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Sansa's rape
May. 22nd, 2015 01:09 amWARNING: Discussion of RAPE. Also spoilers.
Game of Thrones fandom is losing its shit overSansa’s rape.And I just…feel like people are not actually thinking. I’m especially baffled at the book readers. I can understand the reactions of show-only fans. This may in fact seem quite grotesque to them. Why all this misery? Why all the violence? But the book readers, the ones constantly shouting about how much better the books are than the show, need to take a step back. After all, they were fine with all the violence and rape in the books. Or maybe they weren’t fine, but they kept reading.
Sansa is one of my favorite characters. And what she had to go through was terrible. But terrible things happening to good characters, or main character, or prominent characters is not the hallmark of a bad narrative. It is also true that GoT has used sexual violence perhaps a little too excessively, ie: more than strictly needed to establish the realities of the universe. However, ASOIAF isn’t exactly sunshine and fuzzy bunnies. There is a LOT of, arguably unnecessary, violence and sexual violence there too. It’s true that some things have a greater effect on the consumer in visual form than written form, but they are still the SAME thing. Anyone who had read any of the ASOIAF books before starting GoT should have known what they were getting into.
Does the show have an obligation to do better than its source material from a social justice perspective (or any other)? No. I honestly don’t think it does. In the same way we don’t expect fanfiction to thrown canon out the window or to improve on it. GoT isn’t ASOIAF fanfic (although…lately, with the huge plot changes, it looks a little more like it) but it’s also not an independent show. It’s not even a separate part of a franchise. It’s an ADAPTATION. So can we really blame it for sticking to things/the sorts of things that happened in its source text?
This post isn’t super organized or an essay or anything. I don’t have the energy for that. But I did want to put down my thoughts on a few of the arguments I’ve been hearing the most.
( Read more... )
Honestly, this scene is not nearly as problematic as people are making it out to be. You know what rape scene was so much worse in the sense of “totally unnecessary”? That Jaime/Cersei one. Because that one actually fucked with characterization and relationship dynamics. And yet, somehow, people got over that one quickly enough. It certainly did not cause an equivalent ragequit uproar. And I do have to wonder why.
Game of Thrones fandom is losing its shit overSansa’s rape.And I just…feel like people are not actually thinking. I’m especially baffled at the book readers. I can understand the reactions of show-only fans. This may in fact seem quite grotesque to them. Why all this misery? Why all the violence? But the book readers, the ones constantly shouting about how much better the books are than the show, need to take a step back. After all, they were fine with all the violence and rape in the books. Or maybe they weren’t fine, but they kept reading.
Sansa is one of my favorite characters. And what she had to go through was terrible. But terrible things happening to good characters, or main character, or prominent characters is not the hallmark of a bad narrative. It is also true that GoT has used sexual violence perhaps a little too excessively, ie: more than strictly needed to establish the realities of the universe. However, ASOIAF isn’t exactly sunshine and fuzzy bunnies. There is a LOT of, arguably unnecessary, violence and sexual violence there too. It’s true that some things have a greater effect on the consumer in visual form than written form, but they are still the SAME thing. Anyone who had read any of the ASOIAF books before starting GoT should have known what they were getting into.
Does the show have an obligation to do better than its source material from a social justice perspective (or any other)? No. I honestly don’t think it does. In the same way we don’t expect fanfiction to thrown canon out the window or to improve on it. GoT isn’t ASOIAF fanfic (although…lately, with the huge plot changes, it looks a little more like it) but it’s also not an independent show. It’s not even a separate part of a franchise. It’s an ADAPTATION. So can we really blame it for sticking to things/the sorts of things that happened in its source text?
This post isn’t super organized or an essay or anything. I don’t have the energy for that. But I did want to put down my thoughts on a few of the arguments I’ve been hearing the most.
( Read more... )
Honestly, this scene is not nearly as problematic as people are making it out to be. You know what rape scene was so much worse in the sense of “totally unnecessary”? That Jaime/Cersei one. Because that one actually fucked with characterization and relationship dynamics. And yet, somehow, people got over that one quickly enough. It certainly did not cause an equivalent ragequit uproar. And I do have to wonder why.
