Monday night on the Fox network, "21 Jump Street" undercover cop Judy Hoffs (Holly Robinson) is raped by a medical student while she's working on a case.
- The same night in NBC's "Cast the First Stone," Jill Eikenberry plays a teacher who becomes pregnant by rape.- Last Monday, in the CBS movie "When He's Not a Stranger," college freshman Annabeth Gish was raped by a campus football star.
- The night before, a character played by Mel Harris of "thirtysomething" was brutally raped in the miniseries "Cross of Fire."
- The season premiere of "In the Heat of the Night" three weeks ago centered on the rape of Althea Tibbs (Anne-Marie Johnson).
The 1989-90 TV season is barely two months old and already more than a dozen miniseries, movies, and regular series have tackled the sensitive and emotional issue of rape.
What's going on? Did some kind of collective consciousness kick in? Is this exploitation, or responsibility?
"I think a lot of things are coming together at once," observed Eikenberry. "Part of it is that women's issues are getting more play" on TV because women are acquiring clout as producers and writers.
Eikenberry points to "The Accused" - the 1988 film starring Jodie Foster as a young woman who is gang-raped in a bar - as another spark. Ironically, "The Accused" is playing on the cable TV pay services this month.
"There's no question that `The Accused' was important," agreed "21 Jump Street" executive producer Bill Nuss. "I think it probably triggered our own episode."
TV emulates movies. When a well-known actress was willing to play the victim of a graphic gang rape in a prestige movie with something to say, it helped other actresses overcome their reluctance to take similar roles, especially after Foster won an Oscar.
The subject isn't new to TV. In 1974, Elizabeth Montgomery starred in "A Case of Rape," a TV movie that focused on rape's aftershocks; the personal humiliation the victim felt from the police, medical personnel and the courts.
But such stories were rare. A rape victim was inevitably a series guest star in a one-shot appearance, someone with whom the audience had no emotional investment and wouldn't see again next week.
There were exceptions, but not many. A "Cagney and Lacey" episode two years ago where police officer Chris Cagney (Sharon Gless) was raped is still regarded as a model of responsibility.
Television tends to focus on stories that are easy to promote in print and on the air. Especially in the promotional spots, instead of depicting rape as the brutal act that it is and perhaps turning viewers away, it was made to seem titillating, "a chance for your lead (actress) to get her clothes ripped off," sneered Michelle Ashford, who wrote Monday's "21 Jump Street" episode.
In a "Hunter" episode several years ago, police officer Dee Dee McCall (Stepfanie Kramer) was beaten and raped. Later, the show wanted to do another rape story, with McCall once again the victim, but Kramer flatly refused.
"She must have sensed that it was just exploitation," said Ashford. "I thought it was pretty brave to say `No."'
The crime of rape has been traditionally shrouded in shame, with more than half of all rape victims refusing to report it to the police.
Because it reaches an immense audience, TV can help set the agenda for social issues when it brings something like AIDs or rape into public consciousness. With well-known actresses playing rape victims and women working behind the scenes as producers, directors and writers, TV is showing rape as the physical and psychological assault that it is, with stories focusing on recovery as much as the crime.
Ashford got the idea for the "21 Jump Street" episode from a newspaper story about date rape on college campuses. Realizing that college-age viewers are the prime "21 Jump Street" audience, Ashford knew she'd found a perfect fit of issue and show.
"To get the emotional impact, we felt that it had to be seen through the eyes of one of our regulars," she said. So the next step was to appraise Robinson of what was planned for her character. Playing a rape victim is difficult - many actresses won't do it - and Robinson could have squelched the story.
Ashford wants to reach "the guys in the audience. In the research, I found that most of the men who commit date rape aren't typical criminals. I try to say that no matter how confusing a woman's behavior might be, whether she fights or doesn't fight, whether she's drunk, you're drunk, you're alone ... none of that matters. When it comes to the moment and she says `No!' that means `No!"'
The risk in all of this is that rape could become just another programming hook, something as promotable as it is exploitable. It wouldn't be the first message to be swamped by the medium.