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“Game of Thrones” got their pound of flesh tonight. In a season that has seen nearly all characters obsessed with vengeance, Sansa Stark was shoehorned into an absurd plot for what was clearly now meant to have her terrible victimization and trauma be played out for shock value, under the paper-thin guise of this allowing her to get revenge on her family’s killers. In truth, we didn’t need to wait for the disgusting optics and aurals to be seen and heard in this sixth episode. Indeed, from the moment D&D proposed that Sansa Stark’s arc was interchangeable with that of Jeyne Poole’s—a character who can’t even be properly understood to have an arc in the full sense of the term—we could have predicted what an absolute travesty this all would turn out to be. For those who question why this could happen to Jeyne and not Sansa, the answer is simple: these two girls might have been friends in the books, but their identities and experiences are not one and the same. Jeyne is sent to a brothel to be brutalised and trained into being submissive and compliant. Sansa Stark remains in KL to suffer much abuse too, but her development as a main character is focused on her becoming stronger and more resilient as a result.
Unlike Jeyne, whose sexuality becomes the means of her terrible exploitation in the series, Sansa’s sexuality is tied to her liberation and empowerment. It’s not a matter of her being “saved” from rape as some readers interpret, but rather that Sansa is constantly resisting attempts to get her to submit sexually to her oppressors. She comes to understand in that famous wedding scene with Tyrion that her desires are important, and that she is not willing to sacrifice herself for what her husband wants, even if she’s in a situation where she couldn’t be more powerless. Sansa’s sexuality, and her control over it, is an integral part of her growth towards agency. When you have her raped in a show and still want to speak of her as being a player, you are not only warping the character’s development and themes critical to her storyline, but you are using rape as a plot device to motivate a character, which is every bit as bad as it sounds. For fans looking for some kind of hope after this appalling event, we can only direct you to the author’s latest statement on his blog, where he recommends checking out the TWOW sample chapters if you want to get an idea of where the real story is headed. D&D have their pound of flesh, but the true heart and soul and blood of Winterfell remains in the series written by George R.R. Martin.
PAWN TO PLAYER 
I don’t know if any of you have seen the mini interview George had with EW, he mentions that he’s thinking of adding a twist to a character. Now with the events and how Sansa’s arc has been further butchered in GoT I wonder if she’s the one getting a twist, but not one that involves rape, but her smarts.
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I didn’t see the interview but I have seen references to these comments he made. I’d wager that it’s not Sansa, as Martin has very carefully already set her on a path that involves her using her smarts to outplay those that would seek to keep her under their control and influence. That Martin released Sansa’s TWOW chapter (knowing what was coming from the show) speaks to him wanting to make as clear a differentiation as possible at the moment between Show!Sansa (the eternal victim) and his Sansa (the emerging player). The twist he promises is intriguing, though, and definitely something of a power play by him to undermine D&D’s continual assassinations of his plot and characters.
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The interview is online and it’s very small, George notes that he wants to finish and publish Winds before summer of next year.
Here’s an important quote: “And with the various three, four characters involved… it all makes sense. But it’s nothing I’ve ever thought of before. And it’s nothing they can do in the show, because the show has already—on this particular character—made a couple decisions that will preclude it, where in my case I have not made those decisions.”
I agree that Martin wanted to show that Sansa was using her brain and her ability to read people with the Winds chapter, I’m just wondering the possibility that’s involving Sansa. But at the end we’ll only know when the book’s out.
D&D’s butchery of his characters is horrid, I’m just glad I quit the show.
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Yes, I have heard about that comment. Like Brashcandie, I also don’t think it is referring to Sansa, though it would be cool if it was. I have a feeling it has to do with one of the characters who was killed off on the show but is still alive in the books based on his statement that the show has already burned that bridge regarding this character. I think it is very telling on his blog that he has barely made any statements about the show since the last time they mishandled a rape storyline with Jaime and Cersei, when he used to talk about it all the time. I agree with Brashcandie that GRRM releasing the Alayne chapter just before this season started is his way of saying this is what he intends for Sansa and he doesn’t agree with what the show is doing to her character.
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Martin said the twist involves “three, four” characters, so really it’s anyone’s guess. After last night it made me wonder if the possibility it’s Sansa.
