Tag: Game of Thrones Theme Week

‘Game of Thrones’: Is Jon Snow Too Feminine for the Masculine World?

Whilst ostensibly male in terms of gender, Jon Snow’s character is arguably definably feminine through his actions, motivations and interactions with both female and male characters. … This is not to suggest that Jon’s character is not masculine; certainly his actions in battle signal him to be a hero in the archetypical sense, but I am suggesting that Jon Snow’s masculinity coexists with a feminine expression…

Game of Thrones_Jon Snow

This guest post written by Siobhan Denton appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones. | Spoilers ahead.

“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; … identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” (Butler: 1999, 25). Judith Butler’s concept of gender as being performative and defined by actions rather than a universal identifiable notion is entirely apt when we consider the gender of Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow. Whilst ostensibly male in terms of gender, Jon Snow’s character is arguably definably feminine through his actions, motivations and interactions with both female and male characters.

The majority of critique and discussion on Jon’s character has, thus far, focused upon either his overt masculinity or his progressive feminism. This is not to suggest that Jon’s character is not masculine; certainly his actions in battle signal him to be a hero in the archetypical sense, but I am suggesting that Jon Snow’s masculinity coexists with a feminine expression, and it is this coexistence that leads to the events at the end of season five.

Interactions with men

Jon’s interactions with men clearly demonstrate this sense of coexistence. He is both intensely masculine, respected by the men of The Night’s Watch, and thoroughly feminine in his interactions with both Sam and Olly.

Take for instance, Jon’s first interaction with Sam Tarly. Jon is already respected by the men of the watch, and we witness him intelligently coaching and instructing his fellow men in how to improve their fighting technique. As Sam arrives, his appearance is openly ridiculed by the men as they comment both on his weight and his subsequent perceived weakness. As Sam is beaten and humiliated, Jon rapidly steps in and requests that the actions cease. His interruption draws comment from Ser Alliser Thorne who remarks, “Alright then, Lord Snow, you wish to defend your lady love?” This comment, in which Thorne attempts to highlight a male and female dichotomy between the two is notable. For Thorne, Jon’s defence of Sam marks him as explicitly male with Sam fulfilling the female role, but for me, this defense highlights a feminine and in turn a maternal nature to Jon. His connection with Sam is based on pure emotion at this point: he has no knowledge of his character but has responded to him on a visceral level.

Game of Thrones_Jon Snow and Sam

While some may comment that such a defense links to Jon’s sense of nobility and honor (a trope that is regularly linked to masculinity), there is no real honor in stepping in for a man who cannot defend himself. At this point in the narrative Sam is pitiful and Jon’s interception further marks out Sam’s current pathetic nature. Thus, Jon has not acted upon honor, as he would be all too aware of the manner in which this interaction would be interpreted, rather he has acted upon a desire to care and look after others, a quality more stereotypically linked with femininity. After Jon has successfully defended Sam, Thorne orders Jon to “clean the armory as that’s all [he’s] good for,” further reducing him to a typical feminine role of the domestic. Thorne’s disdain for Jon seems to stem from his clear desire to protect and tend to others, as there is no place for such behavour in The Night’s Watch (women are banned from remaining at Castle Black).

Jon places himself in direct conflict with both Thorne and the overtly masculine men of the Watch when he later notes that the men should no longer bully or humiliate Sam. As Jon informs the men of his desire for Sam to be cared for, his motivation is once again linked to a romantic interest as Sam is referred to as Jon’s “girlfriend.” Here, Jon’s embodiment of masculinity and femininity is clearly apparent: his motivation stems from a feminine connection but his manner of dealing with the situation is violent and thereby stereotypically masculine. This intent, combined with such action, clearly marks him as different from the other men. Jon is unique in his approach and, whilst initially respected for it, it is soon apparent that for the other men who simply embody masculinity, Jon Snow cannot remain.

This coexistence of intent and action is again apparent in Jon’s interactions with Olly. Interestingly, this happens once again in a moment in which Jon is acting his most typically masculine and coaching Olly in developing his fighting technique. Notably, Jon’s focus in this interaction is his desire to ensure that Olly is able to protect himself, instructing him on numerous occasions to “keep your shield up.” Olly is not being coached in how to kill, but rather how to defend. Jon’s aim is to ensure the safety of the young boy rather than training him to become an efficient killer.

Game of Thrones_Jon and Ygritte

Interactions with women

Jon Snow’s most formative female relationship is that with Ygritte, the Free Folk (Wildling) woman with whom he falls in love. It is worth nothing that Jon, formally directed to being the masculine counterpart in his relationship with Sam, is here relegated to the feminine role. Ygritte’s superior hunting knowledge and her difficulty in understanding why any girl should ‘swoon’ immediately mark her out as functioning in a conventionally non-feminine manner. Her focus in this interaction is upon violence and possession, remarking to Snow that, “You are mine,” whilst Jon’s focus is once again on seeking to protect the lives of others. Ygritte is unfazed by the prospect of their death and in her possession of her lover, expects him to remain her possession beyond death.

Her constant refrain of, “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” highlights the hierarchy in their relationship. It is useful here to utilize Deborah Tannen’s difference theory, in which she highlights the variances between male and female conversation. Indeed, much of Tannen’s theory, in which she highlights six contrasts between male and female language, are particularly pertinent in the discussion of Jon’s nature. Take for example, her discussion upon the concept of independence (the male characteristic) and intimacy (the female characteristic). Tannen notes that men are more concerned with status and thus focus more on gaining independence. Men risk losing their status if asking for permission and thus reducing their independence, but through his allegiance with the Night’s Watch, Jon has lost all independence, as Ygritte readily points out to him. It is she that is truly free and she recognizes this, whilst Jon has neither sought independence nor recognized that it is lacking.

In a similar manner, we can see that when considering Tannen’s concept of conflict (the male characteristic) and compromise (the female characteristic), Jon once again aligns himself more with the female characteristic. He seeks a compromise with the Free Folk (Wildlings) after their defeat at the hand of Stannis Baratheon, identifying and understanding that conflict and violence is futile. Ygritte, prior to her death, is entirely focused on conflict: she sees no sense in compromise regardless of Jon’s interjections. She questions his lack of conflict when he informs her that he is a Stark, unable to understand or even identify with his approach.

Ultimately, it is this notion of compromise that results in Jon’s apparent death at the end of season 5. The men of the Night’s Watch are unable to reconcile themselves with his approach to dealing with the Free Folk (Wildlings). For the men, who only embody masculinity, a compromise signals weakness. In order to coax Jon into the trap set for him, the men appeal to his emotional, and thereby feminine side, by attempting to engage him emotionally (informing him that news of his uncle has arrived). Is this to suggest then that a character who readily embodies both masculinity and femininity cannot exist in this patriarchal world? Sam, another character who arguably exhibits both genders in his actions, perhaps recognizing the precarious nature of such an existence, has physically removed himself from Castle Black, and in doing so has, thus far, survived. For Jon Snow, whose emotions ever connect him to Castle Black, there could be no such escape.

References:

  • Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.

Siobhan Denton is a teacher and writer living in Wales, UK. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Film and Television Studies. She is especially interested in depictions of female desire and transitions from youth to adulthood. She tweets at @siobhan_denton and writes at https://theblueandthedim.wordpress.com/.

“Love No One But Your Children”: Cersei Lannister and Motherhood on ‘Game of Thrones’

Cersei Lannister is cunning, deceitful, jealous and entirely about self-preservation. Yet, her show self seems to tie these exclusively with her relationship with her children… Why is motherhood the go-to in order to flesh out her character? Why can’t she be separate from her children, the same way the father of them, Jaime Lannister, is?

Game of Thrones_Cersei Lannister 2

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones. | Spoilers ahead.

Love her or hate her, Cersei Lannister is definitely one of the most intriguing characters in Game of Thrones, both in the novels and the TV show. Her popularity was enough to earn actress Lena Headey two Emmy nominations and spawn endless Cersei reaction gifs. However, if you were to run her character’s actions and motivations in the novels alongside that of her show counterpart, you can notice one major difference; how motherhood impacts her character in each medium. Cersei Lannister is cunning, deceitful, jealous and entirely about self-preservation. Yet, her show self seems to tie these exclusively with her relationship with her children, whereas in the books, she is a lot more separated from them in her motivations.

In the first novel of the series, A Game of Thrones, Cersei uses manipulation, her sexuality and murder in playing “the game of thrones.” She toys with Sansa Stark’s aspirations and naiveté in order to get her to inadvertently aid the Lannisters. She tries to seduce Ned Stark in order to keep his silence (long enough to kill him, anyway) on vital information from her husband Robert Baratheon and, when that failed, takes the King out of the picture herself.

