When is threatening someone with rape something the good guys do?

Answer: far too often, at least on TV.

As a preliminaary, Les has an interesting post about a Penny Arcade comic strip and the huge brouhaha over what some seemed to interpret as a joke about rape (it’s actually, to my mind, anything but). It’s worth a read, both for itself and for the discussion of “rape culture.” Go ahead and check it out first … I’ll wait …

[Hums tunelessly, checks watch, clears throat.]

So the argument about rape culture may smack to some (in its arch-feminist socio-linguistic trappings) as being just another example of how Some Folks Just Take Some Stuff Too Seriously. (Or, as the old joke goes, “How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?” “THAT’S NOT FUNNY!”) I suspect it would be less dismissable if one contemplated the people in your life having been raped. Regardless, to simplify it into less academic terms, “rape culture” is the idea of rape being taken as relatively commonplace and a subject for humor — a sort of “get over it, shit happens, hey, did you hear about this joke that’s kind of like what just happened to your sister, except it’s a hoot …” thing.  As Les quotes Melissa McEwan:

But a single rape joke does not exist in a void. It exists in a culture rife with jokes that treat as a punchline a heinous, terrifying crime that leaves most of its survivors forever changed in some material way. It exists in a culture in which millions and millions of women, men, and children will be victimized by perpetrators of sexual violence, many of them multiple times. It exists in a culture in which rape not being treated as seriously as it ought means that vanishingly few survivors of sexual violence see real justice, leaving their assaulters free to create even more survivors. It exists in a culture in which rape is not primarily committed by swarthy strangers lurking in dark alleyways and jumping out of bushes, but primarily by people one knows, who nonetheless fail, as a result of some combination of innate corruption and socialization in a culture that disdains consent and autonomy, to view their victims as human beings deserving of basic dignity.

It’s a long and complex subject, and deserves more space than I can give it at the moment (including a discussion of why jokes about some things are off limits, but jokes about other things, arguably as horrible, are not, and which is the right state of things).

But it reminded me of something else I wanted to post about, on the same subject. It’s a TV trope with a long history — prison rape.

As the (just cited) TVtropes.org describes it:

Prison rape becomes:

• A device for scary violence and revenge scenes in stories with prison settings.
• A threat for nasty law officers to menace prisoners with during interrogation scenes. (“You know what they’ll do to a pretty boy like you, son?”)
• An extra punishment that “good” characters sometimes actually gloat at the thought of villains suffering!
• A source of jokes, often featuring huge criminals wearing eyeshadow.
• A source of fears and hangups for characters who think they may be in danger of incarceration (may be played straight or for laughs).
• A dark, past trauma that blights the lives of ex-convicts.

I’ve become more sensitive to this over the last few years, not through any personal experience but just because it was pointed out enough times that the above literary usage of prison rape, particularly for laughs, is not only callous, but actually counter-productive to solving what is a very real problem. Just as the problem of other types of rape are hindered by a “rape culture” that accepts that rape happens, it’s not so bad, it’s a joke punchline, “lie back and think of England,” “well, you know she probably enjoyed it a bit, too” kind of crap, so too the media acceptance of prison rape as humorous and/or karmic justice is, itself, perpetuating the problem.

This came up a week or two back on an episode of Castle. Now, Castle is fairly light TV fare — a drama about the eponymous mystery writer (played by Nathan Fillian) working with a  homicide squad in NYC to garner background for his books.  It’s got some romantic comedy in it, with some Moonlighting-like maneuvers between Castle and the female head of the squad, and while there’s some serious drama (homicide not being played for yocks), much of the banter and B- and C-plots are played for wit and entertaining amusement.  I enjoy it enough to record it on the DVR and watch each episode, but not enough to buy the DVDs.

So the episode in question (“Knockdown“) touched on some of the more dramatic elements of the show, a long-standing plotline about the cold case murder of the mother of the homicide squad’s head detective, Kate Beckett (the on-again, off-again romantic interest).  Every several episodes, something comes along to advance the case, to drop some clues about the mystery that Beckett obsesses about.

And then they played the prison rape card.  Once, at least, arguably twice.

The first time, two of the detectives are interrogating a drug supplier who might point to the [unnecessary plot elements redacted], if they can get him to talk.  Emotions are high at this point, because everyone loves Beckett, everyone knows how this mystery is tearing her apart, and how, in fact, she’s been thrown off the case because she wasn’t able to control her anger about it.

So the two detectives, Ryan and Esposito, are trying to put the screws on the supplier.  And, yeah, they can’t pin anything on him, but, hey, they can throw him in lockup overnight, that there’s a big prisoner down there named “Peppermint” who’ll just love rooming with him, etc. and so forth.  And the supplier, a kind of frail-looking white kid, folds and gives up his info.

So Ryan and Esposito, two nice guys, officers of the law, on a nice TV show, essentially threaten someone with prison rape (or being put in a situation where it seems something to be honestly frightened of) in order to get information.  And, yeah, the stakes are high and the emotions hot, but … damn, guys.  It’s just wrong, and it hurt my perceptions of them. And nobody seems to have noticed.

(Note: it’s not clear that Ryan and Esposito would have gone through with their threat.  But they threatened the perp, without using the words, with rape unless he talked. Even just the threat is heinous. And there was certainly nothing in the episode that acknowledged that either character thought the  threat was a bad thing, or over the line, or something to regret.)

Then at the end of the episode, the assassin of Kate’s mom has been locked up (for other crimes committed), and will be for some time, but still hasn’t spilled what he knows about who hired him or why.  So Beckett visits him in prison, and when he stays clammed up, warns him that she’ll be back to visit weekly to ask the same questions — and, in the meantime, she knows a lot of prisoners in there who owe her big time, and who will likely be interacting with him a lot, trying to persuade him to give up what he knows.

Really, Beckett? It’s not an explicit prison rape threat, but that might be one of the elements involved.  Or maybe it will just be beatings, or death threats, or other acts of violence tacitly sanctioned by a cop (and, possibly, the prison adminstration).

Now, neither of the recipients of these threats was a nice person.  And certainly the cause is a good one.  But that doesn’t make the threats acceptable or right or moral or just (let alone legal). That the audience probably accepted them as an “Oooooh, snap!” kind of plot element to show how serious the drama was isn’t an excuse (indeed, it’s an indictment).

Bottom line: threatening someone with the likelihood of rape (or, maybe, “just” a beating) is not a good thing to do.  Maybe it’s been around on TV for a decade or three, but that hardly makes it okay.  It’s evil.  It’s corrupting. It’s not not virtuous.  It’s right alongside threatening to cut off their fingers, beat up their family, kill their dog, etc. It’s the sort of thing we expect from the Mob, or the North Koreans, not from the White Hats.  It’s not something we should be cheering, let along (when played for laughs) chuckling at.

Or, in the words of that joke I quoted earlier, “That’s not funny.”