Tag: On Television

Elektra in ‘Daredevil’: Violence, White Masculinity, and Asian Stereotypes

Elektra is in some ways, the most problematic character. … Yet there is something strangely compelling about Elektra, not as an extension of the show’s tired prejudices against Asian people, but as a woman who despite her questionable origins transcends the limiting Strong Female Character trope. …Her presence in and of itself disrupts the masculine hegemony of violence in the show.

Daredevil Elektra 4

This guest post written by Kelly Kanayama appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

When it comes to sensitive depictions of people of color, Marvel’s Netflix show Daredevil has a fairly terrible record. There’s Claire Temple, portrayed by Afro-Latina Rosario Dawson, who helps the white male hero but can never be with him; that privilege is reserved for Karen Page, the embodiment of pure, white womanhood. There’s Madame Gao, who checks all the boxes of the Inscrutable Asian stereotype: the exact nature of her Asianness can never be revealed, she appears to spend her time sipping tea and painting whatever this is, and her communication mostly consists of vague pronouncements. Then there are the hordes of nameless and – as a result of their face coverings – literally faceless ninjas, whose sole purpose is to be dispatched by Daredevil, as his skill in their own martial arts is just that impressive.

And then there’s Elektra Natchios, half-Asian, half-white, sexual, violent, dangerous, and in some ways, the most problematic character on the show.

Elektra functions partially as a contrast to Karen: the femme fatale of color tempting a moral white man away from his virtuous path and, because the two are linked, away from a good-hearted, white woman. To underscore this dichotomy, Karen typically wears whites, neutrals, and blues, like the Virgin Mary would, whereas Elektra’s wardrobe consists of red and black (the vamp’s colors) with accents of gold or the metal of a blade.

Although the series presents Elektra as Daredevil’s equal in terms of fighting prowess, the show disempowers her by attributing this to her status as a living weapon of the Hand. As a woman of color, she is inherently an empty vessel to be filled, with ultimately no agency regarding her actions. Even more worrying, the responsibility for her lack of self-determination lies with her fellow Asians; the Hand may have the occasional non-Asian member, perhaps highlighted to sidestep accusations of racism, but its operation and aesthetics are pure East Asian stereotype. This dynamic ties into other media depictions of people of color suffering the most oppression at the hands of their own – such as any Western news story about South Asian, Middle Eastern, and/or Muslim women – which often serves as justification for the exercise of white privilege over non-white individuals or communities. We might not be perfect, but we’re not as bad as them. It’s fine to bomb their countries, because otherwise they’ll just keep on oppressing.

Elektra Daredevil

It must also be noted that the only named Asian characters besides Elektra are Madame Gao and Nobu, whose name no one bothers to mention for most of Season 1 (I resorted to calling him Hot Suit Guy until then). For the most part, Asians in Daredevil are a monolithic mass, the menace of the Other against which a powerful white man must rise.

To meet this challenge, white men repeatedly prove their worthiness to rule by mastering Asianness. Daredevil and Stick are more proficient in Asian martial arts than the warriors of the Hand, while the Kingpin demonstrates his intelligence by speaking to Madame Gao and Nobu in their own languages. These men are thus “better” than their Asian counterparts, as seen in the Kingpin’s ability to convince Gao and Nobu to cooperate with him, or in the fact that both Elektra and Daredevil are both trained by Stick but the latter manages to not become a killer, due to a morality that the Asian Elektra can never have.

Daredevil is a white man’s world. Asians are just getting beaten up and dying in it.

Yet there is something strangely compelling about Elektra, not as an extension of the show’s tired prejudices against Asian people, but as a woman who despite her questionable origins transcends the limiting Strong Female Character trope. In addition to being half of a white woman/woman of color romantic polarity for Daredevil, her presence in and of itself disrupts the masculine hegemony of violence in the show.

Here’s a drinking game I wouldn’t recommend playing with Daredevil: take a sip every time the title character growls “my city.” You’ll pass out in the first fifteen minutes. It’s a key phrase in deciphering his motives behind defending Hell’s Kitchen, which aren’t simply rooted in the desire to stand up for victims of crime. If that was all he wanted, he would have stuck to his day job as a lawyer for the poor and the otherwise marginalized, without the need to sneak out after dark to break some bones. “My city” connotes ownership and, in turn, the right to treat the city’s occupants however he sees fit, since they as part of the city belong to him. The Punisher also comes to this situation from a (former) position of institutional authority. As a former Marine who was deployed in the Middle East, he represents the exercise of U.S. and largely white male-dominated power with the goal of establishing order, and still refers to himself as a “soldier.” This is the language of possession and imposition, spoken by the show’s white male leads.

Daredevil Elektra 3

Elektra displays little concern for such ideologies. Her accent marks her as an outsider in Hell’s Kitchen and in the U.S., and the phrase “my city” is absent from her conversation, as is its more neutral variant “this city.” She is a foreigner, a woman, and a person of color who is at least somewhat removed from her male counterparts’ battles of ownership and authority – and is their equal at what they do best in their efforts to impose the order of white patriarchal institutions upon their surroundings. To drive this point home, Elektra’s most sexualized moment is inextricable from her first display of physical power, as these are combined in that boxing ring scene – first through a fight where she and Matt are evenly matched, then through a passionate coupling where she spends most of her time on top.

In a show where violence equals authority, being the living weapon of the Hand grants her a status similar to those of Daredevil‘s male leads, investing her with the ability to fight alongside or against them as an equal. While Elektra’s is a different type of violence from that carried out by the Punisher or Daredevil with a different source, it is nonetheless effective.

