[WARNING! MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES]
Have you ever felt, when watching a TV show or reading a book or enjoying fiction and pop culture product in general, that that one female character that you really like, is getting shafted by the often-male writers? You know the one; everybody knows one. Maybe in the middle of the book, something really shitty and nauseating happens to her. Maybe in the middle of the show, her character gets written off and dies in a very undeserving manner. Maybe in the middle of the story the writer(s) decide to get her a lobotomy that completely changes her personality into the very opposite of what she's before. And you want nothing more than to get her and protect her from all the bad things, but all you can do is sit in front of your TV and whisper, "You deserve better."
This all occur to me often, so I'm used to the rage and disappointment, and pretty much prepared for my favorite female characters to succumb to the disaster at any time. However, nothing could ever prepare me to the fury that I felt when I saw what happened in HBO's Game of Thrones' latest episode.
[WARNINGS FOR MASSIVE SPOILERS AND RAPE]
I haven't watched Game of Thrones since Season 3, a season where, I felt, everything started to go downhill. I enjoyed the first and second season, but I hated the third season and found nothing in me that could compel me to continue. Still, I'm an avid fan of the books, so I sometimes tune in to recaps to see where the show is heading and how they handle particular story-line. Part of the reason why I abandoned Game of Thrones is I can't handle all of the rape and female nudity. Now, it's not that I'm against nudity in general, but I'm not comfortable with the way the show handles female nudity. It's like, naked women all day, every day. Where my dicks at, yo? We get to see titties and pussies, but where's my close-up shots of glorious male asses and dicks?
The way they treat female characters in the TV show is also an issue to me. Almost every female character is sexualized. In the books, for example, Margaery Tyrell "seduced" Tommen with kittens, but she never had sex with him because Tommen is nine and Margaery is (technically) considered a grown woman. In the show, Margaery is much older, probably in early-to-mid twenties, and Tommen too, but it's clear that he's meant to be in his early-to-mid teens, so when show!Margaery actually seduced Tommen and had sex with him, I had to throw up. They (D&D) did her so wrong. Margaery changes from an older sister figure in the books to a sexual predator in the show. They change an innocent relationship to a sexual one, all for the sake of getting Natalie Dormer naked. Tommen's innocent, familial, brotherly relationship with Margaery is supposed to highlight how young and unfit for him to be king; to have that relationship sexualized is disgusting. Margaery, girl, You deserve better.
Although that's deplorable, it happened a few episodes ago, and I'm not here to discuss that. Oh, no.
I'm here to discuss how Sansa was raped.
Yes, you heard that right. Sansa Stark was raped. By sadistic psychopathic douchebag extraordinaire Ramsay Bolton. In the confines of Winterfell, her old home and the only place where she'd felt completely safe.
Book readers will know that Sansa's storyline is taken directly from Jeyne Poole's, where she's forcibly married to Ramsay (as fake!Arya), raped repeatedly (sometimes by dogs!), and generally tortured. So that kind of thing happens in the book, however D&D has made it clear that they will not hesitate deviating from the novels, like how they completely erased Arianne Martell from the show. Arianne is a POV character in the book, which makes her quite important, so her omission will bring quite a big change to how the plot works in the show. The show has deviated greatly from the book (not bringing Lady Stoneheart, for example), so they can, in theory, choose not to incorporate the whole "Ramsay rape" storyline. So why do they choose to incorporate it, using an in-story underage character when her actor conveniently turn eighteen?
The show has been criticized repeatedly for overly-sexualizing female characters and for repeatedly showing rape, sometimes only for titillation and male gaze. Consensual sex scenes in the book turn into rape/non-con in the show. This has been a grievance for many fans and fandom blogs, but I think most fans drew the line on Sansa's rape. The Mary Sue, a prominent women-oriented fandom blog, has decided not to promote the HBO show anymore. They felt that the rape is unnecessary, because we've already seen Sansa overcoming abusive men and we know that Ramsay's a sadistic asshole. Sansa's and Jenye's storyline generally serves, both in the book and show, as a vehicle for Theon's character development, by acting as a catalyst for his resistance to the 'Reek' identity. Note how, in the show, that the rape is off-screen; the camera pans to Theon to show his reaction.
A female character's rape is used to show a male character's manpain. We don't see how Sansa feels about this; we see Theon's horror. Sansa is distant, unimportant, in her own rape - it's all about Theon.