George’s wants to finish Winds and hopefully publish it before next summer. He said he was ‘hot’ writing it alongside Dance, but he stopped and started editing Dance and now he regrets it; that and coupled with him not writing a single episode this season tells me he really wants the book done asap. And thus, a distance on the show with his comments.
Not really surprised he released Alayne to curb the fear (at least some) of the book readers ahead of what was in store for Sansa on the show. After all, Sophie had been hinting at ‘something traumatic’ for her character this season and if memory serves me, she said it would be the worst one yet.
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Yes, and I think that another reason GRRM released the chapter were Elio Garcia’s unfortunate remarks a couple of years ago about it potentially being “controversial in certain corners of the fandom”, which got hyped, misquoted and misinterpreted by many to mean things like Sansa being raped (or Sansa murdering Sweetrobin, another favorite idea of many fans). We now know it was a mountain made out of a molehill and that Garcia was just thinking that SanSan shippers wouldn’t like Sansa flirting with a guy while not thinking about Sandor (which is a ridiculous idea). Combined with what the show is doing with Sansa this season, GRRM must have realized that people would jump to the wrong conclusion that Sansa gets raped in that chapter, unless he released it.
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I think so too. Elio’s comment was unfortunate and it was overdone by the media; I think the ‘controversial’ choice of words is because I feel that Elio doesn’t like SanSan.
I think it was wise of George to release a Sansa chapter before the episode, because at least it give Sansa fans breathing room. For the time being at least (last thing I want is Sansa allowing SR to die).
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Thank you for perfectly encapsulating everything that was wrong with the travesty that manifested in front of our eyes last night. I just shared it on FB to help explain to friends exactly why and how it was so awful. Everyone agrees it was awful – but it brings something to the table to be able to say exactly why. It took at least half an hour for my brain to stop going “OMG, THEY RAPED SANSA!!!” and move on to breaking it down. I say “they” because I consider her to have been raped by Dave and Dan, cock-merchants extraordinaire.
I can say without a doubt that that was the LAST episode of Game of Thrones I will ever watch. I’ve already stopped listening to any podcast or video reviews that take the show seriously, because I just can’t hear it. I think I shall be content to check in here and with the cliff notes of the show on Westeros.org just to keep up with the latest defilement of a great work of literature… I certainly wish I had not watched last night, nor the rest of this season.
I know everyone has said how bad Dorne was, but last night was so much worse. Not only was that action scene not worthy of the shows which rip off Xena: Warrior Princess, the idiocy of the entire thing is just impossible to ignore. We all thought that Jaime and Bron going to Dorne by themselves was really, really dumb; how are two non-Dornish supposed to cross sand and desert and abduct Myrcella from under the nose of the Prince of Drone? Well, first, we’ll change the sand to verdant grassland, problem solved. The Dornish only have 6 soldiers in the whole kingdom, so one good fight took care of that problem. You thought the Water Gardens would be well protected because royalty and stuff, but actually you can just walk right in behind a caravan and it’s all good. Walk right up to the crown prince, have a chat, whatever, it’s cool. Dorne is like a small town; no one locks theirs doors at night.
At this point in the show, I was basically having the realization that it was getting really hard to watch. And they… did what they did at the end. So, is that three times now that they have horribly mishandled the issue of rape? Three strikes and you’re out, guys.
One of the bigger over-arching problems with D&D is their consistent choice to show more violence and sex (or sexual violence) at the cost of showing far LESS of the effects of violence. This is something George is really intentional about. Example: George did not spend any narrative time describing Ramsay torturing Theon. He spends a lot of time showing us the effects of it on Theon, the personal and psychological ramifications. HBO on the other hand thought it was a good idea to have scene after scene of torture porn over the course of an entire season. The pregnancy stabbing added into the Red Wedding was pure murder porn, and, my god, I cannot imagine pregnant women watching that episode. It had no narrative value or purpose, it was just added in for more shock factor and horror. It’s cheap.
