'Grand Army': Was Odessa Adlon's Joey Del Marco 'asking for rape' with her brand of exhibitionist feminism?
One of the strongest and most well-developed plotlines of the show belongs to Joey Del Marco played by Odessa Adlon (aka Odessa A’zion). In Episode 3, she is raped by two friends, Luke and George, who she has known since childhood in the back seat of a car. Her third childhood friend and current crush, Tim, is witness to it all but doesn't intervene because he thinks she deserves it for stringing him along. Before this, in Episode 1 and 2, we have come to know enough Joey to know her particular context. Born to a middle-class white family, her mother is a strong woman who has taught her to stand up for herself and never be ashamed of her body or for needing her freedom.
Joey is angry at her father for having an affair, for which he has had to leave home. She is also angry at her mother for making her spend time with him, the 'enemy', who has broken up their family. She has been brought up with a value system firmly embedded in second-wave feminism but she herself is part of fourth-wave feminism with its SlutWalks, #YesAllMen, and #MeToo moments. Her generation is all about being sex-positive and body-positive, trying to challenge tropes around policing women's bodies in public and private spaces.
This is brought sharply up in the first episode when a teacher tries to shame her for 'always' being dressed in something revealing. She retaliates by showing up to class braless (encouraging most of the female student population to do the same in solidarity) in a "free the nipple" T-shirt. However, it is not like she is 100 percent comfortable doing this. She asks her friends anxiously if it is "too much" and visibly cringes as she is subject to stares.
And this is the dichotomy. Joey might want to walk around braless, she might want to think that her "woke boys" are behind her because they like her feminism rather than a chance to ogle her body. But her idealism is falsely grounded in a world that still systematically polices women's bodies and sees it as dangerous.
It is why the male principal gets up to open a door as soon as Joey removes her shirt to show the wet white tee she got thrown out of class for. It is why when the boys are charged with rape after Joey's complaint, their arguments that Joey was not a prude, that she sent pictures of her pierced nipple or that she was 'licking a dildo' are all seen as valid. In the police's eyes, Joey's behavior equals consent and the DA's office also finds it difficult to defend her.
No one considers that her pierced nipple is a political statement. No one thinks that she is a tactile person who trusts the boys and Anna because she has grown up with them. She feels free to be provocative and 'sex positive' around them because she thinks she is safe around them. She thinks that they would never do anything without her explicit consent. It is also never discussed that her provocative and flirty behavior has never brought her anything except popularity, acceptance, and her 'queen bee' status until she is raped. She is put on a pedestal for her 'slutty behavior' and then pulled down from it for getting caught in a vulnerable position for that behavior -- just another example of mixed signals that young girls get from the media and society that surrounds them.
A woman's or girl's body is sexual in any and every context, unlike a male body. It is this assumption that fourth wavers or online-based i-Feminism want to make. But just like the suffragettes faced opposition in their time, these ideas face opposition too.
It will take time for the world to get behind these new ideas that a female body should not be thought of as inherently sexual. There has to be an understanding of the difference between play and actual sexual intent as performed by females – since this freedom already exists for men and boys. Since we are in that uncomfortable in-between moment where the world has not caught up to our political will, the character of Joey Del Marco is not a straight forward victim that you can blithely support.
She is meant to push all the buttons of the "she asked for it" crowd – the ones who criticize a girl for wearing too short a skirt, getting too drunk at a party, or walking the streets alone at night. She is meant to represent the dilemma of society who have taught their girls to ask for freedom and space to be but not their boys to inherently respect women's bodies like they do their own.
It also brings to the fore the danger of frat party-like situations where "sex and body positivity" among girls collides with "locker room culture" among boys and inhibitions go for a toss because of the alcohol and drugs. It is a dangerous mix of the cultural, political, and social in an adolescent environment of hedonistic risk-taking and boundary-pushing behavior. And the result is broken bodies of girls like Joey, who fall in the crack between feminist ideals and real-world scenarios. It means we are failing our girls and refusing to teach our boys as a society and also allowing situations where sexual violence is a given.
'Grand Army' is currently streaming on Netflix.