GoT as Realpolitik

[shipperx]

Interesting GOT review (not of this week's episode but of the series thus far). It discusses things in depth that I haven't seen elsewhere (well... outside of fandom, at any rate).

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137360/charli-carpenter/game-of-thrones-as-theory?page=show

EXCERPTS:

...Social relations in Westeros are sustained as much through bread-breaking rituals, arranged marriages, and promise-keeping as through backstabbing and treachery, and the power of such rules is only highlighted by their occasional breach. Lords and kings no less than oath-breakers are punished for violating custom and agreement -- either explicitly or through the inability to convert their hard power into material successes. Contrary to Cersei's assertion, kings cannot always "do as they like": Ned and the chivalry he represented may appear to have been the loser at the end of book and season one, but Joffrey's disregard for basic standards of justice will return to haunt him as it did his predecessors. The true moral of the story is that when good rules are disregarded, disorder and ruin follow...

And

...Perhaps the most marginalized viewpoint in war literature, and political narrative more generally, is that of the enemy itself. Yet in Game of Thrones, even the despots, king-slayers, executioners, and slave-traders are humanized and contextualized. As Adam Serwer notes, "Tolkien's monsters are literally monsters ... [but] most of Martin's monsters are people. Just when you've decided to hate them, [Martin] writes a chapter from their perspective, forcing you to consider their point of view." Martin shows how gender, race, class, age, and disability combine to produce multiple gradients and forms of power in Westerosi society, just as much as differences in material capabilities. By mixing things up, moreover, he reminds the audience that these categories are often constructed rather than fixed: the strong find themselves crippled; princes become slaves; noblewomen turn into stable hands; bastards grow to be commanders...

and

Perhaps nothing underscores this more than the portrayal of gender relations on the show. Westeros and surrounding lands are of course deeply misogynistic societies, but this hardly makes the show and novels sexist, as some have claimed. Rather, they force the audience to confront the violent reality of feudal gender relations. Martin's in-your-face depictions of debauchery, sexual assault, trafficking, forced marriage, and illegitimacy refute the gendered myth that knights and armies exist to protect women and children, just as they refute the political myth that states exist to protect nations from serious external threats. In standard fantasy, female characters who fail to play along with these myths tend to be punished (compare Eowyn to Arwen in Lord of the Rings). Not so in Martin's realm: Sansa, the only character who appears to buy into notions of chivalry, is painted as pitiably naive. The stronger female characters of Martin's world are indeed constrained by gender norms, but rather than embody them they chafe at and try to maneuver around their circumstances, each representing different feminist ripostes to the gender-blind realist narrative of statecraft and world politics...

The article as a whole is interesting.

Comments

[shapinglight]

That is very interesting. Thanks for the link. Reading it has made me more eager than ever to see how Dany's story unfolds.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I'm going to save the whole article to read later. I was particularly interested in the discussion of the accusations of sexism, because I couldn't agree more.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, read selenak a few days ago on how many prominent women there were in the real Wars of the Roses, and how none of them were well known for getting raped and tortured constantly.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Other than Dany's wedding night etc. none of the major female characters in the series has been raped. Which highlights what the article writer is saying, it sort of makes you confront the reality of arranged political marriages in blunt terms. I doubt historians are including all the women who were in "arranged marriages" like Dany. Showing it as a rape was more honest than saying "Oh, it was just an arranged marriage... where the woman had no choice and had to legally 'submit'". So while what happened to her was rape, I don't know that I'd necessarily give a pass to all the historical figures who had arranged marriages because honestly in a lot of cases we don't really know.

Other than Dany, however, none of the primary females have had anything like rape. True, Brienne was threatened with rape, but she was threatened by the same people who chopped Jaime's hand off. And yes the Arya imposter forced to marry the Bastard of Bolton has to suffer what we can only imagine must be torturous, but then Bolton is a psychopath who flays men alive. So I tend to think that torture is given out to both sexes. And that the mentions of the unending and awful rapes of the Dothraki (I HATED the DOthraki) probably was rather realistic of the Huns they were patterned after).

In the prominent female characters of the series - Arya, Catelyn, Cersei, Sansa, Brienne, Asha, there has been no rape (And Dany's was... her marriage (unfortunately). not that I would put such a thing passed Martin. The books are brutally violent. But they're brutally violent full stop. I can't really think of any (living) fate in the books worse than Theon's.

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this link - very interesting!

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

excellent points.

We don't know much of the women of War of the Roses, other than their marriages and that they often became powerful after being wed & having offspring. But how many of their conjugal experiences were hearts and flowers?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing this - it does a good job of underlining why I've stuck with the novels even though at times, I find the way hard-going.
And why I love the tv series as much as I do.

I like how Game of Thrones depicts power and plays with it, without falling into gender stereotypes. Also depicting clearly that everyone can be a monster, so we often don't have clear villains or heroes, it depends on the situation.