However, show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt the need to add another weapon to her arsenal in order for her to play the game: her children. After her lover and brother, Jaime Lannister, pushes child Bran Stark from a tower and he becomes comatose, Cersei visits his grieving mother Catelyn Stark. She sympathizes with her pain, recalling the heartbreak she suffered when she lost her child she had with Robert. It’s obvious that Cersei’s intentions here were to throw Catelyn’s suspicions away from the Lannisters, but Cersei’s pain was also plainly earnest.

What I find problematic with this, though, is the fact that the creators felt the need to add this weapon to this character in order to give her more depth, as if why she uses her other weapons wouldn’t be enough. There are reasons deeply explained as to why she targets women and uses them for her own gain; the troubling reason why she uses her own sexuality and what she feels she gains when ordering the death of others. Why not just explore those aspects? Why is motherhood the go-to in order to flesh out her character? Why can’t she be separate from her children, the same way the father of them, Jaime Lannister, is?

The fact that the showrunners fabricated the fact that Cersei gave birth and grieved the loss of her and Robert’s child in the show remains problematic for another reason. In the novels, when she once got pregnant by Robert, she had an abortion. If the creators feel that Cersei exercising her right over her own body isn’t a valid enough reason for her decision, is the fact that she conceived the child through rape not enough? Are the creators of the show really trying to suggest that revealing Cersei to have had an abortion too much of a flaw, that her show self must selflessly love her children from conception, no matter the father or circumstance?

Cersei using her children as a weapon is apparent throughout the entire series, whether it’s for her own motivations or to garner audience sympathy. In season 2, there is a storyline where Cersei’s son King Joffrey orders the execution of his late “father” King Robert Baratheon’s bastard children in order to secure his place as ruler of the seven kingdoms. Cersei laments this to Tyrion later, breaking down over the fact that she has raised a monster.

Game of Thrones_Cersei and Tommen

 

Conversely, this devastating act is actually committed by Cersei in the novels. The prospect of power is so vital to her as she feels she has been denied it due to her gender her whole life. Now that her husband is dead, she doesn’t want to lose this newly acquired power and jeopardize the survival of her children. Also, the fourth novel, A Feast for Crows, reveals the act was partly motivated by revenge against her husband for his flagrant infidelity which humiliated her.

Again, these flaws disrupt David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s black and white view of motherhood; that if you are a mother who does not care for children, you have no substance. This rings true in how they made Catelyn Stark seek repentance for not loving Jon Snow as her own child and how the Wildling mother Karsi would not kill wights to save her own life, as they happened to be children. Complexity in motherhood seems to be a flaw that the creators always have to right.

The most simplified version of Cersei in relation to her children came in season 4. After the death of her eldest child, Joffrey, she immediately believed that her younger brother Tyrion was responsible. Cersei’s way of ensuring that he was found guilty was to manipulate the other players of the game to her side. She visits Margaery Tyrell, who’s betrothed to Cersei’s youngest child Tommen, asking for her aid in making sure Tommen is supported ruling the seven kingdoms. Her showing concern over her son’s well-being is honest, but genuinely trying to gain Margaery’s sympathy over the situation isn’t. Cersei does the same again when she visits Oberyn Martell to supposedly discuss her daughter’s well-being while she resides at Oberyn’s residence in Dorne. Later in the episode, Oberyn calls Cersei out by stating, “Making honest feelings do dishonest work is one of Cersei’s many gifts.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZKgxzW4J3o”]

However, in the novel A Storm of Swords, the way that Cersei plays the game has nothing to do with her children at all. Aside from making Tyrion lose the support of his friend Bronn, which was included in the show, one of her most devastating schemes was using Shae, Tyrion’s lover, against him. In Cersei’s first chapter in A Feast for Crows, upon finding Shae’s corpse in her father’s bed, Cersei recalls how she promised Shae security if she would testify with damning evidence against Tyrion in court. Yet, Cersei doesn’t follow through on her promise and discarded Shae when she got what she wanted from her.

Game of Thrones_Cersei and Shae

Cersei’s move was omitted from the show, where if handled right, could have revealed a lot about Cersei’s character. Throughout the book series, Cersei suffers from internalized misogyny, as even though she is the first-born child of the family, her father had no respect for her because she’s a woman. Her whole life, Cersei vies for power in a society where it is so easily given to men and in doing so, she comes to loathe her own gender because of it. Even though she believes that she should be queen of the seven kingdoms, she feels that she is the exception because of her family status and she mistrusts women in general.

Cersei wants power so desperately but she’s never been taught how to use it and therefore makes a mess of things when she gets it (hence her season 5 storyline). She makes enemies of women she should have made her allies. Cersei is a walking disaster of a character, with the book series delving into her psyche and giving a critical commentary on the effect growing up in a misogynistic environment can have on a woman. Despite this, her number one priority that the show creators keep reinforcing is the safety of her children.

Game of Thrones_Cersei and Tywin

Likewise, a vital piece of Cersei’s backstory was discarded. In the opening scene for season 5, there is a flashback of Cersei receiving a damning prophecy that a younger, more beautiful queen will take all that she holds dear and that her three children will die before she does. Given the Cersei from the show’s devotion to her children, this is obvious motivation for Cersei to believe that Margaery will be a threat to her family. However, the show chose to omit this line from the prophecy:

“And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands around your pale white throat and choke the life from you (A Feast for Crows, page 611).”

Cersei later discovers that ‘valonqar’ means “little brother” in High Valyrian. Cersei believes that it’s Tyrion (she never considers Jaime) and that’s why she harbors so much hatred for him. This information was clearly not necessary for the showrunners, as it has no direct tie to her children.

This ultimately leads us to the mishandling of Cersei Lannister’s defining scene: her walk of shame. As mentioned previously, author George R.R. Martin has shown us that Cersei will do whatever she feels necessary to her to hold onto power. In A Feast for Crows, Cersei laments her son and his new wife ruling the seven kingdoms:

“I waited, and so can he. I waited half my life. She had played the dutiful daughter, the blushing bride, the pliant wife. She had suffered Robert’s drunken groping, Jaime’s jealousy, Renly’s mockery, Varys with his titters, Stannis endlessly grinding his teeth. She had contended with Jon Arryn, Ned Stark, and her vile, treacherous, murderous dwarf brother, all the while promising herself that one day it would be her turn. If Margaery Tyrell thinks to cheat me of my hour in the sun, she had bloody well think again. (A Feast for Crows, page 387).”

From then on, Cersei embarks on a narrative driven to garnering the respect she never received due to her gender. She imprisons Margaery, partly due to her being a threat to her power and mostly due to her belief that she is the younger queen in the prophecy she received when she was a child. She refuses help from her uncle Kevan, believing she is capable enough to rule single-handedly. Cersei tries to manipulate religious organization The Faith Militant, which dramatically backfires. This causes her own imprisonment, and what is the first thing she is punished with? Her sexuality.

Game of Thrones_Cersei walk of shame

After admitting to sex outside of marriage, she is made to walk the streets of King’s Landing naked, whilst its people throw garbage at her and hurl gendered slurs. Cersei isn’t receiving the punishment of a lifetime for being a terrible ruler; she is being shamed for the thing she feels has been hindering her entire life: for being a woman.

Even though the show keeps this scene, the context is different. Cersei has Margaery imprisoned mainly due to her overprotectiveness of her son Tommen, less so for her insecurity of her status. Therefore, when she is arrested and punished, it doesn’t ring with the theme that Martin originally intended. You still understand as an audience member of the television series that what happens to Cersei is sexist, but the whole event seems more of the outcome of Cersei’s plunders rather than a greater commentary.

The Cersei Lannister in the A Song of Ice and Fire series is desperate for people to see beyond her gender. Maybe David Benioff and D.B. Weiss should listen to her.

Sophie Hall is from London and has graduated with a degree in Creative Writing. She is currently writing a sci-fi comic book series called White Leopard forWasteland Paradise Comics. Her previous articles for Bitch Flicks were on Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and director Andrea Arnold. You can follow her on Twitter at @sophiesuzhall.

‘Game of Thrones’: Catelyn Stark and Motherhood Tropes

Catelyn Stark’s main function in the show is to be a mother to Robb Stark, a prominent male character, whereas in the book series, ‘A Song of Ice and Fire,’ she is so much more than that. … The show creators are here relying on mother tropes in order to set up the characters; Catelyn is now the nag who only cares about her family and nothing else, whereas Ned is now the valiant hero who wants to seek justice.

Game of Thrones_Catelyn Stark

This guest post written by Sophie Hall appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones. | Spoilers ahead.

Season 5 of Game of Thrones proved to be the most controversial season to date, where the show’s already notorious sexual violence escalated to an all-time high with the non-canon rape of the teenage character Sansa Stark, as well as Cersei Lannister surviving rape. This sparked endless debates on whether the show’s treatment of rape was only to be there as shock value, or whether show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were trying to expose the hardships that women endure in a patriarchal society (I’m in favor of the former). Although this is a topic that has rightfully been brought to light and criticized, there are many other troubling issues that the creators handle awkwardly in Game of Thrones. One of the most troubling for me? Motherhood.

