More outrage at depiction of rape in Game of Thrones television show (spoilers)
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crimzonflame
Member
Sorry, going a little off topic here and in no way downplaying the impact of rape or anything like that, but how do you guys feel about nudity and sex scenes in general? What do we get from from them? Are they pointless? How do they add to the story?
Damerman
Member
well strength may not be the right word, but apathy and detachment would have been a better than crying and whaling in order to get a superficial reaction out of the audience. She's been going through bullshit for 4 seasons now. She's no longer a girl.
Are we watching the same season? She's pissed off her slave city and her elite guard champions were murdered. In other words she is plenty vulnerable, even to her own "kin" in the dragons.
And maybe the crying was a ploy? We don't know that.
afternoon delight
Member
Mountains from mole hills until the next episodes air. Most fans of the material are dismissing the disdain, while others are talking themselves into weird circles.
I, personally, have as big a problem with the depiction of torture in fiction as I do with rape. (fwiw, I find Zero Dark Thirty to be an appalling, dishonest film—that's neither here nor there but maybe it helps some people understand where I'm coming from.) I think a show like Mad Men has handled rape very deftly in the past, I think a film like Prisoners has interrogated the question of torture thoroughly and effectively. I don't think anyone's saying "don't do it," they're saying "if you're going to do it, don't half-ass it, don't misrepresent it, etc."
I don't think it's that one is "worse" than the other: they don't exist in a hierarchy of terrible things that can happen to you. Once you get into a conversation of "which is worse, X or Y," that's a reductive conversation where nobody wins. It's that they're different and exist in wildly different contexts—and thus, should be handled differently and held to different standards. For example, murder is the easiest violence to write: it offers a finality that is simple. either the victim is alive or they are not. Meanwhile, the experience of writing for a rape victim is far more difficult—and, let's face it, most male writers simply aren't properly equipped to write about that. It's about good storytelling. Reducing it to a bullet point within a plot isn't really doing that act or the experience of being a victim justice.
Damerman
Member
because it's not about the rape scene... its about how carelessly the showrunners handle Sansa's character development for the sake of Theon's
Shao Kahn on the Lawn
Member
She didn't need to have a plan at that point: she needed the motivation to act. Littlefinger may have been the one to provide that motivation but the decision to go was still ultimately hers and we have no reason to believe otherwise.
It feels ridiculous to have to point this out but her goals and those of Littlefinger are not mutually exclusive. Catelyn Stark is the only person that Littlefinger has ever really professed to care about and the Bolton's were principle agents in her murder. Littlefinger is playing a bigger game but there is zero doubt in my mind that working with Sansa to annihilate the Boltons is one of his key ambitions. In truth, I think Sansa Stark is one of Petyr's only weaknesses.
Damerman
Member
that is a much different vulnerability.
Those are also bad if they don't serve the plot or affect the characters. If some character got tortured or experienced some other major trauma and came out of it the same person and never really mentioned it it would be bad writing too.
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Deleted member 231381
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Yes, but we don't know what effect this will have on Sansa because it has only just happened in the last two minutes of the last episode. Given that, isn't it hasty to say it shouldn't have been written in?
BertramCooper
Banned
The fact that they've now repeatedly added sexual violence to a universe that's already full of sexual violence is just gross and inexplicable.
So it has to do with the fact that there are people alive in real life who've had similar experiences, rather than with murder where, well, the victim is dead? I feel like that can get a bit... Slippery though. There are a lot of terrible things that happen to people, and they don't die, and we sort of take it in stride. Limbs chopped off, family murdered in front of them, financial ruin, severe physical ailments... All things that leave people alive. So I probably am still not quite getting it. You're saying that it's not about better or worse, and I accept that, but it's about different - I just have trouble figuring out what the difference is.
You said the dragon queen was too powerful, and that is not the case whatsoever with Daenerys who is still learning how to rule not only people but her own dragons. She is vulnerable to even worse kinds of rape than what Sansa went through especially after pissing off the slave city, and her elite guards paid the price.