Granted, this part of the plot is still highly objectifying. Perhaps I’m trying to justify my love for a character whose own backstory undercuts her power by finding alternate readings of the indefensible; even in 2016, as an Asian-American woman, I often have to settle for the problematic and compromised or nothing at all. It is a rare occurrence to see a powerful woman on-screen who looks like me and who isn’t entirely composed of racially fetishized tropes: the clingy schoolgirl, the murderous geisha, the dominatrix ninja, or some unholy combination thereof. Elektra may bear aspects of these tropes, but she is by no means reduced to them – in a show where authority is reinforced by successful acts of violence and such acts are the purview of white men, she undermines this supremacy through her own violence and her existence as a female Other of color among the male, the white, and the powerful.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Daredevil’s Elektra and the Problem of Destiny; ‘Daredevil’ and His Damsels in Distress

Kelly Kanayama was born and raised in Honolulu but now lives in Scotland, where she is pursuing a PhD in comics research. She has written about comics and superheroes at Bitch Media, SciFiNow, NPR: Code Switch, Women Write About Comics, and Mindless Ones. Her poetry on comics and pop culture has appeared in Room Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, and the British Science Fiction Association magazine Focus. You can follow her on Twitter @kellykanayama.

‘Supergirl’ and Room for the Non-Brooding Superhero

There is an indisputable charm to Kara’s strong will that can go toe to toe with the might of her fist. Here is a young woman that believes so strongly in her fellow being that she tries talking to many of the baddies of the week rather than immediately resorting to fighting. Her kindhearted and giving spirit is ultimately what sets her apart from the other heroes that have populated television and movies for the last few years…

Supergirl season 1 flying

This guest post written by Allyson Johnson appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

It would seem that as of late the superhero genre has taken a turn for the dour and morally dubious. Dark Knights battle Men of Steel, a genius, grieving billionaire clashes in ideologies with a soldier out of time which leads to violence; mutants bring the end of days as Hot Topic gets free advertising in what could be the big surprise in Suicide Squad. Hell’s Kitchen offers up a bloody and bruised vigilante and a psychologically scarred heroine and even The Flash, the previous home to the peppiest characters, has had its hero battling demons and facing past traumas. The joy of Barry’s world has dimmed as of late as Zoom has vowed to take everything and everyone that he loves.

Then, across multiple worlds, there is Supergirl, and she is delightful.

It’s hardly a reach to call Melissa Benoist’s Kara Danvers a genuine ray of sunshine. While many may have enjoyed Henry Cavill’s scowling, apathetic Superman, I’d much rather watch Benoist light up the screen with her optimism. Embodying all that is good, honest and hopeful in superheroes; she bursts onto the screen beaming with satisfaction in getting the chance to save the day.

There is an indisputable charm to Kara’s strong will that can go toe to toe with the might of her fist. Here is a young woman that believes so strongly in her fellow being that she tries talking to many of the baddies of the week rather than immediately resorting to fighting. Her kindhearted and giving spirit is ultimately what sets her apart from the other heroes that have populated television and movies for the last few years (with exceptions, obviously.) Kara has more in common with Steve Rogers than Clark Kent in terms of media representation. While she and Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen certainly share attributes (rendering adorable results) the latter is more prone to wallowing than Kara who deals with her problems head on. This is highlighted in the follow-up from the events in “Falling” where Kara has been affected by red kryptonite. Out of control for an episode while her very worst thoughts come snarling out of her, she is branded as a threat to the city. When she awakens from the trance, she sobs out of despair (add Melissa Benoist to actresses who make me cry by crying) and it’s all due to the grief she experiences at how mean-spirited she had become. She doesn’t waste time by ruminating or talking about how it’s all her fault (ahem Arrow). Instead, despite being admittedly shaken, she goes about her day with the mindset of doing anything and everything in her power to regain the trust she worked so hard to earn.

Supergirl TV season 1

Kara isn’t without her trauma, having left a planet minutes away from destruction and having to willingly leave everyone she’d ever known and loved. Rather than wear her tragedies as a burden (and this is something she shares with Gustin’s The Flash) she utilizes her sadness as a way to help others from enduring the same pain. She thrives on her city’s ability to find hope in the darkest moments, both becoming a beacon for it while also turning to them for courage. Young, unabashedly gleeful about what her powers embolden her to do while striving to better herself, Kara Danvers is the embodiment of what we all expected to see in Superman when we stepped foot into the theater for Man of Steel.

So often in our superhero origin stories, the hero faces a tragedy that influences who they become. It just so happens that rather than allow hers to burden her with a sense of guilt, Kara instead utilizes it as a catalyst for purpose. Where Oliver Queen in Arrow was led down a path of self-righteousness and murder all in the name of “protecting his city,” Kara helps out the girl facing down a schoolyard bully. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent seem to believe that the humans they save are a mere nuisance in Batman v. Superman, while Kara believes every problem from worldwide mind control to saving a girl’s pet snake out of a tree is worthwhile.

Supergirl season 1 Kara and Alex

Even the supporting characters, who typically would have been reduced to one note, antagonistic foils for our protagonist, are given a sense of directive purpose. Lucy (Jenna Dewan Tatum) could have been stuck in love triangle hell but instead the two women share a mutual respect. Then, there’s Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart), a journalism mogul who ends up not only mentoring Kara and Supergirl but also proves to possess the warmest heart of any of the characters on the show.

It’s a shame that such richly drawn characters could be buried in such tiresome plots and story development. One of the reasons I’m excited about Supergirl jumping stations from CBS to The CW is the creativity that will now be allowed for its writers. Greg Barlanti, Ali Adler, and Andrew Kreisberg have gone to great lengths to depict characters with love and respect. Now they have time to flourish on a channel with a less restrictive model. Regardless, it would have remained a staple in my weekly roundup, largely due to its leading lady.

There is a larger than life quality to the characters of Zack Snyder’s DC Universe and even in Marvel’s current run where heroes such as Scarlet Witch and Vision join the rankings. Supergirl, despite her otherworldly origins, feels human. Despite her weekly battles with aliens from other worlds or meta-humans from earth, she’s grounded by her optimism and her caring relationships with others. Perhaps there is more drama to be derived from angst and anger, but when we look to Supergirl, we see the face of a hero we would want to see rescuing us, and also, a hero we can all strive to be. I don’t know when it became “uncool” to have heroes who find it burdensome to help others (and in fear of exacting a hyperbole, this isn’t the case all across the board) but while it’s certainly fashionable to have the antihero in the lead or carry a chip on their shoulder, it’s equally as satisfying to watch a hero come speeding into sight, grin in place, and ready to save the day.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Supergirl’s Feminism and Why the TV Series Works

Allyson Johnson is a 20-something living in the Boston area. She’s the Film Editor for TheYoungFolks.com and her writing can also be found at The Mary Sue and Cambridge Day. Follow her on twitter for daily ramblings, feminist rants and TV chat @AllysonAJ.

