AMC’s new series Dietland has been pretty adamant that women are victims in America. The show has gone so far as to excuse murder in the name of feminism, so I didn’t think the rest of the season could get any worse. However, that was before I found myself seeing violent porn on television - for a full two minutes.
The July 2 episode “Belly of the Beast” has Plum (Joy Nash) spending more time with the feminists at Calliope House. While she finds their behavior odd, the members of the house keep slowly moving her to their side by proving how society is anti-woman. Most notable is a member named Sana (Ami Sheth) who has a burnt face following an acid attack by her father.
Throughout the episode, we also hear about a certain room in the house crafted by one of its leaders. It's described as an art project livestreaming “the top 100 videos on Porn Hub at any given moment” to give a “real-life snapshot of what’s getting folks off.” By the end of the episode, Plum finds Sana in said room immersing herself in the gratuitous assault of gigantic pornographic images projected over the entire room, and we bear unfortunate witness to all of it. These are scenes of violent, hardcore porn, and we see glimpses of women being roughly pushed around and choked, the cacophony of moans sounding disturbingly more like cries of pain.
Plum asks Sana how she can stand it and she says, "It helps me, actually." Noting that the women on screen don't look like them, Sana remarks callously, "They're perfect. They're the precious ones. How's that working out for them?" The idea apparently resonates with Plum because she then storms out of the room ready to take on the misogynistic world. As one character says, "Look who's awake."
The feminists of this show clearly don’t approve of men harming women. They clearly don’t approve of porn. Yet they subject us to both on TV to try and lecture us about how exploiting women is wrong. Feminists have been known for their hypocrisy, but this is just indecent. I shouldn’t expect to find a 2-minute scene full of violent porn in the background outside anything but the darkest corners of the internet, or maybe Game of Thrones. Even the original novel's author Sarai Walker seemed shocked that the scene made it onto national television. When one viewer tweeted, "Well this is officially more porn than I thought they could show on AMC," the Dietland account noted that it was carefully edited, as if the lack of explicit nudity made it ok.
Sadly, this is where we have fallen. I am just done with anyone claiming that this show somehow empowers women when it exploits graphic depictions of sexual brutality against women in an attempt to shock viewers awake.
