The relationship between prime time television and social change is complex, historically significant, and as yet only partially understood. As one contemporary analysis notes, “few commentators would question that television has become more open about treating political issues and social controversies as the stuff of entertainment. But the substance and implications of its treatment are hotly disputed.”¹ Although we know that prime time drama frequently depicts controversial issues and political debates, it is also generally accepted that prime time texts are constructed so as to avoid offending potential audience members. Thus the issues and ranges of opinion depicted are usually...

Television viewers are familiar with the frequency and graphic detail with which rapes have been presented on prime time dramatic programs. This chapter traces the evolution of prime time’s portrayals of the crime of rape from 1976 through 1990. It demonstrates a basic change from earlier episodes that mostly depicted “real” stranger rape and followed the basic plot’s formula of extreme violence, use of weapons and threats, victim helplessness, and detective effectiveness, to a later phase when most programs began instead to depict date or acquaintance rapes where the victim knew her attacker, no extreme violence or weapons were used,...

Chapter 2 traced the basic evolution of portrayals of the crime of rape on prime time episodic programs. This chapter further develops the book’s central argument by examining the treatments of masculinity in these episodes, focusing primarily on constructions of rapist and detective character and on detective-rapist interactions. It examines what the rape plots do with masculinity in the context of the evolving genre — how these rape narratives treat, define, and contextualize masculinity, usually in predictable, patterned ways, but sometimes with surprising and complex results. Although the individual elements that constitute prime time’s authorized brand of honorable masculinity are visibly...

The earliest prime time rape episodes under examination here depict victims in a routine formulaic way, suggesting that they deserve sympathy rather than blame. A consistent theme throughout the years is the idea that rape is a serious crime that unquestionably has harmful effects on its victims, a point that is often brought out verbally by male detectives. But, in prime time versions of rape even the victim’s character and dialogue are structured to enhance a general focus on masculinity as the central plot theme. Thus during the period from 1976 through the early-1980s, when rapes consist almost exclusively of...

While the majority of prime time’s rape-centered episodes followed predictable formulas, several were unique in their sensitive treatment of issues, their depth of analysis, or their relatively early examination of a difficult subject. This chapter examines eleven specific episodes that were either groundbreaking in handling new subjects, or unusual in their treatment of more typical subject matter. The discussion of unusual subjects will center on the groundbreaking treatments of marital rape (Barney Miller, “Rape,” 1978); male rape (Kaz, “Day in Court,” 1978;Cagney and Lacey, “Violation,” 1985); and gang rape (21 Jump Street, “Hell Week,” 1988). These episodes are the...

This book has examined prime time rape-centered episodes, arguing that between 1976 and 1990 prime time was struggling with evolving depictions of rape, but almost always in such a way that definitions of masculinity remained at the core of rape representation. It demonstrates that most rape-centered episodes through the early-1980s were aired on detective or police dramas and that they depicted rape as a violent surprise attack involving the use of weapons and brutality. Episodes of this type were common enough to establish a “basic plot” formula for rape on prime time episodic series, and key elements of this formula...