Page 28 - The Staunch Test

THE STAUNCH TEST

Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgård in Big Little Lies
[Photo: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/courtesy of HBO]

But stranger danger generally offers a writer more scope for exciting drama than
the domestic sphere, making plotting more complex, often including the need
to discover who the assailant is. It also enables the opportunity to ‘other’
perpetrators, not only as strangers, but as clever psychopaths, serial rapists or
serial killers (and sometimes all the above), making them even less like ‘ordinary’

men. Such characters are dark and cunning, crazy or brilliant, driven by terrible
things that happened to them in the past, or twisted in ways that drive them to
lust after or kill their victims. Thanks to popular culture, these are the men most
people associate with the violation of women. We’ve seen it so many hundreds
of times that it’s become as real, or more real, than the truth.

Real life murders of women are treated seriously, thankfully. But with assault,

it’s a very different matter. Given what popular culture — not to mention porn
— dishes up, it’s hardly a surprise that women reporting rape are not always
believed. There’s often very little build-up associated with a real-life attack
compared to what we’re used to seeing on screen. No woman running through
the woods fleeing a rapist or killer. No ambush, no sinister psycho plotting, with
photos of victims and victims-to-be plastered all over his walls. No calling card
signature or action that shows he’s struck again.