We Need to Talk About Tara: ‘The Walking Dead’ and Queer Body Positivity

…To have a relationship like Tara and Denise’s was such a glorious prize. Moreover, in a time where femininity is so ensnared in the constant rhetoric surrounding the sizing of women’s bodies, and fixating on labels and valorizing or castigating a language of weight and body image that completely reduces feminine identity, to have two strong and two queer women feature prominently in a way that refuses to submit to those standards and dialogues is such a boon in so many regards.

The Walking Dead_Tara and Denise

This is a guest post written by Eva Phillips.

Rarely do the shows that I rapturously and actively nerd-gasm correspond with shows that I eagerly seek out for positive or intriguing queer narratives. With the exceptions of Orphan Black, the ever-confounding subplots on American Horror Story and my nostalgic revisiting of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, my queer reading of nerd-tastic texts is often relegated to the imagined on my part, and infrequently prominently feature explicitly queer characters and storylines for more than an episode or two. Thus, this piece originated as a way of professing my adoration for one of the few queer characters (and her consequent queer relationship) that happened to emerge in one of my most cherished nerd-series of all time (for better or for worse). And then, upon beginning to pen my praises, a really enraging media-kerfuffle transpired involving Amy Schumer, and the irritatingly age-old issue of discussing and analyzing women’s body image and size based on language that strips them of their autonomy resurfaced yet again. My vitriolic response to the uproar then galvanized me to reconceptualize my piece, reexamining my thoughts on the character/relationship I so adored in the context of its statement on body/selfhood positivity and assertion in conjunction with its queer elevation.

So given that buildup, it might seem a bit peculiar that the show that I chose to write on is the oft-beleaguered AMC giant, The Walking Dead. But perhaps halt scorn for a moment. For a show that started off with some of the most flamboyantly misogynistic storylines, machismo engorged characters, T Dogg and “the problem of race”, and manipulatively or even scurrilously portrayed women (the laughably awful attempt to cast Lori as some sort of Lady Macbeth in Season 2? Always a personal “favorite”), The Walking Dead has surprisingly evolved into one of the more complex, multi-persona infused shows. Though it may not be the pinnacle of diversity in the ever-expanding canopy of televisual representation, and it is plagued by some of the worrisome trends of disregarding certain actors (like the irksome detail of Sonequa Martin Green’s late addition to the main credits three season into her stint, compared to Michael Cudlitz’s and Lennie James’ nearly immediate additions).

The Walking Dead_Tara 3

Tara first appears in the Season Four episode “Live Bait”— which, much to my dismay, was not a standalone episode about a dive-y post-apocalyptic leather bar, but, rather, was a clunky mid-season re-introduction of everyone’s favorite sociopath, The Governor. Fairly pointless things happen throughout the episode’s vignette — he calls himself “Brian,” he gently carries a sickly man, he seems to have a disassociative break from his murderous self, and he develops paternal feelings for a little girl (essentially tacitly promising her a grisly death to continue his pretty dismal parenting record). But aside from “Brian” grumbling around and somehow seducing everyone (how, though? Really? Even Merle had more charisma…) there’s this spunky woman who greets us, pistol at the ready, who hastens to inform “Brian” that she is a star member of the Atlanta police force and has sufficient ammunition to kill “Brian” every day for the next ten years (which, may have not been a terrible idea for a TWD spinoff). This gal with all the chutzpah, of course, is Tara Chambers, significant for being all at once beautifully awkward, savagely protective — she is the watchdog of her niece (the aforementioned little girl, Megan), her father (the aforementioned sickly man), and her utterly milquetoast sister, Lilly — endearingly aggressive yet naïve (she poignantly calls the walkers “monsters,” and shoots them repeatedly, unaware of the “get the brain” rule), and, most importantly, she is profoundly, blissfully queer. Even if, in the final ten minutes of the episode, we weren’t graced with the subtle, all-too-familiar tale exchanged between Tara and Lilly about a camping trip, ‘shrooms, and a confession from a female love interest had a boyfriend, Tara would be the most marvelously encoded queer character to feature in The Walking Dead. Tara swears (at least, by AMC standards) effusively, she is some peculiar admixture of savage, quirky and mournful. She has a belligerent insistence that literally every significant event (including, in her premiere episode, “Brian’s” swift action to put-down her deceased father) must be concluded or heralded with a fist-bump. Actor Alana Masterson efficaciously embodies a character who not only proudly and openly personifies timidly-badass queer femininity, but makes each scene Tara is in meaningful, rather than getting lost in the shuffle of often interchangeable TWD secondary characters (or the, “Are You There God, It’s Me Beth/Bob/Rosita” syndrome that tends to be virulent in the series).

Certainly, there are many praises and vexations to profess when dissecting Tara’s trajectory and character arch, the praise portion of which I would certainly make as rich and embellished as possible because aside from the gorgeous enigma that is Carol, Tara is arguably one of my most beloved characters, living or (un)dead. There’s the really lovely (and it is enraging that character development of queer folk is met with gratefulness) stretch throughout the haphazard, at times brilliant, chaos of seasons four and five, in which Tara develops when she could have been marginalized or left behind. She has some of the most harrowing and compelling storylines. Her entire remaining family suffers the direst walkers’ fate; she realizes the monstrous sociopathy of “Brian’s” vengeance (yelling at her soon-to-perish, then-girlfriend “he chopped a guy’s head off…WITH A SWORD”); upon managing to be one of the two survivors in the husk of the prison, she accompanies, aids and bonds with Glenn; she manages to forge a place in the group and with Rick despite her origins, and develops a quirky little family unit with Rosita, Eugene and Rosita (and later, poor, poor Noah). Not only does her character’s spark never diminish, she is consistently given stellar dialogue, both punchy and sympathetic (her rapport with Eugene is often a highlight), and she rocks some of the most fantastically gay flannel cut-offs that inspire me to greatness.

