The Five Most Egregious Emmy Snubs

John Noble as Walter Bishop in Fringe. Photo courtesy of io9.com.

Emmy season, the single most frustrating time of year for an avid television viewer, has rolled around again. While this year was less frustrating that most - after all, Game of Thrones received 13 nominations, as did 30 Rock, while Modern Family walked away with a whopping 17 - there was still plenty to be angry about. Following are my picks for the five most egregious snubs of 2011. You can check out a full list of nominees here.

5. Emilia Clarke

While I'm absolutely thrilled that Game of Thrones was nominated for Best Drama Series, and even happier to see that the always excellent Peter Dinklage got a Best Supporting Actor in a Drama nod, I think it's criminal that Emilia Clarke was snubbed. Her portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen was wonderfully nuanced, and she did an excellent job of conveying Dany's transformation from frightened girl to powerful Dragon. A performance like this would have been impressive from any actor; coming from Clarke, who was unknown before she was cast as Daenerys, it is phenomenal.

On a side note, I would have also loved to see a nod for Sean Bean. Portraying an irrefutably good and noble character is often more of a challenge than playing a baddie, but Bean kept the audience invested in the character without resorting to any tricks. If getting beheaded on television doesn't get you an Emmy nod these days, what does?

4. Archer

I know that Archer is a cult favorite animated show on FX, and as such has about as much chance of a nomination as Jersey Shore. Archer, however, is consistently funny, sharply written, and features the best voice cast on television (no disrespect to The Simpsons, but they don't have Jessica Walters). The snub wouldn't hurt so much if the seriously sub-par second season of Glee hadn't scooped up a mass of nominations. Maybe if Sterling and Lana broke out into song more often their show would stand a better chance of recognition.

3. Nina Dobrev

The reason that I've singled out Dobrev, rather than the entire cast and writing staff of The Vampire Diaries, is the knowledge that this excellent series is a teen vampire show on the CW, and as such is even farther from a nomination than Archer. Out of all the extremely deserving cast members, Dobrev is the standout (trailed closely by Ian Somerhalder). She imbues both her characters with a realness that is rare on any show, let alone a supernatural teen drama - her Elena is a strong, independent woman who struggles with the role foisted upon her without letting her problems get the best of her, while her Katharine grew this season, starting as an all-out wicked villain and slowly letting her fear of Elijah and Klaus take control of her actions. Dobrev's work was so subtle that I forgot for much of the time that Elena and Katharine were played by the same actress. For playing two different characters and making it look easy, Dobrev deserves at least a nomination. Maybe she'll finally get one next year, when she adds yet another character (the original Petrova doppelganger) to the mix.

2. Community

To my mind, Community is not only the best comedy on television right now; it ranks with the all-time great sitcoms like Arrested Development and Seinfeld. The writing is clever and sharp, packed with details that you have to watch a second, third or fourth time to pick up, and the acting is uniformly excellent. The fact that one of the best ensembles on television did not scrape a single acting nod between them, while six (!) of the members of the Modern Family ensemble received nominations. As in the case of Archer, the multiple nominations for Glee make this one even more infuriating.

1. Fringe

I don't even know what to say about this one. Fringe is absolutely one of the best drama series on television, right up there with Game of Thrones. I realize that it's a science fiction show, and that Thrones probably took up the genre slot that could have been Fringe's, but that doesn't make it any better. The season was creatively and emotionally rich, and the performances by the central cast were beautifully realized and resonant. Lance Reddick deserves a nomination based purely on the moment when Agent Broyles came face-to-face with his own burned and mutilated corpse, and John Noble is the best actor working in television today, bar none. The fact that Anna Torv's portrayal of not one, not two, but three different characters - Ourlivia, Fauxlivia and William Bell - went unnoticed is an absolute travesty. I take back what I said before about Nina Dobrev. Apparently, if you're in a genre show, not even playing three different, fully realized characters can get you an Emmy nod.

Sexual Violence and Vampires: or, why "True Blood" is much more offensive to women than "Game of Thrones"

Rutina Wesley of True Blood and Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones. Photos courtesy of io9.com and ugo.com.

