I love the scare quotes, you show them “lib’ruls” a what-for.
As-someone-who-enjoys-using-hyphens-to-make-unnecessarily-long-compound-words-I-still-feel-there’s-far-too-much-of-it-going-on-in-this-thread.
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Why not just go german and jam words together to make new ones…
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I haven’t actually watched Game of Thrones, so I’m asking this in as much ‘honestly-seeking-information’ as possible; please bear with me:
It was my understanding that Game of Thrones has a lot, possibly ‘story-world-realistic’, possibly verging into torture porn; of situations where some politics happen, and then the loser is very, very, much not allowed to retire gracefully; but is instead gorily reminded that, at the end of the day, ‘power’, ‘nobility’, ‘rank’, etc. are all well and good; but real power is what gets inflicted on your frail body by somebody who has either defeated or sidestepped all your lackeys and bodyguards and armies and can do as he wishes.
In the case of powerful, or not-quite-powerful-enough, men, this seems to mostly involve execution, with some torture, enslavement, castration, and similar as the occasion warrants. In the case of powerful, or not-quite-powerful-enough, women, rape is also on the table, castration off the table, and the other options similarly available.
Is it the case that the show appears to be going down the rape, rape, and a bit more rape! route in order to pander to the prurient interests of the viewers; or is it just another variation on the about-as-old-as-the-show theme of ‘here is somebody who had ‘power’; but now his enemies are in a position to employ physical violence directly against his body’?
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One of the interesting things about A Song of Ice and Fire, the novels, is that in contrast to most fantasy literature prior to its initial publication, Martin makes a point of displaying feudalism as a class system, showing how it works. And the key thing about feudalism is that social control is based directly on the military power of the aristocracy. Within the novels, a lot of the brutality serves to illustrate this point.
Arguably, within the novels, Martin overdoes the violence, including sexual violence against women. There are parts that I found difficult to read, and more than once I considered abandoning reading it entirely. But it generally makes sense, in being consistent about the setting and the characters.
From what I understand of the show – I’ve only seen a few episodes, and a few clips – there’s way more sex going on then in the novels, and a lot of nudity in situations in which it doesn’t. And, as this article pointed out, there was rape, portrayed on-screen, that didn’t occur in the novels, and is arguably incompatible with Martin’s story.
Part of what’s so obnoxious about what’s happened to Sansa in the TV show is that it’s at odds with her character development. As a child, she was the most enamored with romantic notions of feudalism, and we saw her illusions brutally stripped away, one by one. Meanwhile, her defenders and tormentors alike seem compelled to instruct her on how she can exercise power, as a woman and an aristocrat without access to military force – and in the last few chapters about her, it looked like she was starting to maneuver on her own. The TV storyline, however, takes away everything she’d gained up to that point in the story.
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I think this is partly a problem of different media. There is easily as much sex happening in the books, but often it is only mentioned and not described in detail. Characters are also nude all the time, but book nudity doesn’t stand out as much.
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Laura Bradley at Slate has this take on Sansa’s rape.
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Partly, perhaps, but I was also thinking of the recent BoingBoing article on nudity in GOT, which points out a lot of occasions in which women appeared on the screen naked, with little narrative justification.
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What they are doing is that they are moving sex and nudity from major characters to minor ones. That’s how they end up with mostly relatively pointless nude extras. But I don’t agree that they actually increased the amount of either sex or nudity. It is perceived differently in a visual medium and it is a less natural part of the plot.
@fuzzyfungus, this seems rather spot on to me. My only point of disagreement is that at this point, we don’t know in the books what Sansa’s detour to join Littlefinger at the Vale will eventually gain her or hurt her. What happens to her in the show happened to someone else in the books, someone that wasn’t even a POV character in the story, and who had even less agency that Sansa in a sexist society. It was meant to drive Theon’s story, more than anyone else. Sansa is off elsewhere in the books, and there is no telling what might befall her now.
Frankly, I still want her to end up back with Tyrion, because he’s kickass. But I realize that’s unlikely to happen for any number of reasons.
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I’m hoping Bronn is just too darn badarse to die from something as silly a poison (though I maybe wrong 
). Of course, the Sand Snakes, as portrayed in the series, are so rubbish that they might have forgotten something as fiddly as poisoning a blade.
The German’s probably have a word for that.
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As much as I hated the scene, I have to ask: wouldn’t the rape be another way of stripping her illusion of her romantic notions of feudalism? Wouldn’t this show what people would do to consummate a marriage in order to cement their power grab?
This is something that she did not learn from her relationships with Joffrey and Tyrion. While she realized Joffrey was a monster, Joffrey didn’t try to rape her in order to get more power–in fact he did the opposite. Tyrion was much more chivalrous and didn’t force himself.
You could argue that she learned that marriages can support a power grab from Littlefinger, but he didn’t rape Sansa’s aunt. If anything, Sansa’s aunt had a very good time. So she never saw the really dirty way that people could consummate a marriage…
They made kind of a big deal about the cut he got (all the previous set-up, the closeup injury shot, face reaction shot, etc), so unless the show is trying to fake out the audience…
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Pretty much, alongside the whorehouse exposition. Rome used similar HBO-style tittilation but was blissfully short (not enough budget, alongside draining budget away from Deadwood 
) enough for us to find out whether they would lazily repeat themselves and lose that shock value. Oz did oscillate between rape and redemption storylines too much for my tastes, it got ridiculous after a while.
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If we can have Frankenmountain… maybe we can have Frankenbronn?
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Well, it seems like he’s definitely been poisoned, but he might not die - maybe there’s some Dornish antidote to their poison, etc. I guess it depends on whether the show has any further use for his character, or if it would rather strand Jaime in hostile territory all by himself… Given that Bronn was promised a beautiful wife (and castle) upon his return (pretty much the “two days away from retiring” trope), I’m guessing he’s going to die.
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Part of the issue is that process was complete at the end of the fourth novel, A Feast for Crows, and the entire narrative for Sansa in the fifth novel, A Dance With Dragons, has been dropped.
To some extent, dropping that part of the narrative makes sense. It’s slow-moving and subtle, and we don’t really know what Sansa is thinking – hard to convey on television, especially since it’s such a shift in mood – we’re in Wuthering Heights. But my interpretation of what’s going on is that Sansa has moved past her romantic illusions and started to recover, and is starting to develop connections to the people around her, independent of anyone else’s manipulation.
So one of the things that’s jarring about the show’s plot twist is that it’s a reversion to the confused, helpless Sansa – and my understanding is that we didn’t get a glimpse at the more confident, clever, and patient Sansa.
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well, we won’t know what it means for her character development until we see what she does next. she was pretty helpless in that moment, sure, but she’ll have ample opportunity to turn the tables in the coming episodes.
Whatever you do, don’t go to the GOT imdb character page and check the credits for your favorite actors on the show. I was disappointed to see some had only one or NO credits for the rest of the season.
On another note, I have to say that I like Rob’s recaps better than the one from last week. There were too many references to how the scenes were shot. Kind of ruins the magic.
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