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.
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.
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Here are the articles we have published about Game of Thrones:
Counting down from 10 to 1, here are the 10 most-read posts in 2015 that were written in 2015.
Bitch Flicks is back from our holiday break! To kick off the new year, we thought we would share our top 10 posts of 2015, comprised of articles written in 2015. Covering a range of films (Mad Max: Fury Road, Pretty Woman, Mockingbird) and television (Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Steven Universe, House of Cards, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Parks and Recreation), these articles analyze and discuss themes including gender, rape tropes, fat phobia, fat positivity, masculinity, feminism and breast milk, women and leadership, and fandom and the female gaze.
Counting down from 10 to 1, here are the 10 most-read posts in 2015 that were written in 2015.
“I don’t think it would be quite the same barrel of laughs if the motto of Pawnee were ‘First in Friendship, Fourth in Poverty.’ Fat shaming and fat jokes like the People of Walmart photos are often a socially acceptable stand-in for the classist shaming of poor people. Poor people are more likely to be fat, after all. We get paid less and we’re more likely to be fired. Oh, the comedy!”
“For filmmakers, the easiest way to make an audience like a character despite the fact that he’s a lazy failure of a human being is to steep that character in privilege. We’re always expected to root for young straight white cis men, whether their laziness makes them waste away their lives, or their ambition makes them endanger their entire family.”
“As a coming of age story I felt the young men in the show – Aang, Sokka, and Zuko – all demonstrated the struggle young men face journeying into manhood with Uncle Iroh providing a vision of what the end of that road might look like. All of them, even those that have more traditional male expressions than the others, end up rejecting more toxic expressions of masculinity.”
“Aside from being lazy, careless depictions like this are dangerous. They desensitize people to an issue that is still very pressing. It’s not that rape shouldn’t exist in fiction, but they must be framed responsibly. Fictional female characters are forever being raped as retribution against the ills of the men they’re connected to, or as punishment for not being submissive to the men around them. And this happens time and time again across genres and media. So while the denotative reading of these acts might be that ‘evil men rape’ the connotative interpretation over time becomes ‘rape is a valid punishment for women.'”
“In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented. The female gaze is often assumed to be singularly focused on male objectification, to the exclusion of anything else. As a result, women are assumed to either be sexual beings who are present solely to gaze at male bodies, or intellectual beings capable of understanding and appreciating media. Unlike men, we are not allowed to be both at the same time.”
“Whether we believe Vivian’s ‘white knight’ fantasy is cheesy is beside the point; a film in which a woman explicitly negotiates the terms she wants for her relationship, and displays willingness to pursue her goals independently if those terms aren’t met, cannot be considered patriarchal.”
“All of the characters are complex and none is simply good or evil–the show has always been excellent that way, and that writing certainly lends itself to being decidedly feminist, as I’ve argued for the last two seasons. … [Claire] says, ‘I’ve been in the passenger seat for decades. It’s time for me to get behind the wheel.'”
“It does my heart a lot of good to watch this show and imagine a world where no one gives two craps about my weight. But I can only dream of how much this must mean to the little kids watching it. I mean, bear in mind, this is a children’s show. It is meant to be consumed by children. And those children will be watching the wacky adventures, thinking to themselves, ‘These heroes look like me. That means I could be a hero too!'”
“Furiosa, the ‘Wives,’ the Vulvalini, and Max’s triumphant return to the Citadel finds the once chained-to-their-pumps milk mothers now opening the floodgates and pouring water down on the people below. It seems likely that our sheroes and the milk mothers will move forward on the ‘plentitude model’ – bathing in an abundance of sweet, thick human milk, sharing water access, and growing green things from heirloom seeds – rather than continue in the scarcity model exemplified by Immortan Joe, with the milk mothers as capitalists profiting from their own production.”
“Steven, the title character, isn’t the troublemaking, reckless, pain-in-the-butt Boy-with-a-capital-B I feared I’d have to watch around to get to the powerful women and loving queer folk I really wanted to see. He’s unreserved, adventurous, and confident – all good traits that are fairly typical for boy leads in kids’ shows – but he is also affectionate, selfless, very prone to crying, and just plain effin’ adorable.”
The equality of men and women on the basis of healthy and consensual sex is sex positivity according to the Women and Gender Advocacy Center. Thus, to desire sex positivity is to be inherently feminist.
This guest post by Erin Relford appears as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.
If TV shows were lovers, I’d argue women haven’t had great sex since Sex and the City. Much like your first time and the strategically latent mile markers you’ve placed on partners since then, you know good sex when you encounter it. From a woman’s point of view, good sex is control without judgment, a convergence of discovery, submission beyond fear, and a jungle gym full of toys where choice puts you in the driver’s seat (debauchery being an optional passenger of course).
Considering Sex and the City TV’s certifiable rubber stamp of good female sex, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda echoed the tales of countless women, giving ode to the free missives of womanhood and female prowess. The lessons in relationships, the selfish romps of good delight, all were reasons to shout “yes, yes, yes” by virtue of sex positivity.
So why then has good female sex gone missing from television? Arguably, cable and broadcast networks have shared in their ill-fated attempts at sexploitation, mostly at the expense of women. The proof is in the pudding or pootnanny in this case. Showtime’s Californication led seven seasons of “accidental cunnilingus” and sapless sucking, while Ray Donovan’s no frills 1-2-3 pump action has left Showtime’s female audience high and dry. HBO’s Ballers is a good time in the sack, if you’re a woman willing to suffice with balls of dry humping and no “Mr. Big” (par for the course Dwayne Johnson).
Lest one forget HBO’s seduction of rape and torture porn, Game of Thrones’ female characters experience it all in guile of good TV. These depictions aren’t to suggest the storytelling behind such shows are short of genius, but remiss of variety. The female sex narrative has been relegated to an industry turned tits for trade commonwealth, a vulva and violence republic.
Sex is an inalienable right, sacred and undeniable, an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate in its pursuance of life, liberty, and rapture. The privilege is everyone’s to be expressed as a declaration of independence and therefore should be engaged from the perspectives of both men and women. On the contrary, the Declaration of Independence was written “that all men are created equal,” yet our stories involving sex are still being viewed from the perspectives of men.
The equality of men and women on the basis of healthy and consensual sex is sex positivity according to the Women and Gender Advocacy Center. Thus, to desire sex positivity is to be inherently feminist.
