Like the title says, I’m not going to recap Game of Thrones anymore.
It’s because of rape.
More after the jump.
A big part of why I have been consistently excited to recap Game of Thrones is because for a long time it felt like an innovative series. Tired fantasy tropes were subverted, common narrative devices were dispensed with, and common tropes seemed thin on the ground. Ned Stark, a man who would have a heroic death in other series, dies ingloriously beneath an executioner’s axe. Magic, which is a dying force is so many fantasy worlds, is making a comeback in Westeros. Robb Stark, who would be the main character of a lesser series simply because he is noble and has a dead father, is dispensed with violently. I hated the Red Wedding when I first read it, but now I think of it as the series dispensing with clichés along with its characters. I thought for a long time that Game of Thrones was going to be a new kind of genre series that was over and above the clichés of its kind of narrative. Politics, for instance, were more important than just another tired hero’s journey. Characters would not be just stock types, but deeper and more conniving.
I thought, for a long time, that Game of Thrones was more than just an ordinary fantasy series. And, for the most part, it is. For the most part, it remains an excellent example of the genre, even as it critiques and dispenses with the fantasy genre’s most tired conventions.
However, this past week Game of Thrones proved itself to be very horribly and troublingly ordinary. There is nothing new, innovative, or groundbreaking in how the series has handled rape. If anything, the show’s depiction of sexual violence is downright retrograde as viewers are invited to be shocked and titillated by images of women being sexually brutalized on multiple occasions.
I am not a prude. I enjoy watching violent spectacles (obviously, since I’ve been recapping this show for years) but there is something fundamentally different about how people view depictions of violence in entertainment from how they view depictions of rape.
We live in a society where we (more or less) have a clear moral understanding that violence is wrong. There are outliers and exceptions, but for the most part pretty much every consumer of media knows that you should not shoot people with guns, stab people with swords, or burn people with dragon fire, provided that dragon fire was a thing you could burn people with. Violence, even the bloodiest of violence, can be entertaining in part because there is an absolute consensus that it is unacceptable, and we can allow it to live safely within the realm of fiction.
This not the case with rape.
Game of Thrones creators have been unwilling to call the scene between Jaime and Cersei from last season a rape scene. In an interview with Vulture last year director Alex Graves said the following about Jaime raping his sister in season four:
What was talked about was that it was not consensual as it began, but Jaime and Cersei, their entire sexual relationship has been based on and interwoven with risk. And Jaime is very much ready to have sex with her because he hasn’t made love to her since he got back, and she’s sort of cajoled into it, and it is consensual. Ultimately, it was meant to be consensual. [The writers] tried to complicate it a little more with her rejecting his new hand and the state of things.
In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview writer Bryan Cogman was similarly evasive about what just happened between Ramsay and Sansa. He said:
This isn’t a timid little girl walking into a wedding night with Joffrey. This is a hardened woman making a choice and she sees this as the way to get back her homeland. Sansa has a wedding night in the sense she never thought she would with one of the monsters of the show. It’s pretty intense and awful and the character will have to deal with it.
Depictions of rape in popular media invite rationalizations for rape. Apologies for rape. Explanations for rape. Hand-waving of rape.
In the making and viewing of fiction, we accept without reservation the unacceptability of violence. Depictions of violence are, for the most part, just depictions. Depictions of rape too often invite apologetics for sexual violence from the viewers. Game of Thrones has, sadly, turned into the bit of media that invites more ugly rhetorical prevarications about rape than anything else. In that area, it is no longer a groundbreaking show. It is infuriatingly ordinary.
I’m still going to watch the show and talk about it with my friends. If The Winds of Winter ever comes out, I’ll read it. If anyone wants to play one of the several Game of Thrones board games, I’m into it. But, I’m done giving this show special attention on this blog. I don’t want to put my byline next to it anymore.
Respect.
“Depictions of rape in popular media invite rationalizations for rape. Apologies for rape. Explanations for rape. Hand-waving of rape.”
This really needs to be said more often. Good for you for putting it out there in such a succinct way.
this scene actually happens in the book though. it’s jeyne poole and not sansa, but it wasn’t a scene added out of nowhere, it was just a character change.
I’m not sure how you thought that the Sansa wedding night theme would turn out – she is afterall marrying a sick and twisted sociopath like Ramsey. I was expecting worse to tell you the truth.
