Hi. I’m pretty much in agreement in your take on nudity in GoT.
One thing that bothered me is that you commented twice on the historical inaccuracy of the nude women’s body grooming.
Game of Thrones is not about a real world for which we have external information sources. It’s about a fictional world created by the TV producers and the author.
It’s unfair to criticize a show for being historically inaccurate when it depicts another planet (or reality – not clear, really) for which we don’t have a real history.
Do men and women in 4th-century AC* Westeros shave their bodies or not? They made up the world, so it’s only fair to let the author and producers decide.
The much more common biological necessity in most species is that the male must work his butt off to convince the female he’s worth being her mate. The “female gaze”, as it were, is the norm.
Just in case the newcomers are unclear on this term, let me buffalo-buffalo it with Mansplaining Mansplaining:
A Man Explains Mansplaining.. [I love the title, but I don’t find the piece itself that humorous. Does anybody differ?]
You can still criticize things that you like; it’s one of the hallmarks of art is that nothing is beyond some level of criticism. It’s also clearly stated that the show itself has some great things about it and has really awesome female characters, but the set dressing is failing it, which is a valid critique.
I am fully aware that the actresses who appear naked in this series, and look beautiful doing so, are three dimensional people with interesting lives and not objects.
Why don’t we have Rand Paul and his “libertarian” ilk up in arms about the high cost of mansplaing? OH, that’s right, cause he’s a consummate mansplainer himself.
Because you’ve gone and watched every “adult” show to make sure? Or because you are taking the comment literally, as in, “every show in the world labeled as ‘adult’ will have [nudity]”?
But they are. They are, in fact, actresses (I’d bet a sawbuck most, if not all, of them belong to whatever the European equivalent of SAG is, if such a union even exists), just as much as the muddy villagers and wildlings and King’s Landing townsfolk and Meereenese slaves and men of the Night’s Watch we see in every scene who never get a word of dialogue to say. All of those people are extras (who generally prefer to be called “background actors”) who get paid to stand and move around as living set dressing; it’s just that the women we’re discussing do so without many clothes on. And the point is that we, the audience, understand that the actors playing the roles are not the characters themselves. Unless we’re genuinely too immature to be watching the show.
My own argument rests on the concept that the show’s habit of parading unclad women around does not necessarily send a message that women should only exist to please the male gaze. The message sent fits the show’s context: people disrobe in order to have sex, or bathe, or attempt to influence someone else, or any number of contextual reasons. Some characters violently disrobe other characters… as an act of violence. It’s all logical within the storyline, just as it makes sense that Ned Stark can decapitate a mostly-loyal soldier and still be a heroic character, or that Arya Stark can develop into a vengeful murderer and still retain 100% of our sympathy. The nudity is excessive to many people, just as the violence is excessive to many people, and the show is rightly not intended for children, and maybe the show does belabor its points about the lack of agency of women who don’t happen to be characters named Cersei, or Catelyn, or Arya, or Sansa, or Brienne (or even the ones who have undressed, such as Melisandre, Margaery, Ygritte, Shae, or Daenerys), but again, the show is not presenting any of its characters’ behaviors as endorsements. It is not nonsensical for prostitutes to hang around their brothel naked, and the show’s story contains many events set in brothels. Is the show’s treatment of women markedly better if they’re murdered or raped or slapped or abused or exploited in a more discreet state of dress? Are their seductions and sexual transactions more dignified when they wear less-revealing attire? Would changing any of that honestly help the message of the show?
The one time I was an extra (or background actor), that was the understanding. "Thank you for being here, we appreciate it, but don’t get in the way of the talent; we’re working.