The Walking Dead_Tara 2

What is most crucial about Tara, and Alana Masterson’s consistently wonderful portrayal, that really consecrates her deserved spot in the television tradition of marvelously queer Taras, is the space her queerness inhabits and the implicit, resounding body positivity that is manifest in her season six relationship with the affably tragic Denise Cloyd. One of the vexations of Tara’s narrative, and of the show in general, is the virtual nonexistence of queer intimacy and sexuality, particularly given the bevvy of coital exchanges between Maggie and Glenn, and the scantily clad entanglements of Rick and Lori, Rick and Michonne, and even Abraham and Rosita. Tara’s intimacy with her partners is diluted and nearly G-rated, though it is given more attention than her queer peer Aaron and his beau Eric (who, much to my surprise, is still alive — I rewatched the series and thought, “This is surely the episode where Eric dies of a broken ankle or succumbs to scurvy,” but, nope. Still kicking). To address the egregiously dissatisfying matter of disproportionately shown queer sexuality, or the consequent deeming of even queer kisses as “controversial,” would be a really vitriolic and speculative piece all its own.

Rather, what is worth discussing, what I felt so impressed upon to discuss is the way in which Tara’s body exists – she is never exoticized or eroticized, Tara is both beautiful and uniquely, ceaselessly quirky. Her queerness is neither othered nor, arguably more infuriating, forcibly normalized (there is no asinine moment of, “Well, I mean, it’s totally cool that you’re a lesbian.”). Importantly, Tara’s body is allowed to exist in its own right — it is not commodified, positioned, or stylized in a way to be the sexy sapphic chick or the archetypal granola-y/exaggeratedly butch/desexualized lesbian. She is an organic woman with no caricatures clinging to her presentation of self.

This is no more evident and worth celebrating than in the unexpected relationship between Tara and Denise that begins in the season six episode “Now” and flourishes throughout the entirety of the season. Their fire is kindled, so to speak, in the devastating wake of the Wolves attack in “JSS,” and is established on a foundation of moral support (Tara inspires Denise to trust in her medical prowess as she is thrust into the role of Alexandria’s sole doctor), protection and genuine care for one another (Denise asking Daryl to fetch soda for Tara because she talks about it in her sleep is particularly lovely) and just general, unique adorableness. The two even share a winking, encoded, dialogue exchange after Denise initiates the relationship by kissing Tara on the steps, and Denise, presumably referring to, you know, the zombies and all states, “It’s the end of the world,” to which Tara coolly retorts, “No… it’s not.” Amidst all that effulgent splendor and healthiness of a relationship ensconced in decay and turmoil, the most pleasantly surprising element of Tara and Denise (who really need a portmanteau name… Tanise? Rase? Dera? I’ll think of something) is the profound body positivity they embody together and as a couple. Both Tara and Denise — played by the outrageously talented Merritt Wever, who if you are not aware of, you need to familiarize yourself with immediately — are women who may be categorized in certain body types, but to do so would be a blunder. They are beautiful, complex women whose beauty is iridescent in their auras and their fluidity with, attraction to and reliance upon one another. Moreover, they are not hyper-sexualized nor isolated in a realm of frumpy, sexless lesbian portrayal. It is a queer relationship, and a depiction of two women, that thrives on the essence of just being – that is to say that their love and their selves resonate and matter for their own beauty and their own actions; not some essentialized, picked apart, or commodified representation.

The Walking Dead_Tara and Denise 2

That is really at the heart of the matter in why Denise’s savage death in the final episodes of season 6 is so brutal. It’s not simply that it painfully falls into the abhorrent Bury Your Gays trope — Denise gets killed in an attempt to find both soda (for Tara) and inner-strength to be able to tell Tara she loves her (which she resolves to do) — it is that her death signifies the violent and agonizing (not hyperbolic, I’m very attached to these characters) end to a queer relationship that wasn’t steeped in unrealistic or unnecessary stereotyping. Tara and Denise were relatable, despite their outlandishly gloomy environment, and as a couple they embodied a wholly body positive, wholly natural union, albeit forged in the midst of guts and splatter.

The ever-enchanting Merritt Wever, in an interview following the shockwaves of Denise’s vicious arrow-through-the-eye demise (a demise, importantly, intended for Übermensch white dude Abraham in the comics), echoed the heteronormative, unintended privilege of not comprehending the loss of such a character to a queer audience. Beyond her remarks, that there was a sincere failure, in all likelihood, to acknowledge that Denise’s death would be seen as a blight on queer televisual representation, there is a certain melancholy in mourning a relationship that was characterized by body positivity and queer elevation. As a woman who came of age and came to terms with queerness in cooperation with my obsession with television and film, the plethora of queer bodies and queer relationships I watched that fixated on distortedly immaculate physicalities — or, conversely, mocked or marginalized bodies — and reveled in some sensationalized type of sexuality so warped my perception, that to have a relationship like Tara and Denise’s was such a glorious prize. Moreover, in a time where femininity is so ensnared in the constant rhetoric surrounding the sizing of women’s bodies, and fixating on labels and valorizing or castigating a language of weight and body image that completely reduces feminine identity, to have two strong and two queer women feature prominently in a way that refuses to submit to those standards and dialogues is such a boon in so many regards.

Lamenting Denise’s death is certainly deserved, though it should not completely occlude the impact Tara as a character had and will continue to have (once her never-ending supplies run ends after Alana Masterson’s IRL pregnancy). Tara, in her own right, is a formidable character, and as a testament to her character’s appeal and magnificence, she has existed and championed in a series whose literary counterpart she did not even exist in (or so I’m told, because I’m the worst kind of TWD nerd who abstains from the comics). Her flawless presence and uncompromising, uncommodified self and queerness is only the decadent icing on an already pretty phenomenal, fist-bumping cake. Moreover, Tara is one of the few characters that has actually catalyzed me to pine to be fictitious — after all, she’ll probably need a shoulder to cry on after returning to the Negan-sowed chaos in the upcoming season.

