just finished catching up on s2 of Sons of Anarchy
And you know, I think on another show I would be pissed off with a woman's rape being used as a driver of the plot. I still have sorta mixed feelings about how it was handled on this show, but on the other hand, I have to say that it redeems itself a bit for me because it gave Gemma space throughout the entire season to react to her rape, and it gave her the agency to decide who and when and why she was going to tell her family about it. I can't really articulate most of my thoughts on it right now, but for the most part I appreciated how the subject was handled over the course of the season. It wasn't a one-episode dramatic thing, and while I sorta have squicky feelings about Gemma's rape being used as the device to bring Jax and Clay back together, I thought that because that conflict was played out over time and the course of the season as well, and because these characters are so well written it felt in character for who they all were. I don't know, I felt like the show respects Gemma a lot as a character in her own right, and that helps mitigate some of the problems I'd otherwise have with it.
In a weird way I think the show earns the sexual (and just plain) violence that gets inflicted on the women, in that to me it seems to be showing a bit of the reality of patriarchal violence. These men are violent, they make their livings through violence, their whole male-bonding structure is based quite a bit on violence (the whole bit about Clay drawing Opie in "closer" via assigning him violent acts; how the prospects are drawn into the fold based on whether the club thinks they can handle the violence) and I guess I feel like it wouldn't be showing the whole story if how this violence affects the women wasn't included. It's awful stuff, and it's given weight on the show as awful.
I could really understand how someone might completely disagree with this. I don't even fully agree with it, because sometimes I feel the show straddles this line between representation and glorification that blurs due to the requirement that it be entertainment and not documentary. But I think that line is a valid thing to try to explore, in a way. Clay is a horrible person, but he loves his wife. Gemma can be a horrible person, but through Tara you can see maybe how Gemma got there. I like the way the show has these narrative mirrors sprinkled everywhere. Hale and Unser, Tara and Gemma, Jax caught between Clay and his dead father, etc etc etc. I like that it uses some of the older, more entrenched and corrupted characters to show how the younger characters might end up; and uses the younger characters to show what might have happened to the older characters to make them who they are, to understand how they got corrupted, that they didn't start out as horrible people, even maybe Tig, who loves and has loyalty and doesn't want Opie to end up like him, and is a horrible psychopath at the same time.
I think it's entirely intentional that the original members of the club are mostly Vietnam Vets, that there's a connection to the IRA, to generations of survivors of war and what it does to people. The IRA connection isn't out of thin air, you know? Same with the porn connection in season 2, which I didn't get into here but again was something that on another show probably would have pissed me off.
Anyway, enough rambling, I'm still conflicted about a lot but this is where I'm at right now.
In a weird way I think the show earns the sexual (and just plain) violence that gets inflicted on the women, in that to me it seems to be showing a bit of the reality of patriarchal violence. These men are violent, they make their livings through violence, their whole male-bonding structure is based quite a bit on violence (the whole bit about Clay drawing Opie in "closer" via assigning him violent acts; how the prospects are drawn into the fold based on whether the club thinks they can handle the violence) and I guess I feel like it wouldn't be showing the whole story if how this violence affects the women wasn't included. It's awful stuff, and it's given weight on the show as awful.
I could really understand how someone might completely disagree with this. I don't even fully agree with it, because sometimes I feel the show straddles this line between representation and glorification that blurs due to the requirement that it be entertainment and not documentary. But I think that line is a valid thing to try to explore, in a way. Clay is a horrible person, but he loves his wife. Gemma can be a horrible person, but through Tara you can see maybe how Gemma got there. I like the way the show has these narrative mirrors sprinkled everywhere. Hale and Unser, Tara and Gemma, Jax caught between Clay and his dead father, etc etc etc. I like that it uses some of the older, more entrenched and corrupted characters to show how the younger characters might end up; and uses the younger characters to show what might have happened to the older characters to make them who they are, to understand how they got corrupted, that they didn't start out as horrible people, even maybe Tig, who loves and has loyalty and doesn't want Opie to end up like him, and is a horrible psychopath at the same time.
I think it's entirely intentional that the original members of the club are mostly Vietnam Vets, that there's a connection to the IRA, to generations of survivors of war and what it does to people. The IRA connection isn't out of thin air, you know? Same with the porn connection in season 2, which I didn't get into here but again was something that on another show probably would have pissed me off.
Anyway, enough rambling, I'm still conflicted about a lot but this is where I'm at right now.