Reign On Her Parade

The CW’s new series, “Reign,” is one of many series that attempts to inject sex into history. The teen drama about Mary, Queen of Scots, is not the first—nor will it be the last—television show to force historic figures into every sex position and pairing possible and lead to wonderfully misinformed high school history papers. Recently, however, “Reign” has caught the attention of critics because of the CW’s decision to cut a masturbation scene from the pilot episode, highlighting network television’s aversion to self-pleasure.

In the pilot episode, Mary and her female handmaidens observe a post-marital bedding scene. Afterwards, one of the handmaidens, Kenna (played by Caitlin Stasey), sits in an empty stairwell and reaches under her dress and begins to masturbate. In the edited version, however, Kenna only gets to lift her skirts before the King of France (Alan Van Sprang) interrupts with “May I?” In a boring twist of events, the monarch takes over and the two “form the beast with two backs.”

The Shakespeare reference is from a play written nearly four decades after Mary, Queen of Scots died, but since “Reign” sacrifices period realism to the softcore sex gods, I’m going to give myself a break on this one. Examples include inventing a roguish half-brother of the actual King of France and portraying Nostradamus, who would have been in his 50s or 60sin the series’s setting, as a young stud.

Critics have posited many possible reasons why the masturbation scene was cut. Spoiler alert: none of them are particularly flattering. Tracy Clark-Flory writes in Salon that the masturbation came to a premature end because female masturbation places women in control of their sexuality, which does not fit in with conventional depictions of sex. “Women are supposed to be the undesiring sex—or rather, the sex that desires the things we can get through intercourse, not the act itself,” Clark-Flory writes “Why is masturbation more shocking then sex?” This line of thought finds support in the sequence of events of the episode itself. The public masturbator, Kenna, is aroused by watching a couple consummate their marriage. Instead of bringing herself to climax, a man, a monarch, nonetheless takes over, which Kenna accepts. The cause and the product of her desire both revolve around heterosexual, conventional acts of sex. If the King had not swooped in to save Kenna from self-pleasure, the CW would have actually aired a woman engaging in sexual activity for no other reason than her own satisfaction.

In response to Clark-Flory, however, Katy Waldman of Slate argues that sexism is less relevant than the distance between sex and masturbation: romance. (I was tempted to write female orgasm, but that wouldn’t be fair to the King of France). “From a network perspective, masturbation is more shocking than public intercourse not because it returns sexual agency to women but because it severs pleasure from intimacy or emotional connection,” Waldman writes. “People tune into a network television period drama for fantasy and escape, not to watch characters do what you do alone on a Tuesday night in between loads of laundry.”

Though I am reluctant to separate gender politics from the CW’s decision to cut the masturbation scene, Waldman does make a worthwhile point. A handmaiden being sought after by a monarch is much better fodder for escapist pleasure than a servant masturbating in an empty stairwell. Furthermore, as in life, sex is not just sex in television. Though “Reign” is not necessarily high art, it is a narrative and conflict is integral. Sex is where characters and their desires can intersect or conflict. The absence of a sexual partner leaves a dramatic vacancy that is hard to fill by one’s own hand, regardless of pleasure. Clark-Flory writes that women are supposed to be “the sex that desires the things we can get through intercourse, not the act itself,” but it’s arguable that in narrative, characters act with goals in mind. Sexual acts are not exceptions to the demands of plot. Though Kenna’s masturbation scene would have been a step forward for network television, Kenna sleeping with Mary’s husband will probably create more drama than a muffled orgasm in a stairwell.

Though excluding masturbation from the episode can be justified by the demands of plot, “Reign” has raised questions about network television’s sexual politics by choosing to present a masturbation scene and interrupting it. Since “Reign” is a television series instead of a sex education program, it is not required to represent female masturbation; most series don’t. But by presenting a masturbation scene and interrupting, “Reign” raised a lot of questions about network television’s sexual politics. Perhaps the CW feared that parents would have to have awkward conversations with their children about self-pleasure; those conversations shouldn’t have to be awkward, but that’s a topic for another article. Replacing the masturbation scene with an act of infidelity committed between a man of high status and a much younger woman in order to make the episode more appropriate underscores taboos towards self-pleasure. If masturbation is not fit for public consumption but graphic sex is, then perhaps we have become desensitized to sex and fearful of sexuality. How network television deems graphic sex more fit for public consumption than masturbation paints a grim portrait of the industry’s attitudes towards sex and its viewers. An audience that subscribes to the values reinforced by series such as “Reign” would have to be desensitized to sex but fearful of sexuality.

—Staff writer Hayley C. Cuccinello can be reached at hayley.cuccinello@thecrimson.com.