Trigger warning: Discussion of sexual and racial violence
HBO’s The Idol is the newest drama series of 2023 to be caught up in critical discussions of ‘wokeness’, ‘cancel culture’, and feminism. There was high anticipation in the lead up to the series, with the production of Abel Tesfaye (known as The Weeknd) and Sam Levinson director of the infamous show, ‘Euphoria,’ and featuring stars including Lily Rose Depp, Troye Sivan, and Jennie Ruby Jane from the KPop group Blackpink. However, it has faced widespread criticism for unapologetic misogyny and sexual violence under a guise of female liberation and empowerment.
Expecting audiences to apparently interpret it as ‘satire’ while simultaneously defending the ‘risqué’ nature of the show, The Idol is yet another HBO show glorifying distorted views of sex, power dynamics, choice, and consent. Director Sam Levinson has argued that 2023 is an era of sexual freedom where rough sex can be separated from actual violence, and this provocative work could be “revolutionary”. However, it was not that long ago that Angela Davis identified sexual violence as “a weapon of mass political terrorism,” and that its inherent power imbalances and disrespect do not just simply go away.
Depp, as the main character Jocelyn, plays a vulnerable and traumatised pop star that is oversexualised to regain her success in the music industry. She is manipulated by Tedros, a shady club owner played by Tesfaye, into a relationship filled with sexual violence — and later into his cult. Although the show is exaggerated, it still reflects the exploitation of many young people, particularly women, in Hollywood. The only twist right at the end – spoiler alert – is the implication that it is Jocelyn who has actually been playing Tedros the whole time, although this is unsupported by any of the previous four episodes. Go figure.
Criticism and controversy arose even before the show was aired, with executive producer Amy Seimetz leaving the project in 2021 as it veered away from a female perspective and went down a darker path. Intended initially to be “a show about a woman finding herself sexually,” it changed paths to become more like torture porn and a tale of Stockholm Syndrome, according to a crew member talking to Rolling Stone.
Between choking, knife play, battery mimicking Jocelyn’s abuse from her mother, and more graphic instances of sexual violence, the show teaches that powerful and cool men are entitled to sexual fulfilment, and women are to adhere to these desires if they are to be considered empowered and independent. Although Depp reports a very safe, collaborative and comfortable work environment, the final product of, ‘The Idol,’ is just another piece of so-called female sexual ‘liberation’ through rough sex and exploitation in today’s media.
“It was a show about a woman who was finding herself sexually, turned into a show about a man who gets to abuse this woman and she loves it.”
A crew member to Rolling Stone Magazine
Fans and cast members have responded to criticism by defending Levinson, with Depp telling Vogue Australia that “It’s OK if this show isn’t for everyone and that’s fine – I think all the best art is [polarising].” Talking about ‘The Idol,’ singer Dominic Fike labels Levinson’s work as “misunderstood”. Fike, a star in Season 2 of Levinson’s similarly famous but controversial show Euphoria, seems to ignore the point that critics do understand the show in its normalisation of sexual violence and drug abuse that is common to both shows, which is why people are strongly opposed.
Tesfaye’s response to the Rolling Stone exposé was to tweet: “@RollingStone did we upset you?” with a clip of the show calling the magazine irrelevant. Talking to GQ about the controversial sex scenes and his on-screen persona Tedros, Tesfaye describes it all as “satire” meant to show how cringe Tedros is as he exerts his power over Jocelyn and she performs his various sexual desires to him, responding to his every request. Claiming “satire” and social commentary through “provocation” seems to be a lazy way to justify the bizarre and excessive sex scenes appealing to male sexual fantasies. Particularly when this satire is clearly not working, it is shameful that the directors and cast have not listened and, instead, implicated critics as “uncool” and “prudish.”
Chanel Contos, Australian sexual consent activist, recently addressed the popularisation of sexual choking in her new book ‘Consent Laid Bare’ and its launch on Wednesday 13 September at UNSW Roundhouse. The host of the launch event, Hannah Ferguson, posed a question about choking and kink in the mainstream media, and its implications for consent and perceptions of sex. Contos noted, importantly, that ‘choking’ is the term used to colloquially refer to sexual asphyxiation. This euphemism reflects the normalisation of this act and its indoctrination, through pornography and mass media, into society’s idea of sex. With this warped and manipulated view of power dynamics and risk, Contos seriously questions whether people (particularly young girls) can actually truly consent to sexual activities.
Angela Davis’ 1981 book ‘Women, Race and Class’ grounds in theory and history much of the recent work by Contos and others on consent and ideas of female sexual liberation. These three intersections of gender, race and class bring together the power disbalance and the belief of entitlement that almost always underpin sexual violence. We must situate this legacy of sexual violence in its socio-political origins, and consider its implications on how people of all genders perceive sex and enact power dynamics.
In the first chapter ‘The Legacy of Slavery: Standards for a New Womanhood’, Davis identifies rape as a weapon of punishment, intimidation, and domination, “whose covert goal was to extinguish slave women’s will to resist, and in the process, to demoralize their men.” Historicising sexual violence as a tool of repression for female slaves and women during the Vietnam War, it is “a weapon of mass political terrorism.”
In contrast to this radical feminism, media like ‘The Idol’ tends to align itself with values and methods of post-feminism and neoliberalism. Coined, respectively, by Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenburg, these terms reflect ideas of individual choice, gendered entrepreneurship, and female success in a capitalist system. In a collaborative article with Sarah Banet-Weiser (creator of the term ‘popular feminism’), they describe these related and mutually-reinforcing ideas which do not challenge persisting hierarchies and hegemonies in capitalist-patriarchy, and rely on “media visibility, circulation and affective embrace.”
Considering this history, it is evident that sexual violence never occurs in a vacuum. What happens in the bedroom behind closed doors is never a purely private matter, and we are not ‘post-feminist’. As such, when violence is glamourised on screen and conversations about it inevitably unfold, the entire culture of sexual assault needs to be brought to forefront, especially when it has historically been used to systemically silence and oppress vulnerable women of colour. It is not simply a case of influential producers and actors being provocative and pushing boundaries in the name of ‘art’ and ‘freedom’, and dismissing valid criticism of ‘The Idol’ impedes us from growing as individuals and as a society.
