Violence against women in the series. Thoughts (Show spoilers) MOD NOTE post #1

DM addict

Well now I'm blushing

Pat Mustard

DM addict wrote: »

Well now I'm blushing

Don't get me wrong. I still think that you're a complete sicko.

I'm joking! I'm joking! Please don't ban me! I like this guy! Honestly.

snausages

One thing I would say about the books is that they are (obviously) much much longer than the TV show, so statistically they're going to have more scenes involving violence or rape. The show, in my view, should be a condensation of the most important events. So in that view then a literal adaptation of the source might actually be far worse. But even then I wouldn't agree that that's sufficient justification to include those scenes.

Fair play if they removed the rape from the Ramsay Snow scene, because I think that would have been a bit too much. It was a harrowing enough scene as is.

Another thing that does bother me I admit is the thing mentioned by Calex. The apparent normalisation of the Cersei/Jaime romance. I understand in the context of Westeros that it's vile and a taboo, hence the war of the five kings. But it's difficult sometimes to detect how we, the audience, are supposed to feel about it. Should we be disgusted by or invested in their relationship? That I honestly don't know.

username123

snausages wrote: »

Another thing that does bother me I admit is the thing mentioned by Calex. The apparent normalisation of the Cersei/Jaime romance. I understand in the context of Westeros that it's vile and a taboo, hence the war of the five kings. But it's difficult sometimes to detect how we, the audience, are supposed to feel about it. Should we be disgusted by or invested in their relationship? That I honestly don't know.

The Targaryens married sibling to sibling for generations so I wouldnt say its taboo in Westeros. Although perhaps you only get away with it by legitimising it through marriage.

snausages

username123 wrote: »

The Targaryens married sibling to sibling for generations so I wouldnt say its taboo in Westeros. Although perhaps you only get away with it by legitimising it through marriage.

You're right, the thing that's the problem is Joffrey's legitimacy, not necessarily the incest. Although at the same time the current 'era' of Westeros seems a bit more enlightened than everything pre-Mad King Ares or however you spell it.

But I'm just confused sometimes whether we're meant to care about Jaime and Cersei or just be all 'ew, yuck :eek: '

Mickeroo

snausages wrote: »

But I'm just confused sometimes whether we're meant to care about Jaime and Cersei or just be all 'ew, yuck :eek: '

And that is why this series is so brilliant, making you care about a character as as flawed as Jaimie Lannister to the point of not even being able to outright condemn incest

snausages

Well personally I'm not really on his side when it comes to the incest, I'm just wondering if I should be.

Amirani

I don't think the incest is a big deal really?

username123

snausages wrote: »

Well personally I'm not really on his side when it comes to the incest, I'm just wondering if I should be.

I kind of feel sorry for him. Leaving the questionable rape scene alone for a moment, they have been in a consensual relationship since they were very young and while Cersei has had sexual relations with other men since (both consensual and non consensual - King Robert), Jaime hasnt at all - so he is naive.

snausages

Diego Simeone wrote: »

I don't think the incest is a big deal really?

:eek:

brooke 2

Paddy Cow wrote: »

As a book reader, I can assure you that rape is far more prevalent and graphic in the books than is depicted in the show. When Arya is at Harrenhal, women who were seen as collaborators were put in the stocks and anyone who fancied a go could have at them and there was pretty much always someone who wanted a go. Imagine if they had put that in the show? A ten year old girl witnessing rape every time she had to cross the yard to get something for her Lord? There would be outrage.

There is another scene (only in the books) where some Lord is overthrown and the rebels decide to host a banquet. The Lord is strapped into a chair with something shoved into his mouth so he can't speak and his wife and daughters are made to serve the rebels. As the night goes on, the rebels start raping his family one by one (his youngest daughter is only 12) and it made for very uncomfortable reading. As bad as it was to read, I couldn't imagine watching that.

Ramsay in the show is a sadist but even what he does to Theon is nothing compared to what he does in the books. Last week when he set his dogs on that terrified girl was not what he would've really done. Normally he sets a girl loose and if she gives him an interesting chase, he will show her "mercy" and simply rape her before killing her. If she is "weak" and stops running too early for his liking, he will rape her and then flay her alive.