Let’s start with one of the first point of view character to be introduced in the novels: Stark matriarch Catelyn Stark (née Tully). Whenever someone asks me who my favorite characters are in Game of Thrones, I’m usually met with quizzical looks when I reveal one of them to be Catelyn Stark. Their responses I usually get vary from, “Why?” to ‘Really, she’s one of my least!” But the one that I found irks me the most is, “Who, Robb Stark’s mother?” Catelyn Stark’s main function in the show is to be a mother to Robb Stark, a prominent male character, whereas in the book series A Song of Ice and Fire, she is so much more than that.

Let’s cover Catelyn’s overall arc in the first novel, A Game of Thrones. Towards the beginning, Catelyn receives a letter from her sister Lysa saying not to trust anyone in house Lannister as they killed her husband. This prompts Catelyn to beg her husband Ned to go to King’s Landing with them to act as Hand of the King so he can spy on them. After her son Bran was pushed from a tower and crippled, this only added fuel to the fire and caused her to kidnap Tyrion Lannister as she believed him to be the culprit. Towards the end of the novel, after discovering Ned had been executed, Catelyn realizes that war is not worth it when innocent lives are lost, and pleads against her son Robb and his supporters going to war: “Ned is gone… and many other good men besides, and none of them will return to us. Must we have more deaths still?” (A Game of Thrones, Page 769).

However, in the pilot episode of the television series, Catelyn and Ned’s roles are reversed. She begs her husband Ned to stay with her and the family in Winterfell whilst he insists on discovering the truth. The show creators are here relying on mother tropes in order to set up the characters; Catelyn is now the nag who only cares about her family and nothing else, whereas Ned is now the valiant hero who wants to seek justice. Although, as season 1 was the most loyal season to its source material, a lot of Catelyn’s agency was retained. She still imprisons Tyrion Lannister in order to seek justice for her son and she acts as a strategist for her son Robb. She is the one to even organize the marriages between her children and Walder Frey’s, showing that she is willing to sacrifice her children’s personal wishes for the greater good.

Game of Thrones_Catelyn and Robb

However, when the creators started to veer from the novels, Catelyn’s arc became less relevant to them. In the second novel in the series, A Clash of Kings, Catelyn is informed that her two youngest children, Bran and Rickon, have been murdered at their home in Winterfell. Overwhelmed by grief, Catelyn makes the impromptu decision of releasing Jaime Lannister as a trade for her daughters who are being held hostage in King’s Landing. This is a continuation of Catelyn’s arc; she was the one to beg Robb not to go to war for fear of further death, and when her greatest fears were realized, she went behind his back in order to preserve life.

However, in season 2, Catelyn releases Jaime Lannister without hearing of her children’s demise. The reason? She wanted her daughters back. In the show, we have not heard Catelyn objecting to going to war or how she is constantly haunted by the prospect of innocent lives lost. For the creators, the only reason given for Catelyn’s actions are that she’s a mother, and therefore wants her children returned. The show even seems to go on and demonize Catelyn’s motherly reason, as Robb then imprisons Catelyn for this betrayal until the end of season 3, an act he never commits in the novels. Instead of the fact that she has seen what war does and how senseless it is, they removed her character development and had her commit an on the surface illogical act because she only cares about her children.

Also, the creators removed Catelyn’s sexuality. The show is known for having exploitive sex scenes (the term “sexposition” was coined from this show), yet the sex scene with Catelyn and her husband Ned Stark was mysteriously cut. Healthy, consensual sex (with the only thing missing being Beyonce’s self titled album playing in the background) between a middle-aged married couple with children is apparently too much for audiences of a HBO show to handle.

Then, season 3 happened and proved to be the final nail in Catelyn’s mother-shaped coffin. Her screen time and prominence to the narrative was reduced drastically, with her son Robb overtaking her, even though he is not a point of view character in the novels. Hell, even Theon’s character, who didn’t even appear in the third book A Storm of Swords, had more screen time than Catelyn. His narrative consisted getting repeatedly tortured, mutilated and sexually assaulted by his captor Ramsay Snow. Even though this could be seen as important to Theon’s overall arc in the show, the fact that Catelyn’s story was given prominence over his in the source material should indicate to the creators which character to focus on.

In the second episode of the season, Catelyn converses with Robb’s new bride, Talisa Maegyr, over her late husband’s bastard son Jon Snow. It has been made apparent in the show and in the books of Catelyn’s dislike of Jon; he is the walking reminder of her husband’s infidelity during the early years of their marriage. In the novels, this is something she never apologizes for or even questions. This is one of the prominent flaws that readers have found with the character.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k_HWCIT8nY”]

However, in said episode, she shows remorse over her treatment of Jon Snow and even blames herself for the current war due to the fact she couldn’t love “a motherless child.” Now, the fact that she feels so much death and destruction because she refused to mother a child that was a result of her husband’s affair is problematic enough in itself. But the fact that the creators felt the need to dedicate Catelyn’s minimal screen time to absolving this flaw in herself shows how they view motherhood. They feel that a female character’s maternal instincts need to take center stage of her storyline, even if there’s no real call for it.

The majority of the characters’ flaws on Game of Thrones have been altered from their original sources. But if we compare the removal of these flaws in comparison to Catelyn’s, it’s quite disturbing. For example, in the show: Tyrion Lannister killed Shae out of self-defense rather than in cold blood, Theon Greyjoy never raped serving girl Kyra when he took Winterfell, and Oberyn Martell never physically assaulted the mother of Obara Sand when he took his daughter away from her. Are the creators hereby suggesting that murder, rape and domestic violence are on the same page as not being maternal to a child that is not yours?

The most pivotal scene for Catelyn in season 3, nay the whole series, was the Red Wedding. In the novel A Storm of Swords, after Walder Frey ambushes the Stark army and Robb, Catelyn pleads for Robb’s life — and is denied. After losing what she thinks is all of her children save Sansa, she pointlessly kills one of Frey’s grandsons and is then killed herself. However, finding Catelyn’s corpse discarded in a river, character Beric Dondarrion resurrects her using the powers he inherited through his religion. The Catelyn we are greeted with is not the same Catelyn, though — she has turned into the thing that she was trying to avoid since the end of A Game of Thrones –– a senseless, bloodthirsty source of destruction; the epitome of war itself. She becomes Lady Stoneheart.

Game of Thrones_Catelyn Red Wedding

The importance of the continuation of Catelyn Stark’s storyline is highlighted by this interview with the novels’ author George R.R. Martin:

“Well, I wanted to make a strong mother character. The portrayal of women in epic fantasy have been problematical for a long time. These books are largely written by men but women also read them in great, great numbers. And the women in fantasy tend to be very atypical women… With Catelyn there is something reset for the Eleanor of Aquitaine, the figure of the woman who accepted her role and functions with a narrow society and, nonetheless, achieves considerable influence and power and authority despite accepting the risks and limitations of this society. She is also a mother… Then, a tendency you can see in a lot of other fantasies is to kill the mother or to get her off the stage. She’s usually dead before the story opens…”

Here, Martin shows us that even though Catelyn is a female character who has accepted the problematic gender roles of her society, she is no less important than the willful Arya Stark, the warrior Brienne of Tarth, or the conquering Daenerys Targaryen.

But this is how it went down in the show: after Robb’s storyline comes to an end, so does Catelyn Stark’s, and she never reappears in the show again. Save for the added sexual violence, the removal of Lady Stoneheart’s character after she did not appear in the season 4 finale was one of the greatest disappointments for fans of the novels. By removing her arc, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss removed the crux of what A Song of Ice and Fire is about: that war makes monsters of us all. The director of the finale, Alex Graves, had this to say about the character’s disappearance:

“Well, she was never going to be a part of it. I know it caught on on the internet, and people really started to believe it. I think the bottom line is that there was so much going on, at least from where I stood, that it wasn’t something to get into because, you know, when you get into taking Michelle Fairley, one of the greatest actresses around, and making her a zombie who doesn’t speak and goes around killing people, what’s the best way to integrate that into the show?”

In a show that added not only one but two rape scenes that arguably contributed nothing to the plot, I think it says a lot about how the creators feel about the mothers of the show: if the characters have no children to mother, then there’s no point in them being on the show at all.

Sophie Hall is from London and has graduated with a degree in Creative Writing. She is currently writing a sci-fi comic book series called White Leopard for Wasteland Paradise Comics. Her previous articles for Bitch Flicks were on Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and director Andrea Arnold. You can follow her on Twitter at @sophiesuzhall.