In the past, I've written several articles about the role of sexual violence on Game of Thrones. This issue has recently become a hot topic; it was addressed in a story by Jace Lacob on the Daily Beast, where Lacob discussed how the role of sexual violence has actually been diminished in the TV show, compared to the prevalence of rape in George R.R. Martin's novels. In that same article, Lacob discusses the amount of sexual material in the show, saying that the (non-violent) sex in Game of Thrones is even more gratuitous than the sex in other HBO shows, specifically citing True Blood as an example of a show with less gratuitous sex and nudity than Game of Thrones.

Lacob's reference to True Blood - which was one of my favorite shows until it completely ran off the rails last season - got me thinking about the role of sex, specifically violent sex, on True Blood. It isn't surprising that True Blood contains a lot of gratuitous sex; after all, it's a show on HBO based on a series of extremely sexual novels. However, the show also contains worrisome amounts of violent, unwanted sex, perpetrated almost entirely against victimized female characters.

It isn't really surprising that a show about vampires would contain sexual violence; after all, the vampire mythos is rife with sexual symbolism, a tradition that dates back to what is widely considered the first true vampire novel, Bram Stoker's Dracula. In an article about portrayals of gender roles in both general audience and young adult vampire fiction, Melissa Ames, professor of media studies at Eastern Illinois University, describes scholarly analyses of Stoker's novel that emphasize the sexual metaphors inherent in vampirism. She specifically mentions Christopher Bentley's reading of the novel, in which he finds "'deviant' sexual behavior throughout the entire novel from the incestuous relationship Dracula has with his three sister/daughter figures [...] to the 'forced quasi-fellatio' invoked when Dracula imposes his blood upon Mina [quoted in Ames 2011]." In addition, the symbolism of drinking blood - a form of penetration - is often connected to sexuality, and unwanted or violent attacks can be read as sexual assault.

The role of sexual assault on True Blood is, then, even more prevalent than one might have originally thought. In addition to scenes and storylines that clearly dealt with rape and sexual assault - the attempted rape of Sookie (Anna Paquin) during her excursion to Dallas in the second-season episode "Rescue Me" and Tara's (Rutina Wesley) repeated rape at the hands of a vampire in the third season - there are less obvious examples that can be read as representative of sexual assault. Sookie's initial attraction to Bill (Stephen Moyer) was the result of her consumption of his blood, which caused her to have sex dreams about him; a scenario which can be expressed as unwanted penetration of Sookie's mind with these images, and coercion on Bill's part. A similar process takes place in the second season when, after drinking Eric's (Alexander Skarsgard) blood, Sookie once again experiences sexual dreams. Hoyt (Jim Parrack) and Jessica's (Deborah Ann Woll) relationship also has sexually violent undertones, as sex is always painful for Jessica due to the fact that she will always be a virgin no matter how many times she has sex.

Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with the portrayal of sexual violence onscreen (although I agree with A.O. Scott of the New York Times that seeing sexual violence in film or on television can lead to fetishization of such violence), as I think it can be done well and addresses an important issue. However, I have a serious problem with the rampant sexual violence on True Blood, and the way this violence victimizes the show's heterosexual female characters (and occasionally homosexual male characters) while not allowing the women to grow, or even change as a result of their experiences. As a result of this victimization, True Blood is, to me, one of the least feminist scripted shows on television. (Reality shows like Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives of... are an entirely different ball game).

The most prominent example of female victimization in True Blood is Wesley's Tara Thornton. Over the course of the third season, Tara was raped repeatedly by James Frain's Franklin and was shown being unable to save herself. Instead, she was ultimately rescued by Jason (Ryan Kwanten), in an example of the kind of damsel-in-distress storytelling that is disturbingly common on True Blood. Indeed, her relationship with Franklin only begins when he comes to her rescue during an attack in the parking lot of Merlotte's. Indeed, much of Tara's life - like the lives of the other human, female characters on the show - is defined by men, whether they are rescuing her or terrorizing her. She never gets the upper hand in a romantic relationship.

In this way, Tara and the other women of True Blood, particularly Sookie, are constantly defined by their relationships to men. This is a criticism that is constantly leveled at Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series as well; according to Ames, Bella Swan (portrayed by Kristen Stewart in the films), is "constantly depicted as the damsel in distress forever in need of rescue by a male." The same can be said of all the female, non-vampire characters of True Blood. Sookie's life is largely defined by the conflict between her relationship to Bill and her attraction to Eric; Tara is a constant victim who always needs rescuing by the men in her life; Arlene is characterized by her string of husbands. In addition, the more minor characters such as the waitresses at Merlotte's are simply disposable, existing so that bad things can happen to them.