I don't see this as contradiction. It was a conscious decision she made, but at the same time the forceful nature of Ramsey made it very clear that it was rape. She didn't expect him to be this violent and that he would make Theon watch.
Also no one here was ever saying that she deserved it or asked for it.
Yeah, but people aren't upset about bad writing here. People walk around naked with jizz on their face in this show, absolutely unnecessary - but I don't know if necessity is a good metric to apply to a show like this.
I guess the thing is I'd side with the whole "This scene is useless" if say the rape had no context whatsoever. Like if Sansa was walking around winterfell and some nobody pulled her into an alley and raped her. Yes, I'd be alongside everyone else scratching my head asking if that was needed, and they better have some explanation. To me this scene doesn't need explanation, it is what it is. It's a major event for all the characters involved with major implications, regardless of the outcome.
afternoon delight
Member
That's funny because they didn't even come close to the wedding night depicted in the book.
The fear of sexual violence is much more present for women than it is for men. That's not to say that male sexual assault doesn't exist; of course it does and it's underrepresented in media. But, not to get too "down with the patriarchy"-y, I—as a male—don't walk around in fear of being sexually assaulted. It's just not an experience that's present in my psyche, so—even if I could empathize with a sexual assault victim because I have empathy and am a decent human being, I'm still not sure I wold be qualified to write a story about them, to write their experience.
afternoon delight
Member
The only play we know Sansa has up her sleeve right now is putting out a candle and calling for help... The only "decisions" she's ever made have been to agree to go along with someone else's plan.
Even her big play in the Vale succeeded only in maintaining her station. She doesn't have any goals as far as we've ever seen. Retaking the North isn't something she's ever expressed any personal interest in. She was excited to leave the North way back in the day. Returning there now wasn't her idea. She's barely even a Stark: her direwolf is dead, she has never exhibited a single Stark-ly characteristic.
We don't even have reason to believe the Stark name is enough to rally the North. Rob only really got the banners behind him when he took off Greatjon Umber's fingers. He demonstrated martial prowess and he stuck to his code of honor to the last. Sansa doesn't have any of that. Even if she can rally banners to "her" cause, it'll really be other people trying to advance themselves in her name.
She hasn't tried to contact any friends in the North. If she was plotting she'd've used that "North Remembers" lady to get the word out that she wanted to bring down the Boltons. Or she'd've done anything at all except hang out in rooms other people tell her to hang out in.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
You say in that post you're going to talk about two rape scenes that don't happen in the books, and then talk about Danaerys/Khal Drogo. Have you reread AGoT recently? Danaerys is raped. It's not questionable or debatable. I would argue that this is actually portrayed better in the show than the books, where Danaerys suffers a single night, steels herself for the next and becomes dominant, and falls in love with Khal Drogo; rather than in the book, where she is brutalized by Khal Drogo regularly and falls in love with him despite how bad her initial treatment is.
I'm upset about bad writing and storytelling. So are many of the posters in this thread. So are a good amount of the articles written on the subject. Most of the thread is complaints about the narrative necessity of the scene and what it does to Sansa's character arc.
I'm sure you can find people that are just like "don't use rape ever!" but that isn't the majority.
Another good write up IMO
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/all...ments-about-rape-on-game-of-thrones-debunked/
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/all...ments-about-rape-on-game-of-thrones-debunked/
Again, I'm not saying they shouldn't write about it. Write whatever you want. I couldn't care less what people write. I'm saying: don't do a shitty job. And if you do a shitty job, people will call you out on it.
People are different! People come from different backgrounds! That's not an argument, that's just fact.
The Silver
Member
Its fucking Littlefinger, one of the greatest manipulators in the series bar none. Ramsey and Roose are also some of the most brutal backstabbing evil manipulating cunts in Westeros.
Sansa isn't going to get a few lessons here and there from LF and suddenly start standing on equal footing with the greatest players of the game. She's a novice, a little girl motivated by revenge who just recently has decided to fight back no matter how long it takes and no matter the cost to her own well being.
