DV on SVU

Wow...

SVU? Possibly the most messed up show on TV.

The issue of DomViol is treated with glibness, cliche and victim blaming.

The abused is treated like an object and thoroughly dehumanised.

She requests the morning after pill after her abusive husband rapes her and the chemist begins to lecture her and advise her to adopt out.

The incredibly complex topic of the creation of dependence is covered in single line soundbyte exposition: made me drop out of college, gives me orders just like my father, never had a job, grew up poor.

The abused woman is made, by the policewoman determined to help her, to stand in front of the mirror, her blouse is unbuttoned for her by the policewoman and she is forced to look at her bruises.

She is told, he won't change, YOU HAVE TO.

Another cop says she is not capable of making decisions for herself and shouldn't be allowed to.

She is placed in a safe house where she has to abide by rules, including being kicked out for any contact with her husband.

She goes back to her husband, where he swiftly dispatches of her by stabbing her in the chest. She dies in a puddle of blood while the policewoman looks on.

The landlady berates the policewoman for pushing and pushing the abused into pressing charges (which she dropped), thereby causing her murder.

The landlady is revealed to have had an abusive marriage which culminated in her murdering the man. She is forced into a detailed confession.

Both she and the dead abused were raped by their abusers and this fact is lingered over again and again as they are forced to discuss it (I've noticed this show just loves to have the word "rape" mentioned as many times as it possibly can).

After this confession she is, of course, arrested for the murder of her husband by another woman who is determined to prosecute her for GETTING AWAY all those years ago.

The abusive husband is a bogeyman of course, flat, one-dimensional and completely EBOL and sinister, as is the recollected abusive husband of the landlady.

You know, I see where this episode is trying to do good things: speaking out about the disenfranchisement of abused women when they leave, how they are often in impoverished circumstances with no support networks around them, taking a strong zero tolerance stance on rape within marriage (the two hero cops of the show, at least, express these attitudes), trying in a superficial sort of fashion to name the cycle of dependence...

It's just that, even though people in the show keep saying "it wasn't her fault" the underlying message is that it IS. SHE is the one who has to change. It is HER body that is assumed control of by the cops as well, the prison-like, rigidly ruled safe house (I've never understood why they think that continuing paternalism, obey or be abandoned, is USEFUL), that she is quickly and swiftly killed as soon as she returns (when death is most likely when a woman tries to LEAVE, hows that for a message?), the berating of the cop for interfering (although the way she interfered - stripping the woman in front of a mirror - was grotesque) and a woman prosecuting the landlady based on a personal grudge and disbelief of her testament (it'll always be a woman who is the traitor in these shows to divert from the acts of men and the fact DV is still so dismissed as an issue is because a patriarchal world doesn't take it seriously), the characterising of the landlady, who murdered her husband after years of extreme abuse, as manipulative and thus successfully making the female cop doubt her as well... the whole "you can't make choices but you have to help yourself" undercurrent...

There's also the nasty little message at the beginning when the dead abused requests the morning after pill and a lecture begins (given by a woman of course, who is berated by the male hero cop after they arrive on the scene).

And of course, while the landlady is acquitted, her second husband leaves her for lying to him about her past for all those years, including the abortion she had of her first husband's child which left her sterile and thus denying him children and grandchildren.

So, yeah, the obvious message is "DV is bad and people who do it are evil" but there's lots of lovely subtextual "and it's all your fucking fault, bitch, here's your punishment".