Violence Against Women: TV's New Formula for Success
On Christmas morning, actor Charlie Sheen was arrested after putting a knife to his wife’s throat. This translated into a boost to his comedy series, “Two and a Half Men": the show drew in a record 11.1 million viewers on Monday -- making it the most watched show of the night. The lesson? Violence against women sells.
This point was really brought home earlier this month, when MTV’s “Jersey Shore” advertised a woman being punched in an upcoming episode. Ratings doubled.
After the premier in early December, “Jersey Shore” posted a disappointing 1.3 million viewers. But the saving grace for the show (also under attack for its pejorative portrayal of Italian Americans) came when a woman on the show is knocked to the ground in an altercation at a bar. Before the episode aired, the footage produced a firestorm online. A slow-motion video surfaced; one man posted a video of the punch on repeat, entitled “The Countdown to Snookie Getting Punched in the Face Is On.” He was so excited to see Snookie (Nicole Polizzi) get “coldcocked in the face by a dude” that, he claims, he couldn't sleep. He begged MTV to keep the footage in the episode.
He didn’t get his wish. Apparently, MTV had a change of conscience and realized that violence against women was not something it should be supporting, so they blacked-out the punch. As a reality show, MTV didn’t plan the attack, just like CBS didn’t ask Sheen to assault his wife, but both networks benefited from the violence. By releasing the footage ahead of time, MTV censored the incident on the show itself without losing out on the hype; CBS made bank when TV's highest paid actor, with a history of attacking women, assaulted his wife. Gender violence is a cash cow because our society refuses to unequivocally condemn violence against women.
One of the most disgusting comments I came across underscores this point: “coming soon on Jersey Shore is a clip of some fat little girl named Snickers getting punched in face for talking shit.” As a young woman, what message am I to take from this? Was a violent outburst against Nicole Polizzi justified because she is fat? Or little? Because she goes by a silly nickname like Snookie (not "Snickers")? Or is it, worst of all, because she dared to assert herself in a brawl? Silencing women is effective, after all, when backed up with the threat of physical abuse.
At a bar in Burbank, CA, a young man explained to me that the punch was deserved because the character is annoying. With his arm draped lovingly over his girlfriend’s shoulders, he unwittingly tapped into the source of the problem: violence against our own loved ones is intolerable, but violence against people we don’t like, or don’t know, or disrespect, is funny.
In the United States, 2005 data shows that approximately three women are killed every day by an intimate partner. As Roxann posted last month, 200,000 women are raped each year, but our justice system doesn’t take the epidemic seriously enough to actually test the rape kits. How are we to address this problem if women like Snookie "deserve it"? If actors like Charlie Sheen boost their careers by attacking their wives? Despite the stereotypes of Italian Americans, Nicole Polizzi is the product of her upbringing and culture just like the poor and minority women who suffer the brunt of gender violence in America. No one deserves it. Period.
Pema Levy
is a journalist living in Washington, DC. She covers women in politics, reproductive rights and policy, and pop culture here at Change.org.
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