Survivorship in Media

Recently, I traveled to Denver, Colorado to be a part of the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s premiere of their short film “The Call”, which also included a program of survivor-based media, featuring our short dance film “Bittersweet”. After the film premiere, I spoke on a panel moderated by the Hotline’s CEO Katie Ray-Jones, and alongside Sharisse Kimbro — Relationship Abuse Program Officer at the Allstate Foundation — and Ruth Glenn — President of Public Affairs at the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Hotline, plus a newly published author. 

The panel discussion was mostly about survivorship and domestic violence as it’s portrayed in media and film. I was actually pleased with my answers (which rarely happens when I speak on panels because, while I am always the harshest critic of myself and tend to compare myself to the others on the panels, I also adamantly refuse to prepare answers ahead of time, even when I know the questions, because, well, who knows), so I thought I’d share some of those thoughts with you, here.

Some items I wish were included/more prominently featured when it comes to telling survivor stories in media:

1. MORE SURVIVOR STORIES, MORE SURVIVOR CHARACTERS

Guess what? You know a survivor. You probably know ten. Or twenty. Or more! We are everywhere, which is depressing, but it’s true. Think about all the female characters you’ve ever seen in movies or TV shows. How many of them were survivors? Probably not many, and if they were, the entire story probably centered around the fact of their survivorship. But we know survivors are everywhere (yes, the number is still 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men), and they live complicated and wonderful lives, and we just don’t see it reflected enough in our media. 

2. AVOID THE URGE TO PROVE

We all already feel like we have to prove that what happened to us actually happened, and that can get exhausting fast and feed our inner shame monsters. When presenting a story of abuse, or a character who is a survivor, imagine if what they said was just simply taken as truth and not interrogated? Imagine a survivor character who feels safe enough to state their story without automatically going on defense mode to prove what happened to them. I would scream with delight.

3. SHOW US HOW FRIENDS AND FAMILY REACT AND, WHEN IT IS INEVITABLY BAD OR “WRONG”, SHOW US HOW THEY CAN GET BETTER OVER TIME

I’ve been asked countless times how to support someone who is either in or recovering from an abusive relationship. I wrote an article once about what not to do when someone tells you they were raped, and I’ll probably update that and write more on this topic soon, but it’s crazy to me that we rarely get to see the stories of someone in the survivor’s circle coming to terms with how to help them (while also caring for themselves). It could be REVOLUTIONARY in the fight against this, because teaching people how to help survivors is essentially teaching people about the psychology and physiology of survivors. What I mean by that is we can teach people things like how survivors might take many times to break up with an abuser (no, “just leave” is not valid advice), or how to support someone as they are currently in an abusive relationship and not yet ready or able to leave, or what to say when they start to recover memories of their abuse, or how to help them through medical issues that come about after they are safe from an abuser… you get the idea. 

Obviously the media's primary job isn’t to educate, it’s to entertain, but I think that these stories could do both. Whenever I tell people about how my friends reacted then versus now, they’re fascinated. It’s a study of human behavior, in a way, but it also could be really, really helpful for survivors and allies.

4. AVOID SENSATIONALIZING AND EXPOSE THE NUANCE

In one of the videos that played before “The Call” was shown, an offscreen interviewer asks a high school boy about his girlfriend. “I bet half the guys at school want to be with her… I check her phone… I made her delete her Snapchat” he says nonchalantly. Then the words “Abuse doesn’t always look like abuse” come across the screen. It’s super brief, but it’s powerful, because it’s exactly the kind of thing my abuser would have said had someone asked him at the time. He wouldn’t have thought it was at all a red flag, and, probably, neither would whoever had asked him.

Sensationalizing abuse by making it overly dramatic, violent, or complicated leads us all to believe that that’s what abuse looks like — that it’s like a movie, a big budget production that has flashy lights and a sound track and has OBVIOUSLY BAD plastered across the screen — but in reality, abuse (especially what happens in teenage relationships) seeps in through the cracks in a slow enough trickle that no one notices until the house is flooded. There’s no soundtrack, there’s no “oh my god” moment that lets the main character know what’s about to happen, sometimes there’s even very little obvious violence or drama. 

Of course not all abuse stories are like this. Certainly, my story contained both ends of the spectrum. It began with an innocent question — “Hey, you’d never cheat on me, right? Because I heard a rumor…” — and ended with police, restraining orders, testifying, and a plea deal. It began in the nuance and ended in the big drama. The issue with media primarily showcasing only the big drama is that I was sitting there thinking nothing was wrong until it was too late, until the big drama was inevitable and upon me, because that’s the only abuse I’d ever heard about and the only kind of abuse I thought existed.

5. DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE JOY

Survivor stories contain many layers - denial, fear, shame (so, so much shame), relief, more denial… you get the point. But eventually, new layers are added. It felt pertinent to me to talk about joy in this panel, considering that the content of the dance film I had presented to the audience talked explicitly about finding empathy, forgiveness, and joy as part of my story. Not an afterthought, not a different story entirely. Survivorship led me here, to where I am now, which is a place that has a zillion layers, many of which are positive. I guess what I’m saying here is that all our layers… they shift over time, they aren’t set in stone, and even if all those layers are negative at first, it won’t stay that way, and we deserve to celebrate and share the happy parts, too.

We are, after all, whole human beings.

I think there were at least twelve other ideas that swirled in my head while I sat there on that panel, but mostly that’s what made it out of my mouth (and now, onto the page). I also got some great questions from the audience about prevention work, which I could probably write at least four books on, so I’ll save that for another post. If you have ideas or thoughts about how survivorship, relationship abuse, and domestic violence are portrayed in media, let me know! If you know of some particularly stellar representations of survivors in media, send them to me! Maybe one day we can throw a film festival of awesome survivor representations in media. 

Til then…

Leah