Review: Rape as Control in “Snowfall”

In Season 1, Episode 3, respect isn’t earned, it’s enforced.

Everything in life is about sex. Except for sex, sex is about power.

I’ve never watched Snowfall. Never been a fan of anything set in the ‘80s, nor drug-related, nor gang-related, but over time, the face of its main character, Franklin Saint, continued to wiggle his way into my atmosphere.

I sat on an uncomfortable gray chair in my living room, my friend finishing the braids atop my head, when she suggested I start Snowfall. Though I was hesitant, we were on day two out of five of braiding, and eye candy was a necessity at this point.

“Snowfall is so good, but season one, episode three, is so gross I can’t watch,” was the first sentence she uttered after we had begun and finished the second episode, “Make Them Birds Fly.”

Action-packed, provocative-littered, young men dealing cocaine in the ‘80s, when it was only a rich, white person's drug, was my first observation of the show. I proceeded to ask my friend what made the episode so gross and uncomfortable for her. She proceeded to recite the entire scene.

“So basically, Franklin Saint gets jumped by a gang, and his drug supply gets stolen. He and his crew then go on a hunt to find who took his drugs.” I listened to her attentively, and still didn't understand.

She proceeds, “They finally found who took the drugs, and broke into his house, but he won’t give Franklin and his gang any information.”

“They get so frustrated that the man who stole their drugs won't give them any information, so they take matters into their own hands and drag this guy into a bedroom. The bed keeps creaking over, and over, it’s awfully quiet.”

Franklin and his friend continue to wonder what's happening until they peek through the bedroom door and say, “Karvel ain’t killing him… he’s giving it to him.”

And in that moment, the dynamic shifted.

Violence wasn’t new to Snowfall by any means. Viewers have already seen all of the gore, blood, guns, desperation, and so much more.

But this was different: It was about power.

Karvel, the stealer’s, assault on Lenny isn’t framed as homosexuality, or sex, or desire. It’s framed as leverage and anger because that is what rape is.

Although my friend referred to this scene as gross, gross was not the exact word I would use. She was scared, uncomfortable, and confused. Why was rape used as information extraction through power?

The answer is simple: Life imitates art.

 In “In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio,” Philippe Bourgois embeds himself in East Harlem to document how marginalized men, excluded from legal labor markets, construct alternative systems of dignity through the underground economy.

Throughout the novel, Bourgois shows how violence functions and stays alive. sends messages. It establishes hierarchy. It prevents challenges.

Karvel’s assault on Lenny is an unspoken, calculated communication.

When it comes to respect and governance over another individual, whether it’s hazing, gang violence, or anything in between, it’s all about dismantling masculinity through the most sacred parts of oneself.

In a patriarchal society, masculinity is currency. To sexually violate a man is to publicly reorder the hierarchy. It echoes darker histories originating from American Slavery. Buck-breaking took place where enslaved Black men were raped, or forced to rape family members, sisters, friends, in front of entire plantations, to dehumanize, terrorize, and scare them into submission.

Nothing is about sex; it’s about demanding power over someone via sex.

Rape collapses identity. It creates shame so profound that it outlives physical bruises. It enforces obedience not just through pain, but through psychological fracture.

All roads lead back to dominance. To the unhealthy thrill of control. To the sexualized assertion of dominance. Cat-calling. Hazing. Prison assaults. Gang initiations. Each exists on a spectrum where sex becomes a performance of power.

Through spectacle. Through violation.

So is respect earned, or demanded?

In South Central Los Angeles and El Barrio, these structures deny dignity and build their own through coercion, ultimately weaponizing intimacy.

Season one, episode three, forces viewers to sit with that discomfort. It exposes how fragile masculinity is within gang hierarchies, and how sexual violence becomes the most extreme assertion of dominance.

It’s not there for shock value alone. It’s there to show us who Franklin is becoming, and when that becomes disguised as “just business,” we are no longer talking about a drug dealing empire.

We are talking about what Franklin is willing to tolerate to win.