However, let’s not be haste and expel the idea sex positivity has gone hiding into the forests of Westeros. Evidence exists that sex positivity is flourishing in light of TV’s new golden era and new wave of feminism. It’s come in the embodiment of female sex appeal, the brand of woman that is fabulously fierce, yet deliciously palpable. The fire of Daenerys Targaryen, the tenacity of Brienne of Tarth, or the inexplicable “Stark” of Arya and Sansa are all due a conceded applause thanks to Game of Thrones portrayal of strong, bountiful female characters. Scandal’s Olivia Pope earns top brass for her bastion of prose and breastwork, delivering willful rhubarbs to Washington’s elite though judged often and tenaciously for her challenge to disbelief that women can command power and pleasure in it from the highest tent pole in the land.
Alicia Florrick’s beau Will Gardner may be gone, but her sense of smart and sexy is almost too naughty for CBS’ The Good Wife.
And dare not forget the women of USA Network’s Suits, led by the strut, poise, and pivot of the inimitable Jessica Pearson.
Suffice to say there are many Masters of Sex on television, but does women’s exploration of sex on television have to be justified in pioneering scientists? Can the enjoyment of love and lust be equal parts man, equal parts woman? Not so, according to the 2015 Writers Guild of America TV staffing brief, where women remain underrepresented among staff writers by nearly two to one.
All things being equal, one could satiate in the fact women being 50.8 percent of the US population, would also mean a majority of female driven TV programming, written by women. But the reality is, most female characters are written by men. Some exceptionally well, as in FX’s You’re The Worst where creator Stephen Falk gives equal Judas Priest to the sexes or Darren Star’s Sex and the City. But there are more than 31 flavors to cherry popping ecstasy as proven early on by Ilene Chaiken’s The L Word. Perhaps one of the more prevailing scapes into female intimacy and feminism, The L Word managed to be intriguing and vanguard, paving the way for shows like Orange is the New Black where women could be domineering and emphatic, let alone in control of their very naturism as on Girls.
In an age of digital storytelling, where men still dominate culture and the writer’s room, we can continue to look forward to Pussy Galores.
Meanwhile, feminists and female viewers alike will revel in the Lisbeth Salanders, Olivia Popes, and Mary Janes, persevering far and wide in search of the next big “O,” that is open, outstanding, and out of the ordinary television that engages women from the female point of view. Will there ever be great sex on TV for women?
The answer may befall in there’s simply more to come…
Erin Relford is an author and screenwriter currently working in Los Angeles. Her writings involve female empowerment and engaging girls in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). You can follow her on Twitter @AdrienneFord or her website pinkyandkinky.com
Marqués-Marcet just finished editing Hannah Fiddell’s next film, ‘Six Years,’ a relationship drama, due out this year. “I love working with females,” he told me.
“My crew was actually 80 percent female. But it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to get women.’ I was just getting the best people. I don’t care if they’re women or men. In this case, it just happened to be mostly women. If they are the best, that’s how it is.”
David Verdaguer, Natalia, and Carlos Marques-Marcet
Carlos Marqués-Marcet’s romantic drama 10.000 km opens with a long take–lasting maybe 25 minutes–of an attractive couple making love. Living in a dark, cramped apartment in Barcelona, Alexandra (Natalia Tena) and Sergi (David Verdaguer), both in their early 30s, have been together for seven years. While they have sex, they talk about having a baby. Afterwards, the couple carries on with their normal routine; they drink coffee, eat breakfast, discuss their careers.
The 32-year-old Spanish director and his co-stars–the only two characters in the film–turned up at the New York premiere last week at the Museum of Modern Art for the screening and a Q&A. I spoke with them on the red carpet and the after party at 11 Gattopardo on West 54th Street.
As everyone else melted in the hot weather, which Natalia Tena laughed was “f…king boiling,” the actress looked cool and glamorous. “I’m Spanish, so I love this weather,” she told me. She was born in London but is the daughter of Spanish parents. She is best known as Osha in Game of Thrones and as Tonks in the Harry Potter films Deathly Hallows.
I asked the actress about shooting the opening scene, one of the few times she is physically together with her co-star.
“It’s actually the kind of sex scene that makes you cringe because it’s very real,” she told me. “It makes you uncomfortable because it makes you feel like a fly on the wall, you know what I mean? Whereas other sex scenes in films … it’s kind of like montage. This isn’t really that sexy. It’s a bit weird.”
Tena and her 10.000 km co-star, who improvised much of their own dialogue in the film, did prep work to feel comfortable with each other. The director “made both of us choose music and do strip teases, which was interesting,” she laughed, “so we would know each other physically.” They also created backstories for their characters. “We improvised, talked about how we met, talked about our first kiss, deciding to have a kid.”
Tena and Verdaguer’s characters are young but not that young; they are at an age where their career prospects are narrowing. Sergi, who is practical, is studying for exams to get a teacher’s license. As an ex-pat Brit, Alex has it harder finding a job as a photographer. When Alex receives an offer of a yearlong residence in a Los Angeles gallery, which Sergi didn’t even know she had applied for, he tells her of course she must go. For Alex, this may be her last chance at a career she loves, and she grabs it. Their baby dreams take a back seat.
10,000 kilometers is the distance from the dark, messy Barcelona apartment to the even tinier, very white flat Alex moves to in LA. The film takes place in only two locations with only two people. After the opener they are together only through virtual communication–Skype, e-mails, texts, and Facebook. Often seen only as discombobulated heads on a computer screen, they laugh, joke, argue, and cry.
Long-distance relationships are nothing new, but the movie asks if virtual communication can keep modern love going, or is it just as likely to hasten its dissolution? Sergi asks Alex about the photograph on Facebook of her friends and the man she didn’t tag. Who is he? There are fewer secrets, but it’s also easier to misread a situation or uncover a lie.
Natalia Tena
On the red carpet, when I asked why Marqués-Marcet chose this as the subject for his first feature film debut, the director said, “It’s a modern relationship and changing a lot, and it’s a story that’s been told in many ways, long-distance love, but I thought it could be told in a different way.”
Asked if it was based on a personal experience or story, he said, “It’s the sum of many things. Spain is a country with 50 percent unemployment for young people. It’s very, very hard to get a job, so part of it was portraying this reality of people who have to live under these conditions. Economy has had an effect on everyday life and on our relationships.”
As for having only two characters in the film, the director said, “It just evolved that way. We realized that the most touching and strong moments involved the two of them, and so we kind of stripped down everything else,” he said.
“The funny thing is people don’t feel like they are missing anything else. The idea was trying to contain it so you have this off-screen space for them, like in real long-distance love where you don’t know what’s happening on the other side.”
