Okay so here’s something I don’t get. Game of Thrones is an extremely violent show that includes pillaging, beheading, child murder, incest and all other sorts of gruesome things. Nobody cared about any of this or found it offensive.
Then, when Jaime rapes Cersei suddenly legions of people are gravely offended. Now, I think rape is a very serious crime and should be viewed that way, but is it really such a special kind of evil that we ought to feel more comfortable about innocent people dying brutal deaths?
Of course you also have a disturbingly large subset of the population who don’t really care about rape at all, especially if it happens in prison or the perpetrator is a champ at sports. :smack: It seems like people are unable to think rationally about rape for the most part - either it’s “not a big deal”, or it’s literally the worst thing ever, even worse than the Holocaust. Both of these viewpoints are damaging to rape victims and empower the people who commit such offenses because they make people deny the problem and they make the social stigma of being a victim much worse.
It seems like the public is more or less OK with extremely graphic depictions of mass murder yet totally loses their sh*t if there is any kind of sexual element to it. It’s kind of baffling how there’s this huge tolerance for violence in society, like if you ever say anything bad about the troops people will crucify you for it so to speak, but if you suggest that a rapist or molester shouldn’t die a horrific gory death because of issues like human rights, people will say you’re downplaying the trauma of victims.
Why do you think this is? Do you think it’s because people “understand” murder more, is it peer pressure? Is it possible they are paranoid that fictional portrayals of rape will arouse them? Apparently about a third of people claim to have rape fantasies in polls taken and I imagine this causes people a lot of guilt and grief since they’d never actually want to do such a thing in reality.
My gut reaction is quite the opposite, actually. I think most people can’t comprehend murder. But most of us can “comprehend” rape. Many, many people either have been victimized by rape or know someone who has been, and so you’re going to wind up with a larger population of folks who react negatively to depictions of rape used for entertainment.
I think you’re missing a few big pieces of the puzzle:
First, nobody is gravely concerned about the *fictional * innocent people dying brutal deaths, nor are they gravely concerned about the fictional rape victim more than they are concerned about those poor butchered-if-they-were-real smallfolk. They’re concerned about the significance of the fictional story in the real world where real people live.
Second, the people who didn’t like the Jaime/Cersei scene are not, by and large, the people who don’t care about prison rape or sexual assaults by athlete, are they? Aren’t you in fact pointing out that lots of people don’t care about really serious rapes in the real world, and doesn’t that help to explain why a different set of other people might be concerned about a fictionalized scene that looks like a rape but is described as not actually depicting a rape?
Also, what’s up with making up ridiculous and hyperbolic characterizations and reactions that no one ever expresses in order to point out how ridiculous they are – nobody cared; suddenly legions; literally the worst thing ever; lose their shit if there’s any sexual element; you can’t suggest that a rapist shouldn’t be fucking gruesomely executed for fuck’s sake; and so on? You’re submarining any rational or measured approach to this conversation, and you’re doing it while predicting that any reactions you get are going to be irrational.
Long story short, I think the explanation for the problem you’re talking about is that it doesn’t exist and you should consider why you decided it’s a valid observation, and then you would get the thing that you don’t get. I think the explanation for the similar, much less dramatic issue that is that the rape scene in Game of Thrones is more controversial than people getting chopped in half with broadswords is: nobody ever chops anyone in half with a broadsword in real life and gets away with it. Nobody would ever say, in real life, oh man, that interaction between the actual real man with the burned face and the actual child he sliced in half is a serious problem! and get the response that no it wasn’t a problem. It’s perfectly rational to be more concerned about a fictional depiction of a real-life problem that is dismissed both inside and outside the fiction than about a fictional depiction of a cartoonishly evil fantasy element that has no real-world analog.
Well I didn’t mean literally nobody. I’m sure *some *people are offended by the violence in the show. It’s just I never read articles complaining about the wanton violence in the show until there was a rape scene.
