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Is anybody else watching Sons of Anarchy as it airs?
OH SHIT!
I knew something like that was coming when Clay said twice that he'd be lost without Gemma, but OH SHIT, SON!
... Oh goddamn. I wrote the above when the blonde woman whacked Gemma and dragged her into the minivan.
I have since seen the end of the show. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.
Discussion of rape scene follows. Definitely triggery. I would have warned outside the cut, but that warning in and of itself would have been a huge spoiler.
It's not that I don't expect brutality out of the show, because I do. It's not that I don't expect sexism and violence and some very nasty shit, because I saw them castrate somebody and burn a man's tattoo off his back and do all kinds of bad things to women in season 1. What I am tired of is the endless abuse of women, and I am angry about the narrative choices that have been made.
The scene at the end of this episode made me sick to my stomach. I don't know what's worse: the scene itself, or the fact that my reaction was undoubtedly the one the writers were going for. For anyone who clicked on the cut and hasn't actually seen the show: it's about a motorcycle gang in California. The gang is all men, with women explicitly not allowed except as "sweetbutts" (groupies who get handed around like dollar bills) or "old ladies" (wives). The show has seriously skeezy gender issues. I always put up with it because (A) while I don't know much about the world of motorcycle gangs, I have to think the characters' attitudes are at least a little factually accurate, (B) nobody's trying to hide those issues or say they don't exist, (C) I like the actors, and (D) Gemma Teller-Morrow.
Gemma (Katey Sagal) is the main female lead, one of only two female regulars. She's the fifty-something wife of Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman), the current Sons of Anarchy president; the widow of John Teller, who founded the Sons; and the mother of Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), the show's lead character and the Sons' morally conflicted vice president. In the show's Hamlet vibe, Gemma's the Gertrude to Clay's Claudius and Jax's Hamlet. Except Gemma is basically a Lady MacBeth figure, with way more sanity. She loves her family and will do anything to protect them, but she is utterly ruthless. She may not be allowed in the club as a rider, but she's the power behind Clay's throne, and Clay is a mean dude even on his own. Gemma's manipulative and vicious, vindictive. My favorite episode of season 1 involves her hauling off and breaking a girl's face with a skateboard, then having the epic shouting match to end all shouting matches with Clay across a police precinct after she's been arrested for breaking the face of the girl he cheated on her with. Gemma knows everything that goes down with the Sons. It's heavily implied that she and Clay conspired to kill her first husband when they both thought that he had lost his edge as the leader of the Sons of Anarchy.
Gemma's crazy, and crazy-badass. She swaggers around in her stiletto boots, she carries guns, she keeps lots of guns in the house, she is regularly the more ruthless when it comes to a comparison of her and Clay (and, like I said, Clay is a bad dude), and have I mentioned yet that she is nasty? When Jax's son -- Gemma's grandson -- is born premature with birth defects due to the negligence of Jax's recovering-junkie ex-wife, Gemma gives her a syringe while she's still in the hospital, and the ex-wife shoots up and nearly dies. And Gemma is completely 100% regretful that her former daughter-in-law didn't die.
Gemma is my favorite. What I love about her is that (A) everyone is afraid of her, even the trash-talking sexist men, and (B) she's a complex character. She has that ball-busting, profane, cold, completely vicious side, but she can also be very warm. She adores her grandbaby, cleans up after her son, kisses everyone (and I mean everyone) on the mouth (okay, this is more something that I find funny than it is something that demonstrates her warmer side), kicks everyone's asses into participating in charity events for the community, and has a relationship with Clay that I love. I think Clay probably feels more strongly about Gemma than vice versa, but I also think that she genuinely really loves him, and I find them weirdly adorable.
So that's the background that you need for the scene where Gemma has been kidnapped and wakes up with her hands chained to the ceiling and her back up against a chain link fence. A bunch of guys in fucking scary blank white masks with only eye holes advance on her; she kicks one guy in the nuts and again in the face, and I started to hope that maybe she'd get out of this. And then somebody hits her across the face and they start pulling her shirt off, and then the camera goes out on these faceless men ripping her pants down as she screams, raw, and fights.
