Is "Game of Thrones" Glorifying Rape, or Just Being Honest?

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in HBO's Game of Thrones

I don't know about you, but I really enjoyed the second episode of Game of Thrones. I thought it was more tightly plotted and action-packed than pilot, which was tasked with introducing all the characters and their relationship with each other, and I thought that there were some really nice character development moments, particularly the early scene between the Lannister siblings and the final, heartbreaking sequence, when psychopathic Prince Joffrey behaved like a complete dick and got both Sansa's direwolf Lady and the butcher's son killed. And that early scene of Tyrion bitch-slapping Joffrey like there's no tomorrow is a moment that I could watch over and over again, on repeat. (And now you can too, because someone made a .gif of it, available here.)

One of my favorite characters on the show is Emilia Clarke's Daenerys, and I really enjoyed her story arc, which featured Dany starting to gain some power in her relationship with Khal Drogo through (this being HBO) more graphic sex. However, while reading EW.com's excellent recap of the episode, I was struck by several commenters who argued that, rather than empowering my favorite bleached-blond, her storyline was glorifying rape. Commenter Georgia said, "I thought we left the 'women secretly love to be raped' behind in the 80s right alongside the old 'no means yes' chestnut. Guess not," while Amy takes on the recapper directly, saying in reference to his comment about the difference in Dany and Drogo's relationship in the book and on the show, "So you'd prefer Dany to swoon for a murderous brute after he RAPES HER REPEATEDLY? Gosh, that's much more realistic."

The comment that Amy was referring to concerned the different way Dany and Drogo's wedding night was portrayed on the show, as opposed to in the book. As those of you who watched the first episode probably remember, the fairly quick scene that shows Dany consummating her relationship with Drogo is a rape scene, in which Dany cries and says no while Drogo removes her clothes and then has sex with her. (A similar brief scene appears near the beginning of the second episode, and once again features Dany crying while Drogo has his way with her.) In the book, however, Drogo manages to seduce the initially fearful Dany, and she ultimately says yes to his advances.

I can see why the show's writers changed this scene, and the reason behind their decision has little to do with glorifying rape and everything to do with the amount of action they are forced to pack into each episode. As James Hibberd, EW.com's recapper, says, "If you have to tell the story visually, I can also understand why producers may have wanted to show Dany struggling to find her own power amid a difficult situation rather than appear, in this compressed version, to seemingly swoon for a murderous brute right after meeting him." This is the comment that Amy takes such issue with, and while I can see her point of view, mine was closer Hibberd's, as well as that of the AV Club's recapper Todd VanDerWerff, who takes some time in his recap to talk about the excellent way in which the series portrays the relationship between the powerful and the powerless in Westeros.

VanDerWerff starts out talking about the death of Arya's friend, the butcher's boy, as an example of how "the Middle Ages were pretty much shit if you weren't in a position of power." VanDerWerff notes the way in which the boy is a complete afterthought, and even noble Ned "gives it only a single moment before going off to kill his daughter's pet." In my experience with the episode, the audience reacts in much the same way that Ned does; I for one was so upset that Sansa's innocent Lady was going to be killed that I barely spared a moment's thought for the equally innocent boy, which I suspect was the expected reaction. It was only when I stopped to think about the story arc as a whole, after the terribly sad execution of the wolf, that the magnitude of the boy's death hit me.

What does this have to do with Daenerys, you might be asking. VanDerWerff draws a comparison between the death of the butcher's boy and Dany's sexual subjugation, saying that this scene is "similar to the way the series portrays, say, Daenerys, who doesn't have a ton of options in her life and can really only take charge sexually." This is why Georgia and Amy's comments struck me as false. I didn't think that Daenerys' desire to please Khal Drogo came from a new-found love for the husband she was sold to and who sees her as nothing more than an object; instead, I saw it as an attempt to gain the upper hand in at least one aspect of her relationship, and start to find some power in a situation in which she is powerless. (Plus, if we want to get into the mechanics of sex positions - which I think we should, if only because this is HBO, and sex positions are symbolic purely because they can be - the girl-on-top position that Dany pushes on Drogo is one in which the woman is much more in control of all aspects of intercourse, and can more easily keep her partner from hurting her. See, that was useful.)

Rather than glorifying rape, I think that Game of Thrones is bringing us a fairly realistic portrayal of a powerless woman doing anything and everything she can to make herself into her husband's equal in a time in which women have no power whatsoever. If you choose to read it that way, Sansa is doing the same thing; if she marries Joffrey, she'll be in the same position of power as Queen Cersei which, as we have seen, is the most power any woman in the kingdom can attain. Catelyn Stark does seem to have a fairly egalitarian relationship with Ned, but even she has no control over his choice to leave with the King, and she's forced to live with her husband's bastard son. Westeros may not be medieval Europe, but in many ways it's pretty damned close (except for the zombies and the dragons), and the series aptly conveys the absolute line between the powerful and the powerless, both in terms of class and in terms of gender. And we haven't even gotten into race yet.