And I’d argue people do get away with murder, when they go to war in the context of killing civilians. Our troops massacred innocents for fun both in the Iraq and Vietnam wars, many have admitted to doing this, and most have been unpunished. Similarly, the Steubenville rape case led to far more public outrage and interest than the genocide in Syria.
Plus there wasn’t a rape in that part in the book, and it’s not the first time that the show has inserted gratuitous sexual assaults that weren’t in the original.
Accurately or inaccurately, we perceive rape as something that exists in the present, but pillaging and child murder etc etc as something that is safely a part of the past. And…
[QUOTE=Elizabeth Janeway]
Certainly the fact that the present is controversial doesn’t mean that the events of the past are established as true beyond dispute. Too many historians have assured us that the past is reinterpreted by each changing stage of “the present” for us to be deceived about that. But the very fact that the events and ideas of the past can be manipulated means that they can be separated from the framework of concepts surrounding them. We see that thev are open to various interpretations. For the living, on the other hand, today’s facts are embedded in today’s situation. We accept them as being self-evidently tnie, as signifying what they are; or at least, we try to. We are unhappy with puzzles and ambiguities, uneasy with shifting roles and mysterious behavior. Why?
Because they demand something from us. Present events act on us and call for action by us. Since we can change them, not simply define or describe them, they acquire a moral presence. They pose a question of responsibility, and by doing so they change the way we look at them. The past can be described and debated, but it doesn’t call for action—except, of course, as its effects continue into the present and so become the present. But of the true past, one can say: this condition existed, it resulted in these actions and reactions which produced these events and ways of looking at the world. Not so with the present. Here we say, this condition exists—in the same world as the observer. Therefore he is no longer merely an observer, because being present he is involved with the condition. Whether he evades direct involvement or not (and one can’t, after all, become involved in every problem), the question arises: Do I approve of this situation? Is it right that it should exist? Can it be changed? And how?
[/quote]
—Man’s World, Woman’s Place: A Study in Social Mythology, 1971
It’s not “plus” I think it’s the main reason. They took a scene that was in the book and changed it from a consensual but creepy sex act to a rape. It didn’t happen by accident. It was a deliberate act by the show’s producers. So that begs the question of why? Was it for titilation or was it necessary for the plot. It really seems like the former. The show is about a brutal medieval war. Showing that type of war in an unsugarcoated way was one if the strengths of the book and the show. But making this scene a rape scene is simply gratuitous. If it was written that way for a reason in the book there would have been little discussion about it. Most of the discussion in various stories have focused on that. Not “Oh my god there was a fictional rape!” It was more “why did they feel the need to change that scene into a rape?” And I think that is a valid question.
The problem is that the Director of the episode and the showrunners did not intend for the Jaime/Cersei scene in question to be perceived as a rape. Now obviously the scene came across as rape to most viewers, but they have said they did not intend it to be rape or to change the context from the book. When Cersei said “No”, she later says “not here” and “its wrong” , and the Director must have thought that, plus the Cersei/Jaime backstory, was enough context to show that she was only objecting to the location of the act (underneath their son’s dead body) and not the act itself, which is what the creators of the show intended with that scene. They did a terrible job though since most everyone saw it as rape, which damages Jaime’s character more when they did not intend for the viewer to come away with that.
There was a rape scene in the very first episode, one which was also consensual in the books. IIRC there was not much out cry over that. Therefore I am inclined to conclude that the outcry was due to disapproval over the artistic choices made by the writers, rather than considering rape to be a special kind of dvil. Which, FYI it along with murder and other henious crimes, it totally is.
Nope. Not in my experience as a South African. But: gun and knife violence =/= sword beheadings/dragon burnings/deadly gold crownings/purple poisonings, for the most part.
Jsgoddess made a good point about this, and that is, simply, I can envision a scenario in which I might murder. Someone hurts a child or my loved one, for example. Thus, I can envision a murder which I might not be completely horrified by.
I can never ever envision a scenario in which I might rape someone. Rape thus becomes completely inexcusable to me. There is no rape which does not horrify me.