To Ransom a Man's Soul

Bryan Fuller, the creator and showrunner of NBC’s Hannibal, gave an interview with Entertainment Weekly on May 28 about the use of rape on television. “”There are frequent examples of exploiting rape as low-hanging fruit to have a canvas of upset for the audience,” he told the magazine. “’A character gets raped’ is a very easy story to pitch for a drama. And it comes with a stable of tropes that are infrequently elevated dramatically, or emotionally.” Fuller is very correct about this, and his solution (which he admits is inevitably imperfect: “If I was really putting my money where my mouth is, I would have explored rape so thoroughly that it would have taken over the show.”) has been to avoid the use of rape on his series.