s a serial rapist on campus who causes a panic that pits sororities against frats and it’s all tied up in like…the Stanford Prison Experiment. It’s fucking weird.

You’d think it would be better! Rape is everywhere in college. We all remember The Hunting Ground, or at least the Lady Gaga song about it. There are so many real-life examples of plucky young women taking camera-ready campus action. Carrying That Weight and Taking Back The Night and such. But the way it plays out on the show is melodramatic, unsophisticated, cheesy, strange, and generally kind of a bummer.

For me the key issue is that in the first two seasons, Veronica’s assault is squarely in the past. Yes, there’s always danger around and yes, the pain stays with her. But we see her, up and about, living life. She sometimes thinks about the event, but not so much that it’s like it’s happening to her over and over. We can relax a tiny bit because we know she survived. And anyway, the murder is her (and our) main priority.

In the third season, it’s, uh, rape-a-palooza. Assault is constantly rubbed in the viewer’s face in ways that are icky and terrifying, but also kind of goofy. It’s not integrated into the past of fleshed-out characters. It drives the plot and that, in a twisted way, puts the predator in the driver’s seat, story-wise. We don’t know these new kids, and the threat is in the present, so when you’re watching the show, it’s like, anyone could be raped at any time! That’s too creepy.

If you want to know how to write an engaging and interesting assault storyline, watch Veronica Mars. If you want to know how to not do that, keep watching.

I’m determined to end this section on a lighter note, so: DID YOU KNOW KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR WROTE FOR THE VM REBOOT? LOOK IT UP!

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A SAD, BEAUTIFUL, TRAGIC LOVE STORY

Forgive me for quoting Tay to introduce such a serious matter but it’s what came to mind. The latest update from the Twitterverse is bittersweet, but mostly bitter. Ashley Reese, a writer who is one of my mutuals (considering how much time I spend on Twitter, that basically makes her my emergency contact), announced a week ago that her husband Rob had passed away from cancer.

Rob had been battling the disease for some time, and when it came back, the pair planned and executed a quickie backyard wedding that was so lovely it went viral and ended up on Vogue.

Really, it’ll make you believe in love and community, read and look at pictures here.

Ashley Reese @offbeatorbit

please remember that aging is a gift

And if you feel moved to support her via GoFundMe, you can do that here.

Her Twitter has become a sad-funny tribute as she navigates the grief by, among other things, insisting that Rob’s favorite sports teams win or he will haunt them. I highly recommend a follow.

Ashley Reese @offbeatorbit

I looked hot at my husbands funeral and that’s what matters (I tell myself to get thru the grief!)

Smile-cry, etc.

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BITS AND BOPS FROM ‘ROUND THE INTERWEB

Am I insane or is this one of the best pictures ever taken? I’m really into it. As Jamie Manelis pointed out, Beauty and the Beast vibes.

Lauren Ipad @IpadLauren

thread of rotating sandwiches

Warning: this thread may make you hungry.

Good singer, good song, bad combo. Funny when that happens.

david @IaureIheII

Paul Mescal at rehearsals for A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

Wait what was I saying? I got distracted. Phoebe Bridgers is a lucky woman. (As is Daisy Edgar-Jones, if you believe the throuple talk.)

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RECOMMENDATIONS

This non-oily sunscreen

Getting your furniture on Kaiyo

Good hat

Christine McVie forever, everywhere

Good song

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I promise to not be such a downer all the time! I’m watching Suits, any of y’all watch Suits?

Lizzay

1. On the list of media that uses it poorly, I’d put most rape-revenge plots, a motivation akin to fridging, and anything where it’s interrupted or just ~threatened~, a shorthand This Character Is Dastardly, He Is Putting His Face Too Close To Your Face, OooOoooh. Lookin’ @ you, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Women assaulting men, played for laughs, is a gross but entirely different pattern that I’m not getting into here. It’s about the subversion of expectations, the dismissal of female agency…not getting into it!

2. Must be addressed: throughout the first two seasons, there are a number of, let’s say, statutory situations (I’m not gonna use the term relationship, but I also wouldn’t categorize it all as predatory according to the morality of the show). Veronica briefly dates a sweet young deputy; meanie Madison has a secret older boyfriend; a popular teacher gets a student pregnant. Oh, and Lilly Kane’s murderer? Her boyfriend’s dad, whom she’d been sleeping with. We see that Lilly consented to sex (she’s basically a child but, again, within the world of the show, Lilly is depicted as making her own decisions) but not to being recorded — this is the fight that leads to her death. Older guys are endemic, too, though some are harmless. Then again, others ruin your life, and a select few end it. They run the gamut. Variations on a theme. Good TV!