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

[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!