Abstract
In Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media, Nickie D. Phillips sets out to examine rape culture within popular media and how it shapes social understandings of sexual violence. The result is an accessible, well-considered analysis which contributes to the ever-growing body of literature on violence against women. Adopting a cultural criminological approach, Phillips explores how rape culture provides a framework for understanding how sexual violence is discussed, debated and contested within society.
Chapter 1 explores what is meant by rape culture, situating the term within the historical context of developments in feminism over the last forty years. Acknowledging that the term is contested, Phillips leads us through its evolution, beginning in academic discussion and moving into popular discourse. Firmly tying the origins of the term ‘rape culture’ to the academic and activist works of second-wave feminism, we are taken through a concise but detailed summary of this approach to sexual violence. However, as Phillips astutely notes, to understand the social meanings of rape culture, one must look beyond the academic and towards popular media and ‘low culture.’ Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media goes on to link the increasingly prevalent usage of ideas of rape culture with third wave and fourth wave feminism, with feminist activity online and offline, and with a growing awareness and discourse around micro-aggressions. After noting the backlash that developed against the term, the author reminds us of the rates of sexual violence in the US with a brief exploration of the statistical data.
Having set the background, Phillips uses her second chapter to explore three high-profile events from 2013 which, although unrelated to one another, are symbolic of rape culture and heightened awareness of rape culture within public consciousness and public discourse. In the first example, the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in New Delhi, Phillips explores the international news media coverage of the incident, and in particular its presentation of sexual violence as a structural and cultural issue. Comparing this with the domestic news coverage of the second event – the rape of a girl in Steubenville, Ohio – Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media highlights the incongruity between news media coverage of international (‘other’) and domestic cases, particularly in terms of structural analysis. In her reflection on the Steubenville rape, Phillips also considers the role of social media as a forum – albeit one at times steeped in rape culture – for discussion of sexual violence. The final event of 2013 discussed is the eponymous ‘Blurred Lines’, with Phillips exploring the public reaction to this song and its performance by Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke at the MTV Video Music Awards ceremony in 2013. The chapter concludes by considering other events in 2013 which contributed to the propulsion of rape culture into the public consciousness.
Chapters 3 to 6 – the core of the book – are each devoted to different elements of popular culture as sites in which rape culture became discussed, debated and contested. Chapter 3 focuses on television, with – unsurprisingly for viewers of the show – some emphasis on Game of Thrones. Significant to this chapter is the focus on how our engagement with rape narratives in television shows – complicated, varied and at times intense – ‘informs our collective understandings of sexual violence’ (p. 73). Specific rape narratives or tropes examined by Phillips include hegemonic masculinity as the saviour of the rape victim, the tough woman as a victim, and rape as a backstory.
Chapters 4 and 5 – exploring video gaming and comic book cultures respectively – mirror each other in the analysis undertaken. Both explore sexualisation, sexual violence, misogyny and rape culture within games or comics themselves, within their industries and within their communities, particularly at social events such as conventions. The analysis undertaken in these chapters highlights the sexualisation of female characters, the challenge to previously-dominant hegemonically masculine culture posed by a widening demographic profile of participants, and the push-back against this from within those communities. In the case of computer gaming, this is explored (with somewhat depressing inevitability) as a discussion of Gamergate and of the experiences of Anita Sarkeesian.
The penultimate chapter explores rape culture in discourse around college campus rape. Drawing on societal discussions around the accuracy of rape statistics, purportedly false rape allegations and concern over the use of civil rights legislation as a response to campus rape, we see here the emergence of a backlash against the idea that rape culture can provide a lens through which we can understand sexual violence. This was, argues Phillips, the dismantling of rape culture, demonstrated by a shift in various facets of the discussion around sexual violence, particularly a greater concern for the suspect of allegations, and a focus on the importance of due process. Through this deprecation of rape culture, our framework for discussion of sexual violence has been transformed.
The concluding chapter allows Phillips to reflect on the purpose and achievements of her work. She has successfully explored the ways in which our engagement with representations of sexual violence within popular culture, and within the framework provided by rape culture, feed into our understandings of rape and sexual violence. She revisits earlier discussion on the value and contestation of rape culture, and leaves us with some considerations of policy and justice system implications.
Phillips has produced a detailed account of rape culture, with a pertinent and necessary focus on the importance of this within ‘low culture’ and its impact on shaping discourse and debates around sexual violence. The examples referenced throughout the book are well-chosen and one has the sense that each of the central chapters could be expanded into entire studies on their own. This is an engaging book, accessible to lay or academic readers (of undergraduate level and above) with an interest in criminology, sociology, media or gender studies.