I think when loving scenes from the book are depicted as rape it’s creepy and unnecessary. i.e. Jamie.
I think when rape is used as a plot or character device, as the books intended, it’s totally fine.
I think GoT reflects real life and society, both past and present, in a realistic, yet amoral way.
I think murder is worse than rape, in GoT and in reality, and I think torture is worse than rape, in GoT and in reality.
I think the Sansa scene in GoT reflects badly on Ramsey, neutrally on Sansa, and well on Theon, and I am interested to see how it plays out for all three of them.
Life in the GOT world SUCKS, <SUCKS>, !!!SUCKS!!! for pretty much everyone.
If you’re in Essoes you’re gonna be enslaved and have your dick and testicles cut off, and if you’re a commoner in Westeroes you’re at the absolute mercy of how psychologically fucked up your lord is, if your lord loves raping and murdering well tough titties.
GOT world sucks, end of thread.
(I’m sorta rooting for the white walkers and zombies to be honest.)
Part of it might just be me conflicting Book Littlefinger and Show Littlefinger in my head. Book Littlefinger seems to definitely be attached to Sansa, seeing her (in a creepy way) as an expy for the women he wanted but could never have (Catelyn). Stuff like the kiss in the courtyard, etc… makes me think that he doesn’t just see Sansa as a pawn but he truly wants her in romantic sense.
Now, Show Littlefinger is certainly a bit different, since he seems to be making multiple plans. One is to use the Vale and North to raise the banners in support of Sansa’s claim. Alternatively, if he really wants to try and stay with the Lannisters and get named Warden of the North, he’s going to have to turn Sansa over. (He could always just raise the army of the Vale for himself and rebel against the Lannisters, but then, why even bother asking to be made Warden?) And who knows what his plan is if Stannis takes out Bolton outright? What if Sansa gets killed during the battles?
Either way, I’m not saying that Littlefinger is some nice guy who wants to protect Sansa as a friend, but he still would seem to have interest against her being raped and mistreated by Ramsay, chief among them being “she’s going to be my wife.”
Agree with that feeling. I mean, even if you limit it to violence specifically to women, we had a girl hunted down and torn to pieces just because Ramsey got tired of fucking her, and another provided to and used as target practice by Joffrey, who seemingly liked better to kill women than to fuck them.
How does this “rape scene” (voluntarily entered into for the sake of revenge by the victim who knew pretty well that this would happen) and the “quasi rape” of the previous season between the Lannisters (unclear whether it was intended as such or not) get so much ire when the two scenes I mentioned above didn’t raise any eyebrow? Apparently, part of the public is much more at ease with seeing a (former or intended) fucktoy being killed in an horrific way than with seeing the same (current) fucktoy being used sexually. The hang up over this has to be “sex involved” vs “sex not involved”. It can’t make any sense otherwise.
All arguments I read (unecessary for the plot, repetitive, gratuitous…) apply as well or more to the “no rape actually depicted” scenes above, and to an untold number of others not related to sex at all (people, including children, being burned alive, skinned, tortured, crucified, etc…). I can’t understand how someone could go through the screamings of a person being burned to death or skinned, or eaten alive by rats without any issue, but suddenly would flinch at hearing the screams of a rape victim.
And besides, rape is hinted at or clearly mentioned all over the show, including child rape. So why haven’t all the people protesting about this scene given up on the show like, after the first season?
And second, the idea that rape of inmates happen casually in prison seems to be an American legend that a lot of people enjoy to believe to be true, because it’s so much fun, presumably, to picture in your mind this criminal you hate being raped, while somehow it never occurs to them that if it were true, the criminal they hate could be the rapist, instead. The fact that such rapes don’t happen nearly as frequently as that has been discusssed several times, including by people actually working in American prisons.
Not really. In fact, I would guess it’s the other way around for me. Displaying the suffering of anonymous people tends to disturb me more, on the overall : “why did this poor peasant do to deserve such an awful treatment?”.
Main characters are important people, the social elite, and their fate is most often the consequences of their choices. The most blatantly obvious example being the torture of Theon, who was both the son of a “king” and a murderous bastard himself. But even sympathetic characters have agency. They end up badly because they made a fateful decision.
While the non-characters? They get killed horribly us because they happen to be there, a toy of the powerful. To give examples, the kid who played with Arya in the first season, or the mother of Ramsay mentioned in this episode, or the other kids killed by Theon, or the random peasant tortured to death for not knowing where to find the joyous companions or the hiding place of riches. Those fates bother me more than that of the main characters.