This is one major way in which True Blood differs from Game of Thrones and True Blood. While Game of Thrones depicts a world in which sexual violence is commonplace, the show's female characters are portrayed as more than just victims. Daenerys Targaryen, the show's most prominent rape victim, quickly learns that she can use her sexuality to her advantage and quickly sheds her victimization, learning to use her own power to accomplish things. By the most recent episodes, Daenerys' relationship with her husband, Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) is one of the more equitable relationships on the show, and Daenerys is using her newfound power to save captive women from being raped by the Dothraki.

The CW's The Vampire Diaries also offers a much more positive, less victimized portrayal of women then True Blood. The show's protagonist, Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) certainly has as many problems as Sookie does, although she is never sexually assaulted. Elena is also in a relationship with Stefan (Paul Wesley), and also drawn to his brother Damon (Ian Somerhalder), just as Sookie is torn between Bill and Eric. However, Elena is a much stronger character than either Sookie or Tara; like Daenerys, she refuses to be controlled by the other characters, even when Stefan tries to protect her by preventing her from taking part in various events.

While the female characters on True Blood are certainly victimized by both explicit and implied sexual violence, that is not the only problem the show has in terms of feminist perspectives and sexual violence. Rape is often trivialized on the show, most notably when Sookie is assaulted and nearly raped in Dallas in the second season. After her return to Bon Temps and her realization that an evil maenad has taken over her house, Sookie articulates her sadness by saying "I was almost raped in Dallas, but this is so much worse." This comment made my jaw drop when I watched the episode, as it takes the pain and humiliation of sexual assault and sweeps it under the rug, much like the way in which Tara's abusive relationship with Franklin is shunted out of the way to make room for the other plotlines.

The issue of sexual violence is one that has been addressed on many different television shows, from Mad Men to Game of Thrones. However, one of the most distressing depictions of violence against women and victimization is that on True Blood, which routinely victimizes women and trivializes issues of sexual violence. The gender roles portrayed on True Blood are often just as old-fashioned and restrictive as those of Stephanie Meyer's infamous Twilight, but with more violently sexual undertones. True Blood can still be fun to watch - it's a soapy guilty pleasure - but I certainly wouldn't let a teenage daughter of mine watch it. Not for the gratuitous sex or the violence, since I don't believe in censorship. I simply wouldn't want my child to think that the passive, victimized behavior of the women on the show is any sort of ideal.

The "Game of Thrones" Rape Controversy Revisited

Emilia Clarke and Jason Momoa in Game of Thrones. Photo courtesy of ydoxoewerec.blogspot.com.

Previously, I wrote an article dealing with accusations that Game of Thrones was glorifying rape through the portrayal of Daenerys' relationship with Khal Drogo, a man who rapes her on her wedding night and with whom she subsequently falls in love. However, people are talking again about the role of rape on Game of Thrones, but this time they're complaining for the opposite reason.

The Daily Beast recently featured an article by Jace Lacob that accuses the series of lessening the amount of rape present in George R.R. Martin's books, while simultaneously upping the amount of sex and female nudity visible on screen. Lacob quotes various other critics, such as AOLtv's Maureen Ryan and the New York Times' Laura Miller, who complained about the "sexposition" utilized in the series' seventh episode, "You Win or You Die." That episode features a scene in which Aiden Gillen's Petyr Baelish presents a good deal of expository material while instructing two female prostitutes in how to show their pleasure.

According to Lacob, "while frank sex in HBO shows is common, Game of Thrones appears to be placing it front and center, as though the only way to make exposition-heavy bits like these interesting was to couch them in terms of sexuality." I disagree with this assertion for two reasons: one, while there is a not-insignificant amount of sex in Game of Thrones, there is nowhere close to as much gratuitous sex and nudity as there is in any given episode of True Blood, and two, there are plenty of expository scenes in Game of Thrones that involve no sex whatsoever. While I'll admit that the scene with Baelish and the two prostitutes was slightly gratuitous - as was the scene in episode eight in which the audience is treated to some full-frontal nudity by Hodor - I didn't have an active problem with it.