When Brienne Met Jaime: The Rom-Com Hiding in ‘Game of Thrones’

But in that web of gloom, there’s this beautiful shining light: Brienne and Jaime. And while rom-coms are not often praised for their realism, to me, this couple is the most grounded, sensible thing about the show.

Game of Thrones _ Brienne and Jamie

This guest post written by Victoria Edel appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones.

There’s a girl. She’s an outsider, derided for her looks. Girl meets a handsome, golden boy. Girl hates boy. Boy hates girl. Girl and boy are thrown together by a situation outside their control. Girl and boy begin to slowly like each other, their bickering boarding on flirtation. Their new bond is tested, they tell each other their secrets, and they help one another. Just as they balance starts to shift, girl and boy no longer have to be together. A mean, beautiful woman mocks the girl for loving the boy. The two are separated, perhaps to never be together again.

That’s three-quarters of the plot of many romantic comedies. The girl might be nerdy, or wear glasses, or dress badly, or whatever Hollywood has decided is supposedly unattractive that year. The boy might be popular or have a fancy job or be a successful athlete.

It’s also three-quarters of the plot of Brienne and Jaime’s storyline on Game of Thrones. She’s a tall, stereotypically masculine woman who longs to be a knight, and he’s the most handsome and — probably — the most reviled man in Westeros.

Many Game of Thrones fans would claim that the show’s appeal is “realism” — anyone can die, good guys and bad guys are almost indistinguishable, nothing is guaranteed. But those viewers have confused realism with pessimism. Sadness is no more “realistic” than happiness, defeat no more honest than victory. (Of course, what “realism” even means in the context of dragons and magic in a fictionalized world could be its own think piece.) Game of Thrones gets too gloomy for me sometimes. It doesn’t feel real to me — it feels endlessly contrived.

But in that web of gloom, there’s this beautiful shining light: Brienne and Jaime. And while rom-coms are not often praised for their realism, to me, this couple is the most grounded, sensible thing about the show.

Brienne of Tarth is tasked with delivering Jaime Lannister to King’s Landing, ordered by Catelyn Stark to trade him for her daughters. After they get kidnapped by a roving band who cut off Jaime’s hand and threaten Brienne with sexual violence, they start to come together. And they share some gorgeous romantic moments, namely his confession about why he killed the Mad King and when they escaped the bear pit. Their love is apparent, if never uttered aloud.

When they finally reach King’s Landing, you can see the sadness on their faces as they realize what this means, that here they cannot be together. And Cersei drives this home when she mocks Brienne for loving Jaime. In a teen movie, she’d be a cheerleader. In a rom-com she’d work for a fashion magazine.

And so Jaime sends Brienne off to try to finish her mission, to protect the Stark girls, giving her a new suit of armor and a new sword. Like any good couple in Act Three of their story, they don’t say “I love you,” but you can see it in their eyes.

Game of Thrones_Brienne and Jamie 2

The most recent season contained not a single Jaime and Brienne interaction, which might explain my decreased interest in Westeros. But I remain hopeful that this unlikely pair will reunite before the series ends, even if they don’t get to ride off into the happily ever after I want them to have.

In many movies and television shows, supposedly “ugly” women are still stunningly beautiful, their flaws just small quirks. Think of teen movies with makeovers that amount to removing a pair of glasses and getting a blow out. But Brienne actually represents a different standard of beauty, one that would not be appreciated in her fictional world and is rarely appreciated in ours. So when this handsome, flawed, but (arguably) good, man loves this flawed but wonderful woman, it means something different.

I see myself in Brienne. We’re domineering, strong women (though she would clearly win in a fight) who aren’t traditionally beautiful, who beautiful, handsome men usually overlook. There are no fat women who get to be main characters in Game of Thrones, so Brienne is the character I’m left to identify with.

It sounds bizarre to say the romantic storyline I relate the most on television right now takes place on a show with dragons and magic and endless war and mysterious ice monsters and the woman is a super-tall warrior and the man is an incest-y blonde with one hand — and yet.

Perhaps this says more about the rest of television than it does Game of Thrones. On shows with traditional romance, everyone is stunningly gorgeous. And on shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or You’re The Worst or The Mindy Project, where they’re deconstructing romance from the inside, everyone is still beautiful. Fat women are set apart from these love stories, almost completely absent from TV. And having Brienne is not the same as having a fat woman, but it’s the closest I’ve got.

In a way, Jaime and Brienne’s story is also deconstructing and analyzing the rom-com genre, since it places the tropes in an absurd environment. Jaime is this very despicable person for a long time, until his relationship with Brienne begins to change him (and even then, his actions in King’s Landing are not without reproach, though that’s a can of worms for another time). But maybe that reveals the truth of rom-coms that is often lost in silliness — people can make each other better, they do change, and they do love each other in spite of the odds.

If this really were a rom-com, they’d get married and live in a shack somewhere winter never comes. But this is Game of Thrones, so they’ll probably accidentally kill each other or something. But I just want to see them kiss. Even if they both die immediately after. I just want a weird-looking lady to be loved and kissed by a very handsome man. We get the reverse of this all the time. And if Game of Thrones did this, maybe it would, for a moment, live up to its claim of “realism,” of being daring and different.

Victoria Edel is a writer, funny person, and loud-mouthed fat lady. Follow her on Twitter @victoriaedel and retweet your two favorite jokes. She really needs the ego boost.

Why I Will Miss Ygritte’s Fierce Feminism on ‘Game of Thrones’

Ygritte was fierce, she was vibrant, and she didn’t take any shit. Ygritte’s feminism was multi-dimensional, and for me she will always be missed.

Ygritte in The North

This guest post written by Jackie Johnson appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones.

I broke the rule. You are never supposed to get attached to a character in Game of Thrones; George R.R. Martin will kill them and enjoy your anguish. Despite seeing Ned, Catelyn, Robb, and a host of others perish or just disappear (can we get a status check on Gendry, Osha, and Rickon?), I had real hope for Ygritte, the warrior beyond The Wall. It was a naive hope, but a hope nonetheless. There are plenty of female characters for a feminist to fall in love with on Game of Thrones; so many that Ygritte gets drowned out among the cheers for Arya and the Mother of Dragons. She was fierce, she was vibrant, and she didn’t take any shit. Ygritte’s feminism was multi-dimensional, and for me she will always be missed.

Paramount to Ygritte’s storyline was her relationship with Jon Snow. Despite her purpose in the narrative structure (and the fact that she gets fridged), Ygritte never felt like she was merely a love interest for Jon. She was interesting to watch on her own. Further, her status as a Wildling/Free Folk holds a mirror to both Jon Snow and the audience’s internalized understandings of the role of women, female capacities, and our understanding of “the other”. Jon has lived his whole life in a strict, patrilineal society and consistently been told that the Wildlings are savages, which leads him to underestimate Ygritte time and time again. The Wildling tribes/Free Folk are no Herland; the patriarchy is alive and well throughout the land beyond The Wall (just look at Gilly’s father). However, Ygritte shows both Jon and the audience that a woman can fight and excel at it, like sex, love fiercely, and kill without flinching, all in the same day.

Though there are a plethora of reasons to look up to a girl like Ygritte, her complexity as a character, her ability as a warrior, and her sex positivity earn her a slot alongside Oberyn Martell as the hardest loss so far (sorry Ned).

Ygritte is a multi-dimensional Bad-Ass:

It can be exhausting looking for female characters who are fully realized human beings in the fantasy genre. George R.R. Martin has surprised me again and again with the range of female characters and the range that exists within the characters themselves. They exist on a spectrum of femininity and express their feminism in a variety of ways. It would have been incredibly easy for Ygritte to occupy the same place on this spectrum as Arya or even Brienne. Like them, Ygritte is first and foremost a fighter, but Ygritte never falls into the tomboy stereotype Arya embodies. Tomboys on screen are frequently de-sexed, given masculine attributes, and have no interest in romantic relationships or anything remotely coded as feminine. Lastly, they are young girls, who grow up to be the “real woman” they were meant to be. Though not traditionally feminine, Ygritte doesn’t fully fit this mold. In addition to the displays of Ygritte’s sexuality, we see her capacity to love and scenes where she expresses both empathy and vulnerability.

Most notably, at the end of Season 4 when the Wildlings raid Mole’s Town south of The Wall and kill basically everyone in sight, Ygritte spares Gilly and her baby. She recognizes Gilly as a fellow Free Folk and tells her to keep quiet. Anyone else would have killed her and the baby, too. It’s not that Ygritte can’t kill; we see her do so time and time again with precision and ease. Instead of the scene demonstrating that Ygritte is the “weak” member of the pack, who can’t kill a girl and her baby, it shows strength in Ygritte. Despite being committed to the cause, she is not blindly fighting a revenge mission. She is fighting to take back what was stolen from her people and to create an opportunity for them to be safe when winter comes. Gilly is in some ways kin, and Ygritte sees inherent value in her life that the men alongside whom she fights surely wouldn’t.

