A Game of Thrones concern

[yendi]

So, I haven't read the series (although I've listened to most of the first book as an audiobook). And I often forget characters given how bloody huge the world is.

But something still bothered me this week.



So, as far as I can tell, this is the first episode that's featured a black character (the pirate hired by Stanis's man).

And within two minutes, that character has established that the only thing he wants is to "fuck the blonde queen." Granted, he says that he's not going to rape her, but only because he's so confident that she'll just fall into bed with him (something that could only happen, in theory, after his ships have helped destroy her kingdom). Because, you know, conquering her kingdom and destroying her family and killing all of her protectors and then asking her for sex would totally not be coercive at all.

Am I missing something? Have there been a slate of black characters on the series (not POC -- the Dothraki have their own set of issues, but have been pretty thoroughly developed) that I've somehow missed, ones who have provided us with enough range to ignore the stereotype?

Comments

[matt_doyle]

In a word? No. At least not in the books. We see very few black characters and almost are all heavily exoticized and stereotyped.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Do we even know the race? Beyond Dotrhaki being a different race. Not sure if he makes it explicit for everyone.

[matt_doyle]

Yes. There are explicit descriptions of characters from the Summer Islands as ebony-skinned.

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Summer_Islands

Salladhor Saan, however, is Lyseni, who are typically blonde and blue-eyed.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

TBH there hasn't been a lot of mention of race or color. It didn't surprise me that Saladar is black, but then I expected him to be non-white in some fashion (like the Dothraki) because of the locale. The targaryens near-albinism was mentioned I think to set them apart from everyone else.

I think there's specific mention of a 'dusky-skinned woman" somewhere later.

Frankly I was surpised Shae was white. I figured she'd be another exotic "dusky-skinned" or somesuch.

Its possible the Desert People will be non-white. Its certainly how I imagined them.

I think Martin made a passing reference to the dark-skinned people across one of the oceans that we haven't gone to yet where Saladar comes from originally. I wouldn't be surprised if Martin gave us a whole new cast with that country in the next book *sigh*

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

also I suppose its worth remembering that most of the central characters live in extremely cold regions. Its natural to assume they will be white. As the story moves towards warmer regions we begin to see non-whites. I don't think that's anything outre. And in the land of mostly whites where horse and boat is the only way to travel far, a dark-skinned person is going to be considered, yes, exotic.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

lastly, I am pretty sure Saladar didn't say that in the book.

that'd be the second time they added rape to the series when it wasn't in the book.

When Kaleesi was with Kal Drohl for their wedding night, the series made it look like he rapes her. Then later she wants to know how to please him sexually? Wha?
In the book that's not how it happened. He actually approaches her carefully, tenderly and ASKS her permission for every touch. It was pretty much the opposite of rape. She actually takes his hand and places it where she wants it and tells him to go ahead. It was strangely touching and erotic. I was outraged at how they changed that in the show.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

No, Salador mentioning be interested in fucking Cersei is in the book. Which to me is more about him being a mostly amoral PIRATE than anything else. Other than a few minor characters there aren't a lot of POC in the first couple books. Not until Daenyrs starts expanding into the "Old" city-states...

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

agreed

[skitty.livejournal.com]

I respectfully disagree with you. In the book, Dany repeatedly says no, and Drogo, however tenderly, presses onward until she capitulates. He may not have physically forced himself onto her, but there was a clear imbalance of power in that scene and Dany's participation was not voluntary. I appreciated that the show made this more explicit than the book.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I just now read it again. She does not repeatedly say no. HE says no. No to her tears, No to her shame. He basically is telling her not to be afraid of him.

He seduces her tenderly and erotically. And he ASKS her "no?" before he has touched her sexually, she grabs his hand, puts it on her precious parts and says "Yes". Read it again.

[skitty.livejournal.com]

You're right; I was mistaken about the dialogue. That doesn't change the fact that she was a frightened child who did not choose to marry Drogo and did not choose to be intimate with him. When she submits, I firmly believe it is motivated out of an instinct for survival and the fact that she fears him less than she fears her brother.

Look, you can read the seduction however you want, but when an adult king marries a fourteen year old fugitive girl, that's not a consensual sexual relationship.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Definitely not consensual but I think that there was a time when it was common to marry at 12 or 13 and there was some form of acceptance that this is what is going to happen. Usually coerced but there is also a sense of familial obligation.

Katerine of Sforza was married at 10 and the groom insisted upon consummation before he rode off to get into Vatican politics (this is a Renaissance family).

It's creepy as hell but in the context, it's generally accepted.

