How Amazon’s ‘Hand Of God’ Is Trying To Handle Sexual Violence With Respect

The first season of Amazon‘s brand new original drama Hand of God debuts tomorrow, and it’s not pulling any punches. As you may have already seen in the pilot — which is available to stream for free here — the series tackles a myriad of controversial topics head on.

Hand of God follows what happens when a corrupt judge named Pernell Harris (Ron Perlman) suffers a nervous breakdown after his son attempts to commit suicide. Harris is an alcoholic used to playing God in his own community, but his mental collapse culminates with him believing that a higher power is talking to him with visions only he can see. The show tackles religion, zealotry, sadism, racism, sexism, and violence head on. Oh, and rape.

Rape has been an especially controversial topic on television in 2015. In the spring, the media erupted in debate over Game of Thrones‘ decision to create a new subplot in which Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) was repeatedly raped by her sociopathic husband, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon). Hand of God deals with sexual violence in a different way, though. Pernell’s son is driven to suicide after he can’t deal with the memories of watching his wife Jocelyn (Alona Tal) raped before his eyes. The sexual assault occurs off-camera, seven months before the series takes place, and the show runners tried to be careful about how they used the event within the story.

Hand of God showrunner and creator Ben Watkins says that rape became an impetus in the story because it really was the most horrible thing he could imagine. “Obviously, the first inspiration was what — as a man and as a husband — what could drive me to shoot myself?” he adds. “And thinking of the worst crime that I could find myself in, that I would feel this immense guilt about, and conflicted about… That was the original inspiration.”

For Watkins, however, the most interesting thing wasn’t what happened to her husband, PJ, but what happened next to Jocelyn herself. “I was much more interested in seeing how a character who’s been through that, especially something that brutal, puts themselves together and exhibits some strength,” he says. “It’s not like life gave her a time out. Other things are being heaped upon her.”

One of the things being heaped upon Jocelyn is her father-in-law’s insistence on finding her rapist and bringing him to good old-fashioned Biblical justice. The show follows Pernell as he uses his newfound faith to bend the rules even more in his favor. In one scene — one that I personally found almost impossible to watch because it was so horrifying — Pernell forces Jocelyn to watch the interrogation of the prime suspect. He then demands that she identify her accused rapist by looking at his genitals. By the end of it, Jocelyn becomes the first character to put the judge in his place. It’s a harrowing scene with obvious symbolic implications.

“Pernell physically forces her to do something, and that is in and of itself a corollary to what has happened to her,” Watkins explains. “It was also really important to us to see her take her power back. What could she do in that moment? How could she say no? How could she respond to him? So that was one thing in a particular moment where you see her take some strength back, see her make a decision, and push back in a way to what is happening to her.” The scene provides, then, Jocelyn’s first moment of regaining her power. “Throughout the season and throughout her story,” Watkins says, “we get to see her put herself together and also see her exhibit this amazing amount of strength that now we realize almost every woman has to figure out a way to do. ”

Even if the scene achieved the dramatic effect the show runner was hoping for, it was still unpleasant for actors Ron Perlman and Alona Tal, who plays Jocelyn, to film. “I must tell you that was a tough day for both of us,” Perlman tells me. “It’s only because we both loved the big picture of it all, what it meant to the storytelling, that we got through it with the least amount of drama humanly possible. There was a lot of hugging and kissing and, ‘Are you okay, darling?’ and ‘I didn’t mean that’ and ‘You’re only acting,’ and blah blah blah. But it was one of many things that I did in the course of the ten episodes that really, really made me physically nauseous.”

Tal, on the other hand, seems to relish the fact that the show meets the controversial topic head on, asking the question, “Is there an appropriate way to talk about rape?”

Her co-star Elizabeth McLaghlin, who plays a crooked preacher’s sexy young girlfriend, agrees. “I think for a lot of people that just makes them uncomfortable, and that is exactly why we should talk about it,” she says. “Using rape as a device or [for] shock value in a show, I think, can walk that line of not being respectful to victims of rape.”

The cast, particularly the female members, stress how the show focuses on the aftermath of a sexual assault rather than exploitatively depicting rape as a narrative device. “We deal with her healing,” Tal exaplains. “You deal with the ripple effect that everything around her has.” McLaughlin also defends the show’s narrative structure, commending Tal’s portrayal of a victim. “Alona’s portrayed her character is an incredibly respectful representation of real women who go through this trauma,” she says. “We watch the healing process. We watch the aftermath.”

There will always be people who think that sexual violence shouldn’t be depicted on screen, and then there will be others who think it’s the duty of art and entertainment to address these sensitive topics in a neutral environment. In the world of streaming, censors don’t have the same control they do on broadcast television, which means that chances are that we’ll only be seeing more commentary on this difficult topic. Hand of God has its own perspective, and it’s is eager to share it. It’s going to be up to viewers if they agree with it.

The first season of Hand of God debuts tomorrow, August 4, on Amazon Prime.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLuKzH-igLo]

 

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Photos: Amazon Studios