I have great distaste for 'rape as a plot device' trope. Most of the time, I would drop a book/show immediately if there's such scene. Sometimes, I feel like it's used insensitively, only acting as a reason for angst and manpain between two characters, or as a way to code that "this character is sad! you should feel bad for him/her!" Often, it's all about how their significant other found out about the rape, and how they feel and not the victim themselves. Besides, sometimes the rape adds nothing to the plot, unnecessary, and it only serves to brutalize a female character (because it's always female characters that gets raped in fiction).
In this case too, I feel like the rape is very much useless. We've already seen Sansa go through so much - assault and abuse from Joffrey and further assault and abuse from Littlefinger - so we really don't need to see her brutalized further. It's already established that Ramsay is a sadistic asshole by how he treats Theon and everyone around him. In fact, due to the show's history for sexual violence in the show, rape is pretty much expected. As soon as Sansa's brought out of the Eyrie and Sophie Turner turns eighteen, everyone knows that Sansa will probably have some sort of sex scene forced upon her.
Furthermore, the rape happened in Winterfell, and from a narrative point of view, this is a bad move and an unnecessary cruelty. A good part of Sansa's plot in the books is that she sees Winterfell as the only place where she's always been happy. Where nothing bad happens to her. When her family is still one and her dad and siblings are still alive. She sees Winterfell as the light in the end of the tunnel, a source of hope. Winterfell and memories of her family are why she remains Sansa, why she keeps going even after all she's been through, and why she doesn't break, though she's thrown repeatedly.
One of the overarching mystery arc in the A Song of Ice and Fire is whether or not the Stark children can go back to Winterfell. Can they come home, and thus achieve their happy ending, or will they die without ever seeing Winterfell again? Some fans predict that the Stark reunion, if it does happen, would happen only at the last books, as a way to bookend the series. The Starks are together in the first book, at the end of summer and the start of autumn. Come autumn, they're scattered from their homes and from each other. Now winter is coming, their enemies weakening, and the Stark children start to fight back after being downtrodden for so long. It is only proper that come spring, they would be reunited once again in their ancestral home, as a way to signify how the Starks have regain their powers.
Sansa's premature homecoming ruins that narrative. She has come to Wintefell, but without her siblings and the Starks are not restored to power. If the big homecoming does happen in the show, it will feel hollow, because Sansa has come home, and she's brutalized. Winterfell is not a comfortable memory for her, Ramsay's assault destroy that. Even her home isn't a safe space for her.
Sansa, girl. You deserve better.
[WARNINGS FOR MASSIVE SPOILERS AND RAPE]
I haven't watched Game of Thrones since Season 3, a season where, I felt, everything started to go downhill. I enjoyed the first and second season, but I hated the third season and found nothing in me that could compel me to continue. Still, I'm an avid fan of the books, so I sometimes tune in to recaps to see where the show is heading and how they handle particular story-line. Part of the reason why I abandoned Game of Thrones is I can't handle all of the rape and female nudity. Now, it's not that I'm against nudity in general, but I'm not comfortable with the way the show handles female nudity. It's like, naked women all day, every day. Where my dicks at, yo? We get to see titties and pussies, but where's my close-up shots of glorious male asses and dicks?
The way they treat female characters in the TV show is also an issue to me. Almost every female character is sexualized. In the books, for example, Margaery Tyrell "seduced" Tommen with kittens, but she never had sex with him because Tommen is nine and Margaery is (technically) considered a grown woman. In the show, Margaery is much older, probably in early-to-mid twenties, and Tommen too, but it's clear that he's meant to be in his early-to-mid teens, so when show!Margaery actually seduced Tommen and had sex with him, I had to throw up. They (D&D) did her so wrong. Margaery changes from an older sister figure in the books to a sexual predator in the show. They change an innocent relationship to a sexual one, all for the sake of getting Natalie Dormer naked. Tommen's innocent, familial, brotherly relationship with Margaery is supposed to highlight how young and unfit for him to be king; to have that relationship sexualized is disgusting. Margaery, girl, You deserve better.
Although that's deplorable, it happened a few episodes ago, and I'm not here to discuss that. Oh, no.
I'm here to discuss how Sansa was raped.