So why wasn’t everyone so angry after Daenerys was actually shown being raped after her wedding in two much more graphic scenes during Season 1?
“I’m done giving this show special attention”
Well, as soon as the producers hear that, I’m sure they’ll pull the plug. “It’s over. Streckert’s not pushing the show anymore. STRIKE THE SETS!”
Look at all these new commenters. This must be like a Gathering of the Juggalos for MRAs, climbing around the internet commenting on anything about GoT right now.
This was the last straw, huh? You’ve seen people decapitated, burnt alive, skinned, and dragons killing kids!!! You’ll be back with some boring recaps in no time. Then you should apologize for your knee jerk reaction and social media exaggeration.
Wth?!?! I knew this show was gross, but are you freakin kidding me? Why the heck would anyone watch that? I don’t care if it’s 5% or 90% of the story line. This show should come with a trigger warning and a phone number for a local rape trauma specialist. I’ll stick to zombies and Winchester brothers thank you. I don’t need rape cultured incestual pornography in my life. #toosickforwords #stoprevictimizing
Opinion you all must read!
My god no one get this man a history book he clearly can’t handle it.
There is no consensus that violence is a bad thing. To say that is to ignore the enormous quantities of violence happening around the world. It’s a baffling and naive statement.
I something interesting in another comment in another post about another media outlet that will stop covering GoT, I lost the exact quote, but the point was this:
Indeed, rape and violence has been part of history (although when you want to discuss how historically accurate a show with dragons and zombies is, you’re a bit off track). Indeed, watching someone get their hand chopped off is disturbing, as is watching someone forced to fight a bear, etc. But few people watching think “Oh man, that brings up memories of how I had to fight that bear!” or “My roommate had her hand chopped off by enemies, and it scarred her emotionally”.
One thing that I think made that episode a last straw was not just the scene, but that it was the episode after the new Mad Max film premiered. Both plots involve rape and violence. You know for sure that most of the female characters in Fury Road have been raped, and you know specifically who did it in some cases. But you don’t sit there and watch it. It’s the difference between artful storytelling and shock value.
Wow, there are a lot of dude’s getting their Fedoras in a twist because of this post.
Wow, there are a lot of gals who expected them to make sweet love.
This is no real loss for us consumers. It would take less time to read all the volumes of “A Song of Ice and Fire” than one of your episode recaps.
Rape is a horrible crime; one of the worst I can imagine. It is also both true and sad that MRAs are trying to downplay how serious it is (and reasonable people will agree that the MRA movement is sickening, but that’s a digression).
It is so horrible, in fact, that if we superimpose our feelings about rape onto a fictional miniseries, is it fair to force it to bear that burden? Of course it’s fair: what is produced in popular media should both reflect who we are and reasonably conform with social mores of what is “abject”. That’s fair. So then, if Sansa’s rape was gratuitous and intended to project the show as “edgy” or even worse yet “sexy”, you’d be absolutely right for abandoning it and I’d be right there with you. And that is essentially what you are arguing is what took place.
You seem really confused. Let’s go back to an article you cite written by Rachel Ediden. She has three precepts, all of which are spot on: “If you do not understand what constitutes rape, you should not be filming rape scenes”. I haven’t seen the showrunners say that what happened wasn’t rape. “If you do not understand how to portray rape without sexualizing it, you should not be [filming] rape scenes”. There was nothing titillating or sexual about Sansa’s rape; it was pretty clearly a reflection of Ramsay’s (well established) sadism, his ideas of attempting to disempower Sansa, and a way for the Bolton family to further supplant the Starks (considering that genealogy in this setting is just as much a weapon as a sword). “If you do not understand the implications of adding graphic rape to a narrative, you shouldn’t be doing it”. Completely agreed; and in fact, I think the show writers know exactly what they are doing.
To distill the issue: was the rape gratuitous and incidental, or is the disgusting reality of rape a point of plot? You seem to think it is the former, when it is pretty clearly the latter.
We can (and should) use fiction to help us articulate what is horrifying and what is sublime (a convention of gothic literature for centuries). Sansa’s rape is horrifying and viewers should absolutely be horrified by it; only a douchebag would not. Instead, what you are doing is deciding that you feel icky about watching Game of Thrones and foisting your icky feelings onto us readers as righteousness. Come on. You can write about your outrage and offer a shell game of fancy sociological convention (seriously bro, talking about Theon’s “male gaze” really pumped the accelerator on your Associate’s degree in Sociology, huh?) But I hope most of us will remain unconvinced.
