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"\n\tAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below\n\t\n\nI'll try not to spoil more of Nov 14's episode of Scandal than is necessary, but we have to talk about what happened to Mellie. \n\nIn a flashback to 15 years ago, we're forced to watch Mellie\u2014long before she is the First Lady of the United States\u2014being raped by Fitz's disgusting dad. It's disturbing and heartbreaking, and a definite attempt by the show to explain why Mellie is the way she is. Which, is to say, often unsympathetic and unlikable.As Lauren Duca writes on The Huffington Post:Watching the future first lady be violently taken advantage of by her own father-in-law bestowed the character with extreme sympathy and, in many ways, explained aspects of her disposition that may have otherwise been seen simply as flaws.That's a valid argument, but it's not without some annoyance. Often, with women in media, \"unsympathetic\" and \"unlikeable\" are code words for strong, opinionated, gutsy, bitchy\u2014words we rarely use to describe men because it's how we're socially conditioned to expect men to be. Why can't Mellie be strong and opinionated, and not need a traumatic backstory? Hell, why can't she be a complicated, strong, sometimes unlikeable woman without introducing a rape to explain her? However, there are people like the (brilliant) director of the next episode of Scandal, Ava DuVernay, who think backstory makes a more believable, whole person:Yes, that may be true\u2014and maybe it would be harder to judge the episode if TV didn't have such a long and troubled tradition of using rape as a plot device to explain difficult women. Going back to Laura Spencer's and Liz Spencer's rapes on General Hospital and Krystle Carrington's rape on Dynasty to Kelly Taylor's and Naomi Clark's rapes on the original 90210 to Joan on Mad Men andTara on True Blood,rape is often used to explain why a \"tough\" woman is the way she is. Which, to be fair, it can be. But when it's the only way to explain a strong female character on TV, it begins to feel disingenious, gratuitious, and lazy. Follow Laura on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/news/a16513/scandal-rape-scene/?click=rel>