[skitty.livejournal.com]

You make a fair and accurate point, but I'm not sure it's relevant. Of course the community accepts this marriage. The khalasar and Viserys support it. Illyrio supports it. But Dany is coerced into it and at her age, she is not really qualified to consent. Age aside, any woman who is told she is going to marry a king has just lost any control she ever had over her sexuality.

I don't think Drogo's seduction of Dany is erotic or tender because I don't think Dany has any power to consent, or to withhold consent. The same goes for Katerine of Sforza, no matter how acceptable her family and her community may have found it.

[yendi]

Hell, it's not just that she's told to marry him; any failure to marry him and make him happy would result in "waking the Dragon," which we know means she'll be beaten at the last, and likely raped by Viserys, too.

[yendi]

*nod* The presence of mostly whites in a land that's basically Northern Europe doesn't bother me on that level (although I do have some serious questions about the world building here, given the age of the world, the historic empire building, and the slave trades, all of which imply that there should have been more intermixing of civilizations).

[blergeatkitty.livejournal.com]

I actually just (re)read this scene this morning. The rape is in fact a little more implied in the book. He doesn't suggest he'd seduce her, he just says he wants "a gift of the beautiful Queen Cersei to warm my bed at night" as recompense for adding his ships to Stannis's fleet. But don't get me started on the rape in this series. GRRM is actually very progressive when it comes to the majority of his female characters, but women are still largely property in his universe and there are two or three scenes where rape happens for its own sake without really furthering the story. It's a bit problematic.

Anyway, Sallador's race is never specified in the books. In fact, because he's from the same region as another character who's specifically referred to as blonde and blue-eyed, I pictured him as a white guy (and I'll agree that it IS a little problematic, not on GRRM's part, but on HBO's, that they cast a rapist character as a black guy, even if they toned that down for the show). There's at least one more instance coming up of a black actor being cast for a racially ambiguous role, but at least two characters who were "dark-skinned" in the books who appear to have been written out of the TV series entirely.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I think that part of the strength of Martin's female characterization is the fact that he doesn't shy away from creating a Middle Ages type world in which rape is an accepted form of power. In Morte D'Arthur, there is a scene when a farmer's son wants to be a knight and it's revealed that his mother was raped by King Pellinore before she got married. But it's ok because she wasn't married at the time and isn't it nice that the kid is Pellinore's son? No really. It's that blase about the whole rape part of the story.

It's not some cleaned up Tolkien world where the women are non-existent or carry big swords. And save us from the butt-kicking women warriors who exist to be male fantasies.

Kind of like how Mad Men gets a little blatant in obviously depicting the sexism of the time but that also makes it into a great show (as opposed to what it would be if it shied away from talking about gender).

So the women characters are strong characters because they live in a world in which rape is considered normal and they are still intelligent, well-rounded strong characters.

[blergeatkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, I definitely understand that part of it, and I agree that one of GRRM's strengths is his ability to create women who are strong and opinionated and interesting in different ways within a framework that's very sexist. (Side note: a couple of years ago I emailed a lesser author on this very point, saying that I enjoyed his book and his post-apocalyptic universe, but I didn't understand why all of his female characters did nothing but have sex and make food. I argued that within an oppressive framework, women could still be interesting and move the plot. His condescending response was basically that I clearly had had too much schoolin' to wrap my female brain around the concept of a male-dominated world. Yeah, never read that guy again.)

I just feel like GRRM has female characters who get, y'know, lines, and female characters who get raped. He ends up dehumanizing the rape victims in his universe in favor of using rape to say something about his male characters. In most case, a big graphic description of rape in the books is shorthand for "here's an awful character." There are half a dozen rapes either described or recounted in the books, I can actually think of only one situation where the victim is someone we even see again afterward. And her reaction isn't the important part (in fact she doesn't even speak that I can remember) - she's just treated as some damaged goods they need to sell off. (Without being too spoilery, can I complain about overuse of the phrase "half a hundred times" with regard to this subplot?)

To be fair, there's also a character for whom the threat of rape looms over her head pretty well constantly, and it ends up motivating her somewhat, which is probably the platonic ideal of how what you're describing can be deployed effectively and with sensitivity, but since she hasn't appeared on the show yet, I won't go into super details there.

I don't know, I guess it's that GRRM's treatment of it is that it's a real fact of his universe, but instead of his female characters confronting it, it's generally used as an establishing shot where the victims are just scenery, and almost always it's used to say something about men rather than women.

Sorry about the epic comment!

[yendi]

Sigh. So they actually used "color-blind casting" to make things worse. Lovely.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I think Sallador Saan may be the first *black* character with a line of dialogue in the TV show, yes. In the books, I don't recall him being black specifically, and I do recall several other characters being black before and after him - but I also could be misremembering.

And yes, his "where all the white women at?" attitude is.... special.