On #Reign, Rape And Sexual Assault As Plot Device

Trigger Warning: This post contains discussion of rape and sexual assault.

Let me start by saying that Reign is a great show. I started watching during the break between seasons one and two and haven't turned back since. In a lot of ways, Reign is typical CW fare: pretty people's pretty problems, but in others, it's a very progressive and feminist look (even if wildly historically inaccurate) at the life of one of history's most notorious and fascinating women.

One of the show's biggest strengths is that Reign deals quite openly with the struggles that women faced at the time; from their inability to own property to their inability to guide the very direction of their lives. The show expertly demonstrates how the show's female characters find ways to move through a world that refuses them power or autonomy. Because of this, I'm very surprised and disappointed that the show chose to have its title character violently raped as a way to advance the plot.

I am not as plugged into this show's online fandom as I am with other shows that I watch, so I was not aware that the details of this particular plot had leaked online a few months ago, and consequently did not see it coming. I will admit that even as it happened, I thought Mary might escape. After all, this would hardly be the first time that Mary has been under threat of rape in the show. Additionally, Reign had previously tackled rape (poorly) when Catherine de Medici, Mary's mother-in-law, admitted that she had been gang-raped as a child in a season one episode. A petition started back in October to persuade the showrunners not to go through with the storyline nicely sums up many of my issues with this episode:

Many of us have come to love this show for its portrayal of strong female characters and the unflinchingly feminine light it shines on the dynamics and pitfalls of power in a world that is dominated by men. Much of the series has focused on Mary's womanhood and how she has learned to utilize it, manipulate and weaponize it, even as the outside world has looked upon it as her greatest weakness. After persevering through so much adversity and triumphing over those who have fought so hard to silence her, to have her suffer through this violent assault sends the message that the world will only punish--crushingly and humiliatingly--those women who dare to assert their places within it. It is a message jarringly out of tune with everything we have come to admire about this series, and it has no place in a show geared toward young women who dream of a future in which they may rise without fear of retribution at the hands of men.

As with the HBO drama Game of Thrones the argument can certainly be made that the threat of rape is a historically accurate concern for women of the time. But Reign makes no pretense at accuracy and never has; this rape is a fictional concoction inserted into the story solely to create controversy and advance the plot. They cannot even hide behind the defense that they simply bungled the retelling of a true story.

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