She isn't a scared little fish anymore but she's nowhere near the level of shark and it's ridiculous to think she would be at this point. Ramsey is not someone that Sansa can take on yet, she steeled herself for the rape but then got swerved when Ramsey made Theon stay. It fucking sucks she hardened herself only to get opened up by Ramsey but that's the hand she was dealt, she's married to the devil himself.
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Deleted member 231381
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I agree with your argument that fear of sexual violence is much more present for women than for men. What I disagree with is the idea that understanding the fear of sexual violence allows one to understand the experience of the aftermath of sexual violence. They're very different. Obviously, more women will know this experience than men, sadly, but they're still a small proportion of writers. The majority of writers, of both sexes, have to put themselves in a position of empathy to be able to write about this experience; so I don't think the majority of women are favoured relative to men at this specific area of writing.
Shamrock7r
Member
Here the conversation has taken a turn to meticulously breaking down the scene, structure of the story, ramifications or lack there of, importance to character depth, differences between it and other scenes in the series, etc, but the mainstream anger has pretty much been over the rape scene.
I don't want to get hung up on this. For the most part, I agree. Good stories are good stories, regardless of who writes them (partly because those writers also probably know what they can't write). I'm just stating: people come from different backgrounds and are qualified to write about different things, and those writers know what they can and can't write. There's no shame in saying "I'm not properly equipped to write about this"; I find that preferable to writing about it, poorly.
I don't necessarily think Benioff and Weiss are malicious about sexual violence in GOT. But I do think they are clumsy about it. (I think the Cersei debacle speaks for itself.)
She literally says "yes" in the book on their first night after Drogo hesitates and asks "No?". Yes there are issues because she is 12 in the books, and you can argue that she has no choice in the matter but the consent is there where it wasn't in the show. The rough treatment she gets is presented as "just how Dothraki do things" and not getting beat around by a rapist.
this is all so fascinating. what a strange moment in time we live in.
fwiw, i accidentally tuned into the last five minutes of this episode with a couple of palz in a hotel room the other night .. we saw the "rape". our reaction was just .. "damn, thats brutal that theon has to watch".
fwiw, i accidentally tuned into the last five minutes of this episode with a couple of palz in a hotel room the other night .. we saw the "rape". our reaction was just .. "damn, thats brutal that theon has to watch".
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
When I said "better", better didn't mean "has less rape", it meant "more empowering portrayal of a female character". Book Danaerys literally contemplates suicide because of her experiences with Khal Drogo... but nevertheless falls in love with him. Show Danaerys falls in love with him after she's 'conquered' him by turning the tables. The second is a much stronger character.
EDIT: In fact, there's some heavy revisionism going on here. Before the show ever came out or was even mentioned, GRRM used to get criticized a tonne for how creepy the sex in Danaerys/Drogo chapters was. When S1 aired, I actively remember people watching it for the first time, who had read the books, commenting at how much this particular aspect had been improved. I just don't think you can genuinely argue the books do better at this particular portrayal of sexual power balances.
GameGuru59
Banned
One person's "shitty job" is another person's brilliant storytelling. If GOT focused too heavily on the experience of the women overcoming their rapes, the audience would likely quickly dwindle, and alot of people would consider it a Lifetime drama. The story isn't about women overcoming rape solely. It's mainly about war and politics. If you don't like it, don't watch it. But don't call it shitty storytelling because its not telling the story you want told.
If they don't want to write about rape, then... don't include rape in your story.
GameGuru59
Banned
Or... if you don't like how the author portrays rape the story, don't watch the show. Just because something isn't presented in a way you like, doesn't mean its shitty. I don't like Sex and The City. Doesn't mean it's a shitty show. It just wasn't made for me.
Or... even better, I didn't like how GOT kept going back to Theon's torture. I fast-forwarded through most of those. If you don't like that scene in the show, don't watch it. I will concede that maybe at the beginning of the show, HBO should include some sort of "trigger warning" thing for victims of rape, but that's about as far as it needs to go in my my opinion.
and just because you like it doesn't mean it's good. that's hardly a compelling argument in defense of the show.
