'A welcome experience of an “under-the-carpet” subject’: Investigating audience responses to fictional representations of child sexual abuse – Georgia Rule case study

IGEL 2025
#1

:speech_balloon: Speaker: Ailise Bulfin @abulfin & Victoria Pöhls @victoria_poehls
:classical_building: Affiliation: School of English, Drama and Film, UCD

:busts_in_silhouette: Co-authors: Giulia Scapin (School of English, Drama and Film, UCD), Aleksandra Milenović (School of English, Drama and Film, UCD) & Caroline Dunne (School of English, Drama and Film, UCD)

Title: 'A welcome experience of an “under-the-carpet” subject’: Investigating audience responses to fictional representations of child sexual abuse – Georgia Rule case study

Abstract: This paper examines how fictional representations of child sexual abuse (CSA) may influence audience perceptions, stereotypes and/or understanding of the lived experiences of CSA victim-survivors. Following a category-based coding procedure, we analysed 147 online IMDb reviews of Georgia Rule, a coming-of-age dramedy addressing the complex issue of CSA. We examined how this unconventional framing interacted with the views of a general audience and persons with lived experience. Our aim is to explore whether fictional representations can promote compassion and challenge harmful stereotypes associated with CSA, ultimately contributing to a more nuanced understanding of this often-silenced issue.


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:newspaper: Long abstract

Introduction:
This paper explores how child sexual abuse (CSA) is represented in fiction and how audiences, including victim-survivors, respond to this fiction. CSA is a critical and growing issue affecting an estimated one-in-eight children worldwide (Sanjeevi et al. 2018; European Commission 2024) with potentially grave mental and physical health consequences (Hailes et al. 2019). However, CSA, especially intrafamilial, remains a relatively taboo subject, and this social avoidance negatively impacts victim-survivors’ wellbeing and societal prevention efforts. Furthermore, public understandings of CSA are hampered by persistent myths and stereotypes, which misrepresent victim-survivors’ experiences and can negatively affect disclosure, allocation of resources and legal processes (DeMarni Cromer and Goldsmith 2010; Glina et al. 2022).
Despite the social avoidance, CSA is widely represented in fiction, e.g., novels, TV and film. As research on the impact of news-media framing of CSA suggests (Popović 2018; Kroes et al. 2021), the fiction may also affect victim-survivors’ and wider public understandings of the issue. Despite this, and despite the substantial scholarship demonstrating fiction’s transformative power (e.g. Fialho 2019/2024, Kuiken and Sopčák 2021, Loi et al 2023, Green and Appel 2024), including rape representations (Koopman et al. 2012), there is little research currently into how fiction representing CSA affects audiences. Taking the contentious young-adult film Georgia Rule (dir. Garry Marshall, 2007; Netflix, 2022) as a case-study, this paper briefly outlines its strategies for depicting CSA, and then presents an analysis of online audience responses to it.
Georgia Rule depicts the disclosure of intrafamilial abuse by a traumatised teenager (played by Lindsay Lohan), which prompts a series of family crises culminating in a final split from the abuser. However, this hard-hitting, relatively accurate depiction of CSA’s devastating effects on the protagonist and her non-offending family members is shoehorned uncomfortably into a light-hearted, coming-of-age ‘dramedy’ framework, which is what the film’s marketing emphasises, avoiding mention of the difficult theme. This genre mismatch forms the key preoccupation of the audience responses, both positive and negative, and is key to understanding the film’s potential impact.

Methods:
A qualitative content analysis was conducted on a set of online audience responses (147 IMDb user reviews) to the film. Following a category-based coding procedure based on Kuckartz (2018), the dataset was deductively coded for relevant aspects based on scholarship on CSA* in conjunction with cognitive and empirical scholarship on fiction’s effects on viewers. For example, we created an evaluative category for evidence of accurate or inaccurate knowledge of the effects of CSA. In addition, this methodology allowed us to add thematic categories inductively, picking up themes that were prominent in the audience responses. This included references to what we called “unexpected CSA” - a reaction to the genre mismatch where the audience was surprised by the disclosure of abuse by the main protagonist, not anticipated by the film’s paratext (e.g., trailer).

