Side topic: OUTLANDER. What'd ya think was disappointing about the last ep? I've seen a bit of hate for Jamie pov but a) i love Jamie and his ineptitude with husbandry was hilarious b) i can understand it from a storytelling perspective?
Okay let me just preface this by saying that I have never read the books. I have the first one, and maybe at some point I will read it, but not any time soon. So my experience viewing this show is one that sees the show as its own thing. I’m not comparing the show to the books, I’m judging the show purely based on the content it provides and how it provides it.
That being said, I think I probably majorly disagree with you on Jamie’s ineptitude with husbandry. Especially when it comes to the whole “my wife must follow my orders” thing. I know the scene where he hits her with the belt is taken right from the book, so they were sticking to canon for that, but I think it was completely unnecessary, and actually a bit detrimental to the ideas they have tried to represent throughout the show so far.
It would be possible to show tension between them, tension that stems from cultural differences due to the fact that they are from completely different centuries, without romanticizing a guy who hit his wife with a belt. Because that’s completely what they did this episode. No, we weren’t supposed to find the beating romantic, but it gave the impression that a husband can hit his wife and then apologize and it’s all good. For a show that has, with the exception of this episode, been extraordinarily feminist, this was a bad move, and a step back.
And before someone gives me the ‘historical accuracy’ argument: I don’t care. I don’t care if a man beating his wife was accepted in 1743. It shouldn’t be accepted now, and since this show is for a modern audience, what should and shouldn’t be accepted in the present time is more important than the normative nature of domestic abuse in 1743.
Because we all know it happened. We’re aware that women were horribly mistreated, particularly by husbands, up until very historically recently. We. All. Know. It’s not edgy to include it. It’s predictable and boring, and sends the message that you don’t care how a scene like this damages the ideas and messages your show had previously done a good job of illustrating, so long as you can play the “shock factor” card and have the male love interest beat his wife and still seem like an appealing romantic option.
And so what if it was in the books? This show is an adaptation. They’re under no obligation to include every tiny detail of the plot. And this one easily could have been skipped over in favor of something that would have actually allowed for the overall plot to be pushed forward. It’s disappointing that they chose to include it when they have so much material to work with. And maybe the point of it was to show how Jamie and Claire decided at the end that they would be a team, that they would have an even power balance instead of Jamie ordering her around, but we really didn’t need that, because the relationship they’d built up in the first half of the season showed us that that was what they were.
All in all, I just thought it was a bad move, and very reminiscent of how Game of Thrones has more than once included a rape scene in order to push along the development of a female character, or simply for shock factor. It’s tired. I’m tired. Find something else to keep your audience hooked that isn’t horribly dangerous.
