10 Reasons Game Of Thrones Is No Good For George R. R. Martin
2. Gratuitous Sexual Violence Against Women In A Song Of Ice And Fire, we get close-up portrayals of some of the strongest and best-defined female characters in fantasy fiction. Now, Westeros is a world based upon several cultures in eras in our history, and as some have remarked (not least, Cersei herself), this kind of world just isnt good to women and girls. We get that. Were confronted with some of the same ugly truths in Martins writing. But where A Song Of Ice And Fire, for the most part, allows us to see strong, individual women and the different ways in which they deal with a dangerous imbalance of power in the society they live in, Game Of Thrones really just has a whole lot of women being hurt, raped and killed. In front of us. Repeatedly, over and over. These are not, by and large, scenes that occur in the novels or if they do, they occur with an entirely different slant. Daenerys Targaryen isnt forced to have sex with Khal Drogo on her wedding night in the novels; the sex is consensual. Jaime Lannister doesnt force Cersei to have sex with him in the sept next to their sons corpse in the novels; again, its consensual. These are complicated scenes in A Song Of Ice And Fire, but crucially not rape scenes. Its more than just those two pivotal scenes, though. In season two, Joffrey Baratheon has one prostitute badly beat another for his own pleasure, while in a very similar scene in season three, he cruelly murders the same girl, who is sent to him for that purpose as a punishment for spying. We already have enough reasons to loathe Joffrey. We dont need long, lingering hints at his sexual sadism invented purely for the television show. And theres more. A scene in Crasters keep in season four has characters carrying on a conversation while, in the background, a woman is being raped. Why? To help with the mise en scene? The Hound and Arya walk into an inn to see the innkeepers daughter being manhandled while she cries for help. Why? Is it important that Polliver and his thugs are rapists? We already know hes scum hes on Aryas list. At The Red Wedding, a pregnant Talisa is stabbed in the belly. There are far too many more examples, more than we have room for here. Game Of Thrones foregrounds sexual violence to women in a gratuitous manner instead of allowing it to remain a present part of the environment as it is in A Song Of Ice And Fire. It leaves a revolting taste in the mouth.