We have seen all manners of depravity on this show:

A child pushed from a window to what the person thought was certain death
Beheadings
Someone having their tongue ripped out
Cruel domestic violence
A baby ripped from it's mother's arms and killed in front of her eyes
Bastard children drowned
Men being killed in battle
A father engaging in incest
Babies left in the show to die or worse
Slavery
Young boys being castrated and trained to be killers from about age 4
Children being nailed to crosses
Innocent villagers slaughtered
Cannibalism
Men being nailed to crosses while screaming in agony

The list could go on.

It's ironic that people were complaining about how the take over of Mereen happened without a huge battle, in which people (mainly men) would've died in violent circumstances and this is somehow "cheating" the viewer and wasn't realistic. We have become desensitised to violence to men and just see it as part of the story but sexual violence against women still evokes a strong reaction and makes us uncomfortable.

I think a few posters have hit the nail on the head when they say that the rape scene hit home because rape is the one crime that still happens today. We know that babies aren't going to be murdered or sacrificed, men won't have their tongue/penis cut off and we don't have to worry about being sold into a life of slavery but women still do get raped in modern society. We can watch all the terrible sh!tty things people do to each other in Westeros with a sort of detached fascination, safe in the knowledge that it's only a fantasy world and while we wonder how we would react in those circumstances, we know that it's not going to happen to us or our loved ones.

As someone said, the Craster scene took them out of the fantasy because it was real. Honestly OP, while I understand the rape scenes make you uncomfortable, I don't think the writers are shoe horning them in just for gratuitous purposes. Compared to the books, I think they have toned down those type of scenes. The Craster scene is made up but they left plenty out.

Just as an aside, another scene which really got to people this week was Hodor being picked on by the mutineers. It wasn't the most depraved thing we've seen (Brienne being thrown into the bear pit is arguably worse) but bullying is something people of today can relate to and it's another example of how real the show became for some.

Jaysus!!! What kind of depraved minds can produce this crap??!!!
(Meaning GoT author!)

Boggles the mind that something like GoT is so popular.

On second thoughts..........not!!!!

snausages

^^ Get your flame-shield up. Or pray to the lord of light to protect you. Or something.

Sleepy

snausages wrote: »

But I'm just confused sometimes whether we're meant to care about Jaime and Cersei or just be all 'ew, yuck :eek: '

If it helps, a good insight to GRRM's writing would be the frequency with which he quotes William Faulkner's line:

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself

The theme is explored everywhere in the show and nowhere more than with Jaime Lannister:

His conflicting vows: as a Kingsguard he's sworn to protect the king and as a Knight he's sworn to protect the innocent so what happens when he's faced with his King ordering mass murder?

His incestuous relationship with Cersei, he's loved her literally his entire life (in the books it's referenced that their incest began as very small children) yet the older she gets, the more vile a person she becomes: at what point will her bile make him stop loving her? I quite liked the new line in the show: "Why have the gods made me love such a hateful woman?".

We see the same with Jon whose instincts to be the hero are continuously put up against his instinct to do the right thing, part of him wanting to ride to fight at Robb's side yet part of him knowing he's honour-bound to take no part in "the wars of men"...

Even firm fan favourites like Arya, the Hound and Danaerys have their moments when they're not exactly walking the most righteous of paths... it's part of the whole "there is no black and white, everyone's got both good and evil in them" theme...

snausages

I can't remember if Faulkner wrote about incest. Like, I think it might have been a thing in one of his books, but I might be misremembering.

Amirani

snausages wrote: »

:eek:

Why is it? It's consensual?

Pat Mustard

Diego Simeone wrote: »

Why is it? It's consensual?

It's pretty sick, to be fair. :pac:

Lady Spangles

Although there is a lot of violence towards women, you have to take into account its Medieval setting. With this series based heavily on the Wars of the Roses (an era I majored in at University back in the day), it's a brutally accurate depiction of what happened in the aftermath of major battles (with all that chivalric crap stripped away). Women were raped by marauding soldiers; shops, homes and even churches were looted and innocent people killed in the rampage. It happened during the Wars of the Roses; Agincourt, Crecy and all the other major, romanticised battles in that era.

However, it is counterbalanced. There are remarkably strong female characters: Dany, Cersei (who may be disliked, but is undeniably powerful in her own right), Yara Greyjoy, Arya, Catelyn, Mormont's sisters and nieces (omitted from the show). There are others and, I strongly suspect, that Sansa will start to grow stronger soon.

Beside that, there is horrendous acts of violence against the men too. In the show especially, Theon is brutalised by Ramsay Bolton. It is his sister, Yara/Asha who is rallying the Iron Born to go rescue him. It is all finely balanced out, so it's not as if it is all just violence against women. I do wish the show's writers would stop glorying in the rape, though. It is dragging down an otherwise amazing adaptation.

