When TV Shows Highlight Social Issues
Another oldie but goodie! I originally wrote this essay in 2018, when I was deep into my obsession with the drama filled show Greenleaf. If you haven’t seen it, but like scandal-filled church dramas, Greenleaf is the show for you :). Enjoy!
Greenleaf is a one-hour drama on the Own Network, a television network created by Oprah Winfrey that launched in 2011. The show follows the trials, tribulations and controversies of the Greenleaf family, a prominent Black Memphis family. The family is led by the patriarch, Bishop James Greenleaf, who created and leads the Calvary Fellowship megachurch, and his wife, Lady Mae. They have three children, Grace, Charity, and Jacob. Grace ran away from her hometown, family and church, 20 years ago because her uncle was never held accountable for the rape of her other sister Faith, whose suicide finally brings Grace back home to seek justice for her.
What Greenleaf is really about is how a family leans into, or away from, their faith, as a way of dealing with trauma. For the Greenleaf women, that trauma is gender-based violence, specifically sexual violence. In the first two seasons, when the decades long sexual violence committed by Lady Mae’s brother, Mac, comes to light, we learn that Faith wasn’t the only Greenleaf woman to have experienced sexual violence. Mac also attempted to molest Grace, and Lady Mae reveals that her father molested her as a child and that her brother witnessed it. Another aspect of gender-based violence highlighted throughout the series is domestic violence. We see it impact a female member of Calvary Church, whose husband is abusive. She reveals the abuse to Grace, who attempts to help her and her child escape her abusive husband. Grace also wants to offer a space for other victims of abuse to find support, so she starts a support group at church. Domestic violence doesn’t escape the Greenleaf family either; Jacob’s daughter Zora is experiencing abuse in her relationship with a young, Christian singer.
Killing Mac in self defense, after mistakenly believing that he was harming her daughter Sophia, Grace starts a legal defense fund for survivors of domestic violence that are incarcerated for killing their abusive partners. I was pleasantly surprised to see this storyline. The criminalization of domestic violence survivors is a systemic problem in our country, and there are organizations nationwide fighting this issue. According to the ACLU, nearly 60% of people in women’s prison nation-wide, and as many as 94% of some women’s prison populations, have a history of physical or sexual abuse before being incarcerated. The current systems in place that are supposed to help victims are often inaccessible to the most vulnerable or fail them in some way. Although the battered women’s movement started out as a grassroots movement of women opening shelters and creating hotlines, in the 1980s it morphed into a more conservative movement focused on changing the criminal justice response to domestic violence and supporting the addition of criminal laws and penalties. This culminated in the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which was seen as a triumph for the movement. VAWA, which was attached to the 1994 Crime Bill, actually codified a criminal justice response to domestic violence, which wasn’t beneficial to the most marginalized survivors, including low-income and women of color. It resulted in dual arrest policies, where victims along with perpetrators are arrested. Instead of receiving support to address the trauma of surviving abuse, survivors are instead criminalized for doing what they have to do to keep themselves alive. Women are imprisoned if their abusive partners harm their children, coerce them into committing crimes, and if they have to injure or kill them to live. Organizer and educator Mariame Kaba coined the term “no selves to defend” to describe the history of black survivors of violence being punished for defending their lives.
Just like on Greenleaf, with Grace starting a legal defense fund for criminalized survivors, resistance is happening in real life also. In 2014, the Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander (CAFMA) (I was a member!) formed to help free Marissa Alexander, a Black woman who was incarcerated for shooting a warning shot toward her abusive husband to ward off his attack. We raised awareness of Marissa’s case through numerous events, and fundraised to pay for her legal defense. Marissa has been freed from prison for a couple of years now and gets to live her life surrounded by loved ones. After the resolution of Marissa’s case, CAFMA evolved into Love & Protect, focusing on supporting criminalized survivors of violence in Illinois. Additional organizations doing this important work include: Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration and Survived and Punished. Learn more about these groups and find out how you can get involved or support!