Eva Phillips is constantly surprised at how remarkably Southern she in fact is as she adjusts to social and climate life in The Steel City. Additionally, Eva thoroughly enjoys completing her Master’s Degree in English, though really wishes that more of her grades could be based on how well she researches Making a Murderer conspiracy theories whilst pile-driving salt-and-vinegar chips. You can follow her on Instagram at @menzingers2.

“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.

A Black Feminist Woman’s Life in Comedy Web Series ‘Sit Black & Relax’

This series expands the often narrow variety of roles for Black Women in film, and allows them to be what we rarely see — normal.

Sit Back and Relax webseries

This is a guest post by JustLatasha.

Comedy vlogger JustLatasha writes, directs, and produces the comedy web series Sit Black & Relax. The series premiered Monday, March 14th (and every 1st Monday of each month) on JustLatasha.com. This series expands the often narrow variety of roles for Black Women in film, and allows them to be what we rarely see — normal.

Sit Black & Relax has a five episode premiere for its first season and stars Shakirah DeMesier of the extremely popular play, Plantanos y Collard Greens, and comedy actress Alison Burke. DeMesier plays the lead of “Maya,” an awkward new New Yorker who tries to casually live while Black amongst her white friends, and often finds herself in ironic situations due to the advisement of her best friend “Lana,” played by Burke. The series obtains heavy influences of FX’s Louie and Comedy Central’s Broad City, and is told through the passive Black woman’s point of view.

Sit Black & Relax shows a feminist woman living her Black life. Maya is a slightly failing jewelry designer who works at a nanny-matching service to support her dream in NYC. She’s living the carefree life: dating bachelors, entertaining the nightlife, and loving Beyoncé while meeting experiences of race. Just when her life gets too practical and predictable, she keeps her best friend Lana at her side to continue to keep her radical options open.

JustLatasha grew in popularity amongst 6K subscribers with her YouTube comedy vlog, making racism funny… when it ain’t! She tackles tough topics of pop culture and social issues concerning color and feminism, and educates her listeners using comedy. Next episode airs Monday, May 2nd on JustLatasha.com.

She hosted a screening alongside of popular podcast host, Hey Assanté of The Friend Zone Podcast, and was also joined by Kid Fury and Crissle of the #1 iTunes rated comedy podcast, The Read.

Please view the premiere episode, as featured on Blavity and AfroPunk:

[youtube_sc url=”https://youtu.be/RWe0Ov-9GoM” width=”560″ height=”340″]

JustLatasha is a Queens, NY native and cum laude graduate with a Bachelor’s of the Arts degree in Communication Arts. She began her career in the vast and un-glamourous world of Fashion PR, until she found her passion in filmmaking. She started her first brand, Dope Files, in 2010. She discovered that her passion for Black art & activism was shared amongst a vast audience. This birthed her current brand JustLatasha; she films and edits bi-weekly comedic vlogs about race issues to her 6,000 subscribers. This also led to her highly anticipated upcoming comedy web series, Sit Black & Relax, which debuted March 14th, 2016. This is her first scripted work, and she is more than excited to share more of her talents with the world.

Everything That’s Wrong (And a Few Things That Are Right) with ‘The Magicians’

Watching ‘The Magicians’ can be a lot like watching a real magician. One who’s not very good and keeps using such obvious distraction techniques that you want to rebel by looking at exactly what you’re not supposed to notice. And what we’re not supposed to notice here is an almost total lack of character development, followed by the thought that sperm is magic.

The Magicians

Written by Katherine Murray.

[Trigger warning: Discussion of rape and sexual violence]

Watching The Magicians can be a lot like watching a real magician. One who’s not very good and keeps using such obvious distraction techniques that you want to rebel by looking at exactly what you’re not supposed to notice. And what we’re not supposed to notice here is an almost total lack of character development, followed by the thought that sperm is magic.

The Magicians just wrapped up its first season on the SyFy network (Showcase, in Canada) and it was, overall, pretty disappointing. A TV show is not the same thing as a book series and, even though I was a fan of the books The Magicians is based on, I wasn’t expecting – or even wanting – it to be a faithful recreation of the source material. I did want it to tell a good story, though, and that’s where some of the narrative changes let me down.

Don’t get me wrong – I understand why the writers did most of what they did. In adapting the books for a TV series, they faced some difficult challenges:

  1. The first book in the Magicians trilogy, which follows the adventures of Quentin Coldwater and his group of friends, is initially set at a magic school called Brakebills, but the action later moves to the magical land of Narnia Fillory and Brakebills becomes a footnote in the overall story. Because the first few episodes of a new TV show teach the audience how to watch it, there was a danger of setting up the false expectation that The Magicians was going to be about a bunch of students at a magic school.
  2. The second book in the Magicians trilogy backtracks and spends about half its text explaining what Quentin’s friend, Julia, was doing while he was at Brakebills. This is vitally important to the story in book two, but Julia isn’t around that much in book one, and readers could be forgiven for forgetting she existed after she failed her Brakebills entrance exam. On TV, it’s hard to tell a long story in flashback and have it seem compelling.
  3. Let’s be real – it would cost a lot of money to depict things exactly as they happened in the books.


For the most part, the solutions the writers came up with are good. They’ve accelerated the timeline of the original story so that the series hits its major turning points faster; they include action that takes place in Fillory and otherwise outside Brakebills right from the start; they place a lot less emphasis on classes, studying, and other especially school-like activities that take place at Brakebills which stops school from structuring the show; they cut back and forth between Quentin and Julia so that we can see their separate narratives unfold in real time; and they invent a character called Kady who moves between both stories and helps things feel connected.

All of this makes sense in theory – the problem is that, in practice, everything happens too fast.

magicians4

The Magicians tries to cram all of book one, half of book two, and select revelations from book three into 13 episodes – that’s not even including the brand new plot points, story lines and characters it’s introduced. Some of the narrative choices kill two birds with one stone by collapsing multiple plot points into each other – Quentin needs a reason to be friends with Alice, Penny, and Kady and he also needs to accidentally summon a beast to the school; what if they all accidentally summon the beast together? But things start to fall apart when it comes to character development.