Expected Results:
Overall, in developing our coding, we focused on three main elements: references to the Medium (e.g., the actors/characters, the screenwriter or the director, the paratext and the genre mismatch); references to the Personal Response of the viewer (e.g., emotional responses, long-term impact, perceived authenticity of the characters, liking/disliking, personal relevance and personal connection with the vicissitudes of the characters); direct references to the Topic of CSA and to CSA myths (accepted or contested).
At the moment of writing this abstract, analyses of the dataset are still ongoing. During the IGEL conference we plan to present our findings. In the analyses, we want to investigate the range of different responses to the considerable mismatch between the film’s presentation as a dramedy and its difficult theme. Viewers’ responses seem to range from those who are upset by the film’s misleading marketing to those, including a small number of self-declared CSA victim-survivors, who praise its efforts. The responses which are strongly critical of the film for springing its difficult theme on viewers might be indicative of the deep persisting social discomfort with the subject. We are also interested to understand the extent to which a movie such as Georgia Rule, despite its genre mismatch and the outrage it provokes, might critically address myths and stereotypes about CSA and might circumvent audience tendencies to avoid this ‘“under-the-carpet” subject’, and hence provide some cultural value for its viewers. Though failing to get the balance right, Georgia Rule at least attempts to leaven the difficult subject of CSA with some humour and perhaps can reach a wider audience in this way, even despite its irresponsible marketing. In this way, it is perhaps less off-putting than the typically dark and intense treatments of the issue, which, even when they are sensitive and survivor-centred, often suggest that only the bleakest of outcomes are available to survivors.
In presenting this case study, we also aim to propose a framework to approach the investigation of the impact of fictional representations of CSA on their audiences, a topic that, as far as we are aware of, has received very little attention from the academic community.

*Key articles include, DeMarni Cromer and Goldsmith (2010); Hailes et al. 2019; Mathews and Delphine Collin-Vezina (2017); Sanjeevi et al. 2018.

References:

DeMarni Cromer, Lisa, & Rachel Goldsmith. 2010. Child Sexual Abuse Myths: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Individual Differences. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 19(6). 618-47.

European Commission. Protecting children from sexual abuse. 7 Nov 2024. Protecting children from sexual abuse - European Commission

Fialho, Olivia. 2024. Transformative reading. John Benjamins.

Fialho, Olivia. 2019. What is literature for? The role of transformative reading. Cogent Arts & Humanities 6(1). 1-16.

Glina, F., et al. 2022. “Lay People´ s Myths Regarding Pedophilia and Child Sexual Abuse: A Systematic Review.” Sexual medicine reviews 10(4): 596-619.

Green, Melanie and Markus Appel. 2024. Narrative Transportation: How Stories Shape How We See Ourselves and the World. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 70: 1-82.

Hailes, Helen P., Rongqin Yu, Andrea Danese & Seena Fazel. 2019. Long-term outcomes of childhood sexual abuse: an umbrella review. Lancet Psychiatry 6(10). 830-839.

Koopman, Emy, Michelle Hilscher & Gerald Cupchik. 2012. Reader responses to literary depictions of rape. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 6(1). 66–73.

Kroes, A. D., der Pol, L. D. V., Groeneveld, M. G., & Mesman, J. (2021). Big news stories and longitudinal data collection: A prominent child sexual abuse case negatively affects parents’ attitudes toward male caregivers. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 45(6), 561-568.

Kuckartz, Udo. 2018. Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung, 4. Auflage, Weinheim, Basel: Beltz Juventa.

Kuiken, Don, & Paul Sopčák. 2021. Openness, Reflective Engagement, and Self-Altering Literary Reading. In Don Kuiken & Arthur Jacobs (eds), Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies, 305-31. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Loi, Cristina, Frank Hakemulder, Moniek Kujpers & Gerhard Lauer. 2023. On how fiction impacts the self: Transformative reading experiences and storyworld possible selves. Scientific Study of Literature 12(1). 44-67.

