People who experience sexual assault are rarely portrayed on television in a way that gives voice and meaning to their stories. 1 in 4 women experience sexual assault in their lifetime, and yet despite prevalent advocacy and awareness efforts, television still has a long way to go in telling stories surrounding sexual assault. This fact makes it all the more surprising that a 2002 episode of the Canadian program Degrassi: The Next Generation kicked off a story arc around a character’s sexual assault that would extend for years and serve as an empowering narrative around sexual assault, healing, and recovery.
Degrassi: The Next Generation was an early 2000’s re-imagining of the classic Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High series from the late 1980s and early 1990s. These shows focused around a class of students at a Canadian school and was a vehicle for addressing issues affecting teenagers, everything from homophobia to teenage pregnancy. Degrassi: The Next Generation was created with that same idea in mind, continuing the franchise for a new set of teenagers. It’s an after-school special with slightly better acting, a show where a character having her first crush lives side-by-side with another character who’s dealing prescription drugs to pay for his child’s diapers. It’s a show that’s best served in Saturday boredom re-runs or sleepovers during high school. The dialogue is stilted, sometimes lapsing into what sounds like a clueless adult pretending to be “hip” to the latest kid lingo, and the performances range from realistic to rocky. But there’s something endlessly watchable about a show that presents teen life with all its complexities, as dramatic as it truly is. In high school, all the world is a stage, and Degrassi: The Next Generation knows this well.
The show follows a cast of thousands (Degrassi: The Next Generation laughs at your complaints that Lost had too many characters to follow) through their high school experiences. There are the easy The Breakfast Club labels for these teens: nerd, jock, weirdo, prep, but as the show progressed it allowed them to grow beyond their initial labels. And none more so than Paige Michalchuk, who was introduced as an entitled, popular girl who then experienced sexual assault and over the course of four seasons, went on a journey of healing and wholeness. Through Paige’s experiences, Degrassi: The Next Generation moved past sexual assault and rape as dramatic television plot points to educate and inform viewers about the issue.
Paige Michalchuk (played by the excellent Lauren Collins) began as the classic high school mean girl, brimming with confidence and ready with a rolodex of witty comebacks. She was captain of Degrassi’s cheerleading team, which she named the Spirit Squad, and played guitar in an all-girl band she formed with her friends. Degrassi: The Next Generation rarely has outright villains, but in its early years, Paige was the show’s main antagonist.
In the second season’s two-part episode “Shout,” Paige attends a party thrown by a rival school’s soccer team because of her crush on the team captain, Dean. He’s older than she is, and cutely nicknames her “Spirit.” She’s enthralled. She blows off plans with her on-and-off-again boy Spinner to attend the party and cannot wait to see Dean. Paige and Dean leave the loudness of the party to have a quiet conversation upstairs, and Dean rapes Paige. The assault itself isn’t shown, but the lead-up is: Paige repeatedly says no, but Dean continues the act.
The episode follows Paige through the fall-out from her sexual assault. Her friends are excited to know more details about her time with Dean, but Paige is brisk and angry. When Spinner confronts Paige about blowing him off at the party, she slaps him. Meanwhile she continues to have flashbacks to the night with Dean and is unable to function. She’s terrified, and it isn’t until she confides in a friend that she realizes she was raped, and can say so out loud. The second episode of the two-parter focuses on Paige moving towards recovery. She reunites her all-girl band to perform a song to win a music contest, and asks Ashley, Degrassi: The Next Generation‘s resident alt-girl, if she would help them write a song. Ashley returns to the band, having written a song about a sexual assault survivor telling her story, acting as “Shout”‘s walking PSA. “I did some research online. Did you know one in four girls experiences sexual assault before they attend university?” is actual dialogue that Ashley says in the episode.
Paige refuses to perform the song and will not tell the other girls in the band why. The episode shows her denial and shame over her sexual assault, with Paige realizing she needs to share what happened to her with others and get help through seeing the school’s guidance counselor. The episode ends with a triumphant, confident Paige delivering the lyrics of the song to the audience of the music contest, an audience that contains her rapist, Dean.
“It happens to other people. You say how sad, you say poor thing. But when it’s you it’s something else. It’s everything,” she sings as she plays her guitar, the other girls chiming in as the song continues. “I’m not your poor thing,” she says during the chorus, as Dean walks out of the room. By choosing to sing the song, Paige makes a powerful statement about her experiences: she did nothing to cause her sexual assault and she will not feel ashamed, guilty, or blame herself.
Paige’s healing as she comes to terms with what happened to her is a multiple-season story. She decides to press charges against Dean in season three and Degrassi: The Next Generation follows Paige’s court case in the two-part season four premiere, “Ghost in the Machine.” After a grueling, victim-blaming trial, Dean is acquitted, a rare instance on television where the unfairness of the justice system in sexual assault cases is openly discussed and portrayed. Paige, in anger over the court case outcome, crashes her boyfriend Spinner’s car into Dean’s, trying to enact her own form of justice. Dean decides to press charges and Spinner is about to be arrested when Paige decides to come clean and turn herself in for the incident. In turning herself in, Paige finds a sense of closure and freedom from Dean, and continues to heal from her rape.
While Degrassi: The Next Generation may spend too much time showcasing or defending the men in Paige’s life and how they feel about her sexual assault, the show’s overall portrayal of her journey is powerful. She is reassured, and eventually herself verbalizes, that there is nothing she did to cause the rape. She seeks professional help with a counselor after realizing she cannot process the incident alone. She’s supported by her friends and family, who listen intently and encourage her to tell her story. She makes choices to press charges against Dean. She is vulnerable and honest about her recovery. And perhaps most importantly, Paige is not a character moving forward that is solely defined as a victim of sexual assault, but rather this experience is one part of the development of her character.
So yes, Degrassi: The Next Generation is a soapy teen Canadian drama with some questionable acting and a cast of characters that have experienced every problem imaginable in their four short years in high school. But it’s also one of the few programs on television that truly addresses issues going on in teenage life. “Shout,” the first episode that discussed sexual assault on the show, aired in 2002, and still has relevant things to say about the treatment of people who experience sexual assault. Sexual assault awareness and advocacy is as important now as it was then and Paige’s story shows the power of Degrassi: The Next Generation as a positive, educational voice in ongoing advocacy work.