Repeatedly, season one of The Magicians expects us to believe that people undergo major changes in their feelings, perceptions, and relationships with lightning speed. Repeatedly, we’re asked to buy into emotionally-heavy plot developments with barely any time to explore what they mean. Quentin’s friend, Elliot, is torn apart by having to kill his evil, body-snatched boyfriend… whom we’ve known for about forty minutes. Elliot, later has to make a major, life-changing decision about whether to enter into a magical contract that would force him to stay in Fillory forever and never have sex again and he literally has 90 seconds to go on an entire emotional journey that leaves him okay with that idea. Quentin and his sometime-girlfriend Alice seem to be together for about five days before they break up and, in the season finale, she gives him a speech about his character that seems hollow because they barely know each other. The show rushes through a major plot point about how Alice’s older brother turned into a fire monster when he was at Brakebills and then doesn’t deliver the pay-off for that story in the season finale, leaving it as a random thing that everyone got super upset about for exactly one episode.

The most annoying example I remember, though, is a new plot line about how Quentin’s father is dying of cancer and believes that Quentin has wasted his life by being a weirdo. In the space of one episode, we are introduced to Father Quentin and his cancer, and the story of how, when Quentin was a kid, he ruined his father’s favorite model airplane and his father tried to glue it back together and just made it worse. At the end of the episode, Quentin goes back to his father’s house and uses magic to put the airplane back together, proving that he’s not just a weirdo and he’s finally done something with his life. And all of that is great, except that I’m supposed to believe Quentin’s dad just happens to keep that broken airplane from ten years ago in his living room at all times so that he can drag it out to hold a grudge against his son thereby providing an opportunity for metaphorical redemption. The writers know that they need to establish the backstory behind this airplane before the payoff where Quentin fixes it with magic, but the journey between establishing the conflict and resolving it remains too short, direct, and convenient. The same thing could be said for almost every major conflict in the first season.

The characters are also drawn in a pretty shallow way, likely because there isn’t time to develop them more. They always do and feel and say exactly what they need to do and feel and say to lurch from one plot point to another, but there’s no organic sense that these are real people, changing over time.

And that’s not even getting into the stuff with Julia.

magicians2

Straight up – one of the things that impressed me about the second book in the Magicians trilogy is the way that Lev Grossman deftly, subtly, sensitively handled Julia’s back story, which involves a traumatic assault. Julia is Quentin’s childhood friend, but she fails the exam to get into Brakebills and then he’s kind of a dick to her. She goes off on her own and tries to learn magic on the streets – something that he’s kind of snobby about later on – and she has to do a lot of things that she’s not proud of and face a lot of choices that people like Quentin never have to deal with. Eventually, she makes some friends who become her whole world, and, just as everything looks like it’s finally coming together for her, it all gets blown to pieces.

Spoilers for the books and the TV show, but Julia and her friends try to summon a benevolent god to help them, and instead they get tricked by an evil god who kills most of Julia’s friends and rapes her when she tries to save another woman in her group. The book really conveys how horrible this is, and how it was more than just a physical assault – how it took everything Julia had, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and made her a different person. The book is all about how she keeps trying to deny that anything changed, but how it’s only when she accepts this (horrible, traumatic) experience as part of who she is that she becomes stronger. Learning what happened to Julia and watching how she changes also teaches Quentin that he’s not the center of the universe – he learns to have empathy for others, and appreciate that they’re the heroes of their own stories, taking their own journeys, facing their own challenges along the way.

In the TV show, we don’t have enough time to appreciate all the layers of Julia’s emotional journey. She’s angry for a couple of episodes, hangs out with some ne’er-do-wells, makes friends with some people we don’t get to know very well, and then all of a sudden, she’s like, “I know I haven’t always been a great person, but this is my redemption and I want to help everyone.” Again, only for a couple of episodes before the whole thing goes sideways.

Because Julia is still in contact with Quentin in the TV show, and because it needs to make sense that she would help him move the plot line forward when she should be in emotional turmoil, the writers (pretty cleverly) invent a twist where, initially, it seems like Julia successfully summoned the benevolent god, and the benevolent god gave everyone exactly what they wanted, and they all went away somewhere to be happy, which explains why they suddenly vanished. The flashbacks we see of this beautiful moment all have cold lighting and zero sound, which makes them seem creepy. In the next episode, we learn that this is a false memory that a fellow street magician put in Julia’s mind to protect her from remembering the truth. When the false memory is removed, Julia loses her composure, and we see a terrifying (but simplified) scene of how she was attacked by the evil god.

That’s all okay, up until the part where Julia’s complicated quest to reconcile her memories of trauma and become a stronger person is replaced by a plot point where god spunk gives you powers.

I’m just gonna say that again – in the TV show, having the semen of a god inside your body gives you magical powers. That is why Julia has more power in the final episode. That is why Alice has more power in the final episode, too – Julia was raped and Alice drinks a mason jar of semen.

Also, spoilers for the books again, and spoilers for the TV show if this ends up happening later, but – in the books, Alice is the strongest magician and Quentin’s group of friends, and, when they finally face their nemesis the branch-faced beast (in the show, he is a moth-faced beast) she turns into a fire monster like her brother did. It’s horrible but kind of awesome and heroic at the same time, because she tries to do something good and she’s the only one strong enough to do it. In the TV show, Quentin realizes before they fight the beast that Alice is the strong one and gives her a mason jar full of semen to drink. Then, when they reach the actual fight, Alice doesn’t get to do anything before she (apparently) gets killed. Odds are that this is so she can survive somehow and stick around next season, but it’s still a weak ending.

 magicians3

Look, the TV show does a lot of things right. Casting Arjun Gupta as Quentin’s frenemy, Penny (which makes Penny a lot more likeable and charismatic), creating the Kady character to bridge the two stories, getting out of Brakebills faster, inventing a time loop that sort of explains why the TV show is different from the books, letting Quentin have his awkward bisexual three-way without having some kind of panic attack in the process, trying to misdirect the audience about who the beast is, trying to mislead us into thinking Quentin is the most important character so that he learns a lesson when he’s not, following Julia right from the start, simplifying some of the story elements to work with a limited budget – there are lots of good choices.

