Season 5, Episode 6: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken
Seeing as everyone else has vented, angrily, about the most recent episode of Game of Thrones I thought I'd belatedly throw my hat on the pile too. Sorry if this makes you angry.
I've read all the "Song of Ice and Fire" books by George R.R. Martin, those currently being adapted into a multi-million dollar television show by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss - a show that has recently received a critical spanking over the controversial scene where a prominent female character is raped. My ability to read a book would, for many, place me in a certain subsection of a society - that of a passionate group of people, who, in between attending comic book conventions and refusing to wash, care very much about the sanctity of their beloved source material. They care so much, in fact, that if anything changes in the transition between the world of their imagination and its realisation on the screen in front of them, that if even so much as a single moustache hair on the lip of a plump lordling is placed askew they will take to message forums on the internet in their hordes and vent their displeasure in all its profane, irritating glory.
I enjoyed reading Martin's novels, and I enjoy watching HBO's show. Neither are masterpieces, of course, but for the most part each one has demonstrated a superior grasp of story and character, delivering all the right dramatic beats in all the right places. But even before this week's episode there was a great deal of moaning over the ruthless streamlining of books four and five of the saga. I should say that, from now on, I'll be giving away spoilers, so go dunk your head in a bucket of cold water if that bothers you.
For the most part, I can recognise (and even agree with) much of the show's criticism. While I think that both A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons were bloated books, their smashing together into one season of television has been messily handled. Big plots concerning the miserable Ironborn and the Targaryen usurper Aegon have been completely ditched, which is odd, and the one subplot deemed worthy - the slow-burning political tensions of Dorne - has been, quite frankly, butchered (if that awful fight scene with the bald women is to be believed). The creators of the show seem to be in a big rush to get to the big, dramatic moments, scared that investing too much time in building up tensions between characters will result in losing half their audience, without realising it's this that makes those moments so effective in the first place.
But I think the biggest problem with Game of Thrones, and one that runs throughout the entire series, is its treatment of women. While it does draw upon a series to feature some of the best female characters to pop up in fantasy for decades, there's a weird tension between the narrative and the demand from HBO to feature gratuitous sex and nudity. From the various unnecessary scenes in whorehouses to the uncomfortable acts of sexual violence throughout (including turning a regular sex scene from the books into rape), Game of Thrones seems comfortable to jettison the historical precedent of women being treated horribly in medieval times in favour of genuine audience titillation. The more breasts on screen at any one time, the better - and why have a straightforward conversation between two characters when they could be having sex instead? Yeah, The Sopranos did something similar by setting half its scenes in a strip club, but the stories were so good it didn't matter, and there was always something else going on besides the nudity - it was never just pornography.
So now we turn to the most recent episode, and the final scene where Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) rapes Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), while forcing Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) to watch. It was, in spite of everything, an effectively staged scene, and everyone performed well - especially Allen, perhaps the best actor on the show. But it was both representative of the show's adaptational problems and, possibly, its troubling representations of women.
If you can believe it, the scene in the books was even more horrifying. Ramsey Bolton marries Jeyne Poole, the daughter of one of the Stark's old stewards, whom the Boltons are parading around pretending to be Arya Stark. Ramsey invites Theon, or "Reek", into their bedroom and forces him to sodomize her, despite his lack of nether regions. It's a nasty scene but arguably necessary, in that it demonstrates both Ramsey's ruthlessness and Theon's underlying heroism - he later finds himself compelled to bravery in her rescue. Elsewhere, when we last saw Sansa (back in 2005) she was still leaving the Eyrie, on her way to marry a random suitor named "Harry the Heir" - at Martin's current rate we'll probably find out how that turns out in about ten years.
Dan, David, Bryan Cogman et al made the executive decision to smash two character arcs together. Okay. I guess it makes sense, seeing as no-one would remember who the hell Jeyne was anyway (was she even in the show?) But they've come across a double bind by this point, in that Sansa's independence would seem to be undermined by this decision, in that, yet again, she's having to play a victim. What she does next, while important, will be contradicted by much of what's come before it - one minute she was in control, telling off Ramsey's jealous girlfriend, the next she wasn't. Jeyne is a victim (which is fine) and Sansa isn't, but they're expecting her to play both roles. It doesn't make sense. And it's not encouraging considering the showrunners' previous handling of rape with that scene between Cersei (Lena Headley) and Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).
It's also just another act of sexual violence on the show, which has happened before and will happen again. The only reason people are getting pissed off about this one is that it's happening to a character we care about. Remember that bit where the naked woman gets nailed to a bedpost by a crossbow? I didn't think so. There's a lot to be said about the subjugation of women in medieval fantasy, but Game of Thrones, quite simply, isn't the best show to do it. I'm not saying the books are that much better (at one point Martin describes a man's genitalia as a "fat pink mast") but they're certainly less gratuitous. Sansa's scene may not be titillating in the slightest, which made the smart move to not show anything, but I think it's symptomatic of a creative philosophy that prioritises shock and thrill, both violent and sexual, over consistent character development. And while I still enjoy this show, it's developments like this that make it harder to ignore a niggling voice at the back of my head.