The next time the show returns to Gemma, she's being gang-raped. It wasn't, you know, explicit; we don't see any body parts. But it was a hell of a lot more than I expected to see when I tuned in to cable television tonight. It was not what I expected in the last two minutes of an hour-long drama. And I'm sure that's what they were going for, at least partially. 'You don't expect it. Oooh, this is how you know how bad the bad guys are: they rape.' Rape has become almost shorthand for shocking. You want to shock or disgust an audience? Throw in some sexual assault! And I'm just like -- really? Really? Do we have to keep doing this, media? The only way to prove how bad the bad guys are is to have them use a woman as a sexual object? Jesus fucking Christ.
There were several things that made this so galling to me as a narrative choice by the show-runners.
First of all: this takes the show's one strong female character (because yes, I like Jax's girlfriend Tara, but she is defined almost entirely by her relationship with Jax, and she does an awful lot of waffling -- which annoys me -- and she's already been sexually assaulted in the show; way to go on that one, show-runners) and makes her powerless. That scene was terrible. By the time we come back to the rape, she's dead-eyed and saying, 'Please, please.' Ass-kicking Gemma is gone; she's been relegated to an object, degraded and humiliated in a way that we never fucking see for male characters in any form of media, and certainly not for male characters on this show (the only thing that could maybe remotely compare is the aforementioned season 1 castration, and even that -- it was to a bad guy. It was done to a rapist; a one-episode villain who had maybe five minutes of screen time. It was not Jax or Clay or Opie or Tig or any of the other guys).
Second of all: the rapists are apologizing as they rape her, which was the most fucking awful, creepy thing to me. What was the line -- "I'm sorry, ma'am; we'll be done soon," and somebody is grunting and you're looking at a close-up of Gemma's bruised face as her body jerks with the thrusts. I almost threw up. That is not hyperbole; that's not me being dramatic. It may have had something to do with the fact that I was physically ill earlier today, but I actually got short of breath and had to sit with my head between my knees.
Third, and this was where I really started seeing red: Gemma was taken and raped as a message to her husband, and it's explicitly stated in the text. One of the rapists tells her so, and tells her to tell Clay that if the Sons of Anarchy don't stop running guns, the rapists are going to find Gemma and they're going to do this again. And that, combined with the fact that a gang member's wife was fridged in the season 1 finale, made me so angry. I'm so tired of these storylines. I'm so tired of seeing female characters attacked and victimized and killed purely to get a reaction out of male characters.
The promo for next week shows some of the reaction; it shows Gemma found in a crumpled heap (found by a man, natch). It shows the male characters furious and ready to go to war. And that's fine. But goddammit, I want to see Gemma get her own back, you sons of bitches who are writing this shit. I want to see a stiletto boot heel in someone's head. I want to see her get some of her own revenge. What's pathetic is that I saw one flash of a scene with Gemma getting out of a big SUV and slamming the door, and it got me excited. That's how little I've come to expect from TV and movies, in their treatment of female characters. I saw Gemma slam a car door and I went, 'omg, maybe she gets to kick ass!!!'
(I don't have anywhere to fit this in, but for the record, Katey Sagal is crazy-good and was very, very upsetting, which is a credit to her as an actress. It can't have been an easy scene to shoot.)
Sorry if any of this was incoherent or nonsensical. I am so furious, and so -- when I tuned into the season premiere of my new show tonight, I didn't expect to see my favorite character raped. And I definitely didn't expect to see the rape take place onscreen. I just watched the episode again, in the interest of writing this post (because I spent a good chunk of the first watch trying not to throw up, and because they aired the new episode again immediately after it ended the first time), and that scene still makes me sick, and it made me shake and sob with fury/upset this time. So great job, Kurt Sutter and company. I really wish this was sarcasm, but it's not: I'm sure my reaction was exactly what you were going for.
