Sex is not a topic to be broached lightly in fiction as
winners of the Bad Sex Award have found to their embarrassment. Now contrarian
Germaine Greer has turned the shame-flame onto the audiences, blaming women for
lapping up female victimisation in crime dramas and novels.
She even goes so
far as to say many women fantasise about sexual assault. I’m no expert on my
gender-fellows secret lusts but I can’t imagine any this side of florid
psychosis dream of being tortured, raped and dumped in a landfill.
Subtlety isn’t
Greer’s forte, so perhaps a little dissection and nuance might help to clarify
matters. There seems to me a distinct difference between the ‘find corpse, find
killer’ genre, kicking off in Agatha Christie, through PD James and extending
through to present day crime and forensic science fiction. As opposed to the
Game of Thrones’ rolling horrors or even Westworld which I gave up after it
replayed the Dolores rape scene over and over in flashback.
But there’s no
getting away from the uncomfortable fact that all crime fiction has murder as
the plot driver; and disconcerting to admit that once the brutish deed is done
what follows can be as relaxing as a crossword puzzle. Follow the clues through
a tortuous chase and the good guy triumphs over evil. The pursuit of justice is
the justification for inserting a bloody corpse on page one. Though I’m not
sure that stands up to rigorous scrutiny. A deliberate killing as a vehicle for
entertainment might have been culturally acceptable in Roman times with the mob
baying for blood. Two thousand years later, calculated death has been sanitised
into cosy Midsomer Murders meanders, which removes the need to watch the
dastardly act in commission. But it still clearly feeds an atavistic need that
no one likes to acknowledge. 
The stupendously
successful (in sales) Fifty Shades of Grey was also trumpeted as clinching the
argument that women deep down want to be sexually assaulted. Not having read it
(couldn’t cope with the prose) I shouldn’t make weighty pronouncements. But
from a distance it seemed like a dumbed-down version of the French
bondage-masochism classic The Story of O by Pauline Reage (Anne Desclos).
Despite having literary value, it caused huge controversy in the 1950s, with
one reviewer accusing the author of "bringing the Gestapo into the
boudoir". 
Feminists bewailed
the objectification and abuse of women. While the author’s slant was to portray
total submission as an almost mystical obsession, much like a rapturous merging
with a god. In one version the heroine choses to die in the finale and remarks
"To be killed by someone you love strikes me as the epitome of
ecstasy".
Whatever floats your
boat, though clearly not Greer, whose ethos is more dominatrix than slave.
As ever there’s no
real answer to any of the above. Barring the thought that even today we know
very little about what drives human sexuality in any of its multifarious
tendencies. There is no consensus about what the norm is. Although you can
psychoanalyse female masochism as stunted emotional development deriving from
an oppressive patriarchy. Gaining pleasure from submission sugar-coats the
pill, turning the inevitable into a more palatable choice to give a false sense
of control. Ditto male submissives with a fetish for spanking, reliving
experiences of Hitlerian nannies or sadistic schoolmasters.
Where the
fascination for murder comes from is puzzling, an ancestral throwback still
lingering in the old crocodile brain. Perhaps it is the earliest fear in life,
emerging into a scary world, totally defenceless and vulnerable. Reading murder
mysteries may bring us comfort as what we most feared is now projected onto
some other hapless soul. We get vicarious satisfaction from seeing the
perpetrator get their comeuppance sitting in the safety of our armchairs. And
relish our survival by fighting the good fight through another Crime Dagger
winner or a CSI.
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BUY my new crime thriller BY the LIGHT of a LIE at:
www.marjorieorr.com
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