But, amidst all of those good choices, there’s also a sense of anxiety in the first season. There’s a sense that this might not be interesting enough, or people won’t get it, or they won’t think it’s exciting, so we need to pad the story out with sex and violence and rely on shocking plot twists to keep everybody invested rather than building a complex set of characters and relationships that earn their payoffs over time. It’s as if the show fears that, if it takes the time to build something solid, everyone will get bored and leave before it’s done. In that sense, its a lot like How to Get Away with Murder, Orphan Black, and Mr. Robot, in that it just keeps changing direction to throw us off balance. That kind of thing isn’t sustainable over the long term, and it makes me worried that the series won’t ever find its feet.

The Magicians has already been renewed for a second season, and I’ll watch it. But I hope that now that they burned their way through half the source material, they will stop jumping between huge plot points and give the characters more room to breathe. My other hope is that they retcon it somehow so that drinking semen doesn’t give you powers. WTF.

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

‘Daredevil’s Elektra and the Problem of Destiny

Ultimately, we are left to conclude that Elektra’s characterization is not based in specific motivations, but in a dangerous, unseemly destiny that shapes her will and revokes her agency. … This trope, in which women’s “destinies” obscure, erase, or negate their agency is one that can be found other places…

Daredevil Elektra

This is a guest post written by Elyssa Feder. | Spoilers ahead.

In season two of Daredevil, Elektra Natchios, international assassin and part-time debutante, is one of a pair of foils the show introduces to contrast with the series’ hero, Matt Murdock. While season one saw Matt wrestling with if he should kill Wilson Fisk, season two puts Matt among two antiheroes who have chosen the other side of the ethical line Matt won’t cross — Elektra, and Frank Castle, aka The Punisher. While Frank is given a detailed backstory, Elektra’s motivations are suspiciously obscured. The show then reveals that she is “The Black Sky,” a weapon that a shadow organization called The Hand has been searching for for centuries. Ultimately, we are left to conclude that Elektra’s characterization is not based in specific motivations, but in a dangerous, unseemly destiny that shapes her will and revokes her agency.

This should leave a sour taste. I watched season two of Daredevil in around two days and then I watched it again, mostly because I have a terrible memory and usually need to watch shows twice to retain what happened. But going back and watching with the knowledge that Elektra is a weapon, that that is a designation handed to her by men, that she doesn’t get to choose any of it, and that it serves to explain her characterization while Frank Castle gets all the internal motivation he seeks — that’s very troubling to me.

There are a lot of moments to make your skin crawl about this, but the one that kicked off my concerns about this is all the way in 2×12, “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel.”

DaredevilDaredevilDaredevil

Here, Stick, the mentor to little Elektra (and little Matt, as the latter will later learn), explains there is some violent force inside Elektra, one she will have to learn to control. Though I’m not in principle opposed to women having innate power, there’s something off-putting about the way Elektra’s power is described here, and in other parts of the episode. Stick suggests that Elektra and her power are unwieldy, something dangerous and unnatural. And this line comes directly after Elektra almost kills someone — and she ultimately does kill him, later in the episode, an act Elektra explains she did “just to prove she could.” What a sociopathic little girl, we are left to believe.

But the show makes a pretty bad case that Elektra’s a sociopath, which might have let them off the hook for laziness. She’s reticent to leave Stick, her adoptive father figure, and her love for Matthew is genuine. Rather, the show reveals that Elektra is the Black Sky, a strange and mysterious weapon we still haven’t had fully explained. Rather than a real woman with choices, she’s an object. Her violence is, as Stick suggests, deeply a part of her — not because she chooses it but because, at least as most of the men of Daredevil would like to suggest, she’s not really a person. She’s just a shell for something sinister.

There are some fairly grotesque examples of this objectification. Nobu, one of the leaders of “The Hand” repeatedly refers to Elektra as “it.” Nobu is part of a cult that worships the Black Sky, so while one might think he’d be nicer to Elektra, the woman is just a shell, the container of the weapon. Stick, when tied up in Matt’s apartment says, “The Black Sky cannot be controlled, manipulated, or transported.” (Stick seems to have done quite a bit of controlling, manipulating, and transporting of Elektra over the last 3ish decades of her life, but I digress.) There’s a moment after Nobu reveals her identity where you can see the trauma and self-loathing Stick brought to her play out, and she seems to entertain this destiny, even for a moment.

DaredevilDaredevil

To be fair to Elektra’s internal world, I think we can chalk this up to the trauma of her father figure trying to kill her. Furthermore, Elektra is raised by an older white man who taught her that she was out of control for unknown reasons, her violence is given no rationality, and then it’s ultimately revealed she’s violent because surprise! She’s not a person; she’s a weapon. Destiny and a bunch of guys who worship her said so. But they don’t really worship her. They worship some sort of weird mystical weapon they think is inside her. They see her as an “it.” And, at least for a moment, Elektra thinks, “Makes sense.” After all, was she not raised to believe she was a monster? A thing without reason? A creature out of control?

This sort of burden of destiny — and the irrational, innate violence that goes along with it — is something her natural season-long foils, Matt and Frank, are spared. Though I have my own struggles with the writing of Matt’s motivation (a subject not for this post), one cannot doubt that he is hyper-rational about them, with probably too much thinking and self-flagellation for my taste. Frank is given enumerative motive and rationality in the form of his murdered family, and a personal champion Karen Page who makes sure those motives and rationales come to light.