One of the best things about the film is that for a change it’s the woman who leaves for a better career. I asked the director, who co-wrote the script with Clara Roquet, if he was a feminist? “I’m against patriarchy that’s for sure,” he replied.
“I think the role models have changed. The film is just showing a reality. I’m surrounded by women who leave their homes to pursue a professional life, more even than men, so to me it’s more than just a gesture but portraying reality. Films should portray that reality more often.”
Marqués-Marcet just finished editing Hannah Fiddell’s next film, Six Years, a relationship drama, due out this year. “I love working with females,” he told me.
“My crew was actually 80 percent female. But it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to get women.’ I was just getting the best people. I don’t care if they’re women or men. In this case, it just happened to be mostly women. If they are the best, that’s how it is.”
10,000 km feels modern and doesn’t have the familiar female tropes and stereotypes; the woman is ambitious and takes a chance, while the man wants only to have a child and safe career. Tena’s character is more complicated and has a richer, more interesting interior life than we’re usually allowed to see in films.
During the Q&A following the screening, the actress said she liked her character’s sense of independence and sexual freedom. Too often women’s roles in films were reduced to “prostitutes and mothers and secretaries,” she told the audience. “That’s not the reality, at least not with me and my friends.”
10.000 km, released by Broad Green Pictures, opened Friday, July 10.
Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.
“What is her power over you?” Randall chides Jamie during his psychological torture. As manly as Jamie likens to be, he long ago surrendered himself to Claire’s power over him. In his deteriorated state, only a woman can heal this broken man. While Jamie’s brokenness is wholly justifiable, his extremist way of thinking shows his ideas of masculinity will need to continue to evolve if he wants to fully regain his soul.
As the evil dictator of the territory he occupies in a post-apocalyptic world, he demands more and more gasoline (which is in rare supply), while withholding water from his starved and sickly citizens. He also has a collection of women that he imprisons and uses for breeding purposes. In this single character we see some of the worst aspects of rampant hyper-masculinity condensed into one truly horrifying man.
Yet this very concept of shaming queer men for their sexuality while society is praising straight men for their sexual conquests as a key element of “successful” masculinity demonstrates the way homophobia intersects with a devaluing of the feminine.
Steven, the title character, isn’t the troublemaking, reckless, pain-in-the-butt Boy-with-a-capital-B I feared I’d have to watch around to get to the powerful women and loving queer folk I really wanted to see. He’s unreserved, adventurous, and confident – all good traits that are fairly typical for boy leads in kids’ shows – but he is also affectionate, selfless, very prone to crying, and just plain effin’ adorable.
Breaking Bad is one of those well-written, well-acted shows that somehow inspires people to scream at each other in CAPSLOCK. The debate about Walter White and his wife and their drug-trade boils down to your answers to three deceptively simple questions that act as a rorschach test on masculinity in American culture.
It is this point at which things significantly begin to shift in Frank and Claire’s relationship. This entire situation, which occurred in a succession of embarrassments for Frank, clearly served as a challenge to his dominance and an infringement on his masculinity, especially coming from his wife. For Claire, meanwhile, it is evident that while Frank is fighting desperately to enforce his masculinity and remain in power, she has lost all of hers.
Two distinct masculinities pull the Trilogy’s heroes in different directions. Given Wright’s frequent use of pop culture references, I’ve opted to borrow Dungeons and Dragons’ terminology and describe these extremes as lawful and chaotic. Lawful masculinity is characterized by competency and order; it is the hallmark of the responsible (but rigid) adult. Chaotic masculinity is characterized by hedonism and anti-authoritarianism, usually embodied in the series by characters in a state of adolescence (whether age-appropriate or not).
Part of this belief comes from the assumption that casting women in these roles is always an attempt to tone down the masculine-coded characteristics associated with these characters. Vaguely omnipotent feminist forces are conspiring to emasculate hyper-masculine characters by recasting them as women, so the argument goes.
The life Brody has lived is utterly different, if not entirely sheltered. What dangers or dilemmas he’s faced in his life simply haven’t left the kind of marks Hooper and Quint bear. And their lack prevents him from engaging in any stereotypical masculine posturing. He is, by that criteria anyway, untested.
Knowing that his son had and would continue to kill, Harry taught him to follow a strict code that only allowed Dexter to kill “bad” people. Instead of being chaotic, spontaneous, and killing out of pure rage, Dexter developed a more methodical approach. He is a neat monster who creates a pristine kill room with everything clean, tidy and in its place. All of this could be seen as a more feminine kind of control.
It’s a surprising twist on the trope. Jamie is undoubtedly a force of man to be reckoned with, though the fact that he is a virgin and thus relatively inexperienced in terms of sex when he encounters Claire – the older, more experienced woman – attributes some unexpected “feminine” qualities to his character.
Upon viewing the series after knowing the show’s finale, we see that the Don Draper arc reflects a small change in gender perspectives during that era. The Don of Season 1 would never act as the Don in the Season 7 finale. We see that Mad Men was all about shattering the hyper-masculine Don Draper mythos that he built and trapped himself within.
Not only does the characterization of this violent misogyny as “primordial” imply that violence toward women is the natural state of men, it also implies that gender itself is an essential and natural state of being. Men are men and women are women. In a universe that generally operates in gray areas, such a distinction is uncharacteristically black and white.
Narrator Jackson Katz uses visuals and film clips to argue that such a view of masculinity is creating a crisis in young boys as they grow up being made to feel that violence=agency and that rape is just fine because you should get what you want—and if the answer is “no,” then you just take it.
Wrapped in a hypermasculine Trojan Horse of violence and war custom is a heady lesson about the dangers of ceding to those expectations, and about the road away from them and toward something like redemption. Here is a film where women are shown to be men’s combative equals. Even more so, it is a film where the only way the men can escape their own oppression is to join up with, and occasionally defer to, these women.
With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that.
Boys are judged on their ability to swing a sword or work a trade, criticised for showing weakness, and taught to grow up hard and cold. Doesn’t sound unfamiliar, does it? Masculinity is praised in Westerosi society, as it is in our own.
The movie also, however, offers ideological and anthropological readings of masculinity which are, arguably, a little more complicated. Bigelow appears to have a deep interest in, and respect for, martial masculinity.
Slippin’ Jimmy was to James McGill what Heisenberg was to Walter White–a hyper-masculine alter-ego. OK, Slippin’ Jimmy was only conning a few business men out of their Rolexes, but essentially both men created an alternative, more masculine version of themselves in order to survive and gain success.
