Most of you newbies seem to have found yourselves here via the Film Theory posts, which I’d left off some when Mountains happened. Ahhhhhah oops?
Someone mentioned analyzing Game Of Thrones which might be interesting because I don’t know the source material and it’s gorgeous and the people are gorgeous. Also? It’s a TV series.
So I have a question to followers who might know: are there any directors or editors or cinematographers that are female? Which episodes did they direct/edit/block if so? Which episodes ‘feel’ particularly benign versus a bit sketchy? Note: I have no interest in watching/analyzing the rape episodes. I plan to watch with the sound off anyway but for one, it’s too obvious, for two, I don’t want that in my brain right now.
An interesting meta-commentary (that would require dealing with some of the squickier gender attitudes of the show, so maybe not) could be made about the S6E5 episode The Door (written by Benioff and Weiss; directed by Jack Bender). When I watched it I was struck by the play-within-a-play depiction of the group of traveling players in Braavos. As Arya watches the players retelling the scene in King’s Landing that was the climax of that story arc in season 1, the relationship between narrative entertainment and truth is central to the drama. In light of the (many and justified) criticisms of how the show has used elements like female nudity and sexual violence, I thought it was interesting that when play!Tyrion strips play!Sansa’s torso to expose her breasts, the audience gasps, and in particular an older woman behind Arya is shown raising her hand to her mouth and being visibly upset.
Later, backstage, there’s a very desexualized closeup of a male actor’s penis as he talks about his concern that he has contracted an STD.
You could say that this is just GoT being GoT in terms of the differential way it handles nudity and sexual violence. Or you could view it as the show trying to excuse the use of exploitative female nudity a few minutes earlier by throwing out some gratuitous male nudity. But you could also view it as the show being self-aware about the criticism it has received, and representing and commenting on how they have used sexual violence and nudity to shock and titillate the audience, while showing the players being more grimly matter-of-fact in their attitude toward such things when the audience isn’t watching. That doesn’t excuse the things they’ve done, but it opens the door to a more complex understanding of how the show’s creators think about it.
I must be brave. Her torments would soon be ended, one way or the other. If Lady was here, I would not be afraid. Lady was dead, though; Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, her father, her mother, even Septa Mordane. All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now.
“In Game of Thrones, the rapes are — man, this will never not sound gross — “ongoing.” It’s an ever-unfolding rape carnival, a parade of sexual assaults. (Here, by the way, someone will surely say something about why are we so concerned about the rape but, say, not concerned about murder or Greyjoy’s “dick removal scenario.” To which I would respond, frequency again becomes an issue: if every season contained one major dick removal scenario, you’d probably start to say, “Hey, Game of Thrones writers, maybe cool it on the cock-chopping. It’s feeling like you have a thing against dicks. Do you hate dicks? Why do you hate dicks so bad?” And here we could ask the same about women. Do you hate women? Why do you hate women so bad? Do you have a thing against them?”
I just realized why it felt so good to see a movie (Mad Max: Fury Road) that could talk about the horror that is rape and sexual violence without feeling the need to show any of the violence for “impact.” It’s not just the horror of seeing that kind of degradation of women, it’s that those kinds of scenes reinforce the objectification and make the viewer complicit in it. A human being, albeit a fictional one, is being used as an object to entertain the viewer or to get them to react. How can you claim to be speaking out against the objectification of women if you objectify them with the very art you’re making to show the wrongness of it?
We know what happened to the Wives. We don’t need to see it for ourselves. We don’t need to make them into objects to spark our feelings of outrage or disgust. We are outraged at their treatment because they are human beings. Fury Road has the integrity to insist that women ARE NOT THINGS, and then it backs up that statement with EVERY SINGLE SECOND of screen time.
Coming on the heels of my disappointment with show GoT’s choices in depicting the Sansa/Ramsay/Theon arc, the contrast with how Fury Road dealt with that issue was striking, and this analysis gets to the heart of what was different about it.