Interesting...a co-worker told me about a NY Times article that states GoT isn't working as well because it doesn't have a "NED STARK" or star at its head, like Scean Bean. And I thought...uh, since when was Scean Bean that big of a star? He's rarely seen. Also Peter Dinklage made a bigger impression. Not to mention Lena Headley. Plus, Ned, I'm sorry, not the most interesting character in either the series or the books. My comment back to co-worker was - this reviewer obviously doesn't understand the appeal of a non-traditional hero's journey fantasy series. And clearly didn't read the books. (But I haven't read the review yet.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

And it's controversial regarding whether Dany's was clearly rape. She knew that she had to have sex with him to consummate the marriage. She may not have enjoyed it. But I don't get the feeling she necessarily said no, we won't have sex.

People often confuse rough or unenjoyable sex with rape. They aren't quite the same thing. I don't think he meant to rape her. There was also a language barrier, remember, as well as a cultural one. Granted, she didn't want sex, and he's clumsy and knows zip about how to pleasure a woman. But - they had to have it. Because otherwise - not married and no kids. Robert Barratheon probably did the same thing to Cersei. I seriously doubt either wanted to do it, just had to.

Is that rape? Or just really bad sex? I don't know. I can't remember what the book said and it's been a while since I saw the episode.

There is however rape off-stage. Remember Daisy? She's gang-raped. (God I hope that isn't shown. It's referred to in the books.) A lot of the really brutal stuff happens off-page in the books. We just don't see it. Brienne is constantly threatened with it - she gets saved three times, by unlikely people. As is Sansa...who also gets saved. Cersei ...well Cersei and Dany are sort of similar - in arranged marriages, except Cersei never wants her husbands attentions but has to endure them.

Another point about sex - we forget, sex is often also about power. The books deal with power. In those days, women, such as Cersei, had no physical power - but they do have "sexual" power. Cersei controls her brother, Jamie in the books and series through sex. Catelynn's power over Ned was "sexual" as it was over LittleFinger. Littlefinger uses the "sexual power" of the whores. And Roz and Asha use their "sexual" power to get what they want.

Okay, I haven't read up to what happens to Theon...now I'm curious. Is that in Dance of Dragons?

[timeofchange.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for this link. I've not seen the show, but it does illuminate the books, and as another poster said, offers several reasons that I stick with them.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Lollys?

And yeah, there is off-stage rape, but no rape of primary female characters only "extras" as it were.

But regarding Dany, I think that's always going to be a topic of discussion because no, he didn't consider himself as raping her. In that culture/time there was no option for a wife to say no. So neither he nor Dany could conceive of the fact that she could say no (and honestly, who could say no to a Khal? They'd just kill 3 people at the wedding). And Dany didn't think she could say now. Also, in the book, the scene was portrayed somewhat differently.

That said, I think we as a modern readers are allowed to look at it differently. In the context she didn't have free consent. She was basically sold to Drogo and had no standing to refuse (in the show. Again, the book cast the scene somewhat differently). I think we were supposed to be horrified.

It's a bit like the scene with Joan and her fiance on Mad Men. I read an interview with the actress recently and she says that people often tell her that the fiance 'kind of' raped Joan and she says "kind of?" Joan, like Dany, was working under the concepts of their culture, but looking at it from ours, it's not a big skip to come to see that she was stripped of having any meaningful choice in the matter. They'd never label it as such.

And luckily for Sansa, Tyrion didn't have a taste for rape... and he was ridiculed for it.

As for Theon, you have to really, really, REALLY want to know because honestly, it's enough to make you ill. Honestly, it's enough that even as much as you hate him by the end of Book II you end up thinking "NO ONE deserves what's happened to him".

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I read that review. All I could think is that reviewer is doomed to disappointment because there is no traditional "heart of the story" hero.

Then again, I liked... 'beer good foamy's response(I think that was who said it)to the critic who said there was no one to identify with (paraphrased for bad memory) "Guess he can't identify with women or dwarves."

Looking at the series as a whole, Ned's death shouldn't be a shocking as people react to it. Yes, it's "shocking" if GoT were a stand-alone book. But if you look at the series as a whole, he was the dead mentor. The mentor freqiently dies in act I. Think Obi Wan. It's not at all unusual for the father/mentor to die leaving apprentices and orphaned children to be the "heroes". So while it's surprising that Ned dies in act III of the first novel, he's actually dying in the set-up of the series and at that pacing... his death isn't shocking at all.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yes, unfortunately sexual violence done to women (especially within marriage) was very rarely recorded in history.

It's a bit like the lecture series I listened to a couple weeks ago about the ancient history of Israel where the professor of archeology repeated several times that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

And I'm still waiting to read the rest of it.

She has her ups and downs. There are parts where you want to cheer for her, and parts where you're going, "Sheesh, Dany!"

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The series has the luxury of having the books as a blueprint (and a blueprint that is several steps ahead) so they can streamline so that it's somewhat faster paced than the books.

Interesting article, though.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I thought the article had some interesting points that I hadn't read elsewhere.