Campus Rape, The TV Show

The news is replete with, to put it kindly, conflicting claims and statistics. The law is in a state of chaos following the Obama Department of Education’s very successful “Dear Colleague” effort at social engineering its progressive agenda around legislation.

Girls* on campus claim to be raped three times a day before lunch. Guys are required to be neutered during campus orientation. All school colors have been mandated to be pink and pink.** What to do?  The Fox Network has the solution: let’s make it a TV show!

Fox has picked up two new drama pilots, one of which is focused on a subject not usually explored by a primetime broadcast show: college sexual assault.

In Controversy, the Junior Counsel of a prestigious Illinois university must deal with “an out-of-control scandal when a young co-ed accuses several star football players of sexual assault. From the football coaches and boosters who wield outsize influence, to a university administration under siege, the series explores the type of high-profile controversy all-too familiar on today’s college campuses, as well as the corrosive, dangerous nature of institutional power.”

No doubt the “junior counsel” will be remarkably attractive and charismatic, because aren’t all junior counsels? But that’s routine. What may not be is the “all too familiar” trope of the football players who rape. Will it be modeled after Temple football player Martin-Oguike? Maybe the players at Minnesota? It could be Jameis Winston, or maybe Yale’s Jack Montague? Then again, it could be the football players at Baylor or maybe the Stanford player?

But then, maybe it will be an entirely fictional scenario, modeled after nothing more than a fantasy view of this enormously complex, misunderstood and insufferably manipulated issue. Would this Fox show possibly ignore the nuance of false allegations, definitional contortion, lack of due process, or even the overarching question of whether Title IX authorized schools to stick their inept sticky fingers into this problematic legal issue?

The show is from writer Sheldon Turner (X-Men: First ClassThe Longest Yard remake) and executive producers and directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (This Is Us) along with executive producers Judy Smith, Jennifer Klein and Charlie Gogolak.

Clearly, given the legal pedigree of those with their hands on the wheel of this speeding freight train, we can feel a level of comfort that it will be handled with intelligence, sensitivity and accuracy.

But there’s more.

Fox also ordered another pilot titled The Resident. This is a medical drama that’s way more generic sounding.

This is the show’s official logline from Fox [with some editorial annotations]: “An idealistic young doctor [of course they are] begins his first day [of course it is] under the supervision of a tough, brilliant senior resident [why hasn’t anybody made a medical drama titled Tough But Brilliant yet?] who pulls the curtain back [please literally be one of those curtains they use around hospital beds] on all of the good and evil in modern day medicine [that’s a lot of good and evil]. Lives may be saved or lost [it’s a hospital, we kind of expect this], but expectations will always be shattered [well you haven’t yet].”

Yes, we’re mocking this, but just watch The Resident go on to become next fall’s highest-rated show.

No, this second drama won’t be about campus rape, lawyers or football brutes, but it’s mentioned for the reasons it’s being mocked. The network is working the tried and true medical drama because they believe there is an audience out there willing to watch crap. Even the same warmed-over crap they’ve been dishing out for a decade or more. Nothing succeeds like success.

Now that Grey’s Anatomy, the TV show that drove millions of young women to major in STEM rather than gender studies, has played out every story line remotely believable, it’s time to play the same game over again. But how many young women believe what they saw on that screen? How many understood that this wasn’t really a documentary? It was entertainment, designed for no purpose other than to sell commercial time? Not too many.

If they see it on the tube, they believe. It could be good acting. It could be viewer ignorance. It could be confirmation bias. It doesn’t matter. People believe what the TV tells them to believe, and there is no obligation on the part of a television drama to be remotely accurate. They are free to make people stupider all they want.

The Controversy will do the same? There have been enormously popular TV shows about cops and lawyers that haven’t fundamentally screwed with public understanding of law, like Law & Order. Others, like CSI, have done some damage as far as the prosecution is concerned, causing potential jurors to expect magic at trial conclusively proving through really cool scientific testimony that it was the defendant’s third cousin’s postman who committed the murder. But people are fairly familiar with cops, TV notwithstanding, and so the damage was within the framework of ordinary understanding that it was just a drama designed to entice you to watch the commercials.

When it comes to campus rape and sexual assault, the public understanding begins from a place of ignorance, at best, and deeply skewed information at worst. No, college campuses are not more rapey than Somalia. No, a guy doesn’t commit rape when he’s blackout from booze and some gal takes advantage of him, which she later regrets. No, stare rape is not a thing.

But it can be if the TV says it is.

*It’s back.

**This is a rhetorical device known as hyperbole. It’s not entirely true, but an exaggeration to make the point that things are bad. Some schools, however, have not adopted pink and pink. Not all girls are raped three times a day before lunch. Boys are, however, neutered at orientation, unless they’re recruited athletes at big football schools.

7 thoughts on “Campus Rape, The TV Show

  1. LTMG

    Fox might consider writing the campus rape drama along the lines of Frank Stockton’s 1882 short story “The Lady or the Tiger.” Certainly the legal, moral, social, and Title IX dilemmas and conflicts bear some resemblance to Stockton’s story. Could Fox write and broadcast a drama that left viewers hanging? Or would they pander to the “take two aspirin and watch a 30-minute sitcom in a cuddly safe space” crowd that seeks for the media to take a social justice stand? If Fox produced their drama well, then they could have a product that could sell, as Stockton’s story has, for many years after. Think profits and residuals, Fox.

  2. B. McLeod

    Several old Baylor emails were leaked to the media today, and the most interesting thing was they showed the coach looking after players for drug and misbehavior issues, but not a mention of anything rapey.

  3. D-Poll

    Fox is late to the bandwagon here; MTV already beat them to it with “SweetVicious”, with an extra side of trendy vigilante murder and police evasion. You might be pleased (?) to know that one of my first thoughts when I found out about it was “wow, I bet this’ll make SHG’s head explode”.

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