On a side note: if you were as upset as I was about the death of Sansa's direwolf Lady, you can take some solace in this item. Apparently Sophie Turner, who portrays Sansa, loved the dog who portrayed Lady so much that, after filming on the season wrapped, she adopted her. Yay happy endings!

"Game of Thrones" Controversy: Is Fantasy Just for Boys?

Mark Addy, Lena Headey and Jack Gleeson in HBO's Game of Thrones

Anyone who has watched television or been on the internet in the past few months has probably heard about HBO's luxurious and expensive adaptation of Game of Thrones, the first novel in George R.R. Martin's ongoing fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. Those who follow television news and gossip a little more carefully have probably heard about the controversy surrounding Ginia Bellafante's review of the series for the New York Times, specifically the way in which the author implies that fantasy series are "boy fiction," not for women, claiming that the many, many (many) sex scenes that appear in the first few episodes were placed there as "a little something for the ladies," and because "no woman alive would want to watch otherwise." Bellafante goes on to say that she has "never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to The Hobbit first," a statement which is not only completely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is reviewing a TV show and not pontificating on perceived gender differences, but which also demonstrates that she has an extremely limited group of female friends. I for one have never heard of Lorrie Moore, but I am a voracious lover of Tolkien who has, on several occasions, dressed up in a homemade elf costume just because I could.

Bellafante has also clearly never made the acquaintance of Ilana Teitelbaum, who wrote a brilliantly insightful article in the Huffington Post about the sexism inherent in Bellafante's article, namely the idea that women aren't bothered with watching fantasy, and would instead spend their time shoe shopping and watching Sex and the City. Indeed, in the opening paragraph of Bellafante's article (I'm going to stop calling it a review, because there is very little actual reviewing happening here), she says that the show's opening credits should come with a warning stating, "If you can't count cards, please return to reruns of Sex and the City." For the record, while I am a huge fantasy nerd, I also really enjoy stereotypical female activities like shoe shopping, spa days and lunches that include mimosas. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I'm not even going to go into all the sexism (aimed, oddly enough, at her own gender) contained in Bellafante's article, partly because Teitelbaum does the job much better than I ever could, and partly because I think it's fairly apparent in the aforementioned quotes. (Seriously though, just because someone happens not to like Game of Thrones doesn't automatically imply that they're a woman, and even if they are a woman, it doesn't automatically imply that they will be watching Sex and the City. They could be watching baseball, or Fringe, or Community.) Instead, I want to respond with my own opinions about Game of Thrones, the first episode of which I decided to watch before writing this post.

I should state that, because I am not a critic for any of your fancy newspapers, I did not get screener copies of the first six episodes of the season, so this review is based entirely on the pilot episode. Having noted that, I really liked the show. Scratch that: I LOVED it. Game of Thrones was well-written and well-acted, the production values were absolutely top-notch, and there was just enough sex and violence to provide a nice, gritty atmosphere without completely upstaging the plot, although the producers could have cut down a bit on the exposed breasts. Plus, there were zombies. Zombies! I particularly enjoyed the performances of Sean Bean as Lord Eddard Stark, a man torn between loyalty to his king and his family; Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf brother of Lena Headey's Queen Cersei who is witty, often drunk, fond of prostitutes, and much tougher than he looks; and the luminous, marvelous newcomer Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, descendent of the deposed king who is now being used a bartering tool by her nasty brother to get his kingdom back. Clarke perfectly captures Daenerys' innocence and fear, and her performance in the scene of her wedding to savage warlord Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) is mesmerizing.

Speaking of Daenerys and her forced marriage to Khal Drogo, the scene later in the episode in which she unwillingly consummates her marriage is a refutation of Bellafante's assertion that the sex was put into the series for the purpose of pandering to women. Even if all the sex in the episode was not in the books, which is most certainly was, there a three major sex scenes in the episode, and none are the sort that strike me, a woman, as being particularly sexy. They are: a scene in which Tyrion pays four prostitutes to have sex with him at once; Daenerys' consummation of her marriage, which is, to put it bluntly, rape; and a scene in which Queen Cersei is glimpsed having rather vigorous sex with her twin brother (not the dwarf, her other brother). These scenes are not titillating so much as degrading, and the first two in particular serve as a commentary on the place of the women in the fictional kingdom of Westeros and, by extension, the very real setting of medieval Europe.

There are certain small problems that I had with the series. The number of characters and their shifting allegiances confused me, and I don't know if I would have been able to follow had it not been for the assistance of my boyfriend, who has read A Song of Ice and Fire. The episode was also extremely expository, and while the exposition was well done, there's only so many times you can hear a character refer to another character as "my brother" or "my husband" without completely giving up on the verisimilitude of the thing. However, these were small quibbles, and I suspect that the second in particular will be resolved in a few episodes, after the audience has become better acquainted with the intrigue. I, for one, will definitely be watching the second episode come Sunday, and I can't wait to see where the series takes me. I might be a little late though; I have to get in some shoe shopping first.