OH SHIT!
I knew something like that was coming when Clay said twice that he'd be lost without Gemma, but OH SHIT, SON!
... Oh goddamn. I wrote the above when the blonde woman whacked Gemma and dragged her into the minivan.
I have since seen the end of the show. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.
Discussion of rape scene follows. Definitely triggery. I would have warned outside the cut, but that warning in and of itself would have been a huge spoiler.
It's not that I don't expect brutality out of the show, because I do. It's not that I don't expect sexism and violence and some very nasty shit, because I saw them castrate somebody and burn a man's tattoo off his back and do all kinds of bad things to women in season 1. What I am tired of is the endless abuse of women, and I am angry about the narrative choices that have been made.
The scene at the end of this episode made me sick to my stomach. I don't know what's worse: the scene itself, or the fact that my reaction was undoubtedly the one the writers were going for. For anyone who clicked on the cut and hasn't actually seen the show: it's about a motorcycle gang in California. The gang is all men, with women explicitly not allowed except as "sweetbutts" (groupies who get handed around like dollar bills) or "old ladies" (wives). The show has seriously skeezy gender issues. I always put up with it because (A) while I don't know much about the world of motorcycle gangs, I have to think the characters' attitudes are at least a little factually accurate, (B) nobody's trying to hide those issues or say they don't exist, (C) I like the actors, and (D) Gemma Teller-Morrow.
Gemma (Katey Sagal) is the main female lead, one of only two female regulars. She's the fifty-something wife of Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman), the current Sons of Anarchy president; the widow of John Teller, who founded the Sons; and the mother of Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), the show's lead character and the Sons' morally conflicted vice president. In the show's Hamlet vibe, Gemma's the Gertrude to Clay's Claudius and Jax's Hamlet. Except Gemma is basically a Lady MacBeth figure, with way more sanity. She loves her family and will do anything to protect them, but she is utterly ruthless. She may not be allowed in the club as a rider, but she's the power behind Clay's throne, and Clay is a mean dude even on his own. Gemma's manipulative and vicious, vindictive. My favorite episode of season 1 involves her hauling off and breaking a girl's face with a skateboard, then having the epic shouting match to end all shouting matches with Clay across a police precinct after she's been arrested for breaking the face of the girl he cheated on her with. Gemma knows everything that goes down with the Sons. It's heavily implied that she and Clay conspired to kill her first husband when they both thought that he had lost his edge as the leader of the Sons of Anarchy.
Gemma's crazy, and crazy-badass. She swaggers around in her stiletto boots, she carries guns, she keeps lots of guns in the house, she is regularly the more ruthless when it comes to a comparison of her and Clay (and, like I said, Clay is a bad dude), and have I mentioned yet that she is nasty? When Jax's son -- Gemma's grandson -- is born premature with birth defects due to the negligence of Jax's recovering-junkie ex-wife, Gemma gives her a syringe while she's still in the hospital, and the ex-wife shoots up and nearly dies. And Gemma is completely 100% regretful that her former daughter-in-law didn't die.
Gemma is my favorite. What I love about her is that (A) everyone is afraid of her, even the trash-talking sexist men, and (B) she's a complex character. She has that ball-busting, profane, cold, completely vicious side, but she can also be very warm. She adores her grandbaby, cleans up after her son, kisses everyone (and I mean everyone) on the mouth (okay, this is more something that I find funny than it is something that demonstrates her warmer side), kicks everyone's asses into participating in charity events for the community, and has a relationship with Clay that I love. I think Clay probably feels more strongly about Gemma than vice versa, but I also think that she genuinely really loves him, and I find them weirdly adorable.
So that's the background that you need for the scene where Gemma has been kidnapped and wakes up with her hands chained to the ceiling and her back up against a chain link fence. A bunch of guys in fucking scary blank white masks with only eye holes advance on her; she kicks one guy in the nuts and again in the face, and I started to hope that maybe she'd get out of this. And then somebody hits her across the face and they start pulling her shirt off, and then the camera goes out on these faceless men ripping her pants down as she screams, raw, and fights.
