Men of Straw (discussion of fictional rape)

[mme_hardy]

Note: I'm linking to the Guardian rather than the New York Times because the G is not (yet) paywalled. 

George RR Martin has said that omitting scenes of rape and sexual violence from the epic Game of Thrones series "would have been fundamentally false and dishonest", as fans express mounting concerns about the graphic way certain scenes from Martin's novels have played out in the television adaptation.
...

But Martin told the New York Times that although his books are epic fantasy, they are based on history (the series is loosely inspired by the Wars of the Roses). And "rape and sexual violence have been a part of every war ever fought, from the ancient Sumerians to our present day".

 

"To omit them from a narrative centered on war and power would have been fundamentally false and dishonest, and would have undermined one of the themes of the books: that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves. We are the monsters. (And the heroes too). Each of us has within himself the capacity for great good, and great evil," the author said.

 

History, according to Martin, is "written in blood", and although Westeros – the fictional continent where the series is set – is not "the Disneyland Middle Ages", it is "no darker nor more depraved than our own world".

Dear George R Fucking R Martin:

There is a lot of stuff in the past. Rape. Murder. Incest. Unkindness to children. We get that. You're writing a dark fantasy. We get that, too.  Nobody said -- not even once -- that your works, and the TV show derived from them, should never have a rape. I know that's a fun point to debate, because it's obviously wrong.

Let's look at what people are actually saying. They're saying "The TV show is adding rapes where rapes weren't before." They're saying "Rapes are being used as casual plot development". They're saying "When women are raped, the rape is shown from the male viewpoint, and staged to emphasize the women's bodies."   In short, they're making points about authorial choices.   Unlike you, they're making limited, targeted points.  This rape was gratuitous.   This rape was shot in a titillating way.

As many, many people have pointed out, Westeros may not be the Disneyland Middle Ages, but it's certainly not the real European Middle Ages.   No magic.   No years-long winters.   No fricking dragons.    That means that you are choosing, deliberately, to introduce elements incongruous with history.   Furthermore, you are picking and choosing elements from European history -- and Orientalism, but let's not go there -- as they suit your purposes as an author.   Don't present your choices as inevitable truths.   They aren't.   You've chosen  to use rape, in particular, as an  illustration of Things Being Bad and People Being Evil.    The TV series, in turn, has taken scenes in the book that were, at least, ambiguous, or didn't contain rape at all, and made them explicitly rapeful.   You choose where the authorial point of view focuses; the TV series chooses where the camera is pointed.   All of those choices spring from the culture you live in; they aren't some sort of Platonic self-creating ideal.  

We aren't overreacting when we criticize those particular choices as they occur, and when we notice culturally-driven patterns in those choices.   We are reacting.  Our analysis is just as valid, and just as appropriate, as the analyses of people who work out the ecological consequences of long winters, or the troop emplacements at the Battle of Blackwater.  We're fans.  We analyze things.  It's what we do.   

To drop down from the abstract plane, the TV series Game of Thrones uses women's naked bodies as interior decoration, in a way that it does not use men's naked bodies.   The TV series Game of Thrones uses rape as a plot device in ways that the source did not.  I, as a consumer, don't enjoy those parts of a series I otherwise enjoy.   I would rather have my raisin pie not be 15% moose turds.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

Cosigned.

[julian]

A freakin' men.

[julian]

Also, the Orientalism may be a tangent, but it's an important one. (Though not, I realize, at all the point of the post. Just a thing I want to remember for later.)

[mme_hardy]

It's tangential to this particular rant, but it sure needs talking about.

I mean, Dothraki culture doesn't look very sustainable to me.

[rinue]

Yep. Last paragraph in particular sums up my annoyance with the current state of fandom, where I'm continually told I should just be grateful I get what I get and must critically disengage unless it's to act as a booster in support of the status quo.

[mme_hardy]

"Fine. Tell me which other high-budget multi-season sprawling fantasy series I should watch instead."

[legionseagle]

As I've been trying to explain on Twitter, GRRM should stop dragging in the Wars of the Roses. Because women (specifically royal women) were the key to vast tracts of land and hence warriors, a rape would be seen as a property attack and would therefore be dealt with accordingly. His "rape happens in war" line is remarkably thin when (I understand by osmosis) his rapes happen among the royal houses and power players. So imposing his rapes on his fantasy equivalents of Margaret of Anjou, Cecily the Rose of Raby, Elizabeth Woodville (who reputedly pulled a knife out when Edward IV tried something less than consensual and told him she didn't care which of their throats she used it on, but she'd stop him one way or the other), Anne Neville, Isabel Neville, and all the others when there's not a shred of evidence any of them ever where raped may be something, but historical accuracy it ain't.

