Game of Thrones Season 4

[EricMontreal22]

I couldn't find a thread for this--surely some others are still watching?

I have to admit I found the mini backlash online to this week's past rape scene a bit strange. Salon had a piece about how rape absolutely could never be a plot device-- While I think it's often a lazy plot device, or a dangerous one, the use of it (not sure if spoilers are needed) in this week made sense with how the show treats every act of violence, and--I hate to say this, but rape *can* be a plot device. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/21/game_of_thrones_and_the_too_easy_symbolism_of_tv_rape_scenes/

[jasonf]

We've had some real debates in my house about that scene since Sunday. I found an article that interviews the director who makes it clear that it's not intended to be a rape scene. He makes a point of saying look at Cersei's legs pulling Jaime in closer etc. I don't know. I think the director messed up shooting it if he didn't intend it to appear that Jaime raped Cersei - because it certainly looked like he did on one viewing. Of course, Jamie's whole character goes against the idea of rape also - he stood for Brienne rather than her getting raped (and I know there were a couple of other times he was against it as well).

So I don't know. I'd like to think he DIDN'T rape her because it really throws his path to redemption out the window (I know, bad pun), but it's hard to think he didn't watching the scene.

[EricMontreal22]

I haven't read this far in the books, but I have read elsewhere (even in the link I sent) that the scene in the book isn't ALL that different. But of course, youhave to be much more careful with how something like that is filmed. I mean obviously they wanted some sort of hate/love/anger sex--and I know that is often glamourized on TV with the woman giving in after saying no--which IS what Cercei did.

I guess part of it for me is simply the context. If I had seen that on a more realistic drama I would have been more upset (although, in hindsight Don Draper pretty much did the same thing to Megan either last year or the year before on Mad Men--albeit without the incest and their dead son beside them...) I do think, though, it's too facile to simply write it off as "using rape as a 'plot device' simply is too dagerous to ever use" (and wasn't Daenrys much more expicitly raped in season one with a man she did only later grow to love? But I wasn't reading all the postings about the show back then as to the reaction.)

[jasonf]

In the book, Cersei starts to say no but very quickly changes to "make love to me, do me." I mean, literally, she says, "Do me." It's much more consensual there than it is in the show.

Daenerys's scene was DEFINITELY changed. In the book, Khal Drogo waits until she says yes. In the show, he clearly rapes her.

I don't think saying "never use rape" as a plot devise is either realistic or even smart. Rape happens, pretending it doesn't is ridiculous. This scene just concerned me because I don't like what is says about Jaime, the guy we're supposed to be rooting for.

[strummergirl]

There seems to be a lot of different arguments at once over this. Don't mind me, I need to list them out:

1. It was/was not rape- Don't really care what Alex Graves says. That reflects his problem with the material. It looked awkward as a scene, as if nobody was on the same page. It was rape. Jaime raped his sister and lover. Now on to the tougher questions.

2. The show somehow endorses Jaime- Weird one. I keep hearing character assassination more so than Benioff and Weiss think this was a kosher move for Jaime. But I cannot help but feel that after a week of Joffrey dying that Game of Thrones could not help themselves than to have another water cooler moment in the very next episode. It felt like a shock TV move.

3. This is either a failure of director or writing or both- Benioff and Weiss green-lit that scene when this is a show where quite a lot of scenes are re-shot. They were okay with that scene and one of Benioff and Weiss seemed to hint that Jaime committed sexual assault on Cersei that was a non-consensual encounter in post-episode video. If you hear three different opinions from 3 different parties involved, Caster-Waldau who plays Jaime seemed to want to have it both ways in an interview, something is amiss.

4. The idea that Jaime is now irreparably bad so whatever developments he had during the last two seasons that made him human seem out the window- I get this one the most. Yes, his first scene was pushing Bran out a window. Jaime cannot behave in that extreme all the time. It would be horrible writing. It makes more sense to start at that extreme and then show a heartsick, conflicted, broken down man who also happened to save Brienne more than once as a friend. That is more interesting writing and better writing. What is the long-term goal set for Jaime now?

5. Some fans take the books the black and the show to be white in this scene and the scene with Dany and Khal in Season 1 where weird consent lines, book Dany was a teenager, are thrown away for something closer to rape. Game of Thrones is an adaptation and these two choices do stick out but let us not act like these are desecrations of either great art or art of any high moral fiber. This is a junk food book series getting a lucrative junk food TV adaptation that seems to be a major follower of HBO's apparently real 'show your boobs' quota along with gratuitous violence that get more polished with production values and a reasonably good, large ensemble cast. I guess I agree if this were real people in a real world setting show, it would be more upsetting. I get more shaken up by somebody getting fired on Mad Men than anything that went down at the Red Wedding, so I guess while I am angry at the decision and frustrated for the reasoning of why for those two characters, I am not too shaken by it.