The next time the show returns to Gemma, she's being gang-raped. It wasn't, you know, explicit; we don't see any body parts. But it was a hell of a lot more than I expected to see when I tuned in to cable television tonight. It was not what I expected in the last two minutes of an hour-long drama. And I'm sure that's what they were going for, at least partially. 'You don't expect it. Oooh, this is how you know how bad the bad guys are: they rape.' Rape has become almost shorthand for shocking. You want to shock or disgust an audience? Throw in some sexual assault! And I'm just like -- really? Really? Do we have to keep doing this, media? The only way to prove how bad the bad guys are is to have them use a woman as a sexual object? Jesus fucking Christ.
There were several things that made this so galling to me as a narrative choice by the show-runners.
First of all: this takes the show's one strong female character (because yes, I like Jax's girlfriend Tara, but she is defined almost entirely by her relationship with Jax, and she does an awful lot of waffling -- which annoys me -- and she's already been sexually assaulted in the show; way to go on that one, show-runners) and makes her powerless. That scene was terrible. By the time we come back to the rape, she's dead-eyed and saying, 'Please, please.' Ass-kicking Gemma is gone; she's been relegated to an object, degraded and humiliated in a way that we never fucking see for male characters in any form of media, and certainly not for male characters on this show (the only thing that could maybe remotely compare is the aforementioned season 1 castration, and even that -- it was to a bad guy. It was done to a rapist; a one-episode villain who had maybe five minutes of screen time. It was not Jax or Clay or Opie or Tig or any of the other guys).
Second of all: the rapists are apologizing as they rape her, which was the most fucking awful, creepy thing to me. What was the line -- "I'm sorry, ma'am; we'll be done soon," and somebody is grunting and you're looking at a close-up of Gemma's bruised face as her body jerks with the thrusts. I almost threw up. That is not hyperbole; that's not me being dramatic. It may have had something to do with the fact that I was physically ill earlier today, but I actually got short of breath and had to sit with my head between my knees.
Third, and this was where I really started seeing red: Gemma was taken and raped as a message to her husband, and it's explicitly stated in the text. One of the rapists tells her so, and tells her to tell Clay that if the Sons of Anarchy don't stop running guns, the rapists are going to find Gemma and they're going to do this again. And that, combined with the fact that a gang member's wife was fridged in the season 1 finale, made me so angry. I'm so tired of these storylines. I'm so tired of seeing female characters attacked and victimized and killed purely to get a reaction out of male characters.
The promo for next week shows some of the reaction; it shows Gemma found in a crumpled heap (found by a man, natch). It shows the male characters furious and ready to go to war. And that's fine. But goddammit, I want to see Gemma get her own back, you sons of bitches who are writing this shit. I want to see a stiletto boot heel in someone's head. I want to see her get some of her own revenge. What's pathetic is that I saw one flash of a scene with Gemma getting out of a big SUV and slamming the door, and it got me excited. That's how little I've come to expect from TV and movies, in their treatment of female characters. I saw Gemma slam a car door and I went, 'omg, maybe she gets to kick ass!!!'
(I don't have anywhere to fit this in, but for the record, Katey Sagal is crazy-good and was very, very upsetting, which is a credit to her as an actress. It can't have been an easy scene to shoot.)
Sorry if any of this was incoherent or nonsensical. I am so furious, and so -- when I tuned into the season premiere of my new show tonight, I didn't expect to see my favorite character raped. And I definitely didn't expect to see the rape take place onscreen. I just watched the episode again, in the interest of writing this post (because I spent a good chunk of the first watch trying not to throw up, and because they aired the new episode again immediately after it ended the first time), and that scene still makes me sick, and it made me shake and sob with fury/upset this time. So great job, Kurt Sutter and company. I really wish this was sarcasm, but it's not: I'm sure my reaction was exactly what you were going for.
no subject
I don't even watch this show and I'm calling shenanigans like a mug.