Culture Slut: Law and Order: SVU
Please note this essay explores themes of sexual assault and may be triggering.
I am not a fan of the term “comfort show.” I think it’s babying and a little trite, but I do understand the concept behind it. It describes a television series, or film, or any piece of media that you revisit time and again because you enjoy it and you find solace in consuming it more than once. It’s like watching all the Hellraiser films every Halloween, or restarting your favourite series because you don’t fancy anything else on Netflix. There are certain movies I watch annually in order to recharge my artistic energies, to remind myself why I do what I do. I watch Querelle every summer, around Pride, for the intense intersection of Cocteau’s anarchic queer philosophy and Fassbinder’s sumptuous visuals. I watch All About Eve to remind myself how sparkling dialogue and witty epithets can act as a bridge between centuries, and to refresh my bank of pithy one-liners. I watch Showgirls every New Year’s Eve because it’s an incredible example of how the mixture of classic cinematic tropes (young star usurps old star, a la All About Eve or 42nd Street), big budget set pieces and a whole lot of kitsch trash can come together to create a truly transcendent viewing experience.
But the thing I come back to the most, and have been actively watching almost daily for the last decade is Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. SVU is unique amongst all police procedurals because it has become the longest running US primetime live-action series in the history of television, clocking in at 24 seasons currently, and has also managed to avoid many of the pulpy pitfalls or stagnating story-lines of many of its contemporaries, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, or Criminal Minds. It does what you expect from this kind of whodunnit series, each episode focuses on one case, with twists and turns throughout, celebrity guest stars, recurring characters and meta story-lines, but also it has been given the space to grow politically and sociologically during its run time.
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The opening narration tells us all we need to know: In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.
In 1999, it seemed to promise a salacious and sordid crime story, rife with sex workers, torture, incest, child abductors and gasp homosexuals, and it delivered on all those things. I know that one of the reasons I started watching was because in the early 00s it was one of the only places on mainstream television where you could see a wide range of gay characters on screen, especially ones that weren’t just corpses. In SVU, gays would pop up everywhere, partly owing to its diverse urban setting of New York city, not only as victims, but also as witnesses, good Samaritans, red herrings, killers, comic relief, anything. Each of these little appearances may not last long, a few lines at most, but still, it felt like something. SVU started with a pulpy, dark tone, presenting stories of sexual assault, murder and offences against children, following from the crime all the way through to the judicial process, often delivered with wry one-liners from the detectives and ominously ambiguous questions such as “but what about the next one?”, yet as the series stack up, the tone of the show slowly shifts. This is the reason that it has managed to stay relevant for so long.
As the public conversation around sexual assault has become more nuanced and open, the politics of the show have been given the space to grow as well. In many cases it has helped to bring difficult conversations about consent, victim-blaming and other issues into an easier focus for its viewers. It’s famous “ripped from the headlines” approach to story-lines has brought so many important episodes to life about the Me Too movement, the epidemic of college campus assault, internet revenge porn, celebrity domestic abuse, trans women fighting for survival, even assault in the age of TikTok content houses and within reality TV shows. So many of the 00s police procedurals get stuck in a time vacuum that barely acknowledges the development of the world around them. Murder is murder. Murderers are bad, they should be caught. The show runners have little interest in the wider cultural issues or causations, they just want to devise newer more exciting ways of creating murder mysteries. It’s a macabre form of escapism. SVU is different. SVU has a critical relationship with the real world and the problems we face everyday. The early episodes have some of the same dated, unfeeling language and stunted understanding of some harder issues (male victims of sexual assault, trans rights, etc) as so many other shows did, but as it grew, it began to explore characters and situations in much more open and sympathetic ways than had ever been seen before.
