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