Lastly, she loves. Ygritte sees both the joy and the pain of being in love. Jon is a man of duty, and when he chooses his duty to The Night’s Watch over his love and promises to Ygritte, it’s a devastating blow. Despite the pain, Ygritte continues on the mission and eventually faces Jon in battle. Ygritte’s pain is both visceral and real, so is her love. Game of Thrones shows strong women in love, shows them with crushes, and shows how love and trust in men has caused them pain. Despite having a fierce tongue and a strong sense of self, Ygritte never becomes a trope because her vulnerabilities round her out.

You Know Nothing Jon Snow or There’s Nothing to Read Beyond The Wall:

Ygritte is unimpressed
The Wall is an unjust place. Men and young boys are sent there because they lack access to opportunity in this classist, feudal society. Jon Snow’s superiority complex from his wealthy, noble upbringing goes with him North of The Wall. Ygritte cuts him down to size fairly quickly. Her catchphrase “You know nothing Jon Snow” is used in a variety of situations to showcase that despite Jon Snow’s education and refinement, which is both valued in Westeros and by the audience, his form of intelligence lacks importance in “The Real North”, and Jon lacks the competencies that allow The Wildlings/Free Folk the ability to survive (he doesn’t even know what warging is).

As soon as either Jon or the audience wants to dismiss Ygritte as simple, she proves that not only is she intelligent, but her view and understanding of the world might even make more sense than ours. Below is an exchange that proves that Ygritte is practical, honest, and not here for your gender essentialism.

Ygritte: Is that a palace?
Jon: It’s a windmill.
Ygritte: Windmill…Well who built it? Some king?
Jon: Just the men that used to live here.
Ygritte: They must’ve been great builders stacking stones that high.
Jon: If you’re impressed by a windmill, you’d be swooning if you saw the Great Keep at Winterfell.
Ygritte: What’s swooning?
Jon: Fainting.
Ygritte: What’s fainting?
Jon: When a girl sees blood and collapses.
Ygritte: Why would a girl see blood and collapse?
Jon: Well, not all girls are like you.
Ygritte: Well, girls see more blood than boys, or do you like girls who swoon? *Gasp* It’s a spider. Save me Jon Snow. My dress is made from the purest silk from Tralalalalalede!
Jon: I’d like to see you in a silk dress.
Ygritte: Would ya?
Jon: So I can tear it off you.
Ygritte: Well, if you rip my pretty silk dress, I’ll blacken your eye.

She’s completely right. Feminine weakness is contrived BS. Masculinity and femininity, both social constructs, were created in opposition to each other and dictate a lot of our rigid gender norms. They have taken years to create and maintain, and in seven words Ygritte shows them for what they really are: bullshit.

A Skilled Archer:

Ygritte Poised and Ready Game of Thrones

There is no doubting Ygritte’s skill with a bow. It makes me proud to see Ygritte fighting alongside men. As a woman, she doesn’t just have to fight Westerosi Northerners and Crows at The Wall, she has to fight sexism within her own ranks. She rebuffs their sexism with skill and braggadocio. When women fight sexism on screen, we never expect them to be “crude”; crude women aren’t “likeable”. Ygritte does not care if the sexist, cannibal Styr who makes lewd comments at her thinks she’s likeable (Her line “You been thinkin’ about that ginger minge” comes to mind). No woman should feel the pressure to be “likeable.” Watching Ygritte not give a fuck feels incredibly liberating.

Ygritte is a bad ass, but she’s the only Wilding/Free Folk woman we see for many seasons. This reminds us that though it may seem that The Wildlings/Free Folk might have more access and opportunities for women, women are never completely safe or completely free.

“You Pull A Knife on Me in the Middle of the Night”:

Ygritte might talk about sex as much as Tyrion Lannister, and that’s no easy feat. While Game of Thrones is full of sex scenes, few women not employed as sex workers frequently talk about sex and sexuality. Ygritte often taunts Jon about his inexperience or discomfort around sex, and we see that she thinks sex is both fun and funny. I’m not advocating teasing virgins, but Ygritte and Jon’s exchanges illustrate how much of our societal understandings of sex and sexuality are linked to gender identity. Further, their role reversal forces us to question how our ideas about sex have been constructed. Though our larger cultural understandings about sex have evolved over time, we can see parallels between Westeros and our present day society.

Jon’s understanding of sex has always been linked to his status as a bastard. While he knows Theon and other men visit brothels, for men of their stature they are supposed to be concerned with knocking up their future wives. Growing up as a bastard, Jon knew that his brothers’ futures of marrying noblewomen and having children might not be available to him. Moreover, when he joins The Night’s Watch and takes a vow of celibacy, he does so hardly knowing any girls or women he’s not related to. Jon knows little to nothing about sex or love and has lost the one parent he’s ever known. Enter Ygritte.

Ygritte and Jon Game of Thrones

By contrast, Ygritte understands that sex is a natural, normal part of human existence and doesn’t quite understand what Jon’s hang up is (it’s a special brand of duty, honor, and angst). There is a lot of sex on Game of Thrones, and there is unfortunately a lot of rape (even when it’s not in the books). There are few scenes like Ygritte and Jon’s playful, tender, and loving first time. It was a love story I invested in, and I felt a loss when it ended.

In a show where women characters are frequently treated as disposable (see treatment of sex workers), it was truly terrible to see one of the best characters die, and by the weapon they wield with such power. Sometimes I curse George R.R. Martin in my head, and other times I put my feminist hopes in Daenerys and Margaery. It’s always hard to lose a character you love, but on a show where women have such few avenues to power and are restricted by the men that surround them, Ygritte was a hero.

Jackie Johnson is a writer combining her love of sociology and pop culture.  You can find her drinking chai and trying her darndest not to spend any money.  She blogs at https://blackpopsocial.wordpress.com/.

‘Game of Thrones’: Does It Feel Worse to Cheer For or Against Daenerys?

It’s hard to ignore that this is a white woman from a foreign nation who feels it’s her birthright to teach a bunch of brown people how they should behave. … On the flip side, watching a woman lose power on ‘Game of Thrones’ always seems to involve watching her be sexually victimized somehow, which I can’t really get on board with, no matter how awful she is.

Game of Thrones_Dany

Written by Katherine Murray, this post appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones.

As usual, Game of Thrones is a Choose Your Own Interpretation that always ends in tears.

One of the major cliff-hangers leading into the sixth season of Game of Thrones is the fate of Daenerys Targaryen, queen of Meereen, widow of Kahl Drogo, heir to the Iron Throne, and holder of a thousand other titles. After amassing a large army and conquering several cities in Essos (a separate continent from where the main action takes place), it looked like she was about to hit a reversal of fortune. A rebel/terrorist group called Sons of the Harpy staged an attack against her in Meereen, and she fled on the back of a dragon to parts unknown. She was immediately surrounded by a Dothraki army, and previews for season six featured images of Targaryen banners burning while a Dothraki narrator intoned, “You are nobody, the millionth of your name, queen of nothing.”

The Dothraki are known for raping the women they capture and, disturbingly, the full trailer for season six features a split-second scene in which it looks like someone tears Daenerys’ dress off her body.

The dress-tearing scene is still in our future, but the season premiere confirmed that the Dothraki immediately took things to a rapey place, after finding Daenerys alone. There’s a (somewhat) pleasant surprise in that she’s able to talk her way out of danger by telling them she was married to a different Dothraki rapist at one point, which makes her off-limits to them, but the entire situation leaves me feeling confused about who and what I’m supposed to be cheering for.

Like most rulers on Game of Thrones, Daenerys can be horrible, and she has the extra disadvantage of starring in a story line that seems kind of racist. From a pure narrative point of view, it also makes sense that a character who’s had a lot of good fortune lately is due for new challenges ahead. On the flip side, watching a woman lose power on Game of Thrones always seems to involve watching her be sexually victimized somehow, which I can’t really get on board with, no matter how awful she is. It’s different from a situation where you don’t know which of two people to cheer for, and feel torn between them because they both have good points – this is situation where I feel bad about any possible outcome for just one person. Unless she rows away in a boat forever like Gendry, I don’t see how this can end well.

Game of Thrones_Daenerys Targaryen_ Mhysa

Why it Feels Bad to Cheer for Her
Daenerys is kind of an asshole. She inherited her brother’s sense that ruling others is her birthright and she’s proven herself to be arrogant on more than one occasion. On top of that, she makes rash decisions that affect millions of people’s lives – she crucified the entire ruling class of Meereen without asking any questions about the internal politics of the city or whether some of them were actually opposed to slavery (which, as we find out later, some of them were). She’s also horrible to Hizdahr zo Loraq, an advisor she kidnaps into a sham marriage just so she can ignore his advice in more settings.

