Deconstructing Woman

This article was originally published in 2005. Reprinted with permission.

Joan of Arcadia arrived on television screens in September 2003 with a bang. Not a “big bang,” mind you - more like a Godly “Let there be light” kind of bang. All of America sat up and took notice of this ingenious, fresh and controversial television fare. The film industry acknowledged the show and its main principals with nominations and awards. Right-wing family-values organizations applauded the return of good, wholesome family entertainment. Even non-believers appreciated the show with its likeable Joan Giardi and her wayward but loving family, outcast friends and newly found relationship with God, who, incidentally, comes in all shapes and sizes and even the occasional female form.

Despite its non-denominational, soft-spiritual approach, however, the show remained surprisingly dogmatic, promoting many religious and Christian tenets. In an episode entitled Common Thread Joan and her mother were forced to confront and deal with two very important feminist issues: rape and infidelity. Unfortunately, the issues were diluted and obscured by contrived life-and-death plot lines that only served to downplay and trivialize their true moral significance.

Early in the episode, Joan’s mother, Helen Giardi, meets a priest at a local diner. He informs her that he has come to see her on behalf of the man who raped her 25 years ago. Her rapist is dying and would like to see her so that he can apologize for what he has done. Helen, who has just recently returned to the Catholic Church, wonders if her faith is being tested.

For the past quarter of a century, Helen has not known who her rapist is. He has never answered for his crime, never been charged or convicted. When her husband, a police officer, hears of his request, he is outraged. He attempts to make a call to the police station to have the man arrested but Helen won’t entertain the notion of charging a dying man with the crime of rape. In fact, the issue is not even discussed. The fact that rape is a criminal offence for which perpetrators are to be charged under the law and punished with prison sentences is not pursued any further. The man is dying after all. Now is not the time for justice; it’s time for forgiveness. His crime is treated as a mere betrayal against Helen instead of a crime against women.

Despite her husband’s protests, she visits the dying man. He apologizes and asks for forgiveness. “Christ is with me,” he confesses. Helen, realizing the man has undergone a “deathbed conversion” becomes enraged and curses him to experience the same pain he inflicted upon her, exclaiming that he is getting what he deserves and that he can simply rot in hell. But that’s not the end of the matter…

Now turn to Joan, who is dealing with her own Arcadian-style drama. Her boyfriend Adam has recently confessed that he has been unfaithful to her. In a previous episode he repented his sins. Or did he? He confessed and apologized but never actually admitted to any wrongdoing. He told Joan he thought that he could compartmentalize these two parts of his life: his “meaningful” relationship with her and his sexual relationship with her friend Bonnie. There was no remorse for what he had done, merely regret and bewildered disappointment that he had failed to balance both relationships. When Joan broke up with him he was at a complete loss. It was just sex and didn’t mean anything, so what’s the big deal?

Adam now appears to be coping well with the break up and is more than eager to be “friends” with Joan. When she feels awkward and needs to put some distance between them, he is again at a complete loss. After all, what’s the big deal, right? For Joan, however, it is a big deal, and she continually rebukes his attempts to resume their friendship.

Enter God.

God now gives Joan her weekly “mission.” He tells her to finish sewing the scarf she began sewing years ago but never finished since it wasn’t turning out the way she thought it would. As God says, “Unraveling it doesn’t make it disappear; it just changes form.” The scarf, as we will see later, is to be the metaphor of the Common Thread.

Before Joan can complete her mission, Adam goes missing in the woods. And like Helen’s rapist, Adam, too, is faced with imminent death. Due to storms and flooding the rescue team must wait until morning before they can search for Adam. Joan is frantic. She had rebuked his most recent attempt to be friends, partly to seek her own vengeance, and he had been “crushed.” She now blames herself for Adam’s precarious circumstances.

Her best friend Grace agrees. She even goes so far as to tell Joan that Joan herself is partly responsible for Adam’s infidelity. How could Joan expect Adam to be faithful when she was keeping secrets from him? All these strange missions she goes on are just too much for her friends and family to take. I mean, really, she’s knitting, planting gardens, building boats and joining the debate team. How much can Adam be expected to endure????

Adam soon finds his way out of the woods with a little help from one of God’s friends and Joan’s fears are allayed. She is so relieved to discover that Adam is safe that her “pettiness” over his infidelity seemingly disappears. After all, he could have died. Does it really matter that he cheated on her? In the big picture, will it ever really matter? At home, she confides in her parents that she still feels responsible for what happened. Her mother is shocked and assures her that she can’t blame herself for what happened. It was Adam’s choice. But Joan, confident in her “scarf-metaphor” understanding of the situation disagrees: “Aren’t I? Aren’t we responsible for everything we do, feel, touch…Isn’t that what knitting the scarf was about?”

And what of Helen’s situation with her rapist? Convinced by her daughter’s high-mindedness, she decides to return to the hospital to forgive her rapist. Sadly, for her, she is too late. He has succumbed to his illness. However, she is reassured by the man’s daughter that he is in heaven, and she can still speak to him in her prayers.

The story seems contrived to make it merely about Helen and the rapist, with no greater significance to society: He is dying so can’t re-offend, and strangely has not re-offended since Helen’s rape. So there is no compelling reason for the state to intervene, solve unsolved cases, act to protect future victims and so on. The rape is not viewed as an attack on women, or an act that diminishes women – in essence, as a hate crime. That moral perspective is completely ignored. The situation is reduced to that of Helen being wronged by her rapist; the only other interested party being the Church. Because he has asked forgiveness, Helen feels obligated to forgive. It’s her ideal as a Christian woman. When she initially rejects his request, she is portrayed as angry and vengeful.

Is this a lesson in personal responsibility and interconnectedness or is it a rather blatant attempt to blame the victim? Helen’s pain and anger is turned into hateful bitterness as she condemns a dying man to hell. But as Helen says, it’s a “deathbed conversion.” He hasn’t told his family or turned himself in so he can suffer for his sin. He never tried to make amends to Helen, or to society as a whole, before he discovered he was dying. Nonetheless, the viewer is expected to believe that it is good enough that he confessed to his priest, and Helen should accept that.

Consider once again Joan and her boyfriend, Adam. One is almost waiting to hear someone say that Adam’s unfaithfulness is Joan’s fault for not sleeping with him, for spending too much time on her own interests and not sufficiently attending to his needs. Again, the story seems contrived to make it merely about Joan, focusing on her own supposed role in her recent betrayal, with no more significance to society as a whole. As with rape, the broad subject of infidelity is never discussed. Only Joan’s culpability in the circumstances is explored.

Through this one-dimensional use of interconnectedness, we all become co-conspirators in the crimes committed against us, especially those crimes committed by men against women. It has become unfashionable to accuse men of sexist crimes. Only hysterical, unreasonable feminists entertain that sort of notion anymore. According to Arcadia, the problems that we – women in particular – suffer from are not about society but are confined to intimate relationships, individual choices and personal responsibility. No victim is blameless; no perpetrator is unforgivable. In fact, the only people who don’t seem culpable in Arcadia are the perpetrators themselves. As long as they issue an apology, heartfelt or otherwise, they must be forgiven. But as William Lloyd Garrison once said, ‘I am not prepared to respect that philosophy. I believe in sin, therefore a sinner; in theft, therefore in a thief; in slavery, therefore in a slaveholder; in wrong, therefore in a wrong-doer.”

Copyright © 2007, C. C. Ley