--- description: This year on TV, female characters have again and again been forced to face a rape from their past—a plotline that reflects how our society is finally confronting rape culture. title: Scandal and The Americans: There's a Reason There's So Much Rape on TV image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt48e90a01ccba4aa4/6986890fadae4460cd5425d2/ta_201-2_117_1.jpg?branch=production&width=1080&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Living](/tag/time-section-living/) ## Living Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # There's a Reason There's So Much Rape on Your Favorite TV Shows  by [Eliana Dockterman](/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent Apr 10, 2014 8:15 PM CUT  Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings on The Americans Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings on The AmericansCraig Blankenhorn—FX  by [Eliana Dockterman](/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Correspondent Apr 10, 2014 8:15 PM CUT There’s been an awful lot of rape on television this year. Though we expect to rape plot lines on procedurals like _Law and Order: SVU_, sexual assaults have become a mainstay on high-brow dramas too: _The Americans_, _Scandal_, _Top of the Lake_, _House of Cards_, _Game of Thrones_ and _Downton Abbey_ have all had prominent incidents of assault. Some have dismissed this trend as an easy means for creating tension, drama and sympathy. Along with death and torture, rape ranks right up there with the worst things that can happen to a character. “Now, in several of the current rapes on TV, we have female characters who are known to audiences as cold, merciless and calculating. These characters are unloved or even hated by audience,” says Lisa Cuklanz, a professor at Boston College and author of _Rape on Prime Time_. “When we learn about their former sexual victimization, this new knowledge serves to humanize the character.” Elizabeth from _The Americans_ or Mellie on _Scandal_ or Robin on _Top of the Lake_ or Claire on _House of Cards_ all do fit the bill of strong but cold women who can be hard to love. But, sometimes the rape-for-sympathy ploy backfires and looks cheap, as [many pointed out](http://jezebel.com/making-sense-of-the-rape-scene-on-scandal-1465117671/all "undefined") earlier this year when a flashback on _Scandal_ showed Mellie getting raped by her father-in-law. But I don’t think these are the usual plot twists. There’s something different about these rapes. Whereas we used to see or hear about sexual assault in real time and see how it changed the characters, now TV screenwriters like to revive assaults that happened before the show’s timeline. In the case of _The Americans_, _Scandal_, _Top of the Lake_ and _House of Cards_, the plot features a woman who must confront a sexual assault that happened years, even decades, ago. We don’t see the attack in real time, but rather in a flashback (if at all). These women have already dealt with the aftermath, buried their pain and moved on with their lives. Only when their rapist resurfaces (_The Americans_, _House of Cards_) or a new circumstance like investigating a crime or an interview reminds them of the incident (_Top of the Lake_, _Scandal_) does the “rape plot” begin. And this change in the way sexual assaults are depicted isn’t entirely coincidental. The small screen is mimicking what is happening to our society on a larger scale. As a culture, we are confronting the long-buried problem of rape in new ways—just like these fictional characters. The idea of “rape culture” has arisen in the past few years as a major topic of conversation and debate. The Steubenville rape case, sexual assaults on campuses and assaults within the military have brought the long-time problem of rape to the forefront in the media. We’ve seen plots where characters avenge a rape (_Veronica Mars_), save themselves or others from a rape (_Buffy_) or use rape as a plot twist on a couple’s story (_Mad Men_). But this new trope of rape survivors dealing with the long-term consequences of their attack seems to stem directly from our culture.  TONY GOLDWYN, BELLAMY YOUNG Richard Cartwright—ABC As Joel Fields, producer on _The Americans—_a Cold War spy drama on FX—points out, “There’s been an effort in the popular lexicon to stop referring to people as sexual assault victims and refer to them as sexual assault survivors. And that really applies \[to Elizabeth\].” Though Joe Weisberg, creator and head writer for the show, says they did not write the plotline as a gambit for sympathy but as a long-hidden secret that would have kept her from ever becoming close to her fellow spy and husband, Philip. “It would be something that she’s repressed,” says Weisberg. “In our storyline, I think a lot of our thinking involves ideas that repressing that event can be a big part of what separated her from her husband over the years.**”** It’s only when Elizabeth reveals the secret to her husband that the couple is able to begin to close the gulf that’s been between them. _The Americans_ has taken the trope to another, meta level this season as Elizabeth continues to heal through a bizarre sort of therapy this season as she disguises herself as a rape victim in order to get information from a mark. “Elizabeth in disguise with Brad starts to talk about that rape and repurposes it in a way that unconscious and conscious at the same time. But in disguise and by proxy she’s able for the first time to express and explore some of those feelings in this bizarre, safe parallel environment for her.” says Fields. As a spy, Elizabeth plays the victim we’ve traditionally seen on TV—a blatant bid for sympathy. But Elizabeth, the wife and mother, struggles much more deeply with how to resolve her feelings about her rape. Elizabeth may take comfort in the fact that her husband killed her rapist; in _House of Cards_, Claire can congratulate herself on her plan to justify an abortion and to retaliate against her assailant at the same time by announcing his name on national TV; in _Top of the Lake_ Robin can breathe easier knowing the man orchestrating an underage sex ring is dead; _Scandal’s_ Mellie—well, at least her father-in-law finally died. But these women truly begin to heal when their secret is revealed—the the world or their husbands or a close confidant, not when they enact vengeance. Elizabeth and Philip grow closer on _The Americans_ when he finds out about her attack; in _House of Cards_, Claire becomes stronger and enacts revenge against her attacker without her husband (whereas she usually must follow her scheming husbands lead); on _Top of the Lake_, the show ends with Elizabeth poised to help raise a child that resulted from a gang rape (after giving up her own child many years ago); and on _Scandal_ Mellie finds comfort in her husband’s pick for Vice Presidential candidate Andrew—the only one who knows her rape. Whether consciously or not, this is reflective of our society’s effort to unearth assaults old and new, to deal with the fact that for so long rape was something swept under the rug. Only then can we begin to heal. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/50328/theres-a-reason-theres-so-much-rape-on-your-favorite-tv-shows/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/50328/theres-a-reason-theres-so-much-rape-on-your-favorite-tv-shows/"},"headline":"There's a Reason There's So Much Rape on Your Favorite TV Shows","datePublished":"2014-04-10T20:15:45.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:42:59.366Z","description":"This year on TV, female characters have again and again been forced to face a rape from their past—a plotline that reflects how our society is finally confronting rape culture.","url":"https://time.com/50328/theres-a-reason-theres-so-much-rape-on-your-favorite-tv-shows/","keywords":["Living","Rape","Crime","Television","house of cards","Scandal","the americans","Culture"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt48e90a01ccba4aa4/6986890fadae4460cd5425d2/ta_201-2_117_1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt48e90a01ccba4aa4/6986890fadae4460cd5425d2/ta_201-2_117_1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TA_201-2_117_1","caption":"THE AMERICANS -- Comrades -- Episode 1 (Airs Wednesday, February, 26, 10:00 PM e/p) -- Pictured: Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings -- CR: Craig Blankenhorn/FX","creditText":"Craig Blankenhorn—FX","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/50328/theres-a-reason-theres-so-much-rape-on-your-favorite-tv-shows/","name":"There's a Reason There's So Much Rape on Your Favorite TV Shows"}}]}] ```