Monday Musings: Rape as a plot device

A good example of using rape
as a bad plot device: the rape
of Anna Bates in Downton.

There's been a reasonable amount of discussion recently about 'using rape as a plot device', some of which is summarised in this Guardian article. A lot of the commentary I've read has centred around the TV series Reign, a fantasy reinvention of the life of Mary Queen of Scots, which controversially depicted Mary being raped in one of its later episodes. Rhiannon at Feminist Fiction wrote well about how such a scene has no place in a drama that has otherwise been fun and light-hearted, and I agree with her argument as far as I can without having seen the series myself. (The obvious counter-argument is: why can fun light-hearted shows depict murder, then? I don't want to get into that too deeply here, but I think the difference starts with the fact that we all know that murder is wrong, whereas 1 in 4 British people think that a victim of a sexual assault is at least 'a little bit responsible' if they've been drinking.) Downton Abbey got itself into similar problems to Reign when it depicted the rape of Anna Bates, then largely failed to depict the long-term consequences for Anna; indeed, it soon became clear that the rape was a plot device to put poor, misunderstood Mr Bates in jeopardy again. Downton lacks the emotional depth and complexity to deal with a rape scene adequately, and I don't think that such a scene should ever have been included. Nevertheless, some of the commentary on Reign left me feeling baffled. For example, in this post, Anita Little argues, 'If rape is used primarily to move a story along or explain a woman character's "complexity", it can desensitise the audience to real-life sexual violence', whereas this post goes further, stating, 'Rape is not a plot device. It is not character development.' Although these writers may well be right about Reign, their posts did leave me wondering: what place does rape have in fiction, then?

Changing a consensual sex scene to a rape scene actually
created plot problems for Game of Thrones, rather than
solving them, I would argue.

One major issue in this argument is disentangling the idea of 'rape as a plot device' from other (often valid) criticisms of how rape is portrayed in fiction. For example, shows like Game of Thrones and Outlander have been criticised for the gratuitous use of rape, but this does not mean that they use rape as a plot device - indeed, the problem with many of the rape scenes in Game of Thrones is how little they add to the show. This recent Independent article manages to conflate almost any commentary about rape with the idea that it is a (bad) plot device. I want to spend a long time unpicking many of the ridiculous arguments in this article - particularly the idea that rapists must be portrayed as unsympathetic monsters to allow us to have sympathy with the victim - but I suspect that the statements made by the speakers concerned have been selectively and badly reported, so I'm going to move on. The main point is that even if you think rapists have been made to look too 'nice' in fiction, this isn't using rape as a plot device; this is shoddy characterisation.

So what do we mean when we say 'rape shouldn't be used as a plot device'? If we mean that rape shouldn't be used solely as a plot device, that it should never be used simply to move a story along, then I'm in total agreement. But I cannot agree that rape must never play any part in the plot - whether as a motivation for a character's actions or as an event that leads to a further chain of events. For example, in Louise Doughty's Apple Tree Yard (which I've been talking about a lot, because it's a great book) a character is raped. This rape is absolutely pivotal to the plotline. However, it's also central not only to the character arc of the character in question, but to the thematic weight of the novel. In no way is rape simply a plot device to move the story along. But I would argue that it is a plot device - in the same way that any crucial event in a story can be seen as a 'plot device' - because it is a turning-point in the plot. It works because it's not only part of the plot but because the ramifications for the character are important as well. 

In this context, the idea that 'rape is not character development' is even more baffling. I think the argument here is that rape shouldn't be used to make characters 'more complex' or to give the impression of a darker, edgier narrative, and again, I'm in total agreement. But, I think, here is where fiction must diverge from the way in which we talk about, and understand, real-life rape. For real-life rape survivors, it's absolutely appropriate to say that rape is not character development, because it's an event that was not their fault, does not fit into a story that proves their guilt or innocence, and they should not be expected to learn from it or, indeed, react in any particular way. Fictional rapes, however, are a part of character development, not in the sense that the character should be portrayed as somehow stronger or more interesting because s/he has been raped, but because they must be, or what is the rape doing in this story? If rapes don't contribute to character development, or move the plot along, then the only logical conclusion is that they have no place in the novel or film. And I don't think the way to address the poor handling of sexual violence in fiction is to erase it altogether. If commentators think that we shouldn't address rape in fiction at all, then, rather than debating about its use as a 'plot device', perhaps we should have this argument instead.