"When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time." - Maya Angelou
The First Thing the makers of this show chose to present is a naked and bloodied woman seated in cold isolation in a state of apparent paralytic horror. In the dialogue overlay she states that she is terrified - she is in a dream and she wants to wake up; she is advised by a man that there's nothing to be afraid of as long as she answers his questions correctly. Her freedom from this 'highly original' dramatized condition of confinement and despondency is evidently contingent on a man's approval of her performance in some examination. This woman is the ingénue. We learn incrementally that her recurring experience of this condition is often bloodier and more indicative of abuse, and is the result of being viciously raped and abused by a sadistic old man who employs an enormous knife for the occasion - an occasion which is relived over and over again with revolting repetition and some degree of variation, depending on the man's capricious will in a given instance. But not before her family is murdered. The character is programmed to endure real physical and psychological trauma and the actress is directed to display copious evidence of emotional torment. An expression of gaping incredulous horror signals her helplessness and utter dismay as she's dragged, kicking and screaming, to the barn for recreational violation by an ugly predator with heavy weapons and an attitude of cavalier nonchalance.
In a work studio setting a woman seated naked in a trance-like state is observed suggestively stroking her lower lip. This is referred to by the man present as a "Reverie" and is described as being the sort of thing that makes the guests to the park "fall in love with them". The man is called off on another duty and the woman remaining on the scene first casts her eyes over the incognizant woman's body, then advances somewhat criminally for a kiss. Is this supposed to be an apology for the rape of the ingénue? 'Apology' not accepted. This looks like an insult to the audience's intelligence embedded in an 'apology'. I've had gay friends and I've never known a lesbian who would creep on an incapacitated woman in this way (this, generously assuming she's even a true lesbian). This is just an attempt to even the field by making EVERYONE lousy. Robot or not, there's a factual element to what's being plainly depicted in action on the screen and she (the host) evidences no distinction from a human. As with the ingénue, we all know she's a human player. We all know she doesn't look like a robot or demonstrate such manifest discrepancy from a human as might sufficiently distance us from the violation. To make the jump to Robot requires doing and it is here left undone, deliberately - not as a result of an oversight.
Later we're given a tour of Sub-level 83, a robot repository that's a sort of wet necro-land with fully-fleshed, damp, naked dead-looking people standing in a passive, unresponsive state and appearing in varying mild conditions of mortis, as if they never made it to the grave or else were disinterred without delay - many more females shown in close shots than males. As the camera pauses on the scene, framed on both sides by two necro-nude females, we hear a character say "Ain't got a cherry, that ain't no sin. She's still got the box that the cherry come in". Well, as the security guy says just prior to the tour "No one's complained". I am complaining.
Midway through, in another work studio scene, it's suddenly F-bombs dropped inanely in what should actually be a credible work conversation; like what you might expect from an immature 14-year-old trying too desperately to impress: "f-, f-, f-"... This is immediately followed by a group brothel scene in which a woman steps out of a bath and displays 180-degree nudity with particularly obvious comprehensiveness for the camera, approaching a man lounging in a bed. It's gratuitous, and it's predictably exceeded by a sensationalized sex scene in episode two. Both scenes are a pointless waste of time and a manipulative insult to the audience's intelligence.
Three buckets of blood are extracted from a deeply suffering man whose throat has been cut by the man in black. Blood gushes from the man's mouth and he tries to escape to the scant amusement of the man in black. The camera drifts away as the man in black proceeds to scalp the screaming man with his heavy knife. We're supposed to be inoculated from the heinous treatment of this man by the fact that he first demonstrates thieving tendencies and a generally derelict character prior to this torture session. But there really is no character type at all that deserves this kind of abuse. This isn't 'violence'; this is sadism, crude and simple (sadism always is - this is one of the reasons it rapidly becomes exhaustingly tedious and grating, and when I see it I often find myself mired irritably in a "deep and dreamless slumber" in a prison of someone else's sins).
In the saloon at the end of a safe-robbing scene, an outlaw says "No tellin' if there's anything worthwhile in that safe..." then, leering at a prostitute, continues with theatrical lechery "...we should take this sweeet little b**ch just in case." This bit is depicted in an entertainment-oriented and catchy way to distract from the grim reality of the threat of abduction and rape, and while the description of the woman may seem like a mix of compliment and insult that should basically cancel itself out, it's actually pure insult - she's absurdly characterized as a thing to be acquired that is both desirable and undesirable at the same time. We're supposed to feel better about it all via a combination of retribution and distraction when the brothel madam casually shoots the outlaws face off with a gun and the piano kicks in playing an entertainment score, but it's just a quick switch to shallow, glossy violence that's presented as an 'apology' to remedy the original transgression and diminish any negative response from viewers. The show's authors talk a lot about how they mean to be socially conscious and artfully address the plight of "the oppressed" but then they carefully design "the oppressed" as characters built around absurd contradictions and stereotypes and they arrange things to be catchy, sensationalized, and demeaning in a common and crude way.
This show is markedly calculated and it proceeds predictably with a long, escalating series of violations and 'apologies'. Transgressions are difficult to address and can be problematic to identify and sort out to begin with. But it's relatively obvious when in a later episode, for instance, a human character insists on demonstrating to another that the ingénue host is all machinery inside and cuts her abdomen open, that this is supposed to be the demonstration that puts the issue to rest by displaying the mechanics of her internal workings. It doesn't though. It's just another lousy violation because it's still plainly a depiction of a woman being brutally abused.
There's an operational credo used by some producers and writers that they'll state that they do verily decry rape and sadism and exploitation and that this, of course, is why it must all be used as a primary driver of plot and explicit visual exposition. People need to be engaged emotionally and a dialogue needs to be opened, they say. This is cheap, especially on HBO (home of only just entertainment, really), and that's what women's rights and human rights groups are doing already and doing right. Do your job as an artist; create something interesting and poignant using any of the many true artistic methods available to you and you won't need a vulgar, troubled, and calculatedly compensatory treatment, even if you actually are pursuing these troubling issues as foremost in earnest.
What if there are people everywhere who are traumatized by this kind of subject matter because of experiences they themselves and/or a loved one have suffered? How must it feel to be confronted with a pervasive culture of depiction and consequent (or direct) trivialization of rape and sadism in the entertainment media? Wouldn't that have the effect of alienating you from society; not just to see and be affected by the works themselves, but to see ordinary people in society blithely saying things like "I really enjoyed this" in conversation and in reviews? The authors' intentions may be quite irrelevant, depending on the disposition of a complex of factors. In a medium that is already fragile with respect to outcome dynamics, this thematic material should be regarded as a volatile tinderbox; a barely-contained and perilous curse waiting to blow up in the faces of the enterprising, unwary, and less-than-painstakingly conscientious.
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