6. Rape is really the least interesting character development and plot device for anybody involved at this point in television. It carries no weight because it is always victimization against female characters. I do not think it should be banned from TV, but let me just say most writers on TV, books, and movies often use rape as if they have never once known a person effected by such an ugly act. I know there were people who thought this scene was done to make Cersei suddenly look sympathetic. o_O Then there is this idea of a blurred, gray area for consent that is a pretty disturbing trend in other media so sorry, Game of Thrones, by association you look very suspicious. I don't necessarily think Graves is guilty of that but I think Benioff and Weiss need to be asked why they think it should be used beyond 'it happens, so....'.

7. I think a lot of people want to know what is this direction for Jaime and if he gets some comeuppance or are there implications. Not everyone is going to the books to find that out.

"If I had seen that on a more realistic drama I would have been more upset (although, in hindsight Don Draper pretty much did the same thing to Megan either last year or the year before on Mad Men--albeit without the incest and their dead son beside them...)"

Eric, are you talking about the Season 4 moment where drunken Don forced himself on a secretary, not Megan, after she takes him back to his apartment from a Christmas party? That felt pretty close to something bad. Or are you talking about when him and Megan had rough sex in Season 5? That seems to be what they were just into in terms of kink at the time. Don is a controlling person but to me the most awkward sexual encounters were the flashback to when he lost his virginity, in what looks like against his own will, and the recent one with Megan in California when they both came across feeling like they needed to do it than wanting to do it. Those felt real or close to something realistic. Joan got raped, it is definitive. It was an act against her by her fiancee down in Don's office because he was jealous and paranoid about the fact she worked for a good-looking guy. It made her marriage to Greg DOA and drove her to return to work. I am still upset she married Greg in the first place but she realized this is not what she wanted and additionally made the idea of Greg's appeal really being all just surface.

[Taryn]

I've been pissed about the rape scene nonstop since Sunday. Everything the show creative has said since then just makes me angrier. The fact that the director did not recognize what he filmed as a rape scene is incredibly indicative of our culture's incredibly messed up views on sexual assault. He's pretty much saying, "Look, I know that she was saying 'no' through the whole thing, but she didn't mean it."

[EricMontreal22]

Strummer--re Mad Men I actually meant the secretary scene, though I admit I don't have a good memory of individual episodes and probably conflated it with the rough sex with Megan (though didn't she actually say no several times? I should re-watch before commenting again.)

I will say, after watching the Inside the Episode for GoT this week, I definitely agree that there's a problem when nobody involved seems to be on the same page, or at least is willing to own up to what they shot.

The one thing I don't really get is people thinking that this does some detriment to Jaime's character, and I suppose this has more to do with simply my own take. Yes we saw him somewhat being redeemed, but we have at least three seasons (if the word now that it will end at season 7) and four books, or whatever--I lose count--left for the character, unless he dies (I really don't know the later books, like I've said.) And I think both Martin and the showrunners think one of the ways to make these characters complex is to have them do awful things when audiences start to think they no longer will--ie they do seem intent on making Jaime more of a good guy after the past season but I fully expected him to do something awful before long.) I suppose too it could be defended in some bizarre way that just because he didn't want Brienne to get rapped, doesn't mean he wouldn't perform the act himself on a past lover who has been shunning his advances and after their child died. Or something.

Certainly as a soap opera fan I am well aware of even the most well intentioned stories where a villianous woman is raped to try to redeem her to viewers. Its one of the laziest plot devices, and one I'm tired of seeing (and some pretty well regarded primetime series have done this too, not just soaps) so I could see some attempt at that with Cersei. I thought it was a lazy plot device on The Sopranos too. But I still take some issue with its being taken as the one plot device that should never ever be used--as some of these fan bloggers have basically stated.

[henrikegerman]

The scene was great. One in the long series of reprehensible acts committed by highly complex and deeply flawed characters in a challenging and brilliant epic drama.

It was rape. Graves's and Coster-Waldau's comments otherwise are deplorable. Especially alarming is the suggestion that it wasn't really a rape because Cersei was aroused. Rape can and occasionally does occur notwithstanding the victim's arousal. "She got into it" is not a defense.

Curious that we've heard from Graves and Coster-Waldau but, at least to my knowledge, not from Headey.

It is said that the scene in the book is not a rape. Perhaps not (it doesn't appear to be from your description, Jason, but that's not what happened on screen in Sunday's episode: any arguable acquiescence by Cersei (and I wasn't convinced of that at all) occurred after she had been forcibly penetrated). I haven't read the books.

If the screenwriters, director and actors' intended a consensual sex scene they failed. Categorically.