Yes, you heard that right. Sansa Stark was raped. By sadistic psychopathic douchebag extraordinaire Ramsay Bolton. In the confines of Winterfell, her old home and the only place where she'd felt completely safe.
Book readers will know that Sansa's storyline is taken directly from Jeyne Poole's, where she's forcibly married to Ramsay (as fake!Arya), raped repeatedly (sometimes by dogs!), and generally tortured. So that kind of thing happens in the book, however D&D has made it clear that they will not hesitate deviating from the novels, like how they completely erased Arianne Martell from the show. Arianne is a POV character in the book, which makes her quite important, so her omission will bring quite a big change to how the plot works in the show. The show has deviated greatly from the book (not bringing Lady Stoneheart, for example), so they can, in theory, choose not to incorporate the whole "Ramsay rape" storyline. So why do they choose to incorporate it, using an in-story underage character when her actor conveniently turn eighteen?
The show has been criticized repeatedly for overly-sexualizing female characters and for repeatedly showing rape, sometimes only for titillation and male gaze. Consensual sex scenes in the book turn into rape/non-con in the show. This has been a grievance for many fans and fandom blogs, but I think most fans drew the line on Sansa's rape. The Mary Sue, a prominent women-oriented fandom blog, has decided not to promote the HBO show anymore. They felt that the rape is unnecessary, because we've already seen Sansa overcoming abusive men and we know that Ramsay's a sadistic asshole. Sansa's and Jenye's storyline generally serves, both in the book and show, as a vehicle for Theon's character development, by acting as a catalyst for his resistance to the 'Reek' identity. Note how, in the show, that the rape is off-screen; the camera pans to Theon to show his reaction.
A female character's rape is used to show a male character's manpain. We don't see how Sansa feels about this; we see Theon's horror. Sansa is distant, unimportant, in her own rape - it's all about Theon.
I have great distaste for 'rape as a plot device' trope. Most of the time, I would drop a book/show immediately if there's such scene. Sometimes, I feel like it's used insensitively, only acting as a reason for angst and manpain between two characters, or as a way to code that "this character is sad! you should feel bad for him/her!" Often, it's all about how their significant other found out about the rape, and how they feel and not the victim themselves. Besides, sometimes the rape adds nothing to the plot, unnecessary, and it only serves to brutalize a female character (because it's always female characters that gets raped in fiction).
In this case too, I feel like the rape is very much useless. We've already seen Sansa go through so much - assault and abuse from Joffrey and further assault and abuse from Littlefinger - so we really don't need to see her brutalized further. It's already established that Ramsay is a sadistic asshole by how he treats Theon and everyone around him. In fact, due to the show's history for sexual violence in the show, rape is pretty much expected. As soon as Sansa's brought out of the Eyrie and Sophie Turner turns eighteen, everyone knows that Sansa will probably have some sort of sex scene forced upon her.
Furthermore, the rape happened in Winterfell, and from a narrative point of view, this is a bad move and an unnecessary cruelty. A good part of Sansa's plot in the books is that she sees Winterfell as the only place where she's always been happy. Where nothing bad happens to her. When her family is still one and her dad and siblings are still alive. She sees Winterfell as the light in the end of the tunnel, a source of hope. Winterfell and memories of her family are why she remains Sansa, why she keeps going even after all she's been through, and why she doesn't break, though she's thrown repeatedly.
One of the overarching mystery arc in the A Song of Ice and Fire is whether or not the Stark children can go back to Winterfell. Can they come home, and thus achieve their happy ending, or will they die without ever seeing Winterfell again? Some fans predict that the Stark reunion, if it does happen, would happen only at the last books, as a way to bookend the series. The Starks are together in the first book, at the end of summer and the start of autumn. Come autumn, they're scattered from their homes and from each other. Now winter is coming, their enemies weakening, and the Stark children start to fight back after being downtrodden for so long. It is only proper that come spring, they would be reunited once again in their ancestral home, as a way to signify how the Starks have regain their powers.
Sansa's premature homecoming ruins that narrative. She has come to Wintefell, but without her siblings and the Starks are not restored to power. If the big homecoming does happen in the show, it will feel hollow, because Sansa has come home, and she's brutalized. Winterfell is not a comfortable memory for her, Ramsay's assault destroy that. Even her home isn't a safe space for her.
Sansa, girl. You deserve better.
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