Sex On Screen: ‘Outlander’ Gives An Unflinching Look At The Ecstasy & Horror Of Sex
Photo: STARZ ; Illustration: Dillen Phelps
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OUTLANDER
Thanks to the rise of provocative scripted series on streaming and cable, there’s more sex and nudity on TV than ever before. What was once taboo is now par for the course. But what does all this sex and nudity mean for the art of television itself? How does it enhance or encumber the stories being told on screen? In this new Decider column,SEX ON SCREEN, we’ll take a critical eye to these scenes. We’ll strip down TV’s big sex scenes to see if they’re worth anything at all – or if they’re just used as a cheap trick.
This week’s Outlander was perhaps the most “Outlander” episode of the show ever. Within a day of returning to 17th Century Scotland, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) was enjoying a veritable sex marathon with long-lost love Jamie (Sam Heughan). I think it clocked in at about 20 minutes of screen time, give or take. The couple took breaks between various rounds to chat and sleep. It could have been a completely joyous reunion except the episode ends on a note of horror. Left alone in a brothel, Claire is ambushed by a man seeking some sort of nebulous vengeance against Jamie. The last moments of “A. Malcolm” show us Claire struggling to free herself from a brutal sexual assault. Will she escape? Will she be saved? Will she be raped? We don’t know.That’s the cliffhanger.
The episode hammered home what might be the core theme that seethes through the veinsOutlander: the absolute ecstatic joy and the total harrowing terror of being a woman when it comes to sex.
Outlander is a show that celebrates female sexuality as a glorious thing and takes pains to shoot love scenes from a distinctly feminine — and, I should add, straight — perspective. However, this is also a show that is overflowing with instances of sexual abuse. From the very first episode of the series, Claire is presented as a woman who is unapologetic when it comes to her sexuality. We notably see her receive oral sex from her husband Frank (Tobias Menzies) in the ruins of a highland castle. The message of the scene? She is a woman who enjoys sex shamelessly.
Then, when she is zapped back to the 1740s, her first encounter with a man is with the vile Captain “Black Jack” Randall. He not only attempts to force himself on her immediately, but is the spitting image of her husband. Menzies was cast in the dual roles in a move that, intentionally or not, bridges the odd psychological tug-of-war that haunts many women when it comes to sex. When consensual, sex can be not only an empowering force, but a physical expression of trust and love. When non-consensual, sex can be used a torture device…one that manifests itself not only in physical abuse, but psychological trauma. Not only for women, but for men and children, too — a sad reality Outlander has never shied away from, but that’s a topic for a whole different essay.
Outlander is always sliding back-and-forth between these two poles. It’s a strange balance that has often stymied me both as a critic and a viewer. I have friends who adore the show for its frank depiction of lust. They look at Sam Heughan’s Jamie as a romantic paradigm. Outlander is their great escape. And yet, Outlander‘s depiction of sexual violence, and the often debilitating drama that follows victims, has worn some pals of mine down. These reactions are intensely personal and I believe that they are all valid. But when you add all these conflicting scenes up – the romance, the horror, the rape, the assault, the transcendent power of love, the feminism, the misogyny, and the triumph of Claire and Jamie’s bond — what is Outlander trying to say about sex?
I think Outlander may be trying to say that sex is…complicated. Okay, that’s perhaps not the most eloquent way to put it, but I do think Outlander wants to wrestle with all the conflicting feelings sexuality inspires in people – specifically people who identify as women.
I’ve often half-joked with friends that Outlander, both the show and the book series, is going to be looked back upon as an anthropological artifact. Its timing and its themes are fascinating to me. Writer Diana Gabaldon published the first book in the Outlander series in 1991, a few decades out of the swinging ’60s sexual revolution’s reach. It was a time much like now, when women feel mostly equal, but still have to contend with cultural legacies built for purely patriarchal structures. If you think I’m out of my mind, look at any major newspaper or celebrity gossip blog in the last month. The story dominating the news cycle is the fallout from the public revelations about Harvey Weinstein. It sometimes feels — to me, at least — that sexism has been locked in a state of radioactive decay, measured in half-lifes that each last a generation. We keep making major strides, but privately I worry it’s never going to be 100% dead.
When I look at Outlander, I see characters contending with this firsthand. It’s almost like the historical drama-within-a-historical drama conceit of it shows us the difference between now and the 1940s and the difference in being a woman in 1940s and in the 1740s. Not only that,Outlander pushes a very strong type of feminist fantasy unto the framework of some very messy, very cruel patriarchal societal structures. It is a show that trying to find room for a strong, independent woman’s desires in a cultural framework that consistently tells her she exists to be silent and obedient. How does a woman assert her voice in a world that tells her she exists for men’s pleasure? Well…how does she?
Outlander knows that sex is great. But Outlander also knows that sex is scary.
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