I have no problem with a show like Game of Thrones having characters whom we sometimes like and often find sympathetic do horrific things. I did not see the scene as an endorsement of Jaime's behavior. Not in the least. Just as there was no endorsement of Jaime's throwing Bran off the tower. The fact that we can sometimes relate to and even occasionally admire people who at other times do clearly brutal and immoral things fuels the narrative of Game of Thrones. This is not a melodrama populated solely by inveterate monsters and complete angels. A great many of the major characters, Jaime included, are morally far more complicated than that.

In life there are people who have done evil, unforgivable things who have also done good things. To argue that murderers, rapists and scoundrels of all types are incapable of good, is to overlook reality. The ugly truth is that countless women have been violated, sexually as well as physically, by men whom they have loved because of their good qualities, including fathers, brothers and husbands. (and parallels and semi-parallels exist in male-male and female-female relationships, as well as in male-female relationships where the woman is abusive).

[ErikJ972]

I don't watch Game of Thrones, scenes like this are the reason why. I found it gratuitous and misogynistic from the first season.

[mikey2573]

There is absolutely no question it was a rape. She is yelling, "It's not right" over and over and Jaimie keeps saying, "I don't care". There were no subtleties to indicate it was anything but a rape. If those involved were under the impression it was not a rape scene, then they must have been referencing something that may have been written in the script. But, whatever it was that was written in the script, it did not translate to the scene as filmed. Again, there is absolutely no question about it, she was raped.

Also, how can Jaimie be considered a "good guy"? In season 1 he callously pushed a little boy out a window. There is no redemption after that. I have only read the first three books (unbelievably TEDIOUS to read), and I won't be reading any of the others. But I hope Jaimie Lannister meets a very untimely (and gruesome) demise.

[Roscoe]

Part of the story of the SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, novels and HBO series is Jaimie's gradual journey from callous selfishness to something else -- his later adventures show someone who is grappling with the issues of how exactly one is to go about doing the right thing. Can power be wielded in any kind of intelligent, non-destructive way?

He did seem to make some kind of progress during his journey with Brienne, I think, both in the novels and in the series. The HBO series departed from the novels in having Jaimie present in King's Landing for Joffrey's wedding, and in having Cersei specifically reject him for having taken too long to return. We did get the interesting reaction shot during the Wedding Sequence of Jaimie being just as appalled at Joffrey's utter assholishness as everyone else.

We'll see where they take it. Something has interested me, both in reading the novels and in the TV series. At no point does anyone throw Joffrey’s total sadistic brutality at Cersei as an example of what a miserable mother she's been. What a colossal insult to toss at her -- only Tywin could get away with it, or someone with nothing to fear from Cersei, like the Queen of Thorns.

Did anyone notice that mention was made of how Joffrey had been torturing Sansa "for years." How long exactly have these series of events taken to unfold in the world of the series?

[henrikegerman]

I assume that things have transpired over a very long time, several years. I can't speak for the books but the tv show gives the impression that it has been years since the Stark children adopted their direwolves. And not just because the kids are now years older than when they were. Consider everything that has happened. A long war, two Westerosian regime changes, the birth and rearing of dragons, multiple characters have been married and widowed and remarried. The equivalent of an entire Shakespeare tetralogy.

Danny has amassed an army and continues to free more enslaved peoples adding to her regiments. Any season now she may actually do something with it.

[jasonf]

I have to say, though, those lines: "It's not right" and "I don't care" may not be in reference to the sex act itself, but rather that they're doing it by the corpse of their dead son. I don't think those lines specifically indicate rape quite as much as Jaime forcing himself on Cersei and what looks to be her pushing him away. The context of where they are does matter with regard to those lines.

The books are anything but tedious (well, I'll grant the fourth one is, but at least it's fairly short in comparison). Here's the scene from the book (note, it's pretty graphic):

She kissed him. A light kiss, the merest brush of her lips on his, but he could feel her tremble as he slid his arms around her. “I am not whole without you.”

There was no tenderness in the kiss he returned to her, only hunger. Her mouth opened for his tongue. “No,” she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, “not here. The septons…”

“The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference.

“Hurry,” she was whispering now, “quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime.” Her hands helped guide him. “Yes,” Cersei said as he thrust, “my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you’re home now, you’re home.” She kissed his ear and stroked his short bristly hair. Jaime lost himself in her flesh. He could feel Cersei’s heart beating in time with his own, and the wetness of blood and seed where they were joined.


As you can see, in the book, it's clearly not rape. The question is, why the change on TV?

[EricMontreal22]

Mikey, I agree that the one argument I find the oddest is people who suggest that Jaimie now was meant to be a hero and this has ruined his redemption--even with Brienne (or maybe especially with her) they showed him pretty conflicted.