That said, I’m probably in the minority on this one. However, you won’t get me to understand how the rape of a main character who chose to place herself in this situation can be more bothering than the burning alive or skining alive, or crucifying alive or whatever of a non-character who just happened to say the wrong word to the wrong person.
And again, this show is so replete with horrific events, shown or not (the training of the unsullied, the scourging of the mountain, the unsmiling whores handed away to be presumably tortured to death, the abducted kids, and so on, and so on, that are only mentioned) that it escapes me that some people only react when Sansa is raped. As already stated, a lot of people stopped watching the show early on because of this kind of content. Presumably, those still watching it after 5 seasons shouldn’t have a thin skin.
Good posts. “Infant torn from mother’s arm and stabbed in the heart while she watches? Yeah, no biggie. People burned alive for their religious beliefs? Eh, shit happens. Orphans murdered just to be used as props by Theon? Who cares? Ramsay makes a girl spend her last moments running for her life from her former lover, only to have dogs brutally eat her alive? Standard. Years of seeing a guy tortured, maimed, and completely broken down until he’s not even a person anymore? Well fuck that guy.”
“But a girl forced into unpleasant but non-maiming sex on her wedding night? Fuck this awful show, this is beyond the pale. I’m out. I can’t believe I ever watched this shit”
I suspect people get more upset about rape because the rape scenes just hit too close to home, real people get raped for real more or less every day in the society we live in, flayings and crucifixions on the other hand are all pretty damn rare in real life.
Rape on the other hand is something we hear of pretty often and the risk of it happening to someone we know, or even to ourselves at some point, is very real.
Pretend someone did—allowed himself to be convicted and sentenced in order to protect someone else. Does that change?
I’m sorry, but you’re wrong about this. Prison rape is common enough to be considered a genuine problem in our prison system, perpetrated both by guards and prisoners, and it is almost never punished. The fact that it is so often seen as a suitable subject of humor that implies that prison rape is justified just makes it worse.
This rape was devastating and dark and because it was not in a fantasy setting, very close to home. But I have no complaints about its portrayal. At the end, the shot of Joan’s eyes and the cutaway to her point of view and then back is devastating.
You can also nitpick all the circumstances of this story—Joan was engaged but not married, it isn’t a custom for people to have sex in their bosses’ offices, etc.—but that nitpicks to death the actual experience for the person being raped.
I admittedly haven’t read the discussion of it in the other threads, so apologies if I’m just rehashing the sprawling mess that prompted this thread in the first place, but…
The difference, though, is that most of the terrible things that have been happening to our quasi-medieval fantasy people aren’t things that are daily occurrences in modern industrialized countries. Rapes (and particularly the sorts of acquaintance rapes we’ve seen) absolutely are.
How exactly is that relevant, though? Is rape any less traumatic for victims living in societies where rape is considered acceptable under certain circumstances?
GOT strives to be dark realistic fantasy, but it’s still a fantasy show. There’s maybe things that are allegorically relevant to our society, but for the most part it’s just keeping us entertained. Using a graphic rape scene as a plot point in that context is perhaps not impossible to do in a meaningful way, but it’s walking on very thin ice. I’m still giving them the benefit of the doubt that they’ll come up with some sort of meaningful way of handling what we’ve just seen, but if it turns out to just be a throwaway plot development to move things along… well… I’ll probably keep watching but will continue to be annoyed by it.
Oddly enough, probably, yes. When you’re aware it’s just a fact of life and know, from your tenth birthday, that you’re likely in for it as some point it’s probably easier to rationalize and move forward.
It’s kind of the same with violence, honestly. To us, a bunch of horsemen riding through town and murdering random folks would be horrifying. But when it’s just a case of “oh, guess it must be Tuesday”, you probably get used to it pretty quick.
From a non-watcher and a non-reader, I can tell you that the fact of this graphic rape has turned me off ever watching the show.
I just won’t watch rape. I stopped watching that terrible show BSG because of the graphic rapes and almost-rapes in it.
Isn’t it terrible enough that it’s happening right now? That someone, somewhere, is being raped this moment, graphically, and horribly? Why would I want to put that in my head?
And yes, watching rape bothers me more than watching murder. It was jsgoddess who said that I could at some point, see myself killing someone, in a fit of passion or whatever. I could never see myself raping anyone.
It is brutal and horrible and unnecessary to depict and once again reduces women and their bodies to a tool and a plot device.
And to indicate that you just get used to it - ugh. Women are tough and strong and have been through multiple rapes and survived but I still don’t think it’s something you just say “Oh, it’s Tuesday again”.