Another reason for the show’s success and growth is due to its lead actor Mariska Hargitay. I can’t tell you how much I love and respect this woman. She is the daughter of Hollywood Icon Jayne Mansfield and muscle hunk Mickey Hargitay, and was actually in the car at the time of the unfortunate accident that killed her mother. She also appears as a child in some of the infamous pictures of Mansfield with Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, looking like a perfect porcelain doll. She starts out in the first episode of SVU as Detective Olivia Benson, but throughout the series she rises through the ranks to become Captain of the department, and she is the emotional core of the show. Throughout the run, Benson also suffers sexual assault, once at the hands of a fellow law enforcement officer, and once by a sociopathic killer. Hargitay’s acting skills are unparalleled, able to evoke the feelings of helplessness and anger at the system felt by nearly all survivors. I myself once wrote her a drunk gushing fan letter about how I felt seen by her character as a fellow survivor. Thankfully, I think the message has still not been read. Sorry to Mariska or your assistant if you ever do find it in your instagram DMs, it was the ouzo talking.
“One of the reasons I lean so heavily into SVU is that it can feel empowering to me as a survivor of multiple violent sexual assaults.”
In the real world, Hargitay has become a figurehead for survivors of sexual assault, starting the Joyful Heart Foundation which helps people who have been victims of assault and domestic abuse. Her talk show appearances are unique, hosts engage her in the same witty banter all guests receive, but also give her a space to talk about survivors of assault and the systems put in place to help them. At one point, she realised that so many of her fan letters came from women and other people who were divulging their own experiences of assault that she became a certified rape counsellor in order to provide better help all those who confided in her. It seems as if America recognises that Hargitay as Olivia Benson is one of the foremost educators on sexual assault for the public. She has often spoken out on the Rape Kit Back-log in New York and many other states in America, the thousands of evidence collecting kits given to people who get treated for sexual assault which are then shoved in a warehouse and never pursued, and has called for their immediate investigation in order to bring justice to the survivors.
One of the reasons I lean so heavily into SVU is that it can feel empowering to me as a survivor of multiple violent sexual assaults. I know that this is the case for others too, at least anecdotally. The reasons for this are complex, and sometimes require more emotional engagement than so called “comfort shows” usually demand, but I think one of the major factors is escapism. It’s not the same kind of escapism that takes you away from a situation entirely, or allows you to forget your troubles for a few hours. It's an escape into a parallel world where authorities conspire to help you, no matter what. It is a parallel world where the police don’t question your story, or your victim-hood. It’s a parallel world where law enforcement will stop at nothing to get justice for victims of sexual violence, no matter whether that person is a child, a sex worker, a man, a trans person, a drunk college girl or a CEO. It’s a parallel world where you have access to counselling, housing, medical aid and emotional support without question. It’s a parallel world where the white, male, wealthy elite are held accountable for their actions, whether it’s judicial punishment, vigilante justice or even just admission of guilt. It’s a parallel world where you can see your own narrative, and the narratives of other survivors you know, play out in a functioning and efficient system. This isn’t a high fantasy realm of elves, orcs and dragons. This is a fantasy world where people care.
I am not an advocate for the police. I think the way sexual assault (and gender violence and racial violence) is handled is almost functionally useless. I do not fool myself into thinking that anti-black, anti-queer, anti-poor institutions care about what has happened to me. I do not feel supported or saved by the police. The people who did support me and help me were my communities, my family, and the charities that help provide counselling for survivors. For anyone who has experienced assault in the UK, I urge you to contact Survivors’ Network and seek help from communities actually invested in you. So called “Copaganda” (cop-propaganda) shows are everywhere, and they range from the insidious validation of our current corrupt systems to simplified murder mysteries. SVU straddles the difficult divide between marginalised people who deserve justice and the current white supremacist status quo. Unlike other shows, SVU has started to explore this relationship, and even its heroes' own complicity in rotting and racist systems, and the reason for this is because of the amount of time it’s been on the air. SVU and its politics grow with the times, perhaps not fast enough, perhaps not radical enough, but it still does more than any other show I’ve seen.
I find comfort in the Special Victims Unit. I find comfort in people who believe me unconditionally. I find comfort in people who will fight for me no matter what. To conclude; All Cops Are Bastards, except Olivia Benson.
Words and Imagery: Misha Mn