DM addict

Sleepy wrote: »

If it helps, a good insight to GRRM's writing would be the frequency with which he quotes William Faulkner's line:


The theme is explored everywhere in the show and nowhere more than with Jaime Lannister:

His conflicting vows: as a Kingsguard he's sworn to protect the king and as a Knight he's sworn to protect the innocent so what happens when he's faced with his King ordering mass murder?

His incestuous relationship with Cersei, he's loved her literally his entire life (in the books it's referenced that their incest began as very small children) yet the older she gets, the more vile a person she becomes: at what point will her bile make him stop loving her? I quite liked the new line in the show: "Why have the gods made me love such a hateful woman?".

We see the same with Jon whose instincts to be the hero are continuously put up against his instinct to do the right thing, part of him wanting to ride to fight at Robb's side yet part of him knowing he's honour-bound to take no part in "the wars of men"...

Even firm fan favourites like Arya, the Hound and Danaerys have their moments when they're not exactly walking the most righteous of paths... it's part of the whole "there is no black and white, everyone's got both good and evil in them" theme...

This!

One of the things I love about the series is how Jamie is a sympathetic character, despite the incest and attempted child killing we see so early on. He is conflicted, he's struggling with his demons, his feelings towards Cersei and so on. It makes him one of the most interesting characters.

On the incest point- it does seem to be slightly more acceptable in Westeros. . . But it's not clear. Obviously Ned Stark was not a fan, but he's a pretty straightforward guy.

Amirani

The Mustard wrote: »

It's pretty sick, to be fair. :pac:

Yeah it is, but I don't see why anyone would have a problem with it.

Naydy

Most people are innately repulsed by the idea of incest. And shur, Jaime/Cersei resulted in Joffrey, isn't that reason enough!

With regards to how it is viewed by Westoros society I got the impression that it may have been considered very wrong there too for a couple of reasons

-It's referred to as disgusting by many characters including Tywin and Joffrey.
-Tyrion and Cersei discussing the Targaryens showed people had an awareness of insanity caused by their inbreeding
-Littlefinger subtly threatened Cersei with the dangers of people knowing of brother/sister relations. She not so subtly set her guard on him.
-There was a great scene where Tywin was referring to Loras' relationships with men as "unnatural" and Oleanna completely drops all pretense by saying that men having discrete relations with one another was one thing, but that brother and sister together would be a very, very difficult stain to wash out.

Turtyturd

snausages wrote: »

One thing I would say about the books is that they are (obviously) much much longer than the TV show, so statistically they're going to have more scenes involving violence or rape. The show, in my view, should be a condensation of the most important events. So in that view then a literal adaptation of the source might actually be far worse. But even then I wouldn't agree that that's sufficient justification to include those scenes.

Fair play if they removed the rape from the Ramsay Snow scene, because I think that would have been a bit too much. It was a harrowing enough scene as is.

Another thing that does bother me I admit is the thing mentioned by Calex. The apparent normalisation of the Cersei/Jaime romance. I understand in the context of Westeros that it's vile and a taboo, hence the war of the five kings. But it's difficult sometimes to detect how we, the audience, are supposed to feel about it. Should we be disgusted by or invested in their relationship? That I honestly don't know.

This is part of the problem, if the audience cannot decide for themselves how they should feel about certain things then they have to drive it home week after week, which leads to your original complaint.

Da Shins Kelly

I find it kind of hilarious that people are focusing so much on the thematic and aesthetic importance of all the female nudity/violence in the show, and going on that it's a problem with feminism. It's a well-known fact that HBO have an agenda with regards to women and titillation in their programming. That's why there is so much gratuitous female nudity, women standing around naked for no apparent reason, women performing sexual acts in the background, etc. And it's the same reason that men in the show are not sexually exposed to even nearly the same extent.

I don't care if nudity and violence and what have you is included in the show if it actually has relevance and drives the plot forward, as a lot of the violence towards men and children in the show does (whereas I don't really understand how the casual rape of women in the background does), but there's no secret that HBO include a lot of this stuff just for the sake of it and for shock value. They're famous for it. The writer of True Detective has spoken openly about it, and so has a director for Game of Thrones. This idea that it's all done just for artistic reasons is pretty naive.