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Wonderful comments, LmL… You know, we often joked about how the show couldn’t even keep their own internal logic and consistency going, but now the smiles have died, if I might steal a line from Ned, oops, Littlefinger. Seriously now, I feel exactly the same way you do. I can imagine how terrible it was for Unsullied to endure, but when you’ve read and appreciated Sansa’s arc in the books, there are few words to express the sheer outrage that descended after watching that episode. This is a show that already made it perfectly clear that Sansa was at the mercy of many predatory individuals, and had long made it obvious to the audience that Sansa has more than enough reason to hate and want to see those who had done her family harm suffer for it. This a show that gave her a sexy new dress at the end of Season 4 and had her walk seductively down a staircase, declaring that for all intents and purposes, Sansa was a player (according to their limited and prescribed roles for female characters) and would begin to have some useful direction in her own life and happiness. Now? All that can be reversed for shock value; all that can be forgotten because they liked Jeyne’s subplot in the books and felt audiences would be more invested in Sansa as the rape victim. Where was the thought and concern given to her development as it existed in their own show? I would never expect them to reach the kind of nuanced complexity and subtlety that Martin established in writing Sansa’s story, but when they cannot even keep to their own patterns of growth for characters, you know you are dealing with two charlatans of the highest order who will do anything as long as it garners them a revolting moment and better yet, if it involves a female character who isn’t the token badass or temptress. There was no Red or Purple Wedding this year, so D&D just had to create their own template for more shock and awe. Make no mistake, Sansa’s character was exploited by two showrunners and her body used as a casual zone for sexualised violence and suffering in order to service their fanfic adaptation of ASOIAF. There is no justification for this and no reaction is too hyperbolic or severe. D&D deserve every single backlash and condemnation they are receiving.
As for the rest of the episode, Dorne and KL continue to be a mockery. But I will withhold further comments on those until Miodrag’s review is posted tomorrow 🙂
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Yes, the objections with the show now go waaaay past complaints about differences between books and show. One of the podcasts I do occasionally listen to about the show is History of Westeros – they have two each week, one for book readers and one for Unsullied. He has a mostly Unsullied cohost (who’s pretty sharp) who gives that viewpoint… it’s very telling. Anyway. Yes, they are not even consistent within the scope of their own changes… I mean, right in this very episode, we see Sansa kick the annoying (I forget her name) Ramsay girlfriend out of her chamber, like “I live here, you can’t frighten me.” I was like ‘ok, that’s not bad,’ thinking it would perhaps lead to an escape from Ramsay or Sansa standing up to him or something remotely consistent with P-t-P arc. But then, she meekly submits to everything… when just last week she was challenging Ramsay at dinner over Theon. It’s just nonsensical. And nonsensical and rape don’t rely of well together.
One other thing I’d like to add: reading a thing and seeing a thing depicted on TV is very different. One must be aware of the medium one is using. Anytime you are dealing with graphic violence, rape, and anything like what was on the movie Requiem for a Dream you have to think about how much is the right amount to show to get the point across, but not dip into glorification of horror / murder porn. The Red Wedding was suitably horrific already – when you add in cheap shocks like the pregnancy stabbing, it really distracts from the scene more than it adds to its horror.
I really also hate the way they ended the show with the rape – it would have been bad anytime, but it was just like “AH HA! We raped Sansa, WHAT DO YOU THINK? WAS IT SHOCKING? ARE YOU SHOCKED? Aren’t we just so edgy?”
Fuck those guys. Not enough hyperbole in the world, as you said. Basically I make it a point to tell show-only GoT folks that they are not watching anything that happened in the books at this point.
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While at first it looks like this is the worst possible thing they could have done with Sansa’s character, there’s still room for even more destruction of her character beyond anything we could have imagined. Right now, some posters on Westeros forum are speculating if Sansa’s grand revenge will involve… guess what… killing Fat Walda. A few months ago I would have laughed at that, but a few months ago I laughed at the absurdity of the idea of Sansa taking Jeyne Poole’s role, too, and look how that turned out. So, I wouldn’t at this point be surprised if that’s the genius idea of the show runners – it would combine their favorite sexist tropes, their lack of understanding of the themes of ASOAIF (also seen in the way Ellaria Sand has been rewritten and in the lack of any characters who would give her perspective or the equivalent of Septon Meribald’s perspective) and their terrible mishandling of Sansa’s character with their love for shock value gained from violence against women.
So, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they even do that and complete their character assassination of Sansa. Fortunately, I’ve already stopped watching the show halfway through episode 4 of this season, because it was just so terrible I couldn’t make myself go through it, and I already saw this coming.
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I haven’t watched the show since season 3 (I don’t have HBO), so I haven’t seen this episode but I’ve been reading comments all morning. I’m just as repulsed and sickened as some who *have* seen it. I send my condolences to everyone who watched it. Especially to Miodrag, who has to not only watch it but think about it so he can write something illuminating. If anyone can, it’s him.
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Excellent response to a vile, offensive, and misogynistic episode, Brash and Milady. I still feel physically ill. Honestly, when it comes to show!Sansa’s arc, you’d think the writers are just throwing pure shit at the wall to see what sticks. Sexy goth temptress with cleavage? Sure, let’s try that. Meh. Bored. Now let’s see how mopey Sansa does. Meh. We don’t like that either. Eureka! Now that she’s of age, let’s have Ramsay rape her! These are the same writers who insinuated they couldn’t follow through on the Sandor/Sansa (chaste) romance because of the age difference, but as soon as Sophie turns 18, well, it’s time for rape! She’s survived how many acts of sexual aggression against her person in the show? Joffrey, her marriage with Tyrion (though seriously toned down), the attack against her during the King’s Landing riot (seriously ramped up), and the Battle of the Blackwater when Cersei frightens her with the likelihood of rape if the city should fall, and Littlefinger’s unwanted advances, all so she can finally be raped by the most sadistic man on the continent.
But hey, enough about Sansa’s victimization. What about Theon? I mean, that guy just can’t catch a break, amrite? Having to watch! The indignity of it all! The writers have savagely sacrificed Sansa’s arc and entire storyline just so they can set up Theon’s redemptive arc. And, of course, shock value. Sickening.
Bryan Cogman’s defense of the scene is just as repulsive as the scene itself. I am glad that we’re finally reading some harsh reviews of this show, and not just because of this horrifying scene (but mostly), however, I’ll save that for Miodrag’s review.
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/17/game-thrones-sansa-ramsay-interview
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Bryan Cogman’s defense is ridiculous! How could Sansa feel that marrying Ramsay is a vital step in reclaiming her homeland? Are we all expected to believe that Roose and Ramsay would let her rule the North because she’s married to Ramsay and had sex with him? This is baffling me. Or am I missing something?
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Indeed! What makes this all the worse is that they’d been planning this for a long while. By Benioff & Weiss’ own admission, they’d been thinking to include Sophie in Jeyne Poole’s storyline since Season 2, when she was still a minor. And that was the same Season where show!Sansa was saved from rape (a scene they made worse on TV than in the books) at the hands of the mob by the Hound. And for what? So they could have her assaulted by the most sadistic piece of work in Westeros a few seasons later.
And speaking of repulsive remarks, Alex Graves’ “a new romantic interest” comment to tease Sophie Turner takes the cake. Even if that was meant as a mere joke, it’s in poor taste and deeply disturbing, because what’s romantic about having to marry this sadist and be abused by him? This comes from the same director who said the Jaime/Cersei sept scene became consensual by the end, so it wasn’t rape, therefore it doesn’t surprise me. However, I’d have expected more sense from Cogman, who seemed the writer in that team with the most talent and a greater understanding of the books’ themes than the showrunners themselves. Yet he, too, joined Graves’ lot by writing “Romance dies” in the script for this plotline, as Sophie revealed.
They’re implicating, whether they like it or not, that Sansa needed to have her naîvetè raped out of her to become a hardened woman. Because the brutalities that she’d endured up to that moment hadn’t caused romance to “die”!
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“They’re implicating, whether they like it or not, that Sansa needed to have her naîvetè raped out of her to become a hardened woman. Because the brutalities that she’d endured up to that moment hadn’t caused romance to “die”!”
