love how Al, who said mildly creepy things and did vaguely creepy things throughout, ends up being completely awful and a terrible abuser?
YES! Because he is totally gaslighting her, in a way that starts out as subtle and becomes increasingly obvious and more harmful the closer Robin gets to solving the mystery. I also love how the villain is someone inside the law, this "respectable" authority figure, as contrasted with Tui's father- who is violent and a criminal in many ways but would never molest his own daughter.
as much as I sometimes get iffy feelings about a crime-solving woman having her own traumatic sexual abuse in her past as a motivator, I did like that they showed that Johnno had also been traumatized sexually by this experience, even if he hadn't been the one that had been raped. It's very unusual to see men suffering sexual trauma, even if it's just the trauma of being a bystander.
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branchandroot
Re: *spoilers* Re: femnism in Top of the Lake
Date: 2013-06-07 07:21 pm (UTC)YES! Because he is totally gaslighting her, in a way that starts out as subtle and becomes increasingly obvious and more harmful the closer Robin gets to solving the mystery. I also love how the villain is someone inside the law, this "respectable" authority figure, as contrasted with Tui's father- who is violent and a criminal in many ways but would never molest his own daughter.
as much as I sometimes get iffy feelings about a crime-solving woman having her own traumatic sexual abuse in her past as a motivator, I did like that they showed that Johnno had also been traumatized sexually by this experience, even if he hadn't been the one that had been raped. It's very unusual to see men suffering sexual trauma, even if it's just the trauma of being a bystander.