Alex is, in many ways, the ideal of the modern man: Handsome, athletic, intelligent, well-traveled, well-off financially but still environmentally sensitive, and with a romantic partner he treats as an equal. Because of this, he has no trouble shrugging off the gendered stereotypes expected of his relationship in the first half of the film. But as soon as he is given reason to doubt his own traditionally defined masculinity, it all falls apart.
Turtle reminds Vince that “the movie is called Aquaman, not Aquagirl.” This line is indicative of the “boys club” that continues to thrive in Hollywood. An actress’s livelihood in the industry is dependent on her co-star.
However, when boys are told that “boys don’t cry” and that men should “man up,” their emotions are not respected, and they often internalize this stigma, sometimes with devastating consequences. Of course, simply crying won’t cure a condition as severe as PTSD, but men being shown that they are not “weak” for experiencing emotions and needing help will undoubtedly aid in the road to recovery.
Because he doesn’t display the same aggressive temperament (he’s actually rather sweet and nurturing) nor does he have a similar function as the rest of the group, his value is regularly questioned and his masculinity is nearly erased. Walsh broaches this issue in the second episode of the series, “Frozen Yoghurt,” when Egan flippantly claims that the famous bag is full of lip balm: “Everything you say to me is emasculating.” And it’s true!
This is another one of the problems that I have with White Knight syndrome. The types prone to exhibiting this behavior tend to have a lower opinion of women that than their outwardly sexist counterparts. White Knights take up the causes of the women in their lives and speak out for them, but it is usually done in a manner that seems to suggest they think that these women are incapable of speaking up for themselves.
As the monomyth evolves, the question is: will it evolve to include the “everywoman” hero archetype, or will the nature of myth itself change to embrace not just the messaging of individualization, but the representation of unique stories for unique people?
Boys are judged on their ability to swing a sword or work a trade, criticised for showing weakness, and taught to grow up hard and cold. Doesn’t sound unfamiliar, does it? Masculinity is praised in Westerosi society, as it is in our own.
This guest post by Jess Sanders appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.
HBO are not my favourite showrunners. They spoil Game of Thrones for me. They use rape as a plot device and women as decoration – I mean, there is a guy working on the show who openly admits to playing “the pervert side of the audience” for god’s sake. Numerous times, I’ve wanted to stop watching out of sheer anger… but I just can’t.
While the presentation of the show is so inherently misogynistic, I am too invested in the characters and the story they’re telling. I love how George R. R. Martin (GRRM) gives us a world we can believe in, and nuanced storylines to read and watch (I just wish the show had been put into better hands to do them justice!).
Game of Thrones is a medieval fantasy. It is set in the kind of world that fairytales and folklore are made of. We’ve got dragons, brave knights, and beautiful maidens – all the components are there. GRRM could have made some easy money writing a romance: the handsome prince rescues the helpless princess; they all live happily ever after, the end. But nobody lives happily ever after in Game of Thrones.
Much like a fairytale, there are plenty of recognisable male tropes: warriors, lotharios, noble heroes. Game of Thrones is a story of rich and powerful patriarchs raising sons to be rightful heirs and trading their daughters in political power-plays. Boys are judged on their ability to swing a sword or work a trade, criticised for showing weakness, and taught to grow up hard and cold. Doesn’t sound unfamiliar, does it? Masculinity is praised in Westerosi society, as it is in our own.
But instead of championing macho ideals, GoT presents a wide range of fully developed male characters who are vulnerable, have real problems and vices, and are not tall, dark, handsome or at all “chiselled.”
My favourite of these is Samwell Tarly, played by John Bradley. I love Sam. He is so much the opposite of any sort of hero stereotype: he’s a fat, pink-faced coward who’s terrified of, well – most things. He’s not strong, he hates fighting, and he’s painfully shy around girls. He just isn’t “masculine” in the traditional sense of the word. But it’s Sam who first kills a White Walker with Dragon Glass. Since then, we haven’t seem him miraculously transformed into a warrior – because he isn’t and doesn’t want to be one – but when the White Walkers finally get to the wall, he might’ve actually saved the day.
Sam finds his courage defending Gilly and Baby Sam against a White Walker.
Tyrion Lannister(Peter Dinklage) is another of my favourite unexpected heroes. He’s probably one of the best-loved characters on the show and, as a dwarf, could easily have had a loveable underdog story. But he’s not an underdog. Tyrion is an arrogant drunk who visits a lot of brothels. And he’s more than capable of being as cruel and calculating as the other Lannisters (just ask Maester Pycelle). On the other hand, he’s done noble things, like respecting Sansa’s wishes about consummating their marriage. He once slapped Joffrey in the face. Tyrion hasn’t become an all-around good guy or a complete “baddie” because his life has been hard, and we never have to feel sorry for or pity him – yeah, we’re on his side, but he’s not perfect and that makes him real.
“Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you. “ – Tyrion Lannister
Then there’s Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth. I know we were talking about men, but I really couldn’t write an article on masculinity and not mention Brienne could I? I think Brienne might just be my idol. On the surface, she is the typical “Joan of Arc” character: a tall woman in men’s armour, hair cut short, stony faced and over-sincere. Brienne refuses to be outwardly feminine – not just because it isn’t in her nature, but because she’s got too much to prove to show anything that could be considered “weakness.” But even then, she’s not a caricature. Brienne loved Renly Baratheon, so much so that she was willing to die for him – albeit not in a helpless way but in a dies-in-bloody-battle kind of way. She doesn’t want to be anybody’s little wife, but she’s not afraid to feel. Like many of the male characters, she seems to be driven by a strong sense of pride and duty, but for Brienne that’s about doing what’s right – not gaining power or status as her male counterparts have been conditioned to do.
Just Brienne being her usual badass self.
It’s a difficult world to navigate for women. In contrast to Brienne, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) uses her sexuality to get what she wants. Olenna and Margaery Tyrell (Diana Rigg,Natalie Dormer) work together, using a combination of Olenna’s wisdom and Margaery’s beauty as their weapon, to secure a future for their House. The women of Westeros live all their lives controlled by men – they use any tool available to take some of that power back.
“Tears aren’t a woman’s only weapon, the best one’s between your legs.” – Cersei Lannister
The more I’ve written about masculinity here, the more I could have written about. I feel like I could have done a whole article’s-worth of writing on each of the characters I’ve mentioned and more. I think that’s a testament to the overwhelmingly varied range of diverse and complex characters to be found in the show and books.
