Sunday, July 31, 2016

HBO chief spars with critics over rape scenes

TV critics’ rising frustration with rape scenes in entertainment programming resulted in a clash with HBO’s new programming chief at the Television Critics Association’s press tour in Beverly Hills on Saturday.
During a Q&A to discuss the network’s content, reporters pressed the network’s new top executive Casey Bloys on the issue after watching the pilot for upcoming sci-fi thriller Westworld – which includes a scene (spoiler ahead) where a life-like female android “host” is raped off-camera by a human male guest inside the show’s ultra-realistic theme park. Acclaimed new crime drama The Night Of also includes a storyline about a woman being victimized, and some critics have long taken issue with the sexual violence in fantasy hit Game of Thrones.
“For the Westworld pilot, the point in Westworld is they’re robots,” said Bloys, who took over the network’s top programming job two months ago. “How you treat a robot with human-like qualities? Is that reflective of how you would treat a human? It’s a little bit different than Game of Thrones, where it is human-on-human violence. But to your larger point: Is it something we think about? Yeah, I think the criticism is valid. I think it’s something that people take into account. It’s not something we’re wanting to highlight or trying to highlight, but I think the criticism is point taken on it.” READ MORE