None of that makes her worse than any of the other power players on Game of Thrones, but it feels bad to cheer for her because Dany’s story, unlike most of the stories in Westeros, also has some gross colonial set pieces in it. It’s hard to ignore that this is a white woman from a foreign nation who feels it’s her birthright to teach a bunch of brown people how they should behave. The fact that Game of Thrones also hasn’t invested in developing many of its non-white characters means that we see almost everything in Essos through the eyes of foreigners who find it strange and disgusting. I’m not saying I disagree – slavery and forcing people to fight to the death in a pit is disgusting, but so is a lot of other stuff on this show, and we’re asked to see those things as being a normal part of this world. We’re asked to see Essos as savage and exotic, instead, and it’s hard to feel good about the racial component of that division.

People who defend the Essos story line generally argue that we’re not necessarily supposed to agree with what Daenerys is doing, but the way the scenes are dramatized makes that hard to believe. Daenerys’ sacking of the slave cities in Essos is staged as a series of Hell Yeah moments, starting when she tricks a slave trader into giving her an army for nothing and then uses the army to kill him. It’s great that she sets the slaves free, but she waits to do that until after they’ve sacked the city for her, and the show doesn’t really engage with the concept that someone who’s been born into slavery might not know what to do with an offer of freedom. The whole point of the scene where she offers to free her slave army seems to be to reassure us that they’re technically there of their own free will because she gave them a thirty-second window to leave.

The only person in the slave army who’s ever individually identified for us is Grey Worm, and there’s a weird, condescending scene where Daenerys tells him that he can choose his own name, and he says he’d rather keep his slave name because it’s the name he had on the glorious day she freed him. I’ve unpacked this elsewhere in the past, but suffice to say that that is a terrible line of reasoning, this scene only exists to tell us how amazing Dany is, and a lot of the slave plotlines and themes are like that.

The shallow characterization in the Essos story line, the icky colonial vibes, and the boring pattern where Daenerys just succeeds at everything she does all make me want her to fail. Unfortunately, it feels just as bad to cheer against her.

Game of Thrones_Daenerys Targaryen_heart

Why it Feels Bad to Cheer Against Her
There’s definitely a pattern on Game of Thrones where we’re supposed to cheer for the underdog. Part of what makes Daenerys such an awesome character is that she spent the first season making lemonade out of some of the worst fucking lemons that anyone’s ever seen. She was abused by her older brother, sold into marriage, raped multiple times, made to feel she was worthless, and somehow managed to dig in and transform a losing hand into a winning one by doing ridiculous stuff like eating the heart of a horse. The army of slaves and dragons she has is the only thing keeping her safe from more victimization, and cheering for her to fail is basically cheering for some new, horrible man to torture her some more.

There’s always a sense in which we cheer against the people with power in Game of Thrones, but with characters like Daenerys and the series’ second most powerful female character, Cersei, there’s an extra element where you have to remember that they live in a world where women are treated like garbage. That’s why I couldn’t be happy, last season, when Cersei finally started to lose her grip on power in King’s Landing. Yes, she’s a horrible person, but – as the show reminded us – the avenues she has to get and hold legitimate power are limited and the danger she’s in without that power is huge. I thought it was a terrible idea for her to be Hand of the King (because she’s a mean, selfish person who doesn’t have the interests of the common folk in mind), but I also thought it was terrible that everyone told her she couldn’t be just because she’s a woman. I thought she sort of deserved to get hoist by her own petard after arming religious fanatics to take down one of her enemies, but I also felt uncomfortable that it led to a scene where she had to walk through the streets naked while everyone called her a whore.

I had the same uncomfortable feeling when the khalasar horses started circling Daenerys in last season’s finale. A feeling that she was in an unfair, bullshit, gendered, misogynist danger and that, as much as I think she deserves to have her schemes blow up in her face, I didn’t want to go through another cycle of her getting raped by a horse lord. And I didn’t want to feel like the show thought that was titillating, or that I should enjoy it because it’s delicious when powerful women are turned into sexual objects.

I’ve been asking myself how it’s different from being happy that Stannis and Joffrey got killed – or even being happy that Jon Snow got killed, ‘cause I was kind of happy for that – and the only way I can explain it is to say that, on Game of Thrones, getting killed is not a penalty that’s based on hating someone for their gender. Getting killed is not a thing that’s steeped in a layered, complex, gross, disgusting refusal to see women as human beings. Being raped is. So is being publically shamed for your sexuality. So are a lot of other things that I don’t wish on female characters, even if they’re kind of horrible sometimes.

Game of Thrones_Daenerys Targaryen_season six

At this point, I don’t even know what to hope for from this story line. Do I want Daenerys to take back control of Meereen and keep being a colonizer? Do I want her to sail to Westeros and abandon the people she claims to have liberated without a backward glance? Do I want her to go back to the Dothraki and get treated like an animal or piece of property? Do I want her to die and be reunited with her awful rapist husband whom the show is convinced I should somehow like?

My brain keeps flashing back to details like that brothel a few days’ ride from Meereen, where the sex workers dress up like Daenerys, except their butts are showing. And I keep thinking about how, just like in real life, in Game of Thrones, it’s impossible to talk about how you think a woman’s using power irresponsibly without a bunch of other people climbing out of the woodwork to tell you that women shouldn’t have power at all. There’s a sense in which I would like to see Daenerys fail as a ruler because she’s terrible at ruling, but also a sense in which I’m aware that there are other people who want to see her fail because it reinforces a worldview where women are only good for sex.

It leaves us in a lose-lose situation no matter what happens, because the terms are so skewed by sexism.

What I really want is for Game of Thrones to be the product of a different culture – one where threats of rape aren’t hard-baked into gender relations. One where super-colonial themes would be present because the show had something to say about them, and not due to an apparent oversight. The way things are right now, I don’t have much to cheer for.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

Let’s Talk About the Children: War and the Loss of Innocence on ‘Game of Thrones’

Children have always figured prominently in ‘Game of Thrones,’ but their presence seems especially meaningful this [fourth] season, as we get a clearer glimpse of the war’s effect on bystanders, people not entrenched in political intrigue and behind-the-scenes strategizing.

Game of Thrones_Arya Stark season 4

This guest post written by Amy Woolsey originally appeared at Wicked Stupid Plotless and appears now as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones. It is on the fourth season of the television series and is cross-posted with permission.

When watching Game of Thrones, HBO’s contentious, wildly popular fantasy series, it’s easy to get caught up in the Big Moments, the ones that light up social media and generate a week’s worth of think pieces: Ned Stark’s beheading; the Battle of Blackwater; the Red Wedding; so many deaths. But the show isn’t all about shock and awe. In fact, some of the best, most memorable moments this [fourth] season have been the quiet ones, often involving nothing more than characters talking. There’s the circuitous beetle-crushing anecdote that Tyrion tells Jaime in “The Mountain and the Viper,” delivered with tortured intensity by Peter Dinklage, just before the climactic, explosive duel scene. Daenerys’s flirtation with Daario in “Mockingbird.” Any scene between Missandei and Grey Worm, whose tender relationship is perhaps the show’s most welcome addition to George R.R. Martin’s novels.

There’s a reason why, even in a season teeming with game-changing, water-cooler-ready incidents, “First of His Name” remains my favorite episode. Although relatively uneventful, it contains a wealth of perfect little moments that might seem inconsequential on the surface, but actually have profound implications for the characters and their world. Take, for instance, the scene where Podrick Payne confesses to Brienne, “I killed a man.” It’s a simple, four-word line, but for a character that had previously functioned as little more than comic relief, it constitutes a miniature, heartbreaking revelation. Pod may be hopelessly earnest and awkward, but he’s far from the naïve simpleton we and Brienne thought he was; despite his lack of formal training and experience, he’s just as capable of taking a person’s life as a knight of the Kingsguard.

At its heart, season four is a narrative of disillusionment, watching as each character is deprived of his or her innocence. In the premiere, Arya Stark, not yet a teenager, sticks her newly reclaimed Needle into Polliver’s throat to avenge her friend, Lommy Greenhands. A contemptuous smirk lingers on her face even as her victim chokes to death on his own blood, yet whatever catharsis this death brings is only temporary. Arya doesn’t hesitate to revel in her victory; instead, she simply wipes her sword clean and continues on her journey with the Hound. In an interview, Maisie Williams says that Arya is “being eaten from the inside out… She’s got a hole in her heart. She fills it with all these eyes that she’s going to shut forever, and she’s just turning black from the inside out.” Ultimately, killing Polliver is not the act of a girl obtaining justice for her fallen friend; it’s the act of a girl who has lost – or is in the process of losing – her soul. A deliberate, cold-blooded murder, devoid of feeling, performed with matter-of-fact calmness. With this, Arya has officially been indoctrinated into the culture of violence that reigns over Westeros.

