That loud noise you heard coming out of Southeast last night was me screaming at a television at the ending of last night’s Game of Thrones. The show is very good at some things. Depicting rape is not one of them.
An unpleasant discussion and spoilers after the jump.
Game of Thrones has a rape problem.
Multiple times now the show has used rape as just one more thing to shock the audience. Dany and Khal Drogo’s consensual sex in the book was changed to rape. Jaime raped Cersei last season. Last night Ramsay raped Sansa. It is possible for a narrative to handle rape in deft and responsible way. Game of Thrones didn’t.
Ramsay has been one of the show’s weakest characters for some time now. Far too much of season three was given over to him torturing Theon in a series of repetitive and unpleasant scenes of torture porn. My viewing parties would frequently erupt into cries of “not this shit again” or “why are we wasting time on this?” whenever Ramsay’s bullshit sadism would get more screen time, and those scenes of him and Theon usually afforded an opportunity for folks to get off the couch and get a beer.
Rape, though, is different from torture, murder, or getting your head chopped off with a sword. I wrote about this last year when Jaime raped Cersei, but I think that this is a point that bears repeating: Violence and murder are, anymore, transparently unacceptable to the vast majority of reasonable people out there watching television, and a good deal of people watching Game of Thrones have probably never been stabbed with a sword. Rape is different. There were people watching Game of Thrones last night who have been raped. There were also people who think it’s not that bad, or excusable, or who like watching it because they hate women.
Adding to the weirdness of all this, a lot of the focus of the rape scene was on Theon, and Ramsay making him watch. The last scene of the show was Theon crying as Ramsay tortured his erstwhile sister. The implicit message of how the scene was shot and staged made Theon seem like the “real” victim of Sansa’s rape. The act was presented in the context of a man’s discomfort rather than the actual victim’s, which simultaneously was exploitative and dismissive of Sansa’s suffering.
There are probably a thousand good ways that that issue could have been dealt with, and Game of Thrones did not choose any of them. Again, this is a problem for the show. It’s been a problem for a while now. For a better rundown than anything I could ever say about this, I recommend this essay by Rachel Edidin over at Comics Alliance. It’s from last year, but everything she said is still (sadly) relevant.
My enthusiasm for talking about the rest of the episode is pretty slim right now. This will be quick.
Internship of Death Arya took the next step at her Faceless Man internship and actually killed someone. She euthanized a sick girl and, seeing that she was willing to actually take a life out of a sense of duty rather than just anger, Jaqen H’ghar let her see what they do with the bodies after they clean them. Arya and the assassin strode down to a sizable catacomb filled with a head collection right out of Return to Oz. Presumably, the various faces are what the Faceless Men use to transform. Once a face is added to the collection, they can use it to transform. Nothing weird about that.
Suddenly: Pirates! Tyrion and Jorah met some pirates in a sequence that allowed Tyrion to do what he does best: Think on his feet and talk about his cock. Just as he was about to be killed Tyrion started talking up Jorah as one of the best fighters in Westeros, and a good potential addition to Meereen’s fighting pits. In an instant, Tyrion became Jorah’s new boxing promoter, and also proved to the pirates that he does not have a “dwarf sized cock.” Tyrion and Jorah are bound for Meereen, just like they were before.
The wonderful return of the Queen of Thorns. Olenna Tyrell, probably one of the best characters in the show, had a great scene of verbally sparring with Cersei. Olenna was (understandably) upset that Loras had been locked up by the Faith Militant for his homosexuality, and demanded his release. Cersei, meanwhile, attempted to be coy and play politics.
The scene worked well because of its asymmetry. Olenna was ready to sit down and have a no bullshit talk about Loras, the role of the Faith Militant, and how House Tyrell is not to be fucked with because they control a sizable amount of agriculture in Westeros. Her bluntness clashed wonderfully with Cersei’s attempt at aloofness, showing once again that Cersei is not at all the canny political player that she thinks she is. The agreement (of sorts) that they came to was that Loras would have to answer for his “crimes” before the Faith, but that they would be dismissed and that would be that.
Everything seemed to be going according to plan at Cersei’s sex court. Loras denined the charges, Margaery said that he was totally not gay, and then Loras was suddenly betrayed by his former squire and lover. He might have been able to deny the charges, but he lashed out against his accuser and ex and showed his hand. Loras was taken away for sex crimes, and Margaery for lying to the Faith.
As she was dragged away she kept shouting for Tommen. He is, after all, king, and could put a stop to all of this. Tommen, though, is a small weak boy who can’t make decisions well. This is why monarchies are stupid, people.
Also, Cersei probably shouldn’t be too cavalier about the Faith Militant locking people up for sex things. She is a known brother fucker, and the High Sparrow and his death metal puritans probably don’t think too highly of that kind of thing.
Bronn, it turns out, has a pretty okay singing voice. He was in Dorne, and singing about Dorne, and Jaime, who reminded them that they were trying to do stealth, made him shut up. The two of them bungled up their covert ops mission in Dorne, got caught, and fought some Sand Snakes in a battle that did not have especially good fight choreography. It looked like someone was going to die until Areo Hotah stepped in and stopped it all. Doctor Bashir, who is the Boss of Dorne, is probably going to be very disappointed in all of them.
Oh, and Bronn got cut by a Sand Snake. I really hope that people who call themselves “Sand Snakes” don’t put poison on their blades.
That’s all I got. I’m going to go watch Fury Road to get that episode out of my head. See you next week.
At the credits I was convinced the show was punishing me. Either for thinking this show is getting stale or for illegally downloading the whole goddamned thing.
Then I watched Veep and everything was a little better. TELEVISION!
I might be done with this show. Adding in rape is nothing new for this show, it’s a huge problem and it’s been heavily discussed already so I don’t need to retread it.
But something that should be talked about is that rape on HBO drama is almost always approached from the male perspective, which is part of what made the lingering shot of Sansa’s back so obviously intended to titillate and what made focal point of Theon’s male gaze so intensely offensive. We weren’t meant to empathize with Sansa. We were either intended to see things from Ramsay’s perspective (with that back shot) or we were meant to empathize with Theon. It seems like it’s ALWAYS from the male point of view when rape happens.
And it isn’t like HBO doesn’t know how to film rape from the perspective of the victim. Actually, they’re really good at it. For an example, see Oz. The rape in that show is horrific and as difficult to watch as it should be. However, the difference between the two series is in Oz men were being raped by men. When HBO is asked to tackle a female character getting raped, though, they show time and time again that they aren’t capable of putting themselves in the woman’s shoes. Decisions like that tell the audience, loud and clear, that Sansa isn’t a real character the way Theon is.
Sansa is just a thing. And I wish HBO would take a hint from Mad Max and have their female characters shout from the rooftops “WE ARE NOT THINGS.”
But instead, it seems they are going the other way with that.