Content Warning: Sexual Assault, R*pe, MILD Spoilers (if this is the only CW stopping you please re-evaluate)
** ** denotes text added after initial posting
While many have been enjoying the latest installment in dragons, murder, rape, and zombies, I have been gathering my personal thoughts about why there is literally no defense of the violence against women depicted in this show, and why if you feel there is, I’d like for you to read this.
You don’t owe it to me or even yourself, but why not, this will be quick.
**If you are coming to this article as a GOT fan, I hope you keep an open mind. TV isn’t just “good” or “bad”. It has bad qualities along with the good and the entertaining. Be critical so other writers, directors, and producers can do better.**
The main three arguments that I hear in defense of excessive rape on the show are:
It’s the time period, what did you expect
It furthers the plot/character development
It’s not hurting anyone, it’s just a show
My counterpoints are as follows:
It is gratuitous
It is bad writing
It has real world repercussions
And yes, I have seen the show, I stopped right before season five ended because it became entirely too much to bear, those writers are garbage, so don’t tell me I haven’t even seen it. I’ve seen enough. And to be clear, I am not addressing the overall quality of the show, nor am I against showing sex on TV when that sex is consensual, this isn’t one of those “family values” posts, it’s about unnecessary, aggressive, violent, poorly written rape scenes.
1. It is gratuitous
I know that rape and sexual assault exists in the world. Do you know which other cinematic/tv universes rape canonically exists in? All of them. Does all media have to depict 30-45 seconds of rape every once in a while in case you forgot it existed? No.
Furthermore, if they are so hung up on creating a “believable” world, why does basically every single woman have a fully shaven pubic area. Wildlings included. If you insist on forcing the ugly truth of fake medieval reality on me, don’t also push male-gazey beauty standards that I’m just supposed to believe these medieval women with no access to a common media have all decided to adhere to. Fuck that.
Please reach out to me if you wanna fight this, I am so excited to hear you explain why this makes sense.
30-45 seconds of on screen rape is gratuitous. If, and I mean ONLY IF this was somehow necessary to the plot (it’s not), then it could be alluded to offscreen, tactfully, without putting viewers in the awful position of seeing onscreen sexual assault, much less an overdrawn, horror show of sexual assault.
The writers have said in interviews, that it’s not their goal to avoid controversy. They have even said that they were glad for the publicity they received from controversy, specifically the controversy surrounding Jamie and Cersei having what looked to be aggressive, non-consensual sex in front of her dead child’s body… and if multiple news sources ran articles stating it as such, means it really looked like it, not to mention the initial lack of denial from the writers themselves. Honestly, I’m not convinced that they weren’t just covering up after a big mess up. Controversy for the sake of controversy is gratuitous. That is not good writing, that is not a plot twist, that is just brutal. Which brings me to my next argument.
2) It is bad writing.
The writers for GOT repeatedly rely on rape/attempted rape to further character narratives. Their most recent ridiculous writing tactic, having Sansa cite her trauma as something she is glad for having experienced as it made her tough. All this while showing essentially none of her personal, emotional recovery from her repeated assault. Rather than depict any of her emotional growth that actually, might have resulted in some character development, the writers relied on plot devices, shock value, and brutalization to make the audience believe that Sansa had been through some shit and grown from it. When guess what? The audience doesn’t buy it. A consistent critique of the show is Sansa’s poor character development. All that brutality for what?
Honestly you should all read this article that stands up for Sansa as a character, and speaks to the glaring issues with having a team of all male writers.
But let’s talk about another example. Season 5 episode 7, Gilly is attacked by two men, when Sam steps in to save her. This provides zero character development for Gilly, and honestly, zero character development for Sam. We already know because of his rescue of her and countless other kind acts that he cares about her, and is a good person. We do not need to see him save her from rape to consider him a good person. Honestly, it feels like the writers can only differentiate between good and evil characters based on who commits the assault, and who prevents it. Gilly, as a character, is put through this trauma so Sam can have a hero moment that he neither needs nor deserves. And what happens next? He is beat up very badly, and Gilly is the one to comfort him. She tends to his wounds and then they have sex, and for him, it’s his first time. That’s right folks, Gilly was used as a plot device to show Sam becoming a brave, sex-having man. It takes literally until the next episode for Sam to then ask Gilly, “are you alright”.
Talk about bad writing, I mean yikes.
3) It has real world repercussions.
“It’s not hurting anyone.”
I think we all know that the first rape on Game of Thrones probably hit the viewer a little differently than the fifth (also in the first season), or the seventh (season 2), 9th (3), 14th (4), 17th (5), etc. By the time you’ve finished the fifth season, you have see 17, brutal, on screen acts of rape, and that’s not even counting attempted rape.
As you can probably tell by this post, this is not the first time that I have had this conversation. The number of people that I respect that have said to my face, that it made sense for Sansa/Cersei/Dany/etc. to be raped is shocking. And I know, that it is a show, and they are characters, it is nevertheless awful to hear someone say something like that. As a culture we should not be moving in the direction of normalizing the brutality that is sexual assault, when so many victims of sexual assault are not believed, trusted, or supported by their peers and when so many perpetrators suffer little to no consequences for their actions.
To those of you who feel uncomfortable when the subject of Game of Thrones is brought up (literally every day lately), because you intrinsically tie that show to sexual assault (because it is), if it is within your power to do so in that moment, tell them.
Tell your work acquaintances who ask off hand “did you watch GOT this weekend?”.
Tell those companies that decided that GOT branding was a fun, family friendly idea.
Tell your close friend who insists that you should really give the show a chance, despite the rape and violence.
(Thought exercise: How would these ~chill~ interactions be different if you replaced GOT with “literal torture porn”? Not that I’m against de-stigmatizing the sex work/porn industry, it’s just odd to me that GOT is more socially acceptable than porn).
If the rape serves nothing in the way of world building, plot, character development, or reason, then why not omit it for the sake of your viewers?
Why the fuck not?