"I'm fairly certain we can't say 'Dick Wolf' on television": Interlude for Law and Order: SVU

*Trigger alert: describes procedural evidence-gathering for sexual assault victims and talks in broad strokes about how society is not very nice to survivors.*

I just saw Cloe Sevigny on a 2012 episode of Law and Order: SVU. On the good hand: I actually watched something that happened this year, this year (Don't worry, I promise to get back to my list of great movies eclipsed by 9-11 and other such dusty topics later). The bad hand: I was so bummed to see her play the archetype of the manipulative shrew who falsely reports a rape.

Now I know Law and Order: SVU (the weird rubbernecking drug of survivors everywhere) is its own carnival of conceits: the franchise is, without exception, both provocative and blandly formulaic. That is a healthy mindset to go into watching these kinds of shows, your crap baseline, if you will.

But come on. The proportion of falsely reported rapes in real life is exponentially inflated in entertainment. Last I heard, 6% of rapes were considered false (and the data for making such assessments can and should be rigorously interrogated, just for the record). Fewer "fake" survivors come forward than the percentage of people who falsely report a car as stolen. Just because rape only seems like a pressing issue when fame is involved doesn't mean that survivors deserve the incredible amount of scorn, suspicion, and scrutiny that survivors inevitably receive for coming forward. The fame-seeking ho who's out to destroy a nice celebrity family man is a crude stereotype. It is used to suppress the fact that 90% of rapes go unreported (that's a generous statistic compared to the numbers put out by the FBI).

Every murder procedural, and every crime drama on TV today has featured this stereotype at one point or another, and often repeatedly: the bitch who's just in it to ruin peoples' lives.

Yes. What about her. What about the woman, who, on a lark, puts on a Sunday dress and tears the strap, who must then induce enough harm to her own body so that she will not be laughed out of the hospital or police station where she seeks care. Who submits to invasive mouth, vaginal, and anal swabbing, who must have her pubic and head hair pulled out by the roots, her body charted and stripped and scraped and and photographed and mapped. Who, even if she is not subjected to a "rape kit," as we are so fond of calling the evidence-gathering protocol for sexual assault victims, is still guaranteed to endure scrutiny of most parties involved, including the police, the justice system, the survivor's social circles/employers, family, and often the media as well. (I'm told we have rape shield laws in this country, but we do not have victim harassment laws, nor do we have Idiotic Remark Prevention protocol.) Who may be shunned either because someone doesn't know how to talk to her, or simply because we live in a rape-friendly culture that encourages lashing out at the victim. The lying shrew who can just shrug off all this contempt and violation and say, "Good golly, it is just such a lovely day to become the scene of a crime."

Right. Because victims have WAY too much power in this day and age. And so many incentives for lying.

Every time you portray a survivor as a calculating liar, you perpetuate the basest rape-enabling myth of all: that survivors should not be believed. The stereotype argues that taking a survivor at her word inevitably produces results akin to a Greek tragedy.

If I was ANYWHERE on the assembly line for Law and Order: SVU and I learned that I was going to get to write or produce something for Chole Sevigny, an actor who demonstrates such tremendous and thoughtful range, I would be thrilled. I cannot fathom why they would utilize all that depth and talent just to shit out another carbon-cutter sexually manipulative Girl Who Cried Dick Wolf.