I’m a little behind on my 24 watching. I was actually excited for the season because Katee Sachoff was going to be on and I thought she would be kicking some butt, but no, she’s being abused by her ex-con of a boyfriend. EW has also recognized that things are sucking for the women on 24 no more so than agent Renee Walker who is dealing with PTSD from a sexual assault that happened several years ago on assignment. This year things went a bit farther. Adventures of a Young Feminist has kept up to date and is kind enough to let us cross-post a piece she wrote about 24:
Ok, it’s time for a big admittance on my part: I watch 24. But this is not a post about why I watch 24 (nor do I want to get into it in the comments), it’s just something that I do. Maybe I’ll try to address that for a post at a later date. Maybe. What this post is about is one of the story lines that started playing out this week that had me closer than ever to screaming at the television screen.
So last week, a former FBI agent, Renee, was undercover trying to regain the trust of a Russian arms dealer that she was undercover with 6 years ago. Last week, he threatened her into sleeping with him. This week, she pushed him a little bit on a deal they were trying to make and he started to beat her. So she grabbed a knife and stabbed him repeatedly.
Jack was telling the head of CTU what happened. And the head of CTU responds by saying something along the lines of: “What happened? Did she lose it? An hour ago she was sleeping with him and now she’s stabbing him…” No, she wasn’t sleeping with him. He raped her. And then he beat her. No wonder she stabbed him. Have we ever heard of self-defense? At least Jack called the stabbing self-defense and didn’t blame Renee for killing the Russian and then stabbing him (he was trying to pull her off of the Russian and she turned and stabbed him before she knew what she was doing).
But NO ONE on the show is calling what happened to Renee as rape. The Russian, Vladamir, threw a glass against the wall, threatened Renee’s personal safety, and threatened the deal that they were trying to make (that has to do with unsecured nuclear cores) if Renee didn’t have sex with him. That’s rape. No, he did not grab her out of an alley as she was walking around and hold her at gun point while he forced himself on her. But threatening someone into having sex is rape. It’s not even the so-called “gray area” of date rape. It’s rape.
And it seems like next week the head of CTU is going to continue to blame Renee for losing a lead even though he raped her and beat her and it was very clearly self-defense. Ugh. Seriously? It is bad enough that they refuse to call this rape. What makes it even worse, to the point that I am thinking about writing a letter to Fox, is that they want to blame the victim for defending herself and don’t even understand why she would stab Vladamir.
This is precisely the kind of thing that promotes the rape culture that we live in. If 24 is not going to call this rape and blame Renee for defending herself against her rapist, it just perpetuates the same thing happening to real women. Who is going to believe someone that is raped if the media and pop culture is not going to call things like this what it is: rape.
Do you watch 24? What is your feeling about what is going on with Renee?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I think 24′s theme this year is: “why do people have to be such dumbasses when tainted by emotion?” They do have all these great female actresses in parts that are dis-empowered while the guys drive. More Cherry should be a great thing.
If you wanted to see a great strong character this week on TV, you should have seen House this week, where the special episode was all 100% about the woman head of the hospital with only about five minutes total of House.
I haven’t watched 24 in awhile, but I do think it’s interesting that a show that won’t even consider hiring women writers (check the comments under the Nikki Finke article) is completely tone deaf on the issue of rape. This is the sort of situation that could be avoided if they had a woman in the room. Someone who might give her input. Just like Apple could have used a woman on the IPAD marketing team.
Aargh. Don’t watch 24, but this reminds me of another reason why it’s so frustrating/disappointing/infuriating that there aren’t more women writers in television (especially Exec Producers/showrunners) and women network executives. Though the presence of women is no guarantee that those women will be versed in what does and doesn’t constitute rape (I’m versed only because I helped found a women’s center in college and spent a lot of time exploring feminist issues that I would otherwise be completely ignorant of). But, at least it would be a start.
They actually did acknowledge that Vladimir had raped her several times in the past, even if they didn’t call her last “encounter” with him what it was. And Jack’s clearly on her side. Even Brian Hastings gives a solid WTF to that Rob guy from the White House.
What bothers me the most is that everyone fixates so hard on the sexual aspects of how Vladimir abused Renee, but wasn’t he abusive and violent all around? Why is that not being talked about? I think it’s because since rape keeps getting conflated with sex, people find rape to be sexy and lose site of the fact that it’s another form of violence.