The show has creators. They make the choices.They chose to use rape as a plot device. Again. – Jill Pantozzi, The Mary Sue
It is possible to write fantasy without falling back on the harmful cliché that an old-timey setting offers a free pass to show women getting raped all the time. –Everdeen Mason, Refinery29
The issue with the show returning to rape as a trope is not simply because there have been thinkpieces speaking out against it, and is not solely driven by the rational concerns lying at the heart of those thinkpieces. It’s also that the show has lost my faith as a viewer that the writers know how to articulate the aftermath of this rape effectively… –Myles McNutt, AV Club
We already knew that Ramsay Bolton was a sadist and an abuser of women, we already knew that Theon Greyjoy was his tormented puppet. Showing Sansa’s dress ripped, showing her face shoved down into the bed, hearing her screams did nothing to reveal character, or advance the plot, or critique anything about Westerosi society or about our own conceptions of medieval society that hasn’t already been critiqued. – Steven Attewell, Salon
In general, I’m not a big fan of people getting raped in entertainment as a manipulative way of heightening the stakes, but I’m even less of a fan of people getting raped in entertainment when it accomplishes absolutely nothing. – Laura Hudson, Wired
What character development could be wrung from this tragedy that could not have been created without a violent rape? Why does Game of Thrones — and so much popular entertainment — revert to this horrific crime when they want their female characters to “grow”? – Michal Schick, Hypable
Was it really important to make that scene about Theon’s pain? If Game of Thrones was going to go there, shouldn’t they at least have had the courage to keep the camera on Turner’s face?…But the last thing we needed was to have a powerful young woman brought low in order for a male character to find redemption. No thank you. – Joanna Robinson, Vanity Fair
To show Sansa being raped as the kicker to an episode — and then to cut to Theon, as if it’s his view, his reaction, his internalizing of the moment that matters — just felt like more of the same old same old we’ve been getting since Ros died, since Tansy was hunted, since Cersei was raped. – Nina Shen Rastogi, Vulture
There are thousands of ways to make a character and a series compelling without having to humiliate and dehumanize her with sexual force. Come on, Game of Thrones, you should know better than that. – Rachel Semigran, Bustle
Now with Sansa and Ramsay, Game of Thrones is seemingly confirming that it has no idea how to use rape as a storytelling device — crass as it may sound, fictional sexual violence can be extremely powerful if managed carefully (see: The Americans) — and rape is just about the worst storytelling device to deploy clumsily. – Jen Trolio, Vox
Welcome to cable drama, where a woman’s rape is an opportunity for a man’s character development….what really makes the wedding night rape of Sansa Stark notable is the fact that as brutal and honestly unnecessary as the moment is, the show doesn’t even have the courtesy of letting Sansa’s emotions about the event serve as the center of the moment….
This was a choice and the choice was to marry off a teenage girl, rape her, and not even have the dignity to care primarily about her feelings about her fate.
The show pretty much added a new, and in my opinion, entirely unnecessary victimization to her story. More concerningly, after Jaime’s rape of Cersei last season, it’s yet another rape Benioff and Weiss decided to add to the show that was not in the text and at this point, we don’t need anymore. – Lauren Morgan, New York Daily News
There have been numerous plot points and characters from Martin’s novels that have been omitted from the series; I’d love to hear what the showrunners’ arguments are for not only keeping the brutal assault of a young woman, but changing the storyline so that it happened to a beloved character. I’ll be waiting for an explanation, but like Jaime Lannister’s guilt [over raping Cersei], I’m not expecting it to actually arrive. – Casey Cipriani, Indiewire
There were so many ways around this very horrible and very predictable outcome and D&D decided to use what would shock viewers the most. Maybe I’m naive and hope too much for the good things, but I’m also a fan of good writing and creative characters who grow. Sansa’s “wedding” involved neither.- Jen Stayrock, Workprint
Bad enough that the assault upon the Stark princess by ghastly Ramsay Bolton was explicitly presented as an exercise in voyeurism, with Theon Greyjoy forced to watch as Sansa was violently assailed. What made the scene worse, and perhaps unforgivable, was that the rape was in the context of Sansa displaying increased maturity and independence. – Ed Powers, Independent.ie
Personally, I’d really like Game of Thrones to be a good 30-40 per cent less weird about women (and having Warrior Princess fighting girls in Dorne isn’t quite what I’m after, chaps). – Chris Bennion, Independent.co.uk
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“Fans have a direct experience with the crime than with murder or other really serious violent acts.
Often you can tell exactly what the story line was because it’s prompting calls about a certain issue or from a certain group of survivors.” – Scott Berkowitz,
president and founder of the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) The hotline which receives a noticeable increase in calls every time there’s a portrayal of rape on a popular show. Support is available 24/7 through the National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-HOPE
All storytelling and other communication happens in a context, and Game of Thrones is part of a culture in which sword fighting, torture, and dismemberment are rare, while rape is all too common. In this context, extensive depictions of rape that serve little narrative purpose are shitty.
“Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell’s grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan’s stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow’s smile. He used to mess my hair and call me “little sister,” she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.”
When she clicked her heels the third time, Sansa found herself in a strange place. The floor was the color of blood, she wore a shimmering gown of an unusual fabric, and before her, beyond a stone parapet, a mob of bizarrely dressed people shouted at her in a language she couldn’t understand. Many of them held small devices that flashed bright lights in her eyes.
