Sexual Violence in Spec Screenplays

Analysis of sexual violence in screenplays on the Black List website.

Kate Hagen is a writer, has experience as a professional script reader, and for several years has been the director of community at @theblcklst. She also oversees the Black List’s blog and on Monday, she posted this article which has generated considerable attention.

I’ll never forget the worst script I’ve ever read. It came across my desk while reading for the Black List in the fall of 2013, and was classified as a comedy. It was a coming-of-age story about a young woman with dreams of stand-up stardom. It also had eight rape scenes in it, described a ten-year old girl as “teasing like a stripper,” featured multiple scenes of child abuse, torture, and incest, and blamed the multitude of abuses suffered by its heroine on her inability to wear underwear. I’ll remind you again that this script was classified as a comedy by its own (male) writer.

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We decided we wanted to explore the conversation around sexual violence in feature film spec scripts and television pilots from three perspectives to get the most complete overall picture of what “sexual violence” actually means within the spec screenwriting market: we decided to look at data as related to the tagging of scripts on blcklst.com, to interview our reader base about their own anecdotal experiences, and to speak with creators and academics who’ve explored the topic within their own work.

The entire post is not only worth reading, it’s important. Let me zero in on some select comments from script readers drawn from the article:

Any correlations you’ve noticed in scripts that contain sexual violence?

“Almost always written by men, almost always fails the Bechdel test, often it seems like the only female character in the script at all is a victim of sexual violence, usually the female character(s) in the script are only described in sexual terms and their only role in the script is to have sex with the male character. Usually, the male character that has committed sexual violence is the PROTAGONIST, like the audience is supposed to be on this guy’s side even though he is keeping a girl in a cage in his basement (a real plot) or he’s constantly referred to a woman as a bitch and kisses/touches women against their will because he’s just soooo desirable. I also see a lot of scripts with sexual violence towards men in the form of being childhood victims of pedophilia, and it is almost always used as a reason why a character has become a murderer — as if that’s the only possible outcome for a boy who has been violated by an older man.”

Have you ever found a script where the sex that is presented as consensual/non-violent you believe to be otherwise within the context of the script?

“Quite a few times — this feels like it usually happens in a ‘comedy’ where the joke is that a woman will only sleep with a man because she is too drunk to say no, or the men specifically target the drunkest woman in the room so they have the best chance of having sex — there seems to be an extremely loose understanding of consent. This is too often accompanied by descriptions of these female characters as LITERALLY ‘dressed like a slut’ or ‘wearing too much makeup’ or ‘acts like a ho’ or, in the worst cases, the character’s name is Slutty Girl #1 as if it’s the woman’s fault for getting raped. Truly infuriating.”

Can you describe the poorest depiction of sexual violence you’ve ever seen in a script?

“The most problematic element of sexual violence in scripts is usually the aftermath — a lot of writers gloss over it and ignore the emotional/psychological after effects. They essentially treat it as the equivalent of a violent beating or something — it’s stakes-raising action, nothing more.”

Can you describe the best-handled depiction of sexual violence you’ve ever seen in a script?

“Where the trauma happens off-screen but informed the character’s decisions and ability to trust. Wasn’t the central focus of the script but helped motivate the character and was treated as a real issue.”

General thoughts on sexual violence in American film and television on the whole?

“Using rape as a backstory for women is lazy, and it’s even less classy when you insist upon flashing back to it time and time again to add dimension to her character. Not only can it be triggering for audience members, but it reduces female characters to the sum of the most horrific moments in their past.”

Here is something I posted on Monday at the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group in response to the Black List article:

Characters, every single one of them, is a unique, living and breathing individual. They are NOT an object. If you, as a writer, treat them as such, you need to check yourself. Unless you have a damn good reason to subject a character to sexual abuse / violence, serving an important story dynamic, and in effect treat that character like an object, you need to question your commitment to the craft.

There is a larger frame. We live in precarious times. The Powers That Be use fear to further their nefarious purposes. To foment fear, they demonize The Other. They treat People, Human Beings, Individuals as objects. Then rally their supporters to direct hate toward The Other.

Fact: These are HUMAN BEINGS. They share 99.9% of DNA with all of us.

So anytime we, as writers, treat characters as objects, and subject them to rape, violence, sexual abuse, we contribute to the Zeitgeist of demonization of The Other and support for acts of violence against them.

Words. Have. Power.

Stories. Shape. Opinions.

Each of us — and especially men — need to look at whatever story we’re writing and track how we treat every single character, particularly those who identify as women.

Each character experiences their reality as if THEY are the Protagonist.

If we subject them to violence — particularly female characters — and do NOT accord them the respect they deserve to look at the Story Universe through THEIR eyes as a Protagonist figure, if we treat them as little more than an Object…

It’s not just bad writing, it’s wrong.

We, as human beings, are better than this.

This is not to say there are we, as writers, are censored from exploring sexual violence as narrative dynamics in our stories. If it’s central to the story, an essential narrative element, then at least there’s a more complex context in which to explore the impact of that violence.

But just as it’s bad writing to create more sympathy for a character by saying, “Let them have a dead wife / husband”, so, too, if in giving a character a ‘wound’, we drop in some generic sexual violence into their past.

If sexual violence is ESSENTIAL to our story, then it’s incumbent upon us as writers to spend time with the victim and see the story universe through THEIR eyes. In other words, as you develop the story and your characters, switch Protagonists as a writing exercise (assuming the victim isn’t the story’s actual Protagonist). What is their day to day and overall life experience? How does the violence impact them? Talk with them. Listen to them. Uncover the humanity of that character, who they are and how they live, and how the assault has impacted them..

Bottom line, any time a writer works on a story which includes sexual violence, it is incumbent upon the writer to delve deeply into what it means to everyone involved, most especially the victim. If you use it as nothing more than a cheap narrative device, that is not only bad writing, you are in effect supporting a mindset we see splashing across headlines seemingly every day, where men treat women like objects, not authentic human beings deserving of respect and interactions based on our shared humanity.

For more of the Black List article, go here.