Spot on, and really it gets to heart of the matter about why this incident is so disturbingly sexist and misogynistic. It’s like they all decided, hmmm, the worst thing that can possibly happen to a woman is rape, so we’re going to have this done to her and see how it all plays out afterwards. It had nothing to do with Ramsay being sadistic and this needing to happen because Sansa replaced Jeyne. They (the showrunners) decided to brutalise Sansa based on their own profoundly problematic and sexist assumptions about female sexuality and power. That Graves made the comment about new romantic interest is astoundingly perverse, and Cogman’s talk of Sansa going into the situation as a “hardened woman” is even worse. I guess when a woman is “hardened” it automatically shields her from the effects of rape, right, and suddenly she can consent to these things when before she was too “innocent” to do so.
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“It’s like they all decided, hmmm, the worst thing that can possibly happen to a woman is rape, so we’re going to have this done to her and see how it all plays out afterwards. It had nothing to do with Ramsay being sadistic and this needing to happen because Sansa replaced Jeyne.”
This!
I find it so disturbing that they decided to completely alter Sansa’s storyline and growth just to have her raped by Ramsay. They left so many subplots out (Lady Stoneheart, Arianne Martell, Young Griff…) but they couldn’t leave out Jeyne’s, could they?
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Not only did they decide that she had to be raped to become hard/strong/empowered (feeding into one of the nastiest and most mysoginist tropes there is in fiction), they decided that it had to be done in her parents bedroom in her ancestral home – just to twist the knife a bit more.
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I find the remark by Graves rather offensive because it was clearly making Sophie Turner the butt of a joke about her character’s rape – a story line they definitely hadn’t revealed to her at the time. I get the feeling that she’s been misled quite a bit what was in store for her character before she got the script.
The fact that the script says “romance dies” at the start of the rape scene is even more offensive, especially since this whole storyline was never about romance at all. I think that they writers and producers have shown themselves to be huge cowards. They put rape on the screen – sometimes for very flimsy reasons – but they shy away from actually naming what it is: Rape. D&D doesn’t even seem to want to address these issues directly but leave it to the writers and directors who then twist themselves into pretzels in order to avoid calling a spade a spade. Notice how Cogman won’t even say the R-word in an article specifically about this plot point!
It is infuriating beyond belief.
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Yes, it’s not like Theon has suffered a lot himself at the hands of Ramsay, the pinnacle of his suffering has to be watching a woman he knows getting raped! Because men are not allowed to be in pain or want revenge for their own suffering and abuse, it’s far nobler and manly if they suffer and want revenge because a woman they know has been brutalized. Yet another ridiculous and sexist trope.
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Great comments here by everyone. I think what has upset me the most about this is that while the actors involved had all been hinting that something horrible and traumatic was going to happen in their storyline, I am certain I saw comments that Sophie made that she is still going to be in control and that her situation will still be better than in King’s Landing. (I have to go back and see if I can find this interview.) So, how does this in any way show her still having some control? How does this show her being empowered in any way? Also, I really thought D&D would keep their Sansa to some semblance of a character arc that they themselves started at the end of season 4 because I figured, stupidly I realize now, that they would actually care about some sense of consistency within their own story. I therefore very stupidly held out hope that this meant that they were not going to do to Sansa what we all feared and that whatever the traumatic event was, it would not happen to Sansa directly although she would be there in some way (not that I want to see something like this happen to any character, but at least if it happened in a way that made sense to the characters involved then I could accept it better).
Boy do I feel like a moron and also betrayed, because they so clearly manipulated this storyline in nonsensical ways to make this happen. Trying to explain this to Unsullied friends, though, has been very hard. They agree that it was horrible what happened to Sansa and my mother absolutely hates Ramsay and wants to know when Theon is going to do him in, but they all don’t analyze the show the way I do so don’t really get how this was manipulated nor think its a big deal if Theon is the one to save Sansa rather than Sansa taking the steps to save herself. Sigh.
I’ll save my comments on the absolute travesty that was Dorne and King’s Landing for Miodrag’s review tomorrow (except that I can’t resist commenting how that fight with the Sand snakes looked like it was right out of a bad Power Rangers video). Because everything is about REVENGE!
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This episode was just the frakking cherry on top of that steaming pile of dung that they serve up as Sansa’s so-called “empowering”TM arc this season. I’m too tired and too angry right now to say nothing more than borrow the famous quote from Network” and yell I AM MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!!!!!