I should be clear here, when I say rationality I don’t mean, “Frank Castle makes good choices.” What I mean is that there is an internal logic to them; he is a Rational Actor. It is this rationality that allows Karen to argue he wouldn’t target the DA’s family; it goes against Frank’s internal code. I know why Frank Castle does everything he does, in a way I don’t with Elektra because it’s never offered. And there’s a reason this matters too, in the basic vein of “women are people,” and the fact that their choices are circumscribed or erased in all sorts of media is not only a common trope, but a disturbing one. We all know women in the real world make choices, good and bad, moral and immoral, that are grounded in experience. Elektra, the show suggests, makes choices because she can’t help it. Elektra kills people because she was born a weapon. Not much of a choice.

Though there moments where Elektra makes choices in this series, particularly ones that reject her “destiny” and the violence it sparks in her, that unseemly destiny thing has a tendency to intervene. One example is in 2×08, “Guilty as Sin”:

Matthew: Where’s Stick?
Elektra: I made my choice. He didn’t like it. I want to be with you. The only person in this world who believes I’m good.

Then, around three minutes later, Matthew gets attacked by a young member of The Hand and, after beating him single-handedly, Elektra still kills him in this bloody homage to “crazy” lady slasher films.

DaredevilDaredevil

This line is the most unhinged Elektra is all season by my estimation, not three minutes after she decided to hang up her evil sword and pick up her noble one. Guess that uncontrollable violence got in the way again. She and Matt call it quits for a few episodes, until they’re mostly back together in 2×12, after she decides against joining up with The Hand.

It is in the finale that Elektra makes her last choices, at least for now. When Stick says her decision to fight The Hand is a mistake she says, “Maybe. But it’ll be my mistake, because this is my life.” This is the clearest pronouncement of her own choices and agency Elektra makes all season. It is a choice she makes not because she wants Matt to see her as Good ( I should note the paternalism and white savior complex in this dynamic are important to explore), nor a choice she makes because she’s the Black Sky. It wouldn’t be good characterization or good writing for her to suddenly become a white hat, but she chooses to fight a war because she wants to fight it, because there is something personal and at stake for her in its victory, and because she seeks to reject the destiny the men around her have told her is fated.

This is, of course, for naught. She and Matt fight The Hand on a roof, during which she declares they will kill him “over her dead body,” just to heavily foreshadow what was obviously going to happen. And then, in the latest case of unseemly lady deaths, she runs into a sword to save Matt, taking The Hand’s precious weapon out of the equation. It seems Elektra can only have agency over her destiny by throwing herself on a sword.

DaredevilDaredevil

These are the few choices Elektra is allowed in Daredevil that contradict her destiny to be a weapon instead of a woman. The final chain of events — choices that are truly Elektra’s and no one else’s, and ones she makes to reject her destiny — leads to her death. The show even has the audacity to suggest her death, one of her few (and problematic, obviously) choices, will be rendered useless in the face of that destiny. Season two ends with Elektra in a coffin designed by The Hand for “the rising.” We are safe to assume Elektra, or something in Elektra’s skin, will return.

This trope, in which women’s “destinies” obscure, erase, or negate their agency is one that can be found other places, each of which could merit their own post, but I’ll give a few examples. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the premise of the show is that Buffy wanted to be a normal girl and no longer can be, because a few millennia ago, a bunch of men forced superpowers into a girl, and now Buffy doesn’t get any choice in the matter. On the spinoff series Angel, though Cordelia is initially given a series of painful visions without her consent, the show suggests in the episode “Birthday” that Cordelia is destined to have the visions. In making the choice to accept some mystical intervention into her life, she sets off a chain of events that ultimately leads to her death (also in the interest of saving the man she loves). In Battlestar Galactica, Kara Thrace is given the destiny of leading humanity to Earth and nearly loses her mind because of it, only to disappear and die (again) once that mission is completed; Laura Roslin’s similar destiny is inextricably linked with her illness and death.

On the other hand, when men are given great destinies, from Harry Potter to Buffy and Angel and beyond, their choices are not sublimated in the face of that agency. Rather, those choices are portrayed as steps along a greater path. Their agency remains intact, and their deaths are rare. Yet, we see patterns where women’s destinies cut off their choices, or where the choices they make in the face of destiny leads to their deaths. (I will note that Dawn Summers, also in Buffy, faces a similar ‘you’re a mystical creation’ scenario as Elektra, but is allowed to retain and enhance her agency throughout the rest of the show.)

Daredevil Elektra 2

It is also worth noting that Elektra’s death appears amongst a series of disturbing choices to kill off women this spring. A few weeks ago, The 100’s decision to kill Lexa, a lesbian character, sparked deep outrage in the fandom, as well as critiques from the broader media as part of a larger pattern of killing off LGBT women on television. This past week on Sleepy Hollow, the show decided to kill of lead Abbie Mills, played by Nicole Beharie. Sleepy Hollow has faced critiques for a few seasons for the continued sidelining of Beharie’s character, a Black female lead on a major network, in favor of white characters on the show. The show’s decision to not only kill off Abbie, but to construct her death as in the service of white lead Ichabod Crane (played by Tom Mison) and his destiny (one they were supposed to share, but seems to have been summarily robbed from Abbie in the service of his), has been roundly criticized, with fans of the show creating a hashtag to cancel the show entirely (which, agreed). Elektra, a woman of color (played by Elodie Yung) who the show forces to sacrifice herself to save a white man, is part of this larger disturbing pattern.

Conveniently for Daredevil, they, unlike many of these shows, have the opportunity to fix the problem they created. When Elektra does return, the writers have a choice as to who they bring back. She can be a thoughtless monster, a weapon known as the Black Sky with no consciousness, and which Matt will inevitably have to either kill or save with his love (dramatic eyeroll). Or she can be Elektra, a woman who tells the men who both put her in the grave and raised her from it to go to hell, and take destiny with them. It would be this Elektra who could be given the opportunity to make the choices she wants, to have an inner world explained by more than “she’s a weapon.” A real, live, breathing woman.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Daredevil’ and His Damsels in Distress

Elyssa Feder has a BA in Women’s Studies and International Affairs from George Washington University, where one day she decided to write a paper about women in the military (on scifi television) and it was all downhill from there. By day, she is a political person doing political things; by night, she can be found lecturing friends and coworkers about television. She also does this by day, if anyone lets her.

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