George R. R. Martin has presented us a patriarchy that’s falling apart, with men too wrapped up in their power struggles and wars to notice the impending threat of White Walkers, and the arrival of winter. Over the course of writing, I realised how many of the stereotypically masculine characters are now dead, while the thinkers and the “weaker” characters live:
King Robert Baratheon: warrior, womaniser, drunkard – suffered an “unfortunate hunting accident”
It seems that, in Game of Thrones, being “manly” might get you glory, but it might also get you killed. Valar Morghulis, after all.
Jess Sanders is a 22-year-old feminist and writer from “The North” (otherwise known as Yorkshire, England). She can be found tweeting excitedly or angrily at @jsssndrs.
Let me start by saying that the title of this post is a little disingenuous – I’d never tell you how upset to be about the rape plot lines on HBO. You feel how you feel, and you get to make your own decisions about what you do and don’t watch. I do, however, find it interesting that rape’s showing up so often on TV, and I wonder whether that’s a good thing (because we’re finally talking about it) or a bad thing (because we’re slowly getting desensitized to it). I think it’s a little of both.
Let me start by saying that the title of this post is a little disingenuous – I’d never tell you how upset to be about the rape plot lines on HBO. You feel how you feel, and you get to make your own decisions about what you do and don’t watch. I do, however, find it interesting that rape’s showing up so often on TV, and I wonder whether that’s a good thing (because we’re finally talking about it) or a bad thing (because we’re slowly getting desensitized to it). I think it’s a little of both.
I wish I could say something funny, but everything about this is terrible
I remember that, when Game of Thrones first aired, and I watched the first episodes, not really knowing what it was, I was very uncomfortable with the story line where Daenerys gets sold to a warlord who rapes her repeatedly before they suddenly fall in love. I remember thinking (and writing) at that time that I was afraid to live in a world where depictions of rape were so common that they no longer had the power to shock us. I think I likened it to the festering animal corpse we saw in episode one – something that would have really freaked me out when I was younger, but that I barely even noticed on Game of Thrones, since I’m so used to seeing gross stuff on TV.
In the intervening years, I was annoyed that Game of Thrones used rape so often as a way to raise the stakes in a tense situation – during the battle of Blackwater we learn that the noble women have soldiers standing guard to kill them if the city falls, so that they don’t get raped; a bunch of total randoms try to rape Sansa because that’s what they do during riots in Westeros; we know that all the guys stationed at Crastor’s Keep are total fucking dicks because they want to rape every girl they meet; we know that a bunch of other guys in the Night’s Watch are total fucking dicks for the same reason. One of the worst examples is when we spend what feels like hours and hours of season three watching Ramsay Snow torture a male character named Theon, often in sexual ways, apparently just to impress upon us that torture is really bad news.
On the flip side of that, season three also includes the only rape plot line I’d mark as kind of legitimately good. In that plot line, Jaime Lannister slowly becomes friends with the only female knight on the show, Breinne of Tarth. When they’re both captured by mercenaries who try to rape her, the show is very clear in presenting this as a situation in which sexual violence is being used as a way to dehumanize her, punish her for gender non-conformity, and treat her as less than a person. Because Jaime’s come to see Brienne as an equal and a full human being, we see that his perception of rape changes in that moment, and that he starts to appreciate that she’s had to fight a much harder battle than he has, just to receive basic rights. (The show later destroys that character arc by “accidentally” having him rape his sister, but that’s another story.)
For me, the stuff with Brienne worked well because that story didn’t treat rape as something that inevitably follows from being female – it contextualized rape within society, culture, and power relations, showing how rape is used as a tool used to oppress people with lower status. That’s important – and it’s something worth dramatizing in fiction.
The latest rape-related plot line – the one that, weirdly, is the flashpoint for anger over rape on Game of Thrones, after everything else that’s happened – falls somewhere between gratuitous let’s-raise-the-stakes stuff and thoughtful cultural commentary, but much closer to the former. It’s easy to see why people are upset. Sansa is a likable character, Ramsay is a bastard (in every single sense of the word), and watching him viciously attack her on their wedding night doesn’t tell us anything about the characters, the situation, or the dynamics of sexual violence that we didn’t already know. It wasn’t my favourite moment, either. But is this a sign that we’re not taking rape very seriously? I’m not sure.
HBO has a pretty uneven history of using rape story lines – sometimes for good, sometimes for something a bit less than good, and sometimes for something that’s hard to parcel out.
Like this. This is very hard to parcel out.
Back in 1997, HBO launched its first hour-long drama series, Oz – a theatrical, experimental and often scathing indictment of the US prison system. Oz arguably paved the way for the renaissance of HBO original programming that followed, and it introduced a lot of the things we’ve come to expect from premium cable – lots of f-bombs, frontal nudity, graphic sex and violence, people taking drugs, and (of course) people doing crimes. Its thesis, at least in the beginning, was that it’s inhumane to lock people up in a cage and watch them tear each other apart. Its attitude toward rape, at least in the beginning, was that rape is used by dumb people with poor social skills as a way to punish, humiliate and control those they see as their inferiors. The main story arc in the first season asks the audience to identify with a man who’s raped and tortured by a white supremacist, and to watch as he slowly loses his humanity. It’s very uncomfortable, but it’s also a powerful depiction of what’s wrong with something that a lot of people see as being a normal part of prison and have the bad taste to make flippant jokes about.
Oz ran for six seasons, though, and things got weird toward the end. The show seemed to learn the wrong lessons from itself (and from The Sopranos, which launched two years later) about what was successful with viewers and, rather than being a focused piece of cultural commentary, it turned into The Super Gross-Out Everyone Rapes and Stabs Everyone Hour with subplots ripped from the headlines, in which the prisoners became telemarketers and seeing eye dog trainers. Meaning, if we take Oz as a whole, it was both a valuable examination of a serious issue that wasn’t often talked about and a crass attempt at turning sexual violence into a shocking and sometimes titillating spectacle. It didn’t score 100 percent in either category, and many of the premium cable shows that followed have also been a mixture of the two things.
