Our Reanimated Corpses, Ourselves

So, this, about how the crappy vampire show "True Blood" decided to delve into rape and eroguro (the Japanese term, from "erotic grotesque", for porn featuring torture and mutilation—DON'T Google it). It's pretty hard to disagree that the act under discussion reveals the series to be psychotically misogynistic, basically playing sexualized violence against women for cheap thrills every chance it gets.

What I thought was fascinating is that the two main defenses the show's fans muster are, both of them, bullshit. One was, "Oh, well, the context; it's totally not rape because she's more powerful than him, being his sire." The three problems with that are, a) did I miss the memo about there being a context where that kind of sexual violence, even if it were consensual, is okay? b) "sire"? What, and she therefore has more dots in Dominate than him (remember when vampire things ripped off Stoker or at least Anne Rice?), and c) and most importantly, that's a common excuse used in real life. Paint yourself as the underdog and suddenly raping a woman becomes a noble blow against oppression; minority rapists with majority victims often use it. It's also used by regimes like China that use rape as a weapon—the enemies of Communist regimes, remember, are always the oppressor, even if they're Tibetan goatherds. When the English were winning their title "first Western European country to sytematically use terror-rape", their rhetoric was all about the power of the Catholic Church—even though their actual target was Irish farmgirls.

Some of us are so old-fashioned as to point out that, in that context, "power" in that brute-dominance sense is nearly always on the man's side. A woman can be a blackmailer, sexually speaking; it's physiologically very difficult for her to be a robber. It's not inconceivable you could charge a woman with rape—remember, any form of coercion makes it rape—but men are largely alone in committing the "throw her down and have your way with her" type, sorry.

More to the point, the fictional context is one thing, and the fact we see him rape and torture a woman is another one. That's sorta how vampires work, both in-universe and out: they look just like humans, so we feel about them as we do about each other. That's how they hunt, you know? And that's why a scene like this is no different from if it'd happened in, say, the Sopranos. Sorry, but you're still a monkey; your brain is not actually advanced enough to draw a distinction between "fictional reanimated corpse" and "actual human body". They've proven that video game action has the exact same physiological effect as real violence; I don't know about you but I get pretty jumpy when I'm playing Metal Gear Solid.

The other defense the animals made, was worse: "You don't have to watch it." Other than a few religious fanatic libertarians, nobody ever means that. They mean, "It does not happen to bother me, and I cannot see why other people's sensibilities should be respected. If you made something that did offend me, I'd make the KGB look downright relaxed and groovy." Funny how that's basically a failure of empathy, huh? That thing all the studies show is inhibited by overexposure to media violence? Again, monkey: you're not intelligent enough for this not to affect you.

Now of course this isn't terribly likely to influence your actual behavior—much; all the studies show it has an effect, but don't let's let science get in the way of our religious dogma. But I'll say about this what I say about Grand Theft Auto: why the hell do you think that's entertaining? Ask yourself that question.

Now, I don't actually object to media violence as such, though I seriously doubt there's ever a legitimate reason to show rape. Indeed, I can't think of a single story where even the mention of it was particularly useful in any artistic sense; it should only be used when strictly necessary (so never in historical fiction, I regret to inform you, unless it's about a particular historical event where it was a major factor, like Boudicca, certain events in the World Wars, or the history of the Turks, Comanches, or Communists). If you use it "to show how bad things were back then," especially about the Middle Ages, congratulations, you're peddling a Stalinist narrative where all who doubt your ideology are demonized, never mind they were less likely to do it than several of the eras you lionize (trust me, you'd rather be a woman in Capetian France than "Enlightenment" England).

But other forms of violence, if they're to be legitimate at all, need to be in a moral context, the way violence always is in real life; treating people, even fictional ones, as mere aesthetic tools not only can lay the groundwork for genocides, it did. But some of us are familiar with the artistic currents of Weimar Germany.

You can't just splash blood across the screen 'cause it's a pretty color. What are you, Ladd Russo? Grow the hell up.