I'm more intrigued, however, by the other question that Lacob poses: is Game of Thrones the TV series really cutting down on the amount of rape present in the novels? As someone who has not read A Song of Ice and Fire, I can't really speak to the amount of rape present in the books, and my ignorance is compounded by the contradictory reports I get about the prevalence of rape in the original novels. A friend of mind who recently started reading the novels was shocked by the amount of rape present on the page, while my boyfriend, who read the series a few years ago, doesn't think that the amount of rape in the books is different from the amount present in the HBO series.

The TV series, in my opinion, hasn't shied away from representing rape onscreen. In my aforementioned article about possible trivialization of rape in Game of Thrones - which, judging by the sheer number of page views it gets, continues to fascinate readers - I discussed the outrage some commentators felt about the way Daenerys's relationship with Khal Drogo moved quickly from sexual assault to love. Indeed, Daenerys and Drogo now share one of the most stable, equitable romantic relationships on the show. In the first two episodes, the audience sees Dany raped by Drogo at least twice, which hardly seems like lessening the prevalence of rape to me.

The major scene that Lacob describes, however, is not Daenerys' rape - which, he does concede, is similar to the book, despite the fact that Daenerys' character on the show is older - but the scene, featured at the beginning of episode eight, in which Daenerys saves a group of conquered women from being raped by the Dothraki. According to Lacob, the scene as it is presented in the book is a "nightmarish one, as Dothraki invaders rape multiple women before Daenerys puts a stop to their abhorrent behavior," while the scene in the TV show declines to show the actual rape, instead holding the "intangible threat of rape" over the heads of the women in the scene.

After giving voice to these opinions, Lacob ultimately comes to the conclusion that the lessened role of rape in Game of Thrones is a good thing, saying that this creative decision "enables [the show] to be much less harrowing, keeping the horror restricted to the supernatural realm." I don't really understand this argument. After all, the horror in Game of Thrones is hardly restricted to the supernatural realm, as Sansa's direwolf Lady and a dead butcher's boy would certainly tell you. I also don't see why the show needs to be made less harrowing - after all, the series is dealing with a society similar to that of medieval Europe, where rape was fairly common and marital rape wasn't even a concept.

Personally, I think that a better argument for lessening the role of rape in the Game of Thrones TV series can be found in a recent New York Times article in which A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis discussed the recent spate of films featuring violent women. Scott in particular focused on the Swedish films of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy (a trailer for the David Fincher-directed American version can be found here), and the imagery of violence against women that accompanies the theme of violence perpetrated by women, generally in self-defense. Scott points out that sexual violence onscreen is a different matter entirely from the same violence on the page, pointing out that "it is in the nature of the moving image to give pleasure, and the nature of film audiences - consciously or not, admittedly or not - to find pleasure in what they see."

When this principle is applied to depictions of sexual violence against women filmmakers, no matter how good their intentions, "run the risk of aestheticizing, glamorizing, and eroticizing" rape. While George R.R. Martin is telling the truth when he says that rapists in A Song of Ice and Fire are depicted as neither noble or good (although he leaves out Khal Drogo, a seemingly good character who rapes Daenerys repeatedly), when sexual violence is put up on screen it becomes completely different. Perhaps in choosing not to depict rape on the show (if, indeed, there is less rape on the series than in the books) the creators of Game of Thrones are recognizing the pitfalls inherent in seeing sexual violence onscreen, and want to avoid glamorizing or eroticizing this heinous crime.

"Game of Thrones" Generates Even MORE Controversy (this time, it's racial)

Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones. Photo courtesy of blastr.com.

As HBO's Game of Thrones continues to get better and better, it also continues to generate controversy. The latest complaint (coming after Ginia Bellafante's argument that Game of Thrones is just for boys and allegations that the show was glorifying rape) is that the show's portrayal of the nomadic Dothraki is racially problematic. (Warning: SPOILERS ahead for those who have not yet seen Episode 6.) According to Maureen Ryan's recap of "A Golden Crown," the Dothraki scenes "contain a lot of people of color, and they also contain a lot of gratuitous nudity, and it all makes for a problematic aesthetic and message." Ryan goes on to say, "there was absolutely no need for that many dancing women in Viserys' death scene to be topless."

