Time to flip script on how domestic violence is represented (2024)

On-screen violence, particularly against women, is nothing new. From the tyrannical Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) in the most recent series of Fargo to the terrifying “Jake the Muss” in Once Were Warriors, the figure of the abusive husband or father has been a constant on our screens.

But there’s a marked change in how domestic violence is portrayed in film and television, and it comes in line with the real life tragedies occurring in homes across Australia. According to researchers at Destroy the Joint, 28 women died allegedly at the hands of men between January and April this year. The sharp incline in violent deaths – up from an average of one death a week to one every four days – sparked rallies around the country and a move for change in the entertainment industry.

“It’s a really important discussion to have, and I think writers talk about it [violence] all the time, especially women,” said Sarah Lambert, screenwriter, showrunner and producer. “I think that that’s what is really exciting, actually being a writer right now, is the new lenses on things and the discussions and the approaches to tired old material, and finding new ways to look at it and to come at it. From not just female perspectives, but also perspectives of people who’ve been under-represented, and whose voices that we haven’t necessarily heard from.

“I think bringing those voices and those perspectives and those gazes on these experiences is incredibly important because we’ve had a very white male gaze on this issue.”

Lambert is the writer and showrunner of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (Amazon Prime), a television adaptation of Holly Ringland’s novel starring Sigourney Weaver and Asher Keddie.

Growing up, Alice encounters violence at the hands of her father and, as an adult, finds herself in an abusive relationship. Life-changing trauma plays a large role in the series, but Lambert says she was determined not to glorify scenes of violence.

“We were very specific, we decided in the [writers’] room that we would try and hold that tension, that when we saw violence, that it was realistic, but always from being inside it, so it was never gratuitous,” she says.

“We wanted to create the feeling more than show it because I hate that violence p*rn. I don’t want to contribute to that and I feel quite strongly about that. I’ve always pushed back at the dead girl trope actually, it’s always got under my skin. It becomes a thing that is used, and how much do you actually ever need to see that stuff? And what are you doing when you portray it? I think it’s not entertainment.”

A dead, raped or assaulted female victim has long been at the centre of television and film plots – Twin Peaks, countless Law & Order episodes among them – but it has begun to raise the ire of viewers.

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HBO’s popular and bloodthirsty Game of Thrones suffered a widespread backlash, which coincided with the MeToo movement, prompted by repeated depictions of sexual violence. In the first five seasons, there were 17 episodes featuring scenes of rape or attempted rape, according to Vice.

Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss reportedly took viewer feedback into account and there were no rape scenes in the sixth or seventh seasons but the final season had the highest number of women’s on-screen deaths.

“You can barely sit down and watch anything on TV that doesn’t contain violence against women,” says Susan Heward-Belle, professor of social work at the University of Sydney. “Most people who watch television that contains scenes of violence against women don’t necessarily go and commit acts of violence against women. But I think it does raise a lot of wider questions about what kind of attitudes might repeated exposure to tropes about violence against women cause?”

Heward-Belle, who has led investigations for Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, says film and television makers should try to “set the record straight” by raising awareness of real-world violence against women.

“I think there’s an ethical responsibility around if you’re going to have content that relates to violence against women or violence against children, then let’s actually try to portray that realistically and in a way that hopefully is actually trying to move society towards change,” she says.

“We’ve got this political commitment, which is aspirational, about ending violence against women in a generation. If we were really serious about that, then all sectors of the community, including arts and entertainment, would really be thinking hard about how we actually do things differently and build empathy and awareness and try to decrease misunderstanding around intimate partner violence.”

Change may already be under way as screenwriters increasingly reject cliches such as the battered wife or the beautiful victim whose life was cut short. Critics note such plot lines usually rob the female of any agency and throw male characters into powerful positions of protectors or avengers such as Liam Neeson in the Taken franchise and Keanu Reeves in the John Wick films.

Today, viewers are more likely to see violence from the perspective of a female character than that of the “flawed” male perpetrator.

Strong female leads have also begun to emerge in more screen narratives, including those featuring female victims of violence.

In season five of Fargo, Juno Temple plays Dot Lyon, the former wife of the town sheriff Roy Tillman. Tillman seeks revenge on Lyon for leaving him, but she eventually turns the tables and begins to hunt him down herself.

In I May Destroy You, filmmaker Michaela Coel shines an unflinching spotlight on surviving sexual violence, while SBS’s Safe Home explores the issue of family violence through the eyes of a legal centre worker played by Aisha Dee.

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“Women are coming into powerful roles and complex women are coming more and more to the centre,” says Sue Turnbull, senior professor of communication and media at the University of Wollongong.

“And if you just look at something like what we’ve had in Australia recently with a show like Total Control (iview) with Deborah Mailman and Rachel Griffith, women at the centre of politics, taking on the audience and speaking from a position of power.”

Television and film doesn’t have the power to represent reality accurately, but it can stir debate, says Turnbull.

“I think the TV representations are just an echo of the real horror that we’re experiencing as a result of the real events that are happening in the same way as people are only sitting up and taking notice about climate change because they’re being flooded, because they’re being burned out, because it’s actually happening,” she says.

“They’re not representing the real, they can’t represent the real. What they’re doing is they’re actually telling stories that come to our attention and which provoke discussion and thinking.

“The fictional world informs and it gives us ways of talking about issues in the real world.”

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

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