I'm not a prude, I have no problem with nudity and sex in a show, and I wouldn't care except that it's just so goddamn cynical on HBO's part.

snausages

Turtyturd wrote: »

This is part of the problem, if the audience cannot decide for themselves how they should feel about certain things then they have to drive it home week after week, which leads to your original complaint.

No, I think they're entirely separate issues. With Cersei and Jaime their relationship is extremely unusual and yet it's taken the format of a traditional TV love plot.. with rape and incest. Maybe the subtleties are better expressed in the books (I'm sure they are) but on TV it's a bit confusing sometimes.

Oranage2

The crastor keep scene by by far the best scene in the episode if not the season, since the the guy started drinking out of the skull to the end was breath taking, I'd rate it more exciting than the purple wedding, an even slightly better than the hound fight scene in the bar.

Pat Mustard

Diego Simeone wrote: »

Yeah it is, but I don't see why anyone would have a problem with it.

Incest is taboo in most societies. It's universal. It is considered to be abhorrent. I would think that most people would consider it objectionable.

I don't think that people would think that it would be okay simply because it was consensual.

December2012

The Mustard wrote: »

I don't think that people would think that it would be okay simply because it was consensual.

The amount of fan theories that suggest Jon and Dany should end up together suggests otherwise - because fans like those characters

username123

The Mustard wrote: »

Incest is taboo in most societies. It's universal. It is considered to be abhorrent. I would think that most people would consider it objectionable.

I don't think that people would think that it would be okay simply because it was consensual.

As a small aside I found it extremely interesting to learn that societies that have languages to describe many different levels of relations also have the strongest incest taboos. So we describe female relatives as sister, mother, grandmother, great grandmother etc, aunt, great aunt, cousin, second cousin, cousin first removed, twice removed etc....

But in more primitive cultures there have been examples of just sister, mother, then one word that basically describes all other women. Their marriage taboos only extend to immediate family, mother, sister. All other women are fine.

Incest between consenting adult relatives is very interesting, we would all agree that incest when one is a minor is totally wrong of course. But there is a phenomena called GSA (genetic sexual attraction) that happens when closely related people are separated from birth (at least the birth of one) and then meet later in life as adults. Because they didn't grow up in close quarters and experience the usual formation of incest taboo, they can be strongly sexually attracted to each other. There are lots of cases in the literature.

The above is just an aside, of course Cersei and Jaimes relationship is not GSA in that sense.

It's interesting that Lady Oleanna was on the high horse regarding sibling sex when Margary was happy to include Loras in a threesome with her and Renly in order to get Renly off so she could get pregnant. I think incest is more accepted than not in Westeros.

Naydy

The Mustard wrote: »

Incest is taboo in most societies. It's universal. It is considered to be abhorrent. I would think that most people would consider it objectionable.

I don't think that people would think that it would be okay simply because it was consensual.

Exactly this. There are different levels of tolerance (it's fine to marry cousins to each other in some countries for example) but sibling relationships and parent/child relationships are pretty much universally abhorred.

username123 wrote: »

Incest between consenting adult relatives is very interesting, we would all agree that incest when one is a minor is totally wrong of course. But there is a phenomena called GSA (genetic sexual attraction) that happens when closely related people are separated from birth (at least the birth of one) and then meet later in life as adults. Because they didn't grow up in close quarters and experience the usual formation of incest taboo, they can be strongly sexually attracted to each other. There are lots of cases in the literature.

I've heard of this alright, it's very interesting. I think it's called the Westermarck effect that causes people who grew up in close quarters to each other as young children to become sexually desensitised to each other later on. There is an intense need to bond between family members who are reunited as adults but the brain often cannot associate the other person as family so this can manifest in very inappropriate ways. These relationships are still abhorred by society though, even when consensual.

The Jaime/Cersei relationship is a really odd one and while obviously disturbing, it also makes for quite intriguing viewing. It does make you wonder why such a destructive and repugnant relationship developed when they grew up together in relative luxury.

Amirani

I'm not sure sibling incest is universally abhorred? Obviously the majority of people find it repulsive because of the general societal view and probably some genetic predisposition for evolutionary reasons. However, it's not illegal in a lot countries and it's not really harming anyone (providing no reproduction is involved).

Obviously things are different in Westeros.

snausages

It doesn't really matter if reproduction is involved or not, incest always carries the risk of conception and dreadful birth deformities/shallowing of the DNA pool. That's reason enough for it to be abhorred.