Ryan's argument sounds, at least to me, very similar to arguments that are often leveled at the Haradrim, the Southrons and the Easterlings in Lord of the Rings. (For a fairly comprehensive overview of the subject, check out the discussion at TolkienGateway.net.) These faceless antagonists are generally described as either "swarthy" or "dark-skinned," and the problem was only exacerbated by the film versions, in which the Haradrim and Easterlings had a distinctly African and Middle Eastern appearance, respectively. The film's portrayal in particular caused many groups to cry foul, accusing Tolkien and director Peter Jackson of dividing the good and evil forces along racial lines.

To me, the portrayal of the Dothraki is considerably less problematic than the portrayal of the Haradrim and the Easterlings in Tolkien. Even though Tolkien repeatedly stated that he didn't want his books to be read as an allegory, people have spent the years since the trilogy's publication reading it as an allegory of everything from the Cold War to World War I. The faceless quality of the forces of evil invites comparisons to propaganda painting "enemy" groups as nothing more than an inhuman, faceless multitude, and Tolkien's stark good vs. evil dichotomy leaves little room for sympathy. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, has already portrayed the Dothraki as a much more sympathetic group than, say, the Lannisters (with the exception of Tyrion). I was certainly rooting for Khal Drogo when he poured a pot of molten gold on Viserys' head, despite the brutality of the act. Of course, that could have been because Viserys is, with the exception of Joffrey and the creepily still breast-feeding Robert Arryn, the most unlikeable character in the show.

To me, the two scenes that heavily focused on the Dothraki in this episode - Viserys' death scene, and the earlier scene in which Daenerys eats a horse's heart - were intended to highlight the differences between Daenerys and Viserys by showing their reaction to the seemingly strange Dothraki customs. Viserys is, as always, appalled by the Dothraki rituals because he is convinced that he is better than these people, that as the heir to the house of Targaryen he is entitled to their loyalty and servility. Daenerys, on the other hand, has spent the series coming into her own as a woman, a Khaleesi, and now a Targaryen, and her acceptance by the Dothraki is a result of the way she has embraced their culture, eating horse hearts and topless women and all. Indeed, I generally feel that the Dothraki come off much better than many of their counterparts across the Narrow Sea, and Daenerys understands that.

I also take issue with Ryan's insistence that the bare-breasted women in the Dothraki court are reflecting badly on the Dothraki in racial terms, making them look more primitive than the Northerners. First of all, it's not like there's a shortage of breasts and vaginas on display in King's Landing; we've already seen both King Robert and Littlefinger cavorting with multiple prostitutes at once, and in the next episode (which is available a week early on the HBOGo App, and which I would strongly suggest watching if you have the chance) we are treated to a non-Dothraki display of girl-on-girl action that far surpasses the scene between Daenerys and Doreah in the second episode.

Second, I wouldn't argue that its necessarily incorrect to show a group of culturally different people who have different attitudes about bare breasts and sex. There are many groups of people who exist or have existed in our world who have completely different conceptions of what is taboo or not; I wrote my undergraduate thesis about an oral epic from the Siberian Republic of Tuva which features descriptions of breasts and genitalia, and is commonly told in front of young children. The Dothraki are not the people of Westeros - if you read the series as an allegory of medieval Europe, they're comparable to the Mongols, who hail from the same region as modern Tuva - and it wouldn't be surprising if their attitudes toward sex were more along the lines of Tuvan attitudes, rather than European ones.

Third, despite the fact that Game of Thrones can be read as an allegory of medieval Europe, and is based at least in part on the historical War of the Roses, it is important to remember that it is a fantasy series. This isn't England and Africa, this is Westeros and Dothrak, and as such is distanced from any sort of racial statement about the actual world. Yes, the Dothraki can be read as a counterpart to the Mongols, but they can also be read purely on their own terms as nomadic horse lords who have a chance of taking over the Seven Kingdoms. After all, it's not like the people of Westeros are anything resembling Christian - there are two major religions in Westeros, distinguished by whether the adherent prays to the old gods or the new, and neither of them resembles Christianity. This makes any sort of allegorical reading, particularly in terms of race and primitive/advanced cultures, problematic.

Of course, some of you probably agree with me, and you have every right to. Sound off in the comments, and let me know if you think that Game of Thrones has a race problem.