This season has received criticism in some corners for its abundant, almost gleeful use of graphic violence, especially against women. On one hand, I don’t blame anyone who’d rather not spend his or her nights watching people’s heads being crushed or chopped off, and the violence can be occasionally excessive or poorly executed (I complained about a certain scene with Cersei and Jaime as much as the next person). At the same time, though, a lot of the criticism strikes me as overly simplistic. As George R.R. Martin himself said, Westeros is “no darker nor more depraved than our own world,” and omitting or downplaying the violence would be a betrayal of the series’ intention, which is to present the past in all its true horror, an alternative to the glorified, sanitized version we usually see in fantasy stories. If it’s hard to tolerate at times, that’s because it’s effective. Fictional violence should be hard to tolerate. It’s saying something that even in an era when seemingly half the shows on network TV feature serial killers, the carnage in Game of Thrones is still genuinely shocking and gruesome.

While the show undoubtedly does employ violence as a form of spectacle (is it even possible to avoid that in a visual medium?), I don’t think it has, as Sonia Saraiya puts it, “gotten in the way of Thrones’ fundamental truth… a lens that offers not just brutality, but also the assiduous follow-through of healing, grieving, and surviving.” If anything, this season has been all about the follow-through, the way war can invade even the most remote areas of the world and tear apart not only communities and families but also individuals, forever transforming the lives of those it touches. It’s never explicitly stated, but you can detect evidence of war’s devastation, of people struggling to cope with their scars, in snippets of dialogue like Pod’s and in character arcs like Arya’s – again, the little things. Trauma, the show contends, involves more than mangled bodies and troubled minds; it’s a process of moral erosion, the gradual disintegration of personal values in the face of a brutal, uncaring reality. Violence, like power, corrupts.

Game of Thrones_Sansa Stark

“Everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls.” Cersei’s blunt response to Oberyn, who assures her that “we don’t hurt little girls in Dorne,” represents a moment of uncharacteristic sincerity for the Lannister queen as well as an unexpected reminder to the audience that, despite her powerful, confident veneer, she is broken inside. Unbeknownst to her companion, Cersei has been subjected to repeated sexual assault throughout her life, first at the hands of Robert Baratheon, her husband, and then Jaime, her brother and paramour (as much as I wish we could pretend it didn’t, for all intents and purposes, the scene in the Sept happened and can’t be ignored). Perhaps more than anyone else, she understands the key to survival in Westeros, which essentially amounts to a willingness to use and be used by others whenever necessary, to discard your humanity for the sake of self-preservation. As Oberyn discovers too late, this world isn’t exactly kind to those motivated by passion and noble ideals.

Other characters are slowly starting to comprehend this fact. Daenerys began season four as the self-proclaimed Breaker of Chains, a benevolent ruler determined to free the slaves of the cities she defeats. It’s becoming more and more apparent, however, that conquering is not the same as leading, as she resorts to increasingly harsh methods in an effort to maintain power over her subjects; the Daenerys that liberated the Unsullied would be appalled by the Daenerys that ordered the execution of 163 people and called it “justice.” The last time we saw Sansa, she was walking down a staircase in the Vale, dressed in an elegantly low-cut gown and bathed in angelic white light. It’s treated as a triumphant moment, and in some ways, it is: Sansa Stark, the girl who once swooned over fanciful tales of castles and chivalrous princes, all grown up, no longer a timid victim. But then, you remember what brought her here – a barrage of physical, emotional and psychological abuse inflicted by the boy she used to idolize, among others – and the moment becomes as ethereal as the light in the background, the triumph an illusion. She may not be helpless, but she’s still a victim, just another pawn in a system governed by forces beyond her or anyone’s control.

Not coincidentally, the season [four] finale, airing tonight, is titled “The Children.” Children have always figured prominently in Game of Thrones, but their presence seems especially meaningful this season, as we get a clearer glimpse of the war’s effect on bystanders, people not entrenched in political intrigue and behind-the-scenes strategizing. As it turns out, most children in Westeros either wind up dead, like the slaves nailed along the road to Meereen and Elia Martell’s infants, murdered by the Mountain, or turn into killers themselves.

“The Watchers on the Wall” puts a kid right in the middle of the fighting, contrasting the surrounding bloodshed with shots of Olly, a boy whose parents had been slaughtered in a wilding raid, cowering in a corner. For a while, it seems as though Olly is being framed as a symbol of innocence, a saint amongst monsters, but in a twist that diverges from the source material, he shoots and kills Ygritte, partly in an effort to aid Jon and partly as retribution for his father. The death itself isn’t what’s significant so much as Olly’s smile: proud, not a flicker of visible remorse. There’s something chilling about it – the realization that even at such a young age, Olly has already joined and helped perpetuate the cycle of violence and revenge that has endured throughout the history of Westeros, passed from generation to generation.

In truth, there are no children in this world, at least not in our sense of the term. Growing up here means living long enough to become hardened and wear your cynicism like armor. When it comes to the game of thrones, no one is safe or innocent, not even children.

Amy Woolsey is a writer living in northern Virginia. Since graduating from George Mason University, she has interned at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and contributed freelance articles to The Week. In her free time, she consumes, discusses, and generally obsesses over pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr, and she keeps a personal blog that is updated irregularly. She has previously written about The Bling Ring and Phoenix for Bitch Flicks.

Bowed, Bent, and Broken: Examining the Women of Color on ‘Game of Thrones’

With the women of color being so scarce in the show, it’s just as important to look at the quality of these portrayals. While ‘Game of Thrones’ does give us some strong women of color, many of them are portrayed problematically in their own ways: either put into subservient roles, exoticized, demonized, or otherwise discarded by the narrative in ways that the white characters aren’t.

Game of Thrones_women of color

This guest post written by Clara Mae appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones.

I often feel conflicted about HBO’s Game of Thrones and its portrayal of women. On one hand, the show has given us some of today’s pop culture feminist icons: women like Brienne, Arya, Daenerys, and Olenna, who show us what it means to persevere in a male-dominated society despite differences in age and social standing. On the surface, so too does the show give us dynamic women of color: characters like Irri, Missandei, Shae, Talisa, and the Sand Snakes, some of whom were updated or added in for the benefit of the show’s audience (of which I am a part of exclusively, having not read the book series).

But with the women of color being so scarce in the show, it’s just as important to look at the quality of these portrayals. While the show does give us some strong women of color, many of them are portrayed problematically in their own ways: either put into subservient roles, exoticized, demonized, or otherwise discarded by the narrative in ways that the white characters aren’t.

The first image we get of women of color in the show is not… flattering, to say the least. In the pilot episode, we see the women of Khal Drogo’s khalasar writhing topless and being mounted in plain sight as Daenerys looks on in disgust. Daenerys is dressed in a light, airy dress while the dark-skinned Dothraki women gyrate in dirty clothes. The audience is meant to see these women as “savages,” and Daenerys the character we sympathize with — an uncomfortable task, you can understand, if you happen to look more like the Dothraki women than Daenerys herself. To contrast this terrible first impression, we later meet Irri, a kind and headstrong woman who is gifted to Daenerys as a handmaiden — really, just a euphemism for “servant/slave” in this context, as another handmaiden, Doreah, mentions that “your brother bought me for you” and, y’know, they’re not actually paid for their services.

Game of Thrones_Irri

Irri is the first woman of color we meet who expresses any degree of humanity. She teaches Daenerys the Dothraki language, mends her clothes, and cares for her. It’s a subservient role, clearly, and one that’s problematic when you look at the fact that the only women of color we’ve seen up to this point are either barbarians or servants. But the narrative tells us Irri is not unhappy in her station — and in fact seems to take pride in it — and so her lack of agency goes by relatively unremarked upon. And social standing aside, Irri is a strong character in her own right. She’s proud of her culture, is equal parts firm and compassionate, and has no qualms about speaking out against the men in her male-dominated tribe.

But Irri is ultimately not given much to do as a character outside of her subservient role to Daenerys, and unfortunately, the narrative ultimately discards Irri for Daenerys. Irri is killed off-screen in Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ home when the dragons are stolen. When Daenerys stumbles across Irri’s body, she briefly shows distress, but yells not a second later, “Where are my dragons!” Irri’s body, then, suddenly becomes just another object in the room. The narrative here is clear: Irri, as helpful and supportive as she was to Daenerys, ends up mattering very little at all.

Game of Thrones_Missandei

Irri is then replaced with Missandei as Daenerys’ translator and cultural ambassador. Missandei, like Irri, is also a servant to Daenerys: “You belong to me now, you do what I tell you to,” Daenerys tells Missandei after buying her from her former master. Again, we have an uncomfortable power dynamic between our white female protagonist and another woman of color; but with Missandei, at least, she’s given more to do than Irri ever was, and is all around one of the most long-lasting and positive representations of a character of color on the show.