It bears mentioning that a few shows have actually just been a mixture of the worst kinds of things. At the shallow end of the entertainment pool, True Blood scored a hat trick by: a) including gratuitous, shock value rape that served no purpose in the story; b) acting like it’s impossible to rape a man because men are always up for sex; and c) acting like rape can be a funny joke under the right circumstances (for reasons that I don’t understand, those circumstances are: if the victim is promiscuous and if the rapist has a weird personality – WTF?). On Showtime, Shameless has also gone the route of it’s-impossible-to-rape-a-dude-and-it’s-kind-of-funny-if-you-try, and I’m told that the current Starz series, Outlander, is basically built from rape fail of the isn’t-this-sort-of-erotic variety.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Sopranos episode “Employee of the Month” is routinely cited as one of the best in the series, and that’s an hour all about the rage that Tony Soprano’s therapist, Dr. Melfi, feels after the man who rapes her is released on a technicality. She struggles with the ethical decision of whether to use her mafia connections to exact some vigilante justice, and the audience understands how she feels. We can debate whether or not the show “needed” the attack on Dr. Melfi to be rape, or what it means that that was what was chosen so that we could sympathize with her position, but it’s a good piece of television. And it’s a good piece of television from a show that also has no problem setting its scenes in a strip club and using women’s bodies as a backdrop to the action.
In that context, Game of Thrones reads more like Oz and The Sopranos than like True Blood, Shameless, or Outlander, to me. Sometimes it’s contributing something of value; sometimes it’s indulging an ugly desire to see people suffer for our entertainment; sometimes it’s uncritically replicating our conflicted cultural attitudes toward rape – it’s a mixture of all of those things – so, how should we feel about that?
Seriously – “Employee of the Month” it’s one of the best episodes
There was a time, not long ago, when rape was basically Voldemort – you couldn’t say its name without making everyone uncomfortable, or risking that they’d blame you for making them uncomfortable, by speaking the forbidden. When rape was a stigmatized topic and had the power to bring an uncomfortable hush, it arguably seemed like a more serious subject. But, because it brought that hush, and because we didn’t talk about it – because it was shrouded in so much shame and secrecy – we couldn’t have the conversations we’re having now about what consent looks like, and what it is and isn’t OK to expect from a partner. We couldn’t talk about rape culture – we couldn’t talk about the way that rape relates to other forms of violence against women; we couldn’t publicly discuss the systemic reasons why it happens. We couldn’t even say, “It’s a form of misogyny.” It was just shadows peeling out of the dark – a horrible, inexplicable thing that just happened without any explanation, or any way to make it stop.
Now, it’s at the top of our cultural radar. Now, it’s lost some of its power to hush, and we’ve gained more power to speak about it. We’re at a stage where we have to confront rape somehow, and we’re watching that confrontation play out on TV – it’s a confrontation that isn’t over yet. It’s a confrontation that’s really just starting.
The reason there’s so much rape on television now is that we’ve realized the issue is important. It occupies a place in our minds – it’s something that we’re actively struggling with, and that’s good. It’s better than accepting rape as normal; it’s better than treating it as some big mystery thing that nobody can ever talk about or change.
At the same time, when we didn’t talk about rape, we could all sort of silently believe that we agreed with each other about how it worked. Now that it’s holding more space in public discourse, we have more opportunity to encounter ideas about rape that offend us. If the presentation of rape on TV seems schizophrenic – if it seems like it’s this weird, random mixture of insightful observation, crass enjoyment, gross misunderstanding, sympathy, minimization, titillation, gender theory, cultural criticism, ignorance, spitefulness, and confusion – that’s because, culturally, we have a fractured, complicated, self-contradictory relationship with this topic. It’s actually possible for the same person to be kind of turned on and kind of grossed out by rape scenes – it’s possible for the same person to think it’s wrong for men to rape women and that’s there’s nothing you can really do about it because it’s just something that happens. It’s possible for somebody with really good, enlightened, thoughtful views of gender to just not notice sexualized violence against women, because we’re all so used to seeing it.
It’s also possible for someone to be a straight-up misogynist dick bag, and we get some of that, too, but the point is that we’re in the middle of a discussion that it’s worth our time – all our time – to have.
To say the least, it’s absolutely annoying – and, for some people, hurtful and traumatizing – to feel that you can’t watch TV anymore without risking that the story will suddenly turn against you by presenting sexual violence – violence that you may have experienced in real life – as something that’s either Not A Big Deal or is Kind Of Fun To Watch – but it’s also an opportunity for dialogue that we weren’t always able to have.
I would be more disturbed if every depiction of rape on TV were dismissive, normalizing, gratuitous, or uncritical, but we’re fortunate enough that that isn’t the case, and fortunate enough to live in a time when audiences have an unprecedented ability to publicly respond and speak back to what they’ve seen.
It sucks to be reminded that not everyone has a very sophisticated view of how gender and power dynamics influence rape – it sucks to be reminded that there are some people who’ve literally never had to think about this at all, and others who have to live in fear and think about it all the time. But it’s also amazing, because at least now we’re talking about it. Now, no matter how little you usually think about gender, you’ve heard the words “rape culture” before. Now, no matter how little you usually think about TV, you’ve had to ask yourself whether you think it’s right or wrong to have a plot line about rape – and why, and what makes it that way, and what having that plot line says about culture.
It’s up to you to decide how upset you are about any individual plot line on any individual show, but the pattern, I think, is not so discouraging. The pattern shows that this is a subject that’s become important to us – that it’s something we’re trying to understand. That we find it worthy of our attention. The discussion is still really messy, and it includes ideas that are pretty off-putting at times, but I think it’s a positive sign that we’re talking about this at all.
Aside from being lazy, careless depictions like this are dangerous. They desensitize people to an issue that is still very pressing. It’s not that rape shouldn’t exist in fiction, but they must be framed responsibly. Fictional female characters are forever being raped as retribution against the ills of the men they’re connected to, or as punishment for not being submissive to the men around them. And this happens time and time again across genres and media. So while the denotative reading of these acts might be that “evil men rape” the connotative interpretation over time becomes “rape is a valid punishment for women.”
This guest post by Cate Young previously appeared at her blog BattyMamzelle and is cross-posted with permission.
I’m sick of talking about rape.
Forcible rape, date rape, grey rape, acquaintance rape, spousal rape, statutory rape and now fictional rape. I’m sick to death of explaining why the callous rape of women and girls in media is a very bad thing for our culture and why we should cut it out. *wags finger*
This Game of Thrones storyline is just the latest in a long line of excuses and equivocations for why the depiction of brutal and gendered violence against women is a storytelling necessity. People are sticking their heels in on both sides but to me the moral position is clear: there is nothing to be gained from lazy representations of rape in a media landscape that already devalues women and reduces them to objects and property.
Now I’ve read the arguments in favour of the narrative value of Sansa’s rape. That it showed that Ramsay was a sadist. That it would help Theon come back to himself and help Sansa escape. That it would motivate Sansa to seek vengeance. But it’s all bullshit.