By the way, no points scored for saying Sansa’s rape is gratuitous because it doesn’t happen in the books. First of all, the author of the books and the showrunners have been consistent in saying that the two are not alike. Second, Ramsay DOES rape someone in the books. You don’t get to be outraged at the show and not the books because it happened to a different character. That’s wildly absurd.
Nor am I trying to reconcile any of my own icky feelings by trying to drop you down a peg. I just know the difference between a plot point and something shoved into my face as gratuitous. To be fair, only the showrunners know what this will do to Sansa’s character arc and maybe they will ultimately prove me wrong. But I doubt it, and I doubt you are smarter than the show’s writers.
You deserve congratulations, nonetheless for your dramatic departure from recapping Game of Thrones. I’m sure you agonized over your decision. Discussed it with friends over drinks. Stared at yourself in the mirror. Asked for the day off from your boss so you could drive to the coast and contemplate the horizon and finally whisper to yourself “I can’t write about Game of Thrones…anymore”.
But if your editor needs someone who CAN write about one of the best shows on television, I’ll happily make time in my schedule while you are busy having writerly revelations.
RapeBO has graphic depictions of rape in almost every show they have ever made. How many graphic, brutal, violent rapes were there on Oz? Rome had at least two or three. Carnivale, Sopranos, GoT, and those are just the ones I’ve seen. I’m sure there are others. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if Larry David raped Laurie David at one point on Curb Your Enthusiasm. You know, for the laughs!
Its like their bread and butter. They know rape shocks people and gets word of mouth going about their shows, so they do it a lot.
What I don’t understand is why everyone is so shocked and dismayed about this particular depiction of rape. Is it because a lot of sensitive nerds and sincere feminists watch it? Or is it just that hitching your feminist journalist outrage bandwagon to a very popular show gets you more ad revenue and click throughs?
I’m a little torn on this. I think the show actually handled this rape reasonably well. After 4 seasons of watching Sansa being tossed around like a pawn and spending most of that time being afraid for her safety, she finally had something really horrific happen to her. I’m not saying I like it, it was pretty harrowing. But unlike the Cersi/Jamie rape which was just weird and seemed to come from nowhere, this one has been building up to that point. And I think it’s important from a story standpoint. Cersi brought down Ned Stark for doing the exact same thing to her years ago, forcing her into a brutal marriage with Robert Baratheon where she was repeatedly raped for years. This is why I always have a bit of sympathy for her, even when she does terrible things.
I do find the showrunner’s reaction to the rape disturbing. Just because you set a show in the past doesn’t mean today’s morality doesn’t apply. It’s cowardly to pretend otherwise.
I understand not wanting to to watch it though. I stopped watching Downton Abbey after they put in a pointless rape of one of the main characters. And I’m really enjoying the conversation this is sparking.
“Set the show in the past”?
When the fuck will people quit thinking this is historical fiction?
“Depictions of rape in popular media invite rationalizations for rape. Apologies for rape. Explanations for rape. Hand-waving of rape.”
Then how should these scenes be handled then? Is the solution to ban depictions of rape altogether? Pretend they didn’t happen? Maybe have a big ol’ disclaimer before the scene begins. How are you supposed to advance a story that, like it or not, takes places in a medieval realm where rape happens, and not depict some elements of rape?
Thank you. I stopped watching the show about halfway through the first season, when one of the young characters is forced into marriage and shown crying as her “spouse” approaches her sexually, and is then shown to be madly in love with him the next day. In real life that woukd be called Stockholm syndrome, and I got pretty disgusted and bored at that point. But I have some badass feminist friends who stuck it out well after that. I just don’t consider that something that makes me feel that awful to be entertainment. And I am a HUGE fan of horror. This show works hard to make cruelty towards women look sexy. Gross. HBO doesn’t need our $ anyway.
This is why I stopped watching Sons of Anarchy. Rape is rape, no matter the sex or the victim or situation. And the fact that most see prison rape as a-okay speaks volumes about our rape culture. Glad I stopped watching this show long ago.