Mathews, Ben & Delphine Collin-Vézina. 2019. Child sexual abuse: toward a conceptual model and definition. Trauma Violence Abuse 20. 131-48

Popović, Stjepka. 2018. Child Sexual Abuse News: A Systematic Review of Content Analysis Studies. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 27(7). 752-77.

Sanjeevi, Jerusha, Daniel Houlihan, Kelly Bergstrom, Moses Langley & Jaxson Judkin. 2018. A Review of Child Sexual Abuse: Impact, Risk, and Resilience in the Context of Culture. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 27(6). 622-41.

2 Likes
IGEL 2025 conference schedule (June 5 & 6, 2025)
#2

This study is highly relevant and part of an important project. I’d be very interested in seeing the follow-up research. Good luck with what’s to come. A really tough topic to focus on for years.

Looking back, I realize I was one of those in the audience who flinched at the movie—focusing on small, inconsequential details—and only after watching your presentation did I remember the darker side of the story. Strange or maybe not so strange working of the memory works? Without overgeneralizing from my own experience, I can’t help but wonder if the flinching you describe is related to a kind of memory inhibition, even for viewers of such comedies.

The lack of perspective-taking from the victim’s point of view is also striking. Maybe that’s something specific to this film? I recall the mother character was very prominent, played by a famous actor. It could simply reflect a limit on how much we can absorb when we try to take on another person’s role. Some horrors—like child sexual abuse—are so overwhelming that our minds shut down. It’s similar to how people respond to terrible news: fully grasping what’s happening in Gaza, for example, demands an enormous willingness to empathize, whereas lesser “hells” can feel more accessible to our compassion.

Ultimately, it’s a reminder that our willingness to engage with suffering—whether on screen or in real life—has its limits.

Looking forward to your presentation and Q&A.

#3

Dear all, I would like to congratulate you for your work. This is really good and nice how you start with it – from an inductive perspective. What are the next steps? And what are the main goals of this project? i.e., what would you like to develop in 5 years? All best wishes and success! Olivia

#4

I was thinking during your presentation: it could be interesting to revisit some of the ideas from Frederic Bartlett’s Remembering . His methods — simple yet potentially quite revealing — might offer useful tools. They could help explore what people choose to commit to memory and what they don’t, and what aspects of representation might make readers more or less inclined to retain something.

#5

Thanks for interesting research presentation. Have not see Georgia Rules. But your talk on dramedy reminded me of The Perks of being a wallflower, another dramedy with CSA themes mixed in with comedy (trauma not revealed until late in the movie). Might be interesting to see audience response to a second movie. I hope this helps!

#6

Thank you Frank, it was really nice to engage with you today during the discussion. The film offers so many interesting avenues for exploring – for example, speaking to your comment, some viewers describe their different responses to watching GR when it first came out & later when they were older - sometimes mentioning that they only really felt its full seriousness as older adults. The lack of concern for & perspective-taking was surprising to us too. In other datasets, we have noticed a protective response among (in these cases) readers – like a strong form of sympathy, where readers describe wanting to protect or take care of the protagonist, and sometimes extending to protective impulses towards children in the real world. We were surprised to find little of that here. Though we did think it might be harder to empathise with or take the perspective of a character who has suffered abuse, so were less surprised not to find so many of these types of response. It seems like this kind of representation produces a bit of a double bind – if it may be imputed that on one level the film hopes to raise awareness and understanding of a survivor’s experience – in that its form as a comedy/dramedy does seem to counteract the flinch, but at the same time impedes connecting with the protagonist.

1 Like
#7

Thank you, Olivia. First & foremost for us is to carry out our studies with survivors of child sexual abuse as the group most likely to be affected by this fiction. We plan to do this via in-depth qualitative interviews & are working our way through the ethics process. We will also be starting our focus group study with support professionals on how fictional representations of CSA affect their clients & their work. And then we will widen out to working with ‘general’ audiences – who of course, statistically speaking, will always include survivors.

#8

Thank you Soon, I have read the book, but not seen the movie & am surprised to see the movie described as a dramedy, as the book is quite serious. So this could be a very good comparison text for us.