What did that scene add that we didn’t already know? Did the writers think that cutting Theon’s penis off was too subtle to indicate Ramsay’s sadism? Did they think the brutal murder of her mother and brother were not strong enough motivators for Sansa to want revenge against the Boltons? Could they not conceive of a single other way in which Theon might be able to mentally recenter himself? What about this particular rape scene added such probative narrative value that it had to be transposed from one character to another even as the original victim is excised from the story? All it was is more rape on a show already replete with rape, for the sake of having rape. None of this is new information.
And it’s not that rape should never be represented in fiction. Rape is everywhere. It’s unfortunately an all too real danger of the world we live in. But it’s not as though there is some dearth of rape representation in media. Using rape as a narrative tool is lazy, and especially so when it’s invoked this many times in the same show. We are now at three female characters (all of whom are considered major point of view characters in the novels) who have been raped in the series, two of whom weren’t raped in the source material. It’s just rapes on rapes on rapes up in this bitch…
And then to add insult to injury, the framing of the scene takes the emphasis off of Sansa and her trauma and places it firmly on Theon and his anguish and having the witness the act. That slow close up to Theon’s face as we hear Sansa scream and cry in the background places him and his emotions squarely at the centre of the scene. We see not, Sansa’s emotional turmoil at being humiliated and degraded by her new husband, but Theon’s tortured face as his guilt consumes him. So on top of Sansa being raped in the first place, that violation is used not to make us feel sympathy for her, but for a man who betrayed her and her family. She doesn’t even get to be the subject of the violence that is happening to her. Her pain instead gets used as a device to advance a man’s character arc instead of her own (the perils of which I talked about back in December in this essay about the rape plot in the CW show Reign).
Aside from being lazy, careless depictions like this are dangerous. They desensitize people to an issue that is still very pressing. It’s not that rape shouldn’t exist in fiction, but they must be framed responsibly. Fictional female characters are forever being raped as retribution against the ills of the men they’re connected to, or as punishment for not being submissive to the men around them. And this happens time and time again across genres and media. So while the denotative reading of these acts might be that “evil men rape” the connotative interpretation over time becomes “rape is a valid punishment for women.”
“Now instead of raping a buxom, weeping young woman, your Extremely Bad Dude is now raping a terrified six year old boy. Does it still feel like it deserves to be there? To use the usual fictional rape apologist arguments, there’s no reason this scene shouldn’t exist. Child rape exists, and no doubt happens in times of war. It probably happens even more in third world countries that are at war. Historically speaking, I’m sure there have been thousands of child rapes since the dawn of humanity. Maybe millions. Practically speaking, it would be remiss not to include a child rape scene or two, right? It happens. We must be truthful to reality. It’s our duty. Or, wait – is it possible you’re using this horrific, degrading, monstrous act as window dressing?”
Why is it that sexual violence against women is the only kind of violence seen as such an inevitability that not including it raises suspicions?
And for all the people who keep harping on about how much worse Jeyne Poole’s fate was in the novels, you’re missing the point. We’re at the juncture now where the series will likely deviate wildly from what George R. R. Martin wrote in the novels and from what he intends to write in the future. This gives the show’s writers enormous latitude to readjust the moral compasses of these characters. Evil men will stay evil, and good men will stay good. But how evil and good they may be is up to them. I find it very upsetting and frankly offensive that in all the retooling that was done to this storyline, the rape scene was the one thing that just had to stay. We’re literally talking about an entirely different character with a different history and experiences, but she just had to get raped because…. “realism?” It’s amazing to me that we can accept a fictional world where dragons are real and men kill their brothers by shadow proxy, but a world without rape (or even just a little less rape!) is unfathomable to some people’s imaginations.
But when it comes down to it, I’m sick of talking about rape because it’s exhausting. I don’t think the men who are disingenuously barging into these conversations understand how truly exhausting this new cultural trend can be for female viewers. And often they bring up the many, many murders on Game of Thrones as a counterpoint, but that isn’t a 1:1 comparison. For one thing, nothing is preventing men from “making a stink” about the excessive violence of these shows. We as women aren’t required to not care about something that affects us because men don’t care about something that affects them. But I digress…
In our daily lives, murder is not something that most people are actively protecting themselves against. For most men, unless they’re in the people-killing business, getting murdered is not exactly a daily, top of mind concern. But for women? Getting raped is a daily concern. Women have whole routines built around not making ourselves vulnerable to rapists and sexual predators even for a second. Every day we have to think about getting raped. We self-police what we wear, where we go, when we go, how we go, with whom we go, all in an effort to make sure that we’re taking every possible precaution against being raped. And then we’re raped anyway and society tells us it’s our own fault for not having a more effective rape routine.
So for women to then come home, (hopefully having managed to not get raped) and have to watch ALL THE TV SHOWS be about women getting raped? It’s too much. The men defending Sansa’s rape don’t get that this depiction is yet another reminder that rape is everywhere, there’s no escape and that we could be next.
If you really to make a leap, we can see this uptick is the engagement of rape tropes as an element of social control. Because it isn’t just Game of Thrones that’s doing this. From House of Cards to Scandal to Reign, lots of shows are adding rape “for flavour” and it serves as a constant reminder of danger. When we look at it like that, is it really too much to ask that creators are at least responsible with their use of rape in fiction? When you’ve created a scenario where an entire segment of your audience is actively debating whether or not Sansa was even raped because “she chose to play the Game of Thrones” you’re being irresponsible with your craft. These discussions are not fun rhetorical games. They have an active effect on our lives as women. It’s disheartening as a feminist lover of television to find that this is the new status quo. Rape your women, king your men. And watch TV behind your fingers.
I gotta say, I don’t know how many more television shows I can watch while quietly mumbling “please don’t rape her please don’t rape her” under my breath.
Can we please stop raping our fictional women?
I’m all raped out.
Cate Young is a Trinidadian freelance writer and photographer, and author of BattyMamzelle, a feminist pop culture blog focused on film, television, music, and critical commentary on media representation. Cate has a BA in Photojournalism from Boston University and is currently pursuing her MA in Mass Communications so that she can more effectively examine the symbolic annihilation of women of colour in the media and deliver the critical feminist smack down. Follow her on twitter at @BattyMamzelle.
Our theme week for February 2015 will be Unlikeable Women.
Representations of female antiheroines are on the rise. Contemporary audiences love morally ambiguous female characters who are hard, powerful, and determined. The soft-spoken but ruthless Claire Underwood of House of Cards is a prime example of women we love to hate, who push or ignore boundaries to get what they want. The elegant antiheroines who tend to be wealthy, goal-driven, and charismatic (Olivia Pope of Scandal, Patty Hewes of Damages, or Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent), while comparable, are a slightly different breed from the outright unlikeable women who are popping up all over film and television.