Although Missandei starts out as a servant, she quickly grows from simply being Daenerys’ translator to her confidant and advisor on the council. She’s shown to be intelligent and quick: she can speak nineteen languages and advises Daenerys about the fighting pits of Meereen. Daenerys herself becomes very fond of Missandei and indeed ends up seeing her as a close friend: when she believes they’re both going to die in Daznak’s Pit, Daenerys holds Missandei’s hand in a sign of trust and love.

Most notably, Missandei is also given a chance at romance with Grey Worm. Through Grey Worm’s eyes we see Missandei as someone who deserves to be looked upon reverently: an important contrast to the images of the gyrating, savage women of color we saw back in episode one. By giving Missandei a romance, she’s elevated above simply being a servant or a background character: she’s someone who matters and who is worthy of love. That, if anything, is one of the most valuable portrayals a woman of color can see reflected back at her.

Game of Thrones_Shae

Missandei is not the only woman of color romanced on the show. Shae is Tyrion’s clever and outspoken lover across several seasons. To be clear, Shae’s actress is Turkish; Turkey straddles the border between Europe and Asia. The actress has spoken about being type-cast as a “foreigner” in European films. The show also plays her off as an “exotic Other” regardless, so I thought it appropriate to include her here. Shae is a rather feminist character: she outwits Tyrion in their first meeting, and is shown to be just as clever as Varys and Littlefinger when necessary. She’s incredibly protective of Sansa: she quickly pulls a knife on a serving girl who tries to tell Cersei about Sansa’s period. She’s compassionate and loving towards Tyrion, a sharp contrast to how the other characters treat him. She’s all around a positive improvement from her book counterpart, and an example of how a character doesn’t need to be a queen to be able to take control of her own story.

Yet Shae’s characterization begins to quickly unravel in season four. The narrative suddenly turns her cruel, thoughtless, and petty — an attempt to put her back on track with her book counterpart, despite George R.R. Martin saying book versus show Shae are “certainly two different characters.” Shae then becomes the tawny jezebel in Tyrion’s life: she lies on the stand about Tyrion and Sansa, despite how much she sincerely seemed to love both of them. Tyrion later stumbles across Shae in his father’s bed — a somewhat inexplicable conclusion, as the show never makes it clear whether she’s there by choice or by blackmail. But then it doesn’t really matter, because Shae is brutally choked to death by Tyrion in a gratuitous snuff scene: her body splayed out with a gold Lannister chain dangling from her neck. The scene focuses more on Tyrion’s pain than Shae’s, and in the end Shae is fridged in order for Tyrion to finally find the determination to kill his father. Despite being such an integral character in the show, the narrative ultimately discards her.

Game of Thrones_Talisa

Then we have Talisa (whose actress is half Chilean), the other woman of color romanced on the show. She’s introduced in season two and she’s tough as nails: the first thing she does when we meet her is saw a man’s foot off. Talisa is Not Like Other Girls: she vows to never go to dances, and instead travels the countryside tending to the wounded. As a creation of the show writers, Talisa is Robb’s equal in many ways: she trades quips with him, is of noble birth (although not from Westeros), and is just as stubborn. Although some have pointed out that the show writers made her a bit too much of a Strong Female Character, a Mary Sue of sorts, she is regardless the portrait of a confident woman driven by her own moral compass.

It’s difficult then to reconcile Talisa’s “Mary Sue-ness” with how utterly her life falls apart. Talisa and Robb make some singularly bad decisions together, the worst of which is getting married despite both being fully grown adults who are aware of Robb’s “debt that must be paid” to the Freys. Talisa becomes one of the sources behind Robb’s and Catelyn’s fractured relationship, and indeed Talisa is placed strongly in opposition to Catelyn: young versus old, change versus tradition. As the audience is more familiar with Catelyn than Talisa, it’s difficult to not feel resentful towards her for embodying everything Catelyn is not.

This of course all culminates in the Red Wedding, which Talisa is present for when her book counterpart (Jeyne Westerling) was certainly not. Talisa’s death is vicious and startling; a painful reminder of how often the women of color are written off the show. So although the show writers seemed to take two steps forward by creating Talisa, a strong woman of color presented as Robb Stark’s equal, they then took several steps back by giving her one of the most unpleasant deaths that any woman has suffered on the show.

Game of Thrones_Ellaria and the Sand Snakes

Then we have Ellaria Sand and the Sand Snakes. We meet Ellaria in season four: she’s fiery, viper-tongued, and sexually free. After Oberyn’s death, she becomes relentless in her quest for revenge, and she sets her sights on Myrcella: “Let me send her to Cersei one finger at a time,” she demands of Prince Doran. Ellaria is unhinged; an angry demoness who is given little characterization beyond her need for vengeance.

Ellaria rallies her daughters and stepdaughters the Sand Snakes, who are younger and more bloodthirsty than their book counterparts. The show writers have reimagined them as tanned jezebels out to torment the sweet Myrcella, who really, has done nothing wrong except be related to Cersei up to this point in time. While Tyene, Nymeria, and Obara are interesting in their own rights, they are not given much characterization beyond just acting as Ellaria’s weapons. As Neil Miller writes at Film School Rejects:

“The Sand Snakes have become villains of the story, hellbent on doing harm to Myrcella in their blind quest for vengeance…It has made them one dimensional characters, stereotypes who will potentially become more known as ‘The One With the Whip’ and ‘The One with the Daggers’ than well-rounded characters. They are caricatures, whereas Oberyn was a dynamic and fully fleshed-out character.”

Worse, the narrative pivots the story so that instead of it being focused solely on Ellaria and the Sand Snakes, it instead becomes the story about Jaime and his heroic rescue of his niece/daughter. The Dornish women, then, are given little agency over their own plotline: they simply exist as Jaime’s antagonists that he must overcome in order to triumph.

All in all, Game of Thrones doesn’t do so great with its women of color. Three of them are dead, leaving us just Missandei — the one positive portrayal — and the bloodthirsty Ellaria and the Sand Snakes. With the debut of season six, I’m hoping we’ll see not only the Sand Snakes getting more characterizations, but new characters of color introduced. I’m going to be crossing my fingers for a lot of things. But looking at the show writers’ poor track record, I’m also not going to be holding my breath.

Clara Mae is a twenty-something year old English grad from UC Berkeley who works somewhere in the San Francisco financial district. If not at work, is probably off eating ramen, petting dogs, or attempting yoga. Blogs too little and tweets too much at @ubeempress.

Call For Writers: ‘Game of Thrones’

Season 6 of Game of Thrones launches in April, so it’s an apt time to really dig in and dissect this wildly popular show. As the show is so widely consumed and so influential, it’s important that we take a deeper look at the ways in which it subverts or reinforces our cultural norms.

Call-for-Writers-e13859437405011

Our theme week for April 2016 will be Game of Thrones.

Season 6 of Game of Thrones launches in April, so it’s an apt time to really dig in and dissect this wildly popular show. The talent of its cast and crew, the painstaking settings, the rich costuming, and the astronomical budget all contribute to making this show the success it is. However, to explain their love of GoT, many point to the depth of character development, the intrigue, the thoroughness of the worldbuilding, and the way the show keeps its audience constantly guessing. As the show is so widely consumed and so influential, it’s important that we take a deeper look at the ways in which it subverts or reinforces our cultural norms.

How does GoT represent its female characters, its sex workers, its characters of color, its marginalized characters? What does the show say about power and privilege? What does the show celebrate, critique, or elucidate? At its heart, why do people fanatically follow GoT?

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which topic you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, April 22, 2016 by midnight Eastern Time.

Here are the articles we have published about Game of Thrones:

Masculinity in ‘Game of Thrones’: More Than Fairytale Tropes
I’m Sick to Death of Talking About Rape Tropes in Fiction
How Upset Should We Be About Rape Plot Lines on HBO?
Another Dead Sex Worker on ‘Game of Thrones’
Controversy is Coming for ‘Game of Thrones’
‘Game of Thrones’: The Meta-Feminist Arc of Daenerys Targaryen
Recap: Season 4 Episode 2 of ‘Game of Thrones’ – The Lion and The Rose
Recap: Season 4 Episode 1 of ‘Game of Thrones’
Sex Workers Are Disposable on ‘Game of Thrones’
The Occasional Purposeful Nudity on ‘Game of Thrones’
Gratuitous Female Nudity and Complex Female Characters in ‘Game of Thrones’
In ‘Game of Thrones’ the Mother of Dragons Is Taking Down the Patriarchy
Motherhood in Film & Television: Spawning the World: Motherhood in ‘Game of Thrones’
‘Game of Thrones’ Season 2 Trailer: Will Women Fare Better This Season?
Here There Be Sexism?: ‘Game of Thrones’ and Gender