The rest of the episode is also bad but for different reasons than Sansa’s story line with Porne being the worst offender. Cutting Arianne has really been the death blow to Dorne and I wonder why they’ve even included Dorne this season because the narrative contortions of the writers seem increasingly flimsy for a story that is rather boring, dogged by bad acting and peopled with characters that are no more than slightly offensive stereotypes of very bad writing. It doesn’t help that the Dornish all sound like they have been been taught to speak English by Manuel from Fawlty Towers!
The Faith Militant is so over the top that this plot device would feel right at home in a Monty Pythonesque version of the Spanish Inquisition. It just lacks a scene where bearded women stone sinners for having Dorne shaped birthmarks. Yes, I’m laying the hyperbole on thick but they way this show represents the Faith Militant is looking more and more like a spoof than an adaptation of the source material.
Both of these elements have an unintended hilarity because they are so unnuanced and over the top. However, I doubt that this was the intended effect because this show takes itself so very very seriously.
And please, can we stop with the dick jokes! They are as unfunny as they are puerile – and they conjure the image of the writer’s room peopled with adolescents giggling over using “naughty” words (the hee hee *cock* the hee heee) whilst anxiously hoping that their nanny won’t discover them and wash their mouths with soap.
Arya’s story is, at least, on point so there’s that for small mercies.
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Man, this show has crossed the line for me. I’ll probably continue to watch it, but I refuse to support it in any way (it’s diffused in a channel that I already have in my country, so I don’t feel like I’m supporting the show by watching it, even if I am). No more blu-rays or memorabilia money from me!
Everything is so predictable, even when it is present for shock value. It seems that they totally forgot what the show was about. It’s no more “Game of Thrones”, it’s “Shock and Boobs”.
The Sansa rape scene was bad, as all of you already demonstrated, but what really turned it unwatchable for me was knowing that it had absolutely no reason to be there. They went the extra mile in order to shoehorn Sansa into this unbelievable situation, just for her to be raped.
And what can we say about their “empowerment” propaganda? We’ve now watched 6 episodes and Sansa is as powerless as ever. And watching the next episode preview, we can guess that she’ll be there for one more episode at least. So what? She’ll suffer a badass transformation in episode 8? Last time she dyed her hair and wore a black dress to show us how badass she was. What will she do this time? Appear half naked with part of her head shaved, like a bad video-game evil witch?
That, for me, hurts a lot more than just “another rape scene”.
Critics of the show have reacted negatively to the episode. But, as always, it’s principally superficial analysis. Criticizing Sansa’s arc this season just because she was raped after telling us that this story was a “bold” move is not really convincing.
But, at least, it bring some of the reviewers to think about these problems, instead of blindly believing everything that D&D showed down their throats.
I’ll keep watching to see were this mess is going, but I have no more illusions about a satisfying, believable ending (not that I had many to begin with).
D&D will do what they do best: shoehorn characters into unbelievable situations just because that’s were they’re supposed to be, despite everything we’ve seen before.
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“And what can we say about their “empowerment” propaganda? We’ve now watched 6 episodes and Sansa is as powerless as ever. And watching the next episode preview, we can guess that she’ll be there for one more episode at least. So what? She’ll suffer a badass transformation in episode 8? Last time she dyed her hair and wore a black dress to show us how badass she was. What will she do this time? Appear half naked with part of her head shaved, like a bad video-game evil witch?”
The showrunners, Graves and the whole writing team need to go educate themselves on this subject, badly! Rape is a profoundly traumatising occurrence, and it can take years to overcome, sometimes is never overcome. And it has nothing to do with strength of character, for both weak and strong do suffer severely. Professionals that had to do therapy with men and women that underwent this experience will tell it’s nothing like pop culture and the media love to portray it. It’s not empowering, it doesn’t function as a motivator to do anything; it’s psychologically destructive, more so when the victim happens to be a virgin or very young. This empowerment through rape and motivation through rape tropes that the media is so fond of need to disappear, because it only perpetuates myths about sexual violence and damages efforts to have the public become aware of this social issue and the ways to deal with it, and the showrunners have done their part to continue this trend in the worst possible way: it’s bad enough when a character has this type of plot as part of their original arc, but to force another into it is truly nauseating.