Whiny, self-obsessed Piper Chapman of Orange is the New Black and Hannah Horvath of Girls are perfect examples of these downright unlikeable female characters. What sets them apart from the traditional antiheroine archetype? Michelle Jurgen of Mic posits,
“It’s alienating simply because we’re not used to being served up unpalatable women: women who are naked just because, who give themselves terrible haircuts, and who are frank, judgmental and do whatever they want without regard for others. Women who act in a way we’re used to seeing only male characters act, which has unfairly branded them unlikable rather than well-crafted and complex.”
Jurgen further goes on to suggest that it is the humanness of these antiheroines that is difficult for audiences to stomach. Along with Piper and Hannah are characters like Cersei Lannister of Game of Thrones and Annalise Keating of How to Get Away with Murder who are equally vulnerable. They’re petty, manipulative, and needy. They make mistakes, often stupid mistakes, and they’re usually in damage-control mode, putting out the fires they either set or caused to be set.
If these unlikeable women are so “unpalatable,” why are they still being created? Why are we still watching them? Why are these productions winning so many awards and accolades?
Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.
We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film 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, Feb. 20 by midnight.
Even after the finale of its fourth season, the HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’ continues its reputation for unpredictability and for subverting our genre expectations. However, a glaring pattern of predictability is emerging: all sex workers with significant roles will die horribly. Think about it.
Even after the finale of its fourth season, the HBO series Game of Thrones continues its reputation for unpredictability and for subverting our genre expectations. However, a glaring pattern of predictability is emerging: all sex workers with significant roles will die horribly. Think about it.
Doreah (played by Roxanne McKee), Daenerys Targaryen’s handmaiden and a prostitute: DEAD.
Doreah is instructed to teach Dany the art of sex
Ros (played by Esmé Bianco), a Northerner who moves South to King’s Landing, working as a prostitute and trusted assistant to Littlefinger: DEAD.
Ros: tough, upwardly mobile, intelligent, and independent
Finally, we have Shae (played by Sibel Kekilli): a prostitute and the lover of Tyrion Lannister who poses as a handmaiden to Sansa Stark: DEAD.
Shae soothes Tyrion’s fears before the Battle of Blackwater Bay
What do all these women have in common? Their profession as sex workers, and they are all disloyal.
After being raped by Viserys and ordered to sexually train/service Daenerys, Doreah betrays her Khaleesi in Qarth, helping Xaro Xhoan Daxos (the man Dany instructed Doreah to sleep with) to steal Dany’s dragons. (A deleted scene even shows Doreah coldly murdering fellow handmaiden Irri.)
Doreah is caught in bed with Daxos
Ros rightfully fears her employer and seeks to help Sansa Stark by revealing to Varys Littlefinger’s plans to spirit the girl away.
Littlefinger punishes Ros by letting Joffrey put a series of crossbow bolts in her
In one of the most significant acts of betrayal the series has ever depicted, Shae testifies against Tyrion in court, condemning him for the crime of regicide. We also find that she was sleeping with his father, Tywin Lannister, which the show asserts is an even greater form of betrayal than her false testimony.
Shae gives her damning, full of lies testimony
Shae’s acts of betrayal are over-the-top and out of character (remember, we’re talking about the show here, not the books). Season 4 has her being sullen and adopting a completely unrealistic attitude about the danger she and Tyrion face. She is irrationally jealous of his forced marriage to Sansa while still maintaining her affection for the young Stark girl. Overall, though, we must remember that Shae truly does love Tyrion. She has refused gold, safety, and a fine home with servants all for love of Tyrion.
Shae and Tyrion lovingly kiss
We are to believe that because Tyrion white fanged Shae, she would condemn him to die by telling lies during his trial, condemn Sansa whom she loved and protected by telling lies about her, fuck Tywin, get so cozy with him that she’d call him “my Lion” and try to kill Tyrion the next time she saw him? I ain’t buying it.
Shae and Sansa watch ships arrive in King’s Landing
Is Shae really a woman so scorned that she’d destroy everyone she ever cared about to get revenge? Is she really so daft that she couldn’t see that Tyrion was trying to protect her all along? Is she really so malleable that Tywin could so easily manipulate her into such complete betrayal?
Her utter betrayal is character-defining for Tyrion. That he is “forced” to kill her changes him, so her unrealistic actions and extreme betrayal merely serve to further Tyrion’s character arc, while contradicting her own characterization over the last four years.
Tyrion finds a gussied up Shae in his father’s bed
More importantly, Shae’s betrayal when considered alongside the double-crosses of her fellow prostitutes and their collective fates reveal a disturbing attitude toward sex workers that Game of Thrones is advancing. It claims that sex workers are disposable and that they cannot be trusted.
“That’s in a way, the most horrible thing he could see because she wasn’t a whore…they had become committed to each other. She’s no longer a whore. When he calls her a whore, it’s not that he believes this is what she is; it’s what he desperately needs to tell her to save her life in his mind, and, ironically, he’s ended up turning her into that very thing that she was running from.”
Weiss’ repeated use of the offensive term “whore” here encapsulates so much more than Shae’s profession as a sex worker. Weiss’ and the show’s obsession and discomfort with these women’s occupation is very masculine and very patriarchal, asserting that if you must pay a woman for sex, her morals and motivations are never to be trusted about anything ever. This stems from an ego-driven masculine notion that if a woman retains enough agency to demand payment for sex, it is impossible to know if she really enjoyed said sex, and if she might be faking that, she could be faking any and all other emotions or professed loyalties.
Game of Thrones punishes another sex worker by having her die on her back in a bed
I’m pretty tired of seeing sex workers raped and murdered on TV. I’m sick of seeing sex workers depicted within a stereotypical trope as liars and betrayers who get what’s coming to them. It’s no secret that Game of Thrones doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to the exploitation of its female characters, liberally employing death, rapes, gratuitous nudity and crappy decision-making that runs counter to characterization in order to move the plot along, make a nonessential point or punish an “unlikeable” woman. This so disappoints me because, in other ways, Game of Thrones delights with its intricate plot, attention to detail, breathtaking visuals, character depth and endless surprises. Season 5 is being filmed right now. It’s time for the bar to be raised with this amazing series’ treatment of women and, in particular, its treatment of sex workers. I challenge the creators to stop exploiting their female and sex worker characters. I challenge them to start working as hard to give these marginalized women as much real depth and humanity as they do for their male counterparts.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