Dear God, if he wants a lesson in how to use rape in grimdark, he should read Stephanie Plowman's To Spare The Conquered (a Peacock, which was an early sixties/seventies Penguin imprint for what is now known as YA). It's about what happened when the Romans thought raping Boudicca and her daughters was a really cunning plan. And you know what? When they dig sewers and suchlike near Long Wall and the Barbican they're still digging up the Roman heads.

[neotoma]

It might be nice if GRRM stopped dragging in Vikings as well, because Viking women has a lot more rights than the Ironborn do -- such as they could sue or just have killed (because it wasn't murder if you admitted you did and didn't hide the body) a rapist.

And a husband who couldn't deal with the fact that his wife had been raped didn't have the legal right to kill her -- he had the right to divorce her and kill her rapist. Even enslaved husbands had the right to defend their wives against rapists among the Vikings.

[mme_hardy]

While we're on the subject, Mongol wives had substantial power and authority, and were nothing like the downtrodden and voiceless Dothraki wives. (Note that the senior Dothraki women are hastily whisked offscreen to be crones.) Genghis Khan consulted his wives when choosing his successor.

[neotoma]

Mongol women owned their tent and could bar men access, among other things. I would love to see the Dothraki having more of that and less of the stereotypical 'savage nomad' stereotypes.

The surviving queen of the previous khan was often the one who picked the next khan because Mongols practiced levirate marriage. Mandukhai Khatun used that to lever herself into enormous power by careful manipulation of that cultural institution.

[mme_hardy]

Do you have a favorite book on the Mongols you'd recommend?

[neotoma]

Jack Weatherford's Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and The Secret History of the Mongol Queens. I read them together with Tuchman's A Distant Mirror several years ago, and it's amazing how the Mongols had dealt with logistics problems that baffled the French a century later.

[mme_hardy]

Hi-ho! Off to the Amazonmobile! And thank you.

[mme_hardy]

Yes yes yes yes YES. Women were bargaining chips, important ones, and they frequently did the bargaining themselves. The closest we see to a real medieval noblewoman is Olenna Tyrell. That's *exactly* what a noble widow looked like: she had money, power, and influence on, if not control of, family strategies. She shouldn't be such an outlier; the Tyrells shouldn't be the only family where grandmothers, mothers, and wives are setting strategy and controlling resources. One of the big impacts of a constant state of war is lots and lots of widows with power, widows serving as regents, and wives running estates and countries for absent husbands. In GoT most of those regents (Cersei and Lyssa for two) are incompetent.

I really, really resent GRRM's hiding between "Oh, it's all just history". No. It's YOUR perception of history, and YOUR choices.

I was shaped for life by Anne Hollander's Seeing Through Clothes. Hollander pointed out that, when costuming a play or movie, even if every single garment was identical to a surviving garment or fashion plate, the movie would still look dated to the period it was made in within decades. Why? Because the costumer picks the authentic garments that look right to him/her, the ones that are attractive, and which shapes and colors look attractive varies across time. You may have picked out the only lime green dress ever worn in 1810 to use as a model. It's authentic, but not representative. For a good example of this, compare the 1920s costuming in the Robert Redford Great Gatsby to the 1920s costumes in the Leo diCaprio Great Gatsby.

Historical fiction is exactly like that. History is big. Unimaginably big. You are going to pick the bits of it you find compelling, amusing, emotionally compatible. What you write about is shaped by your character. Just saying "it's history" doesn't take responsibility for your choices about what to highlight and what to omit entirely.

[tadorna]

Personally, I would quite like it if the entire series revolved around Olenna Tyrell. She's great.

[mme_hardy]

Permanent Olenna/Tywin snarkoff, yesssss.

[tadorna]

I would very much enjoy that.

[sollers]

To be fair to GRRM, he himself says that his main inspiration wasn't the Wars of the Roses (I got the impression he thought they were overworked) but Maurice Druon's "Les Rois Maudits" - a series which says that yes, Edward III did have a valid claim to the French throne.

[ironed_orchid]

your rant is a good rant and you are right and he/they are wrong.

[jayblanc.livejournal.com]

Going to note that GRRM is probably hugely restricted as to what he can and can not say about the way the TV show has taken things. These days, anyone involved with big media productions has to sign what amounts to a gagging order saying you will only say good things about the product for a specified amount of time. And this often means having to say turds are raisins, or at the very least obliquely not answering anyone who asks about the turds in their raisins.

This is a big part of why you only see defensive answers about movies and TV shows from their producers, actors, or writers. Because they signed very strongly worded agreements not to say anything that might imply the show is bad in any way. Don't assume they tactically agree with how things have ended up, because they're liable for penalty fees if they ever agreed with critics that the product was bad.

It's my assumption that no one involved with any major production is telling the truth or expressing their own feelings about any entertainment product, till years after it's finished.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I have never been tempted to watch it, and now? There is no way. No. Way.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

You can safely pass. Not a masquerade ball in sight. (Alluding to a mutual obsession, I think?)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes! :-)