Anti-rec: Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter (Inspect Morse series)

[ilthit]

Goodness gracious, the rape-apologism. It was written in the 70s, which sort of explains it but doesn't excuse it, and from today's perspective it's deeply disturbing.

Examples: Jennifer Coleby says the murdered girl may have "enjoyed being raped". Men at the bar joke about how rape is probably not even possible since a girl with her skirt up runs faster than a man with his trousers down, and about how a girl who got raped mid-exams performed better after than before, suggesting rape was a stress-relief (seriously). A woman listening in on all of this hooks up with one of the men and later in bed sexily whispers to him, "rape me again". I ONLY WISH I WAS KIDDING. That's not even all of it.

Morse is also just sleazy, and I get the idea that the author thinks women find his sleaziness charming.

Comments

[destinyislands]

O____O WTF?!

[ilthit]

You'll find that sort of thing splashed all over the 70s, I understand.

[prodigy]

I've heard bad things, but I never imagined that bad. It sounds pretty disturbing from a 70s perspective too, to be honest. Wow.

[ilthit]

I've come across the rape-is-just-another-word-for-seduction-and-it's-fun-for-the-ladies paradigm in other fiction/films from before the 80s often enough. There's plenty of it in the Beebo Brinker chronicles (legendary lesbian pulps), Gone With the Wind (never a good place to go for non-disturbing entertainment in the first place) and even in the 1998 Lisa Kleypas romance novel Stranger In My Arms (which had the good rape/bad rape dichotomy - the good rape is the one that gets the lady off).

It's funny to think that the idea that rape is, you know, not fun, is kind of a modern idea.

[prodigy]

To be fair, that stuff is not exactly uncommon nowadays either, particularly in things like romance, and where it's faded away it's often been replaced with rape-as-luridity or rape-as-concern-trolling-plot-device-for-heroes-to-rescue-pathetic-victim-figure, I'm looking at you, Law & Order franchise and the like. There have always been notions of "good rape" and "bad rape," "real rape" and "frivolous rape," but popular boundaries in American media have shifted; there's older-than-dirt storytelling that portrays rape by a stranger as a great travesty and rape by a husband as a nonexistent concept, and then there's Veronica Mars circa the early 2000 where the female protagonist is relieved to find out it was her boyfriend who had sex with her when she was drugged, she was so worried before that she'd been raped and all. (Matters were complicated by his being under the influence too, but the driving point was more that it was okay because he and not some other guy did it.)

Of course, I'm not disagreeing with you about the 70s -- I'm just leery about proclaiming that media about sexual assault has particularly progressed, either.

[ilthit]

Rape by a stranger being bad and rape by a spouse being impossible is linked to the idea of a woman as property. Rape by a stranger is dreadful because now the lady might have non-pre-approved babies.

I would definitely say media has progressed. It's not perfect. Rape-by-evil-people-for-the-viewer's-titillation seems to have replaced rape-by-hero-isn't-he-dreamy, which... I guess at least pays lip-service to the idea that rape is not fun.