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We just have to look at what happens with Jeyne to understand that this scene have consequences.
But no. For them, you can flip-flap between characters with complete impunity. Sansa suffers rape but, instead of being broken like Jeyne, she will turn into a badass hardened woman because everybody knows that powerful women can endure rape like it’s nothing!
Is that really something you want to show on TV? How are actual rape victims going to react to that? Talk about victim blaming: “It’s your fault if you’re still messed up after being raped. Look at Sansa, that’s how you should react”.
Thanks, D&D, were would I be without your magnificent social advice!
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I kind of had the feeling that having no female talent in the writing/directing pool could very well be very, very problematic for the show – I guess I was proved right. Yes, they have used rape before and a rape of a main character like Dany. However, Dany’s scene was a lot less brutal than Sansa’s. With Dany they showed her getting undressed crying and then Drogo pushing her forward. We didn’t her her agonized screams!
Honestly, Sansa’s rape made me sick to my stomach – and I have decided to take a very long break from the show. The episode and the entire discussion around it has been very triggering for me and with my depression rearing its ugly head once again, I’m doing this to protect my own health. I literally couldn’t sleep that night.
Furthermore, when a show after 5 seasons still is a merciless trek through the slough of despond without any hope of a narrative and emotional pay-off anywhere near on the horizon – then it isn’t really entertaining for me anymore but rather an exercise in masochism. (This goes for the books as well – I doubt I’ll reread them until a decade from now, if the series is ever finished).
The show has great production values – I am in awe of the costume department (especially since this field is a particular interest of mine). It has has some stunning visuals – the image of the fallen statue of the harpy from ep. 1 was amazing on a visually epic scale. The actors are generally great as well. These things, however, do not mitigate a narrative that stumbles incoherently along, inconsistent characters and the fact that they can’t tell a story without shoving down all the most offensively sexist and racist tropes can in no way mitigate all the hard work and talent that a lot of people have put into making this show happen.
So good-bye Game of Thrones. It has been complicated and not entirely pleasant relationship, but we’re done for now. I may revisit you if you can manage to salvage something worthwhile from the shattered ruins of your own fuck-ups.
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Dear friends,
Here’s an article that perfectly sums up my thoughts and feeling about how GoT is overly reliant on “shock” moments and how that strategy very well (hopefully IMO) can come back and bite the showrunners in their asses.
http://filmschoolrejects.com/opinions/the-new-game-of-thrones-rape-problem.php
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Thanks for the link, Trinuviel; off to read…
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Another really good article that analyzes exactly what is wrong with the choice to rape Sansa on the show.
“The problem, as ever, with “Game Of Thrones”’ rape is not that it exists but that it fails to adequately justify why it exists. Miller’s film has incredible vision and purpose and energy. Every moment is considered and vital. “Game Of Thrones” doesn’t feel that way. A world of violence is not a narrative, it’s just a theater of horror. There is a real disconnect in this show between the character arcs and the brutality of each moment; between the subtle storytelling and the entirely unsubtle treatment of its women. It creates a dissonance of attempting to identify with characters before seeing them suffer almost cartoonish horror in the arena of the show; the violence is titillation.
But rape isn’t mere violence; it’s not a punch to the head or a knife through the ribs. It’s an act that attempts to divorce a person’s soul from their body; to imitate the language of intimacy in what is purely cruelty. It is a kind of murder, except afterwards, the victim can still walk and talk and breathe. I question any depiction of rape that seeks to add to a woman’s violation in the text by further robbing her of her dignity in how that story is told. And at this point, with HBO’s “Game Of Thrones,” I’m questioning three.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/19/rape_in_westeros_what_game_of_thrones_could_learn_from_mad_max_fury_road/
The critics are turning on the show now – at least there’s that. It will be interesting to see if this is the moment where the showrunner’s strategy of using sexual violence for thrills is finally going to snap back in their faces with the boomerang effect that is inherent in this particular strategy for storytelling – it cannot be sustained over prolonged time since the shock and awe approach calls for a constant escalation of the emotional manipulation of the audience. If it gets to gross, too exploitative – then it blows up in their faces.
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