Totally agree. And that's why the rape is boring and tasteless. It adds very little to the bigger story of war and politics, while her and Reek's reactions to it would add so much more.
Let's take an extreme example (possibly way too extreme, but it is the first one that came to mind). The reactions of bystanders and rescuers in 9/11 or any other major tragedy is the focus rather than the body parts or corpses or victims. That doesn't mean that those parts or people weren't there or weren't significant. Showing them, however, is tasteless and the more important part is what comes next - the reaction.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. Are you saying you'd still want the rape to happen, but to happen off-camera or inbetween scenes?
Meh. She begs the question and assumes in her first rebuttal that the only way to convey this information was the way they chose. That's obviously wrong.
Once she married Ramsay, the rape was inevitable. The information that it was forced and Reek watched could be conveyed in conversation easily and with a focus on how it will change the relationships.
So yeah, off-camera. In some ways, it largely did since we didn't actually see it happen. They forced just enough watching to shock.
Edit: My central argument here and in other threads is that this scene is another demonstration of them choosing shock over a good narrative. A cliffhanger with Sansa somehow gathering more of her underground support or Reek remembering who he is would have been better in my view.
What wallowing? There have been three scenes in total, one of which wasn't even intentional, while at the same time we've had far, far more instances of female empowerment and progress without resorting to rape throughout the show. GoT isn't a show simply priding itself in subjugating its female cast to appease a male audience, the male and female characters get abused equally (with Theon arguably getting the worst treatment out of any of the characters in the series) and become empowered equally. If single instances of torture/rape/etc. aren't your thing then you shouldn't have made it to this season. This clearly wasn't a pointless scene which they chucked in there for the hell of it either, it will have significant implications for Theon's relationship with Sansa and most likely the story overall.
It feels like its time for fans of the book to really accept the fact that the show has been doing its own thing for awhile now. Its time to treat them as different entities.
I can understand though since Martin takes for fucking ever to throw these books out.
As for this scene and episode, i was sad to see it happen to Sansa but considering the shit that happens at nearly every wedding in this world, i wasnt too fazed. Plus Sansa is an awful character and bores the shit out of me.
I cant get behind the outrage though. This isnt the books. Get over it. The show is full of wild shit. Lol
I can understand though since Martin takes for fucking ever to throw these books out.
As for this scene and episode, i was sad to see it happen to Sansa but considering the shit that happens at nearly every wedding in this world, i wasnt too fazed. Plus Sansa is an awful character and bores the shit out of me.
I cant get behind the outrage though. This isnt the books. Get over it. The show is full of wild shit. Lol
GameGuru59
Banned
@jtb- I've already detailed why just about every rape in the show matters in previous posts, read those. Better yet, read some articles that explain why (better than I do) the rape scenes were included.
@MikeyB- War includes rape as a consequence. Moreover, during the period the show is set in, rape was much more common anyway. It's part of the world, but not the focus of the story set within the world. Moreover, I take issue with the idea that the concept of rape shouldn't be used to drive a story:
Assuming we want the world constructed to be realistic (and a show set in the period would include what we would now consider rape), rape HAS been an impetus for action in the real world. Black men were lynched often in the first half of the 20th century due to accusations of raping white women. The town would get whipped into a frenzy and lynch the (usually falsely accused) offender. The burning of an entire black section of Tulsa Oklahoma was initially set about by a rape accusation.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Isn't it even more insulting to have something that (hopefully) will be incredibly important to Sansa's character development to be pushed off screen? I think I'd be more insulted by a casual exposition drop that a main character was raped than what was a fairly tasteful portrayal of rape that focused on the emotional rather than physical aspect.
Arthr2ShdsJcksn
Banned
I just know that I like what I like, and I liked this rape scene. Continuing to add scenes like the scene I liked increases the likelihood that I'll continue to like the show.
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