When you think of Kat Slater, you think of a fearsomely loyal, eternally tragic yet loving character; you think leopard print and leather boots and you thinkof sensational performances from the ‘YES I AM!’ queen Jessie Wallace.
When you think of EastEnders, you think of a show based on family and community, of gritty storylines targeted around often uncomfortable issues and of episodes that leave an emotional impact.
Marrying all of this together for a saga focusing on the very real issue of child-on-parent domestic abuse has led to a powerful and agonising look at the horrific position Kat has found herself in as a mum.
Kat, a character whose own childhood was heavily darkened by abuse, is the epitome of a resilient, surviving, powerful woman of soap; the type of character that goes down in the history books of the genre.
Mess with Kat as an enemy and you are likely to regret it. Have Kat on your side, and you have a battle already half won. As a character, she is a titan of feistiness, fun and ferocity.
Does that mean that she can’t therefore find herself the victim of abuse from a child? Despite the cries of ‘Kat would never let Tommy get away with that!’, this is as far from the truth as can be and a misconception that proves exactly why it’s vital for shows in the public eye like EastEnders to continue shining a light on violence against women.
Tommy’s aggression has been unpredictable (Picture: BBC)
Depressingly, even after the soap genre has covered a myriad of circumstances around abuse over decades, for some, there remains a stereotype of what an abuse victim should look and act like on TV. And, in the same vein, what they shouldn’t – aka, which characters would ‘never let abuse happen.’
There’s no such thing as ‘letting abuse happen’ or ‘letting someone get away with that’.
And there is no such thing as the ‘right’ abuse victim.
Over the last year and longer, EastEnders has been laying the seeds of a gradually worsening pattern of behaviour from Tommy, played extremely well by capable young actor Sonny Kendall.
Much of what would often be put down to teenage angst as well as the lasting effects of being a child brought up through traumas, started to play out.
Suddenly shouting, breaking things, storming out, making threats, playing mind games – has there ever been a parent who hasn’t come up against some of this from a teenage child?
No parent ever wants to see their child as any kind of monster and so it’s only been recently that Kat has been forced to face up to the daunting truth that Tommy’s behaviours are next level and go far beyond teenage tantrums.
There is nothing to be scoffed at here. Wanting to see the best in Tommy is not a weakness and aggressive actions like violence and destruction are impossible for most of us to react to and manage.
Part of the biggest trauma of abuse in the home is that for the most part, the perpetrator is someone the victim loves and someone who is supposed to love the victim.
It’s not a case of ‘oh, just give the lad a good thrashing!’ like some in the ‘I was smacked as a child, and I turned out okay’ brigade are arguing.
Meeting violence with more violence would be the worst possible thing to do, no matter how much we as viewers want to protect and fight for Kat.
It is a horrible watch and the fan anger towards Tommy is palpable and for the most part justified – he is played so well by Sonny that I absolutely detest the kid myself sometimes!
But just because we have seen Kat deliver Slater justice to men who have cheated on her or women who have entered cat-fights with her, it doesn’t mean that she is suddenly invulnerable to abuse.
Comparisons between her and quiet, more reserved sister Little Mo – also an abuse survivor – are useful not to make the point that ‘Kat is much stronger, she’d never end up there’ but to make the point that any person, no matter their background or the perceptions of them, can be a victim.
Tommy being the person in the world Kat wants and needs to protect above anyone else, adds just that extra layer to her abhorrent situation. In one moment, she is petrified of him and what he is capable of and in another, she is traumatised at the prospect of losing him.
She will spend most of her time wondering how he is feeling, blaming herself, questioning her abilities as a mother and asking herself – what a group of people who watch the show are wrongly saying – ‘Where did I go wrong?’
The complexities of where Tommy has ended up – and indeed, where he may go from here – are many, unique only to him and his situation. Like with those who can be victims of abuse, there is also no set-in-stone blueprint for who can go on to be a perpetrator.
There is so much more to it than ‘he needs a bit of discipline’ and ‘the Kat of old would never have taken that!’
EastEnders is doing a brilliant job of exploring this scenario – how does a parent navigate a life where their child is also potentially a monster?
It’s a question posed and dealt with equally brilliantly by Hollyoaks right now in their storyline focusing on sibling sex abuse, where parent Darren Osborne can’t stand to look at his son, the perpetrator, and yet is consumed by the agony of knowing he will suffer the rest of his life for his actions.
Watching a TV show and drawing that definitive line in the sand on where Kat or Darren should have known, should have acted and should have disowned is a mistake, because there is far too much nuance at play with parental and child relationships, not least of all where abuse is concerned.
Kat the fun-loving, mischief-making beloved loudmouth local and Kat the struggling, traumatised and trapped mum are both the same Kat.
Both are valid and not one of the many characteristics is capable of nullifying another.
While there remains doubt anywhere that even a woman outwardly exuding the most feistiness can fall victim to abuse, EastEnders and its soap cohorts must never stop bringing the challenging conversation to the fore.