I do think it's been at least several years. The tv show, as opposed to the books, has a double edged sword in that the young actors noticeably age--so I assume the timeline has to be longer than the books--but the amount of traveling back and forth the characters do makes me think quite a few years have passed.

[JerseyGirl2]

For the same reason they changed the consensual sex in the first episode to rape. Who freaking knows?! That was almost enough to turn me off the whole series. It completely changed the dynamic of the Dany/Drogo relationship.

[Jane2]

I didn't think it was rape. She appeared to be stimulated and hot with desire but she thought it was wrong to do it next to her son's casket so she was trying to fight it. But she seemed to be giving in after all.

[EricMontreal22]

Uh oh... Jane, you may wanna re-word that, because otherwise aren't you basically just saying what the original link claimed is the danger of the scene? Or was that your point?

[Jane2]

I'm not sure, Eric. Maybe it all boils down to what the dictionary definition of rape is, and not the Game of Thrones definition. I always thought it's rape if one of the partners doesn't want to do it. In the scene, it was one of those "I don't want to do it" "Don't stop" situations.

[henrikegerman]

" I didn't think it was rape. She appeared to be stimulated and hot with desire but she thought it was wrong to do it next to her son's casket so she was trying to fight it. But she seemed to be giving in after all."

A person who says no, a person who says it is wrong - for whatever reason, including that it is taking place next to the corpse of her dead son (Jesus! who the **** would willingly have sex next to the corpse of their dead son! - well, I guess Jaime Lannister, but that doesn't mean that Cersei was ok with it - she wasn't!) - who is then forced to have sex, is being sexually assaulted (sodomized or raped, depending on specific legal definitions according to the actual sex act, I can't be more specific as I haven't studied the Kings Landing Penal Code).

The fact that that person is aroused doesn't change that. A person can be sexually turned on and still forced against his or her will to have sex.

And that, is exactly what happened in this scene.

How can someone be a rapist and not a cartoon villain but instead a whole character with some good qualities and a shot at redemption? The same way murderers and doers of nefarious deeds have been portrayed throughout the entire history of non-melodramatic drama. In both real life and drama complex characters who are a mix of good and evil sometimes commit brutal criminal and reprehensible acts.

Stanley Kowalski rapes Blanche DuBois. That doesn't make him Snidely Whiplash.

For several seasons we have seen Jaime Lannister as a complex character sometimes committing horribly brutal acts - such as throwing Bran from the tower - and at other times finding his humanity in acts of decency and even kindness.

The reality is that people who commit brutal acts - including sexual crimes - are not necessarily completely villainous and unredeemable people. This in no way excuses or in any way mitigates their crimes, least of all murder and rape. It is simply a fact.

There are women who fall in love with men who have shown them that they are capable of kindness and compassion. They marry these men. And at one or more points the men commit horrible acts. They might sexually assault a child. They might rape their own wives. This happens. And they are culpable for those actions. And those actions should be treated as the serious violent offenses they are.

But it doesn't necessarily make these men 100% pariahs incapable of any actions that are good.

Very few people who have committed horrible crimes are completely evil.

Facing this fact is not a sanctioning of brutality. It is merely an honest reflection on the human condition. Game of Thrones, like Streetcar, is not a simple melodrama in which characters represent pure light and pure darkness. It is a fantasy which takes its cues from world history. World history is filled with people who have committed dishonorable and oppressive acts but whose lives were not nonstop barbarism.

[EricMontreal22]

Henrik--brilliantly said, and I agree 100% (That's also one reason I hate the retort some people have had that Jaime saved Brienne from a rape--so he wouldn't ever rape anyone...)

[EricMontreal22]

WHile I haven't read the third novel where this takes place, I also have seen the point made that in the novel, which like all of the novels has each chapter written from a different characters' POV, this scene both takes place as soon as the Jamie returns and sees Cersei--he wasn't at the wedding, etc--and is done completely from his POV.

[Roscoe]

Eric -- quite right about the timing of the events in the novel.

[Jane2]

I think she changed her mind.

[Roscoe]

"She is yelling, "It's not right" over and over"

No, she wasn't. There was no yelling going on at all. She's quite upfront about not wanting sex with Jaimie, of course, but nobody yelled.

[EricMontreal22]

Some of the blog descriptions have been odd--I've read more than a couple that said the scene *ended* with her kicking Jamie off of him and sobbing.

[EricMontreal22]

And Salon.com just weighed in with a completely useless article that wants to explain why THIS has upset fans when fans have otherwise still rooted for characters in the past on TV (including Jaimie) who have done every conceivable horrible thing except rape. Except his ultimate answer says absolutely nothing at all.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/24/why_the_game_of_thrones_rape_scene